Supernatural the Animation 01 – The Alter Ego Review


One of the Winter 2011 titles that I am excited to watch since I am interested in Supernatural but don’t know where to find the DVD’s… and I don’t have a DVD player. Also, I don’t want to spend more than an hour just to marathon the first season, so yeah, I will just watch the 22-minute version. Anyways, in this episode the Winchesters face a shape-shifter and cause quite a problem with the brothers.


Unlike the first episodes of anime that I have watched, they never introduced why they are travelling in an old car and when did they start looking for their missing father and when did the start hunting for monsters. Since this is adapted from the original American script, screw not introducing the Winchester brothers and let’s get into the action!


As for the action in this episode, it was awesome. What’s more is that the art adds up to the realism of the scenes and makes the characters of this series more human, and thus, I salute the character designer for making the designs look like they are humans. Asides from the art, the lighting that reminded me of the similar lighting style with Madhouse’s smash anime hit, Death Note adds the darkness and the intensity in some of the scenes.


For the plot of the episode, even if it only give hints about the Winchester’s past such as Dean hinting monsters with his dad while Sam is in college and that their dad left a notebook and that’s it. Hopefully, they will talk more about it and explain Sam’s dream early in this episode. As for the monster of the week (I am dead serious), it was fun.


Having a shape-shifter as the monster for the first episode was a good choice since they were able to flesh out more of the personality of the Winchesters and their respective senses, thus causing not to trust each other at some point in the episode that gives us a lot of intense scenes involving them. Will not tell you which scene is it since it is awesome that you need to watch it yourself.


First impressions on the Winchesters, Dean is the happy go lucky guy who loves chicks and in this episode, he hits with the female Detective. I like Dean. As for Sam, he was the serious type and that’s it. Will have a hard time liking Sam but considering what he did in this episode, he is badass!


Overall, it never actually felt the show’s first episode but even with that, they introduced why they are travelling across America and it happened that they got interested to a case in an area in America and showed us how they work. It seems that I am seeing a pattern here, which might cause fans to assume that this will be an episodic series, ala the Iron Man anime.

Hopefully it might not end up with the Iron Man anime route at the near end of the series. Even if that is the case, it had a great start the action is good and that the animation has a realistic feel that adds to the darkness and intensity of this series. I like it.