OP: “Crack-Crack-Crackle” by CLASS:y

My views on anime directors should certainly be no surprise to anyone who’s been reading my scribblings for a while.  I’ve said it till I’m blue in the face, with an adaptation the most important person is the director (with an original, it’s the writer).  And as directors go, they don’t get much better than Omata Shinichi – or Hatakeyama Mamoru, as he seems to go by both names interchangeably for some reason.  He’s right there with Watanabe Ayumu and Tachikawa Yuzuru at the very top of the game in TV anime for me, someone whose work I would closely track irrespective of the source material.

Well, big surprise – the premiere of Undead Girl Murder Farce was great.  After the GoHands experience this was like a full-body directorial detox treatment.  If GoHands and Naz are the Yin-Yang of anime awfulness, this was the Yin-Yang of flat-out quality.  This episode was gorgeous from start to finish.  I remember thinking several times that there simply wasn’t a boring shot in the entire thing – everything was more interesting and more striking than it needed to be.  I think it would be hard to top Tengoku Daimakyou for overall production quality (especially as an adaptation), but this was the best anime episode of the year purely in terms of direction.

I don’t want to drag Megane Wasureta too much here, because honestly, it’s not sporting – it’s so easy it’s almost cruel.  But just compare GoHands’ grotesque, vertigo-inducing attempts at being artful and what we got from Hatakeyama-Omata.  The way he contrasted light and dark, vivid colors and monotones, the exquisite scene compositions.  Especially stunning was the way he played with the image of Aya within her cage, framing it so many different ways – looking in and out, above and below.  And the transitions!  I could go on for hours – mercifully I won’t, but believe me I’m pretty goddam impressed.

As for the story, I went in pretty much cold turkey here.  This show is based on a series of  mystery novels (not light ones) by Aosaki Yugo, whose work I know nothing about.  The date is Meiji 30 (1897), and in the name of “Westernization” there’s been a purge of Japan’s youkai.  A man they call the Oni Slayer (Yashiro Taku) works at a seedy freakshow, killing “monsters” on stage, though the big boss says he’s a monster himself.  One day he finds himself being followed, and leads his pursuer on quite an expedition before confronting her by the riverside.

At first there seems to be some sort of ventriloquism happening here.  The woman (dressed as a maid) says nothing, but we hear the voice of Kurosawa Tomoyo, and it’s apparently coming from the birdcage the maid is holding.  The maid and the oni slayer put on quite a show before the disembodied voice calls a truce, and the truth is revealed.  There’s a severed head in that cage, and it belongs to Rindou Aya.  She, apparently, is “The Immortal” – the only one in world, according to the man (whose real name is actually Shin’uchi Tsuguru).  He’s half human and half oni, Aya says – and close to death, as the oni side is slowly consuming the human.

I immediately liked both these characters, I immediately liked both the seiyuu performances, and I immediately liked the chemistry between them.  There’s a whiff of Baccano! to all this – the setting, the direction, the manic energy, the machine-gun dialogue.  Aya just wants Tsuguru to kill her  – she’s been 14 for 947 years and having had her body stolen she’s tired of the game – and in return, she says she can extend his life.  For his part Tsuguru was ready to die – in fact, he’s been working at the carnival with the intent that when he finally snaps, he’ll take out a bunch of bad people in entertaining fashion.  But faced with this tinew prospect, he’s willing to give it a punt.

Tsuguru has a condition, though,  He won’t kill Aya – rather, he’ll help her find her body, which she says is likely in Europe.  The guy who took it – and old man with an “M” cane and another half-oni for muscle – is the same one who “took his humanity”, Tsuguru says.  So it’s a team, and that’s quite the road trip they’re heading out on.  The deal (to extend his life he has to swap some saliva, the old-fashioned way) And the maid starts talking too – her name is Hasei Shizuku (Koichi Makoto), and she’s going with them.  These three headed to London 1897?  Sign me up for that.

Yup, there’s a ton of upside potential to this – as I kind of knew going in, which is why I didn’t feel right listing Undead Girl Murder Farce as a sleeper.  In addition to Omata we’ve got Takagi Noboru, one of the best adapting writers in the industry (and the guy who adapted Baccano! I might add) and someone who’s worked with Hatakeyama before.  If the source material is even just pretty good, you have to figure these two have the chops to make something great out of it.  And based on the first episode, I wouldn’t bet against them doing so.

ED: “reversal” by Anna