OP Sequence

OP: 「緋色のカケラ」 (Ake no Kakera) by 鈴希ゆき (Suzuki Yuki)
Watch the OP! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Streaming ▼

 

Summary:

Teito Klein is a boy without memories who’s currently attending a military school and has been suffering from weird dreams. He’s best friends with another boy named Mikage, and the two have promised that they won’t abandon each other on the battlefield. During their graduation exams, they are tasked with taking down a large prisoner, and most of the fighting falls to Teito. He manages to restrain the prisoner and doesn’t want to kill him, however the just-arrived Army Chief-of-Staff Ayanami kills off the prisoner anyway. That night, Teito has another dream of his young self being left by a certain man and the ensuing sea of red.

It all comes to a head the following day when the sound of a necklace leads him to overhear Ayanami talking to his men about something called the Eye of Michael. It triggers a memory inside of Teito of the man from his dreams – his father – being killed by Ayanami. This drives Teito into a rage and he tries to attack Ayanami, but he’s quickly stopped and locked up by Ayanami’s men. Mikage hears about this later and goes to help his friend, but Teito has already broken out on his own by that point. Teito doesn’t want to get Mikage involved, but Mikage insists on helping him get away. When the two are cornered by some guards on a balcony, Teito pretends that Mikage is his hostage and pushes his friend into the guards so that he can jump onto a vehicle below. As Teito prepares to fly off, he comes face-to-face with Ayanami for a moment, and although Ayanami manages to shoot and injure him, Teito is still able to escape. Teito’s vehicle flies away from the city, and his path just happens to cross that of three guys.

ED Sequence

ED: 「瞳のこたえ」 (Hitomi no Kotae) by Noria
Watch the ED! Mirror 1, Mirror 2, Show Spoiler ▼

Those of you who watched the original Fullmetal Alchemist anime might remember that a group named YeLLOW Generation performed the second ending song. Suzuki Yuki used to be part of that group, but she’s singing solo now for this series. It’s not a bad song to start off on and the chorus reminded me a little of some of TWO-MIX’s songs from Gundam Wing, but other than that, it’s not really special either. I liked the ED a bit more (I seem to be preferring slow songs a lot this season), and the water imagery in the ending sequence was nice – plus it shows off some of the few girls in this show.

Preview

I was a little hesitant coming into this series because it was being animated by Studio DEEN, but they did a pretty good job to start here. This first episode was presently pretty faithfully as an adaptation of the first chapter of the manga (there were some changes of course), and the production quality stayed fairly high. I’m still not a huge fan of the character designs, and I think that the animators made things unnecessarily bright at times with their frequent use of what seemed like a white gradient filter over the daytime scenes, but other than that, no complaints.

As for the story, I’m not that keen on how much the best-friends-with-Mikage aspect was played up (one of my friends called it a bromance), and Ayanami feels like a generic bad guy to me, but that’s not as much the anime’s fault as it is the original material. What I do find intriguing are the Shinigami-like 7 Ghosts. They didn’t show up in this first episode, but the OP sequence had some very cool looking shots of them and what little I’ve read of the manga has presented them as the most interesting, much more so than Teito himself. That alone probably isn’t enough to keep me watching the anime long-term, and I get the feeling that I’m going to start getting annoyed at Teito’s character sooner rather than later. I’ll tune in for a few more weeks though, and maybe the next couple of episodes will prove me wrong.

53 Comments

  1. Although, In the anime I wish that they had made Teito express more emotion during the time he was running with Mikage. In the manga you could feel it abit more, but in the anime , even though they showed his tears, it wasn’t as much as the manga.

    Xrtear
  2. oh god =_=… this “bromance” will be takin further and further and further and FURTHER all the way to borderline if not already… yaoi o_o… I was hoping it wouldnt and hopefully the main character might settle down have a few kids with some random nun… but nope O_o… alas… oh well

    Putang
  3. I’m not that keen on how much the best-friends-with-Mikage aspect was played up (one of my friends called it a bromance)…

    Well, the mangaka were originally a BL doujin circle, so no surprises there. ;D

    Anonymouse
  4. Oh, to add. What I meant is that there isn’t an important female character or at least I don’t know yet. I did not mean there is no females in the show because there obviously are.

    Silver
  5. Well if you’ve read all the manga volumes (so far I only have up till 5) you’ll come to like Teitos character a little more. Also the story gets better from volume 2-3 so we’ll have a few episodes till then but I say keep up with it. The animation quality seems pretty good for now so as long as they don’t change too much to the story Im sure it’ll be good.

