October 06, 2004
Fantastic Children Episode 1 - From the Edge of Darkness
OP - Voyage (inori) - pretty cool, fairly calm but epic, totally suits the animation. I'm gushing, I know, but I really love this series already.
ED - Mizu no Madoromi (Origa) - I'm a massive Origa fanboy, so I'm biased anyway about the music. The animation is very interesting given the events of this episode.
Because I'm a shameless copycat (and like the OP and ED that much) - download them here!. Zipped up to prevent people gobbling bandwidth.
I may update this once (if) a subbed version comes out. Here's impressions thus far.
A man sits alone in his study surrounded by scrawlings and mumbling about a forthcoming apocalypse as we see a photo of a group of ageless young albinos called the Children of Pefoal (well, that's what the kana say). We switch focus several times as we follow the Children throughout history - in Holland, where their attempts to convince a young boy called Conrad to join them fail after they send him a postcard depicting a strange image, to Sweden at the turn of the century, and to the South Eastern Islands where they arrive too late at the bedside of a dead woman named Serafine who has been painting the same image as on the postcard. Strangely, one of the Children, Mel (Maaya Sakamoto!) suffers amnesia and panics, getting captured by the strange young man Duma (who is also an albino) and his cronies while the other Children escape.
Fast-forward to 2012 in the Islands, and the roguish Toma practices his martial arts before discovering a young girl, Helga, lying on a statue silently. He visits his mother, a bogus fortune teller, and helps a young thief, Chit, escape his pursuers, before returning home to see Helga being taken away by some mysterious men...
Wow, I'm hooked already. Just from watching the raw, which I could only really just about follow! Bandai already have this pre-licensed and I don't know what's going to happen with fansubs, but I will probably still keep up with this raw for a while, it's really that good. Top notch animation, an intriguing storyline, great music... I'm sold. I just hope it doesn't go downhill from here.
Posted by BluWacky at October 6, 2004 02:55 PM | TrackBackThat good eh? I'm tempted to give it a try although I wonder if my download bandwidth can handle another additional series on top of what I already intended to watch.
Posted by: Garten at October 6, 2004 04:26 PMSo that was Maaya Sakamoto :)
I was very impressed as well. Hope it stays just as good, and turns out as epic as I hope :)
I decided to check it out after seeing your entry and goddamn it was it worth it. I'd LOVE subs but I'll even watch raws of the whole thing if I must. It's too alluring. Ahh.... how many series am I going to keep up with... Hopefully Kannazuki no Miko and/or Uta~Kata are bad enoguh so I can just drop them... there's still GSD and Gankutsuou and Genshiken that haven't come out! *_*
Posted by: wao at October 7, 2004 12:37 AMI like the fact that you mention Maaya Sakamoto both in italics and with a '!'. You have just cost me money. Git.
Posted by: DiGiKerot at October 7, 2004 08:41 PMThe ending theme is absolutely amazing. It's really become one of my top ten favorite anime songs now. I really hope someone subs this...
Posted by: Hayama at October 7, 2004 11:36 PM....young albinos? ............ Do you have something against them?
Posted by: Rainy at October 10, 2004 01:30 AMNot at all. I couldn't think of any other way to describe "pale people with white hair" more succinctly. Apologies if this caused any offence.
Posted by: BluWacky at October 10, 2004 09:46 AMYou probably know this already by now, but mahou is subbing this.
Fantastic Children is becoming one of my favorite series. I almost like it better than Gankutsuou now.