Maya Kumashiro has just returned to Japan and attends his funeral, her purpose for her return aside from attending his funeral is to destroy the Academy that he build from within by being the principal of the said Academy. After his father “accidentally” summons a poltergeist, he meets a naked man who came from above. I am serious.
After some quite unusual encounter with the guy, she was able to pick a weird phone that has a camera on it (It is the 90’s people), in which when she took a picture of herself, she saw an image of the skull. On the next day, we are introduced to the man himself; his name is Abe Minoru, their new history teacher. Maya, still bothered with the guy, we learn much more about him in which I will summarize in the next paragraph since when he was first introduced, he lied in some details.
His real name is Fumiaki Uchida, who is the famous psychic spoon bender in TV who is also known as Bunmei. In the future, aliens conquered Earth and the event that happened in Waldstein Academy is the cause of their arrival. Since we have aliens, there are people who are fighting against them. After picking some of their technology, they were able to create a device for time travel.
Our protagonist, ladies and gentlemen!
After the agent before him, #5 was killed by a Moth Man, the adult Fumiaki was forced to travel back in time to prevent the aliens in arriving Earth, aside from the data gathered by the agents before him. He receives a cellphone in which once you took a picture and think about something that will happen in 2012, it will show a result of its fate in 2012.
With that cellphone, they can find an item called, Nostradamus Key in which is the cause of the arrival of the aliens in Walstein Academy. After Maya learns that the cause of his father’s death is he looking for the key, she decides to aide Fumiaki in his quest for looking of the key.
On to the review, to be honest, I haven’t watched the other two titles of Anime no Chikara, so I will not compare it to the said project, but instead, I might throw in references on other supernatural anime titles.
For starters, from all the supernatural related anime titles that I have watched, this is the most realistic. By realistic, no weird looking monsters (Well, we have but not those Hollows!), or shamans, or shinigamis but pure classic occult stuff; namely, aliens, monsters coming from folk lore such as the Chupacabra, Moth Man and the like. Sure, they went a little magical at the finale but still, the pure occult stuff is the meat of this series… along with its time travel bit, which I will talk about later.
For the time traveling bit and the ability to see the future with a cellphone camera, was igneous. Sure, it is not the fun time traveling thing that we saw in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, but the serious aspect of it. The use of the cellphone camera as a device to see the future is something I never thought of seeing in this show. It was probably, one of the best bits of this series.
If you are a fan of shows that is something to do with time traveling, you might see the ending of the series coming but because of the strong occult stuff that is happening for weeks, you will be surprised on how it ended (Yes, I was surprised about the ending). This is one of the strong parts of the series, how they were able to divert the viewers in the occult stuff and less on the time traveling aspect.
If you are a fan of shows that is something to do with time traveling, you might see the ending of the series coming but because of the strong occult stuff that is happening for weeks, you will be surprised on how it ended (Yes, I was surprised about the ending). This is one of the strong parts of the series, how they were able to divert the viewers in the occult stuff and less on the time traveling aspect.
Even with the show having quite a strong theme of “the world has ended in 2012 and some random hobo was thrown in a time machine to save the earth,” it never fails to deliver some comedy to freshen up the series. Aside from the occult, the time travel, one of this series’ strong points is its comedy. To be honest, the second episode was one of the episodes that I seriously laughed aside that it extended the “shadow penis” incident back in the first episode but they gave poor Bunmei quite a hard time doing his job as a time agent properly!
Even in the most serious episodes, they never fail to make us laugh! Here’s a sample: on the episode in which they saved Maya’s friend, Ami from a horde of Chubacabra, all the male characters make strong speeches of backing her up just for her to save Ami. After all of them say their lines, Maya replied that those people who say those lines are the ones who died in the movies!
Character designs are gorgeous but there is one thing that bothered me in the designs, the eye bags in Maya’s eyes. But hey, the animation is one of the best that I have seen in the previous anime season! A-1 Pictures did a great job in terms of animation.
Fumiaki was one of my favorite characters in this series. Aside that he was a hobo coming from the future that lost his psychic powers, possibly due to his mother being quite abusive in some point in his life; he is one of the characters that continues to make me life aside from JK and Kozue. Even he is quite a comedic protagonist, he has some serious moments in this show. Aside that in one episode he volunteers to save the real Kozue in the other side, we saw much of him being awesome in the last three episodes of the series, especially the finale. Seeing his actions in the finale was one of the strong points in this series.
Maya is quite a good character, aside that she hides the fact that she still loves occult even if she declared that she hates it, her knowledge in occult makes this series interesting. She is a character that you will easily love at the start of the series. She is a good contrast to Bunmei’s bumbling-ness (If such a word exist), that even if Bunmei is the time agent, it seems that Maya is more eager to do the job compared to him.
Overall, if you are quite sick of those pre-apocalyptic films that talks about the end of the world at the year 2012, it is one of those best titles to watch that is related to 2012 but it is not how the world will end, but how to prevent it to end.
Animation wise, it is good and, the plot will keep you asking for more. From all the series is that I watched in the previous Summer Anime season, this is probably, one of the best titles that I have watched, and it is hard to think of saying something bad about this series!
Seeing this title, I think I should give the other titles of Anime no Chikara project a try; I might try Senkou no Night Raid first since this is the only title that has nothing to do with music since my PC has no audio!
Special thanks to xxxholic_wing for the images coming from her blog!