Anime reviews

[salinea]

Enough with the procrastination ^_^

Le Chevalier d'Eon



In mid 18th century France, d'Eon de Beaumont is a young man who decides to join the secret police when his sister Lia's dead body is found drifting on the Seine filled with mercury. He quickly meets with a sinister and esoteric conspiracy that uses the Biblical Psalms for magical misdeeds, many tales of his sister's awesome accomplishments and is joined by three companions : Robin, a young page boy for the Queen, Durand, a mysterious and sarcastic knight, and Teillagory, his old fencing instructing and famous old knight of the previous King. Then Zombies happen. And then he gets possessed by the spirit of his sister in order to fight them. Woo.

Le Chevalier d'Eon is filled with a lot of interesting thematic and plot ideas, perhaps too many, and they make it a dense and often very intriguing story despite some flaws of pacing. The main discussion regarding absolutism and divine right of kings versus more revolutionary criticisms is pretty interesting, as well as the cruel dilemmas of loyalties and honour it creates for the protagonists. Sometimes it felt that the story was trying to do too many things at once, creating some confusing genre shifts, between tales of occult conspiracies, Dumas-esque swashbuckling intrigue, and political drama. Eventually you get the impression that the plot collapsed under its own weight when the resolution rests on a couple of very WTF revelation from out of the left field. Despite this, I'm still impressed by some of the core ideas of the end game, like SPOILERY DETAIL the image of the divine right of king as written in the Psalms getting replaced by the written words of the Declaration of Human Rights which is made of win. END SPOILER.

Character wise, both the protagonists and antagonists are pretty fun and interesting, although I could have lived with more character development overall. D'Eon as a kind hearted young man who is determined to be up to his sister's legacy in order to avenge her but also redeem her vengeful spirit is nice enough; and all three of his companions have their own story arcs which are worked well and take some surprising turns. There's a couple of very charismatic and fun characters amongst the antagonists (I never though Robespierre could be so bish, and Cagliostro & Lorenza are endlessly amusing) but some of the others, like the