    ROFLWAFFLELAWL
  6. @ Silver
    One of the shinigami is well
    Show Spoiler ▼

    Am I correct?
    Love how all the nuns know this aswell.

    Cherubium
  7. Uh actually I found the ‘bromance’ was majorly cut down as opposed to the manga, especially since Teito doesn’t even smile for Mikage in the anime. But I guess it depends on how one interprets it!

    DATSRIGHT
  8. Also if anyone knows ANYTHING about the manga they’d know sooner or later the ‘bromance’ will Show Spoiler ▼

    And seeing the Omni say Ayanami is a stereotypical villain in the original source makes me wonder how far they’ve read. :/

    I agree Teito gets kinda annoying though, but that’s part of his character development (so he’ll grow to not be annoying basically.)

    DATSRIGHT
  9. My second most awaited thing after FMAv2 this spring :3

    Love the manga, love the OP.

    Overall i don’t think Teito will be as annoying. First volume or so – maybe, bu this character grows. through the whole “church” stuff he goes through a lot of character development leaps, making him into quite an interesting main character.

    Ayanami….well, he might look like “stereotypical baddie” but he is not. In this manga, almost nothing is what it seems to be.

    UnknownVoice
  10. AS for Mikage and Teito. I don’t see any bromance or shounen-ai there.

    Its just that Mikage was Teito’s first and only friend, so you could guess that the friendship between them would be really strong.

    UnknownVoice
  11. Wasn’t Studio DEEN the one which made the Dot Hack series? I was pretty fine with that..
    Anyways, this looks interesting enough to keep me watching + I don’t know the manga so I’m not spoiled by that~

  12. I’m really excited about this show. I think the manga has a really strong storyline and the characters are all so colorful and funny. (Yay for Frau! ^_^) I don’t really like the character designs either though, at least on Teito. His eyes are sooo fricken big. And he looks like a girl kinda. But i’m still happy about the way Frau and C

    Hana
  13. ohhhh, i got cut off. how rude. 🙂

    But, yeah, I like the way Frau and Castor look. I also agree about the ‘bromance’ thing with Mikage. I got tired of that quickly. Teito needs to get over him and get into his questionable ‘bromance’ with Hakuren. 🙂

    Hana
  14. I don’t really like the ED that much – it sounds a bit too “wistful,” in my opinion. I like the OP much better.

    Putting that aside, I didn’t really find anything too “bromance” in the manga or the anime. Or maybe I just sort of put that aside because I didn’t find it as interesting as the relationships Teito develops with the other characters.

    Either way, looking at how interesting the manga is as a whole, I think I’ll keep watching all of this. (I bet it would disappoint less than Pandora Hearts, anyway – haha.)

    monochrome
  15. Whee, looks like fun.

    I love the character designs myself. Way cuter than in the manga. Everything looks nice and…”shiny” is the word that comes to mind. Polished? Anyway, much easier on the eyes than Studio DEEN’s usual.

    And Derailed by Darry beat you to using the term “bromance”. XD

    Story
  16. Saw the first episode,I’m glad it lived up to my expectations. I’m looking forward to watching more and hope that it just gets better from here on. Bromance?All I saw was genuine friendship.I like Teito’s character too. c: Also,was I the only one surprised that Dattebayo subbed 07-Ghost? XD

    Amu
  17. Amu you are not alone, I kept hoping a good sub would come out too,but I didn’t expect the people who subbed Bleach to do it. Though the subs for O7-GHOST, were great.

    Xrtear
  18. I disagree with you Darsright I checked out the manga and I was very disappointed with the story line and teito character development. I liked it better when he was alot colder but with good intentions. Also I’m not sure how anyone can miss this but doesn’t the animation remind you of jujou romantica?

    Who knows maybe the anime will turn out better look what happened to code geass the manga sucked but the anime is amazing!!!!

    Either way I will try to watch this but mostly likely it will not be my favorite anime thims year if you want good anime watch black lagoon ^_^

    kyoko-han
  19. Well, well one of the bishop was really pervert,pervert,pervert,pervert but i think he was kind enough..
    In fact i like him(also teito)
    Hwhwhw.. I hope it’s not bl anime..
    I’ve read the comic only until chapter 32 and it’s make me crazy that teito wanted die to revive mikage!?
    (Well it’s really touch)
    What do you think?

    Mito
  20. I was able to watched the first two episodes and it looks great looking forward on watching the rest of the episodes. The story intrigues me and I wonder how will they end the anime considering it only have 36 chapters in manga.

    Amethyst

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