With Hunter x Hunter on a hiatus, I guess it is time for us to watch Togashi-sensei’s underrated title, Level E and this time, he decided to go back into his supernatural roots and instead of demons coming from the other side, we have aliens! Yep, and this alien is blonde!
The first episode was one fun episode to watch. Asides that he threw a couple of visual references such as one character appearing in the beginning kinda look like Gon from Hunter x Hunter, E.T.’s infamous two fingers connecting and the fact that the guy heading the engineering department is named Edogawa Ranzo (Edogawa Ranpo) and that he is living in Conan (Edogawa? Conan? Conan Edogawa! Get it? Get it? Nevermind) will make you laugh.
As for the plot, it is about Tsutsui Yukitaka who has just moved in a different neighborhood because of baseball and to his surprise, a longhaired blonde person has just unpacked his things and decided to stay and drink coffee! Turned out to be he is an alien, only known as the Prince because that is what it is said at the end of the episode that came from the planet, Jacqueline Ess and now he is on Earth because this is were his spaceship landed! At the fact that Prince here is a little simple minded with mimicry abilities and the ability to regenerate!
The plot is not your average supernatural anime plot simply because it was established earlier that aliens exist and some are hiding somewhere in this planet, in short, we might see more aliens in the future episodes. Second, Prince here is unlike most aliens in anime that I saw doesn’t want to invade Earth but he just wants to know his true self. If it turns out that Prince’s true self involves him invading Earth, then we just have a very predictable plot twist!
Prince = Awesome.
First impression on our duo: Yukitaka basically is that new guy who just came in town and ends up finding a weird guy wearing his clothes. Yeah, he is that plain as for the one breaking in his house, Prince he is one heck of an alien! Seriously, I love how he thinks that Yukitaka has the makings of a great psychopathic killer due to the fact he never mentioned to the girl next door that he is the one who pressed the self destruct button! See how simple he is! Plus, he carried the entire episode, no, he is everywhere in this episode! If I would place Yu Yu Hakusho/Ghost Fighter references with this Togashi title, you might say that Yukitaka is the cross between Yusuke/Eugene and part of Kurama/Dennis’ personality while as for Prince, he is like the cross between Kuwabara/Alfred’s comical side, Kurama’s hair except that he is blonde and a part of Hiei/Vincent’s mysterious personality.
Overall, this is one fun first episode. The Prince here like I said earlier carried the entire first episode that it even overshadowed Yukitaka who is supposed to be our main protagonist! The comedy is over the top with some references from other works and Prince’s simple-mindedness in terms of how Yukitaka acts with other people. As for the plot, it has some similarities with Togashi-sensei’s other works and I am sure, his fans will feel at home with this title. If this is your first Togashi title, then you will start watching or reading more of his titles.