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Wow. This one looks like the potential for some serious headfucking. Hope they don't get all stupid with it as it progresses.
Any anime with ALI Project doing the score is going to grab my attention hard, and they really set the mood for this one. I watched it twice through just now in the middle of the night and got a wonderful creepy feeling off everything from a soundtrack that had my skin crawling from the beginning, to the voice acting, through the entire design and style. The artwork is really rich, and the dilapidation of a town decaying really comes through against the color palette and detail. The entire town is close to death.
On a whim I decided to try the [ReinWeiss] offer @Nyaa (&tid=275319). I generally trust CrunchyRoll and they 'Japanified' the subs slightly, which caters to my preferences. When something is set firmly in Japanese culture, I prefer minimal localization to try and keep the mood, and they did a good job. Well worth checking into since they also keep the CR subs in the encode as an alternate sub option. The video quality is excellent; I noticed some minor gradient banding in a couple of scenes, but otherwise the video was clean and gorgeous. No karaoke for OP & ED.
I rarely ever follow a series as it's being released, but I think I'll be following this one, unless it starts to get completely retarded.
A lot going on all at once.
The 14 26-year time frame between 'then' and 'now' leads me to suspect a close relationship between Kouichi and Mei, [ EDIT: my total fuckup; clearly 26≠14 perhaps a direct blood relationship such as his mother? ] His inability to state clearly if he ever lived in Yomiyama leaves his early childhood open (almost assured) to have been spent there. Whoever his grandfather is paying respects to would seem an important character and seems likely to end up being Mei. My first thought at that scene was that Mei was Kouichi's father's sister? Are we looking at some sort of an incest tag for this one [ EDIT: this possibility does still remain open, but it's a real stretch, of course. ]? Leaves me wondering just how many people are involved in covering up whatever happened ... like just in the family, or half the small town?
The rest of the class is behaving like the Children of the Corn. I wonder how many of them can/have seen Mei. Izumi in particular appears ... "attenuated" to whatever energy is going down. That handshake scene in the hospital was ... significant.
Loved the OP ... Absolutely classic ALI Project with shades of NOIR in it. The ED was good too, slow and moody to leave you feeling disturbed.
