November 9th, 2005
The Dragoons prepare to take Haruka back to Lacrima, but they are interrupted by the appearance of someone from Shangri-La, a floating, crumbling mask called Noein which possesses massive amounts of power over space-time; Noein sends Haruka flying through the wall of the warehouse and easily sends the Dragoons back to their own dimension (with the exception of Karas, who escapes just in time).
Haruka is launched onto Uchida and Koriyama’s car as they follow the strange signals they keep picking up. After investigation, all traces of Noein and the Dragoons have vanished, but the tap that Haruka fed Karas from is still dripping and there are holes drilled through the wall from Karas’ ESP use.
The Dragoons return without Karas AND Haruka, and their failure is beginning to get to them; Isuka and Tobi conspire with Atori to go and get the Dragon’s Torque by whatever means necessary. Karas also turns up at Yuu’s to berate him about being useless as per usual, and a mysterious old man occasionally appears to offer Haruka cryptic warnings about the Ouroborus and the Dragon’s Torque.
Most of this episode, however, is about a mobile phone strap. Isami and Haruka meet up to talk about what to do about Yuu, and are spotted by Miho out walking her dog - she immediately assumes that they’re dating, and starts jabbering on about this to Ai, who feigns disinterest but secretly likes Isami herself. When she sees them together again she arranges to meet Haruka to give her a talking to about not being her friend - things escalate into a full-blown slapping fight when Ai discovers that Isami has given Haruka a mobile phone strap like one he gave her which she treasured. Ai eventually tears off her own strap and runs away screaming about how much she hates Haruka, and things are pretty miserable (as Haruka’s mother notes), but when the Dragon’s Torque gives Haruka a vision of Ai hunting for the strap she heads out to help her and the two are reconciled.
Well, that was a little random to say the least, and of course it would be easy to say it’s just a filler episode to make up for how much money Satelight is spending on the action sequences and CG, but at least it made Ai’s feelings for Isami more explicit than they would be for those who haven’t combed the official website for Noein for every little detail like me. I’ll be interested to find out more about Noein (since the show is named after him/her/it!) and the mysterious old man; maybe they’re one and the same person?
I still can’t quite decide if the Dragoons are good or bad. I think it’s all being very made very ambiguous at present - while I think it’s safe to say that Atori is just nasty, while Karas and Fukurou are presumably the “good” ones, their methods and perhaps their motives are a little more dodgy. What exactly is Shangri-La doing, if anything? And Noein seems to be massively powerful, so presumably this is why they need Haruka. Too many questions!
I can’t say I get the fascination with phone straps. Surely it gets annoying having a little fluffy thing dangling off your phone? Wouldn’t it get trapped in places easily? I suppose not everyone is as cack-handed as I am, though.
Lots of CG backgrounds this time - I think this is actually a sensible way to use CG, it allows for clever angles and panning shots you can’t really do that well otherwise, and the integration is pretty good in Noein. I’m guessing it’s also relatively cheap - notice how scenes which would be static or merely show background art in other anime can appear dynamic and exciting with some swoopy swirly CG camerawork…
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October 26th, 2005
The Ouroboros Ring dissolves away into nothing, taking the space-time resonances with it almost as soon as they arrived. However, Haruka and Yuu aren’t safe yet, as Atori discovers them - Yuu tries to fend him off, but Atori’s fury only increases when he discovers Yuu’s relation to Karas and he easily fends him off, absorbing his craft knife into himself and then preparing to kill him. However, Haruka leaps in to protect him, and the Dragon’s Torque activates just as Atori gathers his ESP power, somehow causing it to backfire. The resultant shockwave activates the cable car to the observatory, and Haruka and Yuu escape onto it - but Atori is not far behind.
Atori superheats the supports for the cable car so they melt free, sending it plummeting to the ground below, but Karas arrives in the nick of time and grabs them with his ESP - however, with Atori attacking him at the same time, he begins to lose his grip as Yuu devolves further into panic, even though Karas tries to make him get a grip. As Atori powers up for his final attack, the Dragon’s Torque awakens once more, and although I have NO idea how it plays into the events that follow, Karas returns fire and somehow causes Atori’s attack to backfire once more, releasing his plug and sending him back to Lacrima - however, Karas also lets go of the cable car, allowing it to crash (safely) beneath him. As Haruka and Yuu head for the nearest road (with Yuu depressed about how useless he feels and how he’s hurt his head), Haruka runs out and almost causes Uchida and Koriyama (who were following the noise given off by Atori’s fight) to crash into them.
Everyone returns home - Atori to Lacrima, where he is in deep, deep doodoo, Yuu to his mother (likewise) and Haruka also homewards, where her mother doesn’t believe her (unsurprisingly, although she does make a mysterious phonecall). The remaining Birds search for some faint signal of Karas’ life, while Atori is tied to a hospital bed and wheeled off, babbling about how Lacrima will disappear…
Haruka, Ai and Miho discuss the previous night’s events, of which there are no traces of anything happening, and Haruka decides to try and go and see Yuu (who is locked away in cramming hell) to no avail. Both she and Yuu feel some kind of strange clutching at their hearts, however, and suddenly Haruka finds herself down by some warehouses where she used to play with Yuu in the past; heading into an open warehouse where she hears a sound, she discovers Karas in desperate need of water, which she provides - however, he grabs onto her and asks her to come with him. Haruka is convinced that he’s really after Yuu as the remaining Dragoons materialise there, but is shocked to discover that she’s the one they want…
While nothing much really happened in a “plot moving forward” sense this episode, a lot happened in a “whizz bang explosions!” way, and I LIKE my whizz bang explosions! I’m sure we’ll be seeing Atori again, and I damn well hope so - he’s not my favourite character because he’s so damn evil, but he’s one of the most insidious creations I’ve seen in anime, with an incredible style of movement and acting that really impresses me.
Just what powers does the Dragon’s Torque actually have? I get the whole “space-time manipulation” thing, but it seems to be able to do a whole lot of stuff (and I don’t know WHAT was going on in the cable car, but hey, it looked pretty, if ripped slightly out of Arjuna 1’s Drop of Time sequence). It also acts as a good plot device to get Haruka from one place to another, it seems! Presumably Haruka will be able to control it better later in the series or summat.
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October 19th, 2005
OP - idea (eufonius) - boo to (admittedly lovely) recycled footage from the first episode! Hurray for the rest of it! I like the song - I think it would benefit from me having better speakers and audio quality to hear some of the percussion and synth stuff, but it’s grown on me very rapidly. The echo effect on the vocals at the beginning makes it a bugger to understand what they’re singing, though…
More people like Karas materialise in Hakkodate - their leader, Kuina, despite the loss of an arm during the manifestation, orders the situation to be monitored as he mutters that this dimension is unstable…
Karas bats Yuu away as Haruka repeats that she recognises Karas, but she’s put into even greater peril as another person like Karas, Atori, appears on the scene - unlike Karas, he has no concern for Haruka’s wellbeing, and is willing simply to wrench away the Dragon’s Torque. Karas and Atori immediately come to blows, and their fight brings the flow of time to a complete standstill; only Kuina’s intervention brings the fight to a halt, and as Karas positively identifies Haruka as the one who possesses the Dragon’s Torque they all fizzle away into nothingness once more, returning time to normal. While Ai and Miho argue about whether there was really a ghost, Isami notices that Yuu seems down about something…
Karas and co. re-materialise in their own world and discuss their mission - the Dragon’s Torque is key to the Lacrima Dimensionalists’ plans to defeat the Shangri-La forces that oppress them. As Karas cares endless bird statues, he expresses his weariness at his responsibilities as a Dragoon for ensuring the equilibrium of space-time with Fukurou - neither of them is really sure why they do it any more…
Back in the real world, Yuu continues to angst about the pressure his mother puts on him and Karas’ words - “You can’t do anything…”. The girls, meanwhile, go out for the day with Yukie-sensei - she doesn’t really believe their story about the ghost, taking the piss out of Miho without her really realising it and causing Haruka a great deal of embarassment!
Yuu’s mother continues to “support” Yuu by nagging him about entrance exams, but he finally snaps and runs away, grabbing a pre-packed rucksack from the garage. On the way, he bumps into Isami, whose friendly attempts at cheering him up turn quickly into a fight as Yuu expresses his desire never to see him again - the girls turn up just in time to break things up, and Haruka calms Yuu down despite his anger by saying she’ll run away from home with him.
Together, they head up to a local observatory to look at the town for the last time before they run away, and both wistfully look at a genuinely happy, conventional family. Meanwhile, Yuu’s mother sinks deep into depression, and almost phones someone unspecified…
The observatory closes, but Haruka and Yuu have hidden from the security guards in order to camp out for the night. Yuu asks Haruka if the previous day’s events were a dream or not, growing angry again about Karas’ words. As Haruka goes to comfort him, however, the Dragon’s Torque re-appears around her neck, and ghostly images of all the visitors to the observatory re-appear around her and Yuu before an ethereal voice starts to speak to them - the images are “space-time echoes”, before making cryptic comments about the “Urobolus” and how once more it is the beginning of the end - Yuu and Haruka look up to see the giant Urobolus Ring encircling the town. Meanwhile the Dragoons all begin to materialise in the present day once more - but Atori appears to have ulterior motives, as he laughs that the Dragon’s Torque is his at last…
OKay, first off, I’ll try and not be too fanboy-ish. Satelight’s infamously inconsistent character designs rear their heads once more - everyone looks much more conventional here (well, the humans do - the Dragoons all retain their sketchy, odd look) which is a little off-putting. Plus this episode isn’t as exquisitely animated as the first one, particularly towards the beginning - while there are some awesome key-frames, the inbetweening isn’t always that great.
Okay, I think that’s enough.
Noein is so awesome. So, so awesome. The fight between Karas and Atori is one of the most incredibly imaginative sequences I’ve seen in a long time - the way Atori’s spidery laser things burst out from under his cloak, or Karas’ melding into the ground and wrapping tendrils around Atori, or… the list goes on. On top of all that, we got some light relief from Miho once more, some proper development for Yuu’s mother (she’s obviously not that bad really, this episode portrays her a lot more sympathetically), the really rather good scene between Isami (who only got to say “arienee” once this episode!) and Yuu, and the cliffhanger ending!
I’ll be going through the episode a couple of times more anyway, but I’m still not totally sure how the whole Lacrima/Shangri-La world relates to Earth. Is Karas Yuu but 15 or so years older, or is he some kind of alternate dimension version? An alternate dimension would explain the amazing powers and the radically different technology better, and also why Haruka isn’t there in some form - although given that she possesses the Dragon’s Torque and appears to be able to manipulate space-time anyway perhaps she stands outside all this. If it’s a future scenario, though, it makes more sense for Karas to tell Yuu he can’t do anything - because Haruka’s probably died for some reason by then.
Whatever the situation, Noein has me hook, line and sinker, as you can probably tell from the waffley entry. I’m actually quite embarassed about how excited I got about watching this episode today - while it still lived up to my expectations, I can’t afford to do this every week or Noein will undoubtedly disappoint me somewhere along the line…
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October 12th, 2005
No OP for this episode, but the ED is Yoake no Ashioto by solua, a pleasant little song, with a simplistic ED showing shots from the episode on a sort of “parchment” effect.
In a war-ridden land, a group of superhumanly cloaked figures battle against a giant, organic spaceship of some kind, powered by enormous chanting guru-like figures, which vapourises the land below it. One of the cloaked men, Karas, apparently blows himself up by diving into the middle of the spaceship and making it implode in on itself. But then, as blue snow falls on Hakkodate, Haruka Ueno looks up at a church spire to see Karas standing there, watching her…
Haruka wakes up and hurries off to the last day of school before the summer holidays start, leaving her lazy mother behind and her dog Baron behind. Her friends, particularly the bespectacled Miho, are all abuzz with talk of a mysterious ghost appearing in a local graveyard, but Haruka is more concerned with her best friend Yuu, whose divorced mother is placing massive pressure on him to succeed in his middle-school exams (so much so that he wants to run away with Haruka to Tokyo to live with his father, something Haruka had almost forgotten about). Meanwhile, the buxom Uchida and the slobby Koriyama are outside the school monitoring mysterious data that neither has any idea about - the signal is lost, however, when Haruka leaves the school grounds…
While Yuu’s mother presses him on studying over the holidays, Haruka tells her mother straight out she’s going to test her courage by going to find the ghost that night, which she slightly grudgingly allows. That evening, Haruka meets up with Yuu in town in one of the brief moments of respite he gets from his mother. However, his mood does not improve, despite Haruka’s attempts to cheer him up, as he’s desperate to grow up and be able to do things the way he wants to. Suddenly he complains of feeling strange, and the world shifts to some kind of inversion of itself - Haruka puts her hand through Yuu’s body in astonishment as a strange, golden choker appears around her neck. From the power lines before her manifests the figure of Karas, whose presence seems unfettered by normal laws of physics - he tries to grab at her neck, calling the choker the “Dragon’s Torque”, but some kind of spinning golden globe malfunctions and he disappates into thin air, leaving only blue snowflakes as a signal of his presence…
The following day. Koriyama tries to prise information about weird goings on from Haruka and her friend Ai to no avail as they prepare to go and hunt the ghost in the graveyard. Yuu escapes from his mother to join them by lying and pretending he has cram school, and together with Miho and the smartass Isami they set out for the graveyard - until Yuu’s mum catches him, however, and starts to drive him home.
The others continue on without him, until they really do confront the ghost - Haruka recognises it as Karas, although horribly deformed (he’s anchored to his own world by a blue “bungee chord”, and somehow it has malfunctioned), and while she co-erces the others run off in varying degrees of terror (Isami) or glee (Miho) Haruka lures a newly materialised Karas into a churchyard, where he confronts her. Yuu, however, rejoins her, having felt sick when Karas materialised and escaped his mother’s car on the pretence of being sick, and draws a craft knife, which Karas sneers at, saying that he cannot protect Haruka. When asked by Yuu “Who are you?”, he replies “I am you!” before reaching towards the two children…
Well, that kicked several kinds of ass. I know I’ve been looking forward to Noein since the minute I saw promo artwork for it, but it’s another one of those series that just hits absolutely every button for me - jaw-droppingly good animation, great music, a juicily mysterious plot, likeable (or intriguing) characters, no fanservice… the list could go on. I’m itching to know what happens next, and can’t wait to see where the series leads us - while the first episode throws a lot of unexplained stuff at the viewer, it’s not overwhelmingly obscure, and tantalises with enough details and revelations to utterly hook you in.
As usual, I don’t expect everyone to share my enthusiasm for Noein. The character designs are kind-of odd, despite the mysteries the plot isn’t overly original, and the show’s style might not appeal to everyone. However, I’m head-over-heels in love with Noein from this first episode, and I hope that it lives up to my wild expectations from here on in. I just wish I didn’t have to wait another week for the next episode - I actually first watched this on Sunday when I won the chance to see an Internet preview of the first episode through Bandai’s web-broadcasting service, so it’ll have been a whole NINE DAYS since I saw this when the next episode airs. How will I cope?
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