First Impressions / Miscellaneous

Summary:
In Arkham City, there is a detective named Daijuuji Kurou who’s contacted for a job by the head of the wealthy Hadou family, a girl named Ruri. She wants him to search for a magic book and is offering quite a handsome reward. Kurou takes the job, but that money is taken away from him by Sister Leica for food costs when Kurou goes to the church for lunch. Back in her office, Ruri wonders why the magical book is necessary for the Demonbane, which her grandfather left as a means to combat the Black Lodge organization. Kurou, who studied magic theory in college, searches the town for leads. When evening comes around and a fog settles in, he suffers a brief set of visions. He then sees another bookstore through the mist. Inside, he meets the female storekeeper named Naia. She figures out that he’s after a powerful magic book, but her store doesn’t have it. She seems to think that Kurou will get his hands on the ultimate magic book capable of summoning a god.
As Kurou is sitting in his car thinking about what Naia said, which included a reference to the Necronomicon, he suddenly sees a young girl come crashing out of a building. She falls right on him (panties to his face), and his car is immediately surrounded by Black Lodge members armed with submachine guns. They start firing, but the girl uses her magical powers to shield them from the bullets and then to strike back at her enemies. After the girl faints, a Black Lodge villain shows up – a man by the name of Doctor West. He fires his guitar-case rocket launcher at them, but Kurou hits the gas pedal just in time to get out of the way. The two do get surrounded by West and the Black Lodge again, and this time the girl asks for Kurou’s name. With it, the girl – whose own name is Al Azif – forms a contract with him through a kiss. It transforms him into a more powerful being and changes her into a chibi.
Kurou is now capable of defending himself from the Black Lodge’s bullets and even catches and throws Doctor West’s rocket back at him. After the battle, Kurou remembers that the Al Azif was the original name of the Necronomicon. However his conversation with her is cut short when Dr. West emerges back in the middle of they city onboard his giant mechanical fortress. He starts firing at Kurou, which in the process starts destroying the city. Al senses a Deus Machina, which she first thinks is the Aeon, but then realizes is a different one. Kurou doesn’t know what a Deus Machina is, and Al only explains that it’s a god of this world. This Deus Machina is the Demonbane, which now starts activating. In her command center, Hadou Ruri is dumbfounded at the fact that her grandfather’s Demonbane is moving. To everyone’s (except for Al) surprise, a mecha crashes down into the city – the Demonbane has arrived.

One of the first things you have to know about Demonbane is that it’s based on H.P. Lovecraft’s writings. Much of the terminology of this series originates from this author (Arkham, Necronomicon, Al Azif, etc). Of course, Lovecraft never wrote anything about a mecha called Demonbane with a young girl (loli) as the Necronomicon.
But this first episode doesn’t really make this out as a mecha series as much as it is an action series. At least not yet anyway. The Demonbane itself only showed up in the final minutes of the episode, so the mecha battles are yet to come. The designs remind me of Evangelion (particularly the eyes and the large shoulders) crossed with a bit of The Big O. And the city of Arkham is an interesting mix of magic and futuristic Industrial Revolution/Prohibition era.
However, I’m not too big on the character designs (huge boobs on females, bulging muscles on males)…with the exception of chibi Al Azif, who may be the most adorable character since Shana-tan.
This series is fairly intriguing so I’ll probably continue with it, at least to the next episode to see the mecha battle and the OP/ED.

26 Comments

  1. Hui, what’s with all that gothic clothing stuff. But it doesn’t look bad. Think I’ll give it a try. The design reminds me a bit of Gungrave. The pictures don’t tell me much. What the hell is the story about ??
    Besides, öhm Omni, how many shows are you watching now? How do you manage to concentrate on so many shows? Just interested, because I don’t know how’s that possible 😉

    *Chi*
    Reply

  2. Well there’s no guarantees I’m going to continue covering this. Maybe do a second episode just to see the OP and ED. There’s currently four Thursday shows I can choose from (this, Kamisama Kazoku, xxxHOLiC, and ZEGAPAIN), of which I think I’ll end up doing probably two.

    Omni
    Reply

  12. the 11th picture in the right looks like a mech and a human combined. like the scene where the girl turns into a chibi and the guy gets buff thats kinda cool transformation for both sexes. i’ll be waiting for the next episode if it will interest me more

    anim3guy
    Reply

  16. Sounds and looks pretty interesting. I will defiently check it out.

    ELD:

    How do you figure it copies DBZ? I havent seen it yet but from the screencaps and explantion I dont see any similarities.

    Fuhrer
    Reply

  17. Actually, two things I’ve noticed so far about this series is the use of background textures and the main script writer. The background texturing on scenary and buildings look impressive, though not as good as Gankutsuo. The scriptwriter is a fairly good one who did write for Honey and Clover, Scryed (I think) and many other good series. So, I’m actually pretty confident about this being a decent series right now.

    weirdofu
    Reply

  21. Now that you guys have grown an interest in the anime, play the game. 😀 It rocks! There’s the original H-game, and then the non-H-game version. 🙂

    I took a peek at the Wowow page for Demonbane, and ir looks like we’re going to be taking a two-week break between episodes 2 and 3. >.>

    Shinji103
    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *