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Funimation / 320 Minutes / 2009 / Unrated / Street Date: July 27, 2010
This is another bizarre, wacky fantasy anime in somewhat the same feel as Slayers and One Piece. Like those series there is a large group of characters here. It was tough for me to get a handle on all the characters and their relationships. I’d never seen the series before, but after watching a few episodes I got into it. There are some very interesting character designs and complicated, but fun storylines and characters. I honestly still can’t tell you who the main character is. Unlike Lina of Slayers and Luffy of One Piece, what we have here is more of an ensemble of characters with none taking the lead over the others and most being equally compelling.
For those unfamiliar with this series I’ll cover some of the basics as best as I can. The series follows the Death Weapon Meister Academy where students study under the Grim Reaper. This isn’t your grandfather’s grim reaper though - this one has a fun squirly on top of his head, giant hands and a high-pitched voice. There are a number of teachers from the school that are significant characters such as Marie and Stein (shortened from Franken Stein). Then there’s a wide arrange of students who take many storylines and battles: Maka, Soul, Black Star, Tsubaki, Death the Kid and the Thompson sisters. An interesting point here is that many of these characters are weapons. Oh, half the time they appear as humans, but then they turn into a scythe, sword, or guns and are wielded by the other students – this is a bizarre world.
In these stories we deal with Medusa, a villainous woman who has no head of snakes and turns no one into stone, but inhabits the body of a little girl, so our protagonists can’t hurt her without hurting a little girl too. Then there’s Aracne who does live in a very spiderweb-inspired castle, and tries to expand madness upon the world, or universe, or something, I’m not quite sure. There’s so much back story that I don’t know that I couldn’t quite follow it all, but I did enjoy trying.
I don’t know anything about the animation production on this show, but if I had my guess it’s traditional animation with some computer animation as well. It all melds together well though and makes for a good visual experience. Like most anime the lip flap (even with the Japanese language) is less specific, but suffices. The action though is well animated and you won’t find much of the visual cheating here as in so many other anime shows. The show is pretty fully animated and the action sequences range from good to spectacular.
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