Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohani Hoheto (Story of the Bakumatsu Era ABC) Episode 1 - The Unlucky Star Appears
OP - Kouya Ruten (FictionJunction YUUKA) - sing Honou no Tobira instead and you’ve got basically the same song…
ED - Ai no Ken (Takako and the Crazy Boys) - decent enough song, but watching credits scroll isn’t uber-exciting.
The Bakumatsu era, time of endless samurai shows and the arrival of the West to Japan. As the Westerners and Easterners clash, a ronin named Yojiro Akizaki comes to Yokohama port, driven by a strange red star in the sky; after intervening in a fight and saving two annoyingly anachronistic brats he is taken to a Kabuki theatre troupe which appears to secretly be some kind of secret organisation against a tall guy with fish lips, whom they track to an illicit auction at a
posh party; whilst black market arms are on the agenda, the main attraction is a large mysterious object sealed with ofuda that contains a demonic floating head and starts to unravel. Yojiro is summoned towards it as his eyes go all swirly and blue and he destroys the demon head, only to be attacked by Fish Lips Man as the auction room blazes around him - cliffhanger!
Why on earth this show is on an internet channel where it can get no exposure and earn no money I have no idea; Sunrise have obviously lavished money on it, even more so than Code Geass perhaps (at least this gets a widescreen broadcast). Beautiful backgrounds, busy crowd scenes and good animation like this don’t deserve to be shunted onto Gyao.
To be honest, though, it didn’t look much like my cup of tea for most of the show; the Kabuki stuff’s a bit weird and I hate period shows. However, a good old demonic floating head and a potentially interesting female lead in the head actress of the Kabuki troupe (she’s got a sword and a fan!) brought me back on side for Irohani Hoheto. Whether I’ll stay the course is another matter, but I’m certainly intrigued enough to check out the next episode at least.
Incidentally, apparently Irohani Hoheto is the first line of a famous poem that uses every syllable of the Japanese language only once - I couldn’t really think of a decent way of rendering this in English, but since “Iroha” is the traditional equivalent of ABC (perhaps I should have put Alpha Beta Gamma?) it’s the best I can do.
October 16th, 2006 at 5:12 pm
Thank you for this summary. I had really been wanting to check out this show. From what little I have seen, the animation seems to be quite beautiful.
Thanks! I’ll be looking forward to your comments on the next episode.
October 16th, 2006 at 5:57 pm
i would love to check this out but no fansub group has touched it yet unfortunately. >_
October 16th, 2006 at 6:59 pm
I suspect you won’t make it past the next episode, for some reason. Which is a pity. Oh well!
I also have no idea why the hell something this good is airing on *Gyao* when there’s a shitload of stupid anime on TV right now… But in a sense I guess it’s a good deal for Gyao.