Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi remains the oddest and probably most puzzling series of the season for me. At first flush it seems so out of time that it’s hard to see why it even exists (much less on NoitaminA). Of course there is the Coolkyoushinja factor – any mangaka who gets three adaptations in a single season is certainly trendy. But this is a very weird show above and beyond simply being retro – which is in itself a reminder that anime that were weird for the sake of weirdness used to be a lot more common.
While Idaten has been very direct about the core premise – evil demons vanquished by Gods 800 years ago, to humanity’s benefit – this is one of those stories where good and evil get a little fuzzy. In the first place we’ve already seen that the Idaten are quite amoral in many respects – disinterested in helping humans unless it’s demons doing the threatening. They’re also pretty sadistic – Rin sure as hell is. And we have pretty strong evidence that Ysley – the brains of the outfit to be sure – is pursuing his own ends. In partnership with the oft-mentioned Prontea in fact – Shinji and Kaworu, together again.
As for the demons, they do seem pretty clearly evil at least in the sense of wanting to enslave humans. But there are only 634 of them, and they all seem to be hanging out in Zoble pretending to be human. Ironic that, as their leader O-Bami is actually a human posing as a demon lord (if Ysley is right, anyway, which he seems to be most of the time). And they all have quite human-like personalities, including the arrogantly cheeky Nickel, the one chosen to test the strength of the Idaten (Ysley has manipulated events to make sure it’s Rin they go up against). I get the sense there’s another shoe waiting to drop with this whole Idaten-demon dynamic.
The heart of the matter is that so far, Rin seems pretty much unbeatable, as Hayato knows all too well. We see via flashback that Rin has been shaped by an angsty 800 years to become the way she is, but whether she’s the hero or the villain of the piece I’m not too sure. Nickel is apparently one of the strongest of the demons – she’s more than a match for Hayato, which means she could easily defeat Ysley or Paula. But her fight with Rin only goes on as long as it does because Rin is taking the opportunity to measure Nickel’s strength. Intelligent demons that look like humans (sometimes) is a new thing for Rin. But when she gets serious, Nickel’s head leaves her body in short order.
One thing we can say for sure – don’t get attached to any character, and don’t assume famous seiyuu armor works in a cast with as many legends as this one. I still don’t quite know what to make of Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi to be honest, but that’s more a plus than a minus in an era of predictability in anime. The premise and cast is interesting enough to keep me around for now, and the resolutely old-school visual style makes for a refreshing change of pace to be sure.
