Spring wastes no time in kicking off the schedule, and no fooling. We start with Kijin Gentoushou, not an insignificant prospect by any means. It’s squarely in the mid-table, yes. But also the only thing I could really call a sleeper going into the season. In the main that was because it was based on a novel series, though there’s some disagreement on whether it’s a light one or not. Series based on true fantasy novels are certainly notable, and have definite upside. Karasu wa Aruji o Erabanai is the most prominent recent example, though there any many others.

I don’t rank Kijin Gentoushou on that level as a prospect, mind you. It has a less noteworthy staff, Yokohama Animation Lab hasn’t done a lot that stands out as quality, and the novels here don’t have the same reputation as Yatagarasu. Nevertheless my hopes were fairly high going into this premiere. And as is all the rage these days, it was double-length. It starts out in the early 19th Century, where an orphan sibling pair get taken in by a kindly stranger called Motoharu. His name is Jinta, and his little sister is Suzune. But it’s immediately clear something is off with her.

Let me say for starters, this premiere reminded me eerily of Kimetsu no Yaiba. Maybe there’s a bit of Sengoku Youko in there too, but the tone and premise struck me as very Demon Slayer (the English title is “Sword of the Demon Hunter” BTW). For the record the source novels predate Kimetsu by three years, so any similarities would be going in the opposite direction. The place Motoharu takes the kids to is a swordsmith village. And his job is as a “sentinel” – a demon slayer who protects the village and its Itsukihime, shrine princess. A job which he starts training little Jinta for pretty much immediately, it seems.

I found the first half of this double-episode to  be a bit draggy at times. The second was more action-driven and generally more engaging. Jinta and Suzune grow up with Motoharu’s daughter Shirayuki as their sibling and best friend, with the obvious implication that Jinta and she will fall in love. Which they do of course, and after a pretty significant timeskip (it’s dwarfed by the next one, though) Jinta is now the sentinel and Shirayuki the Itsukihime (both their predecessors having been eaten by demons). Suzune for her part looks exactly the same – which I initially assumed was because she’s a demon with a thousand-year natural lifespan, but was actually because she was retarding her own growth in order to support Jinta and Shirayukihime.

There are two sentinels now, and the other, Kiyomasa, is the son of the village chief. He gets betrothed to Shirayuki despite her being in love with Jinta, and both of them are willing to accept it for the sake of the village (Kiyomasa has the decency to be disgusted about it). This fact is used by a youkai with clairvoyant abilities to turn Suzune against them while Jinta is off fighting her partner, an assimilation demon. He wins the fight while losing an arm, and getting a demon one in replacement. All of this was foreseen, as was Suzune killing Shirayuki right in front of Jinta. Suzune, it seems, is some sort of youkai royalty. As such Clairvoyant Demon takes a blade for her, but she foresaw that too.

The prologue ends with Suzune declaring her intention to bring ruin to all mankind, Jinta being a youkai, and a 170-year timeskip. As this is where the story proper begins, it would be dangerous to read too much into the first two episodes. They were fine, pretty much. Nothing special in terms of writing or production but decent to look at and solidly entertaining for the most part. The story does feel fairly derivative (which is already a distinction with Yatagarasu) but I can see some potential here. I don’t think I can begin to seriously assess Kijin Gentoushou until after next week, however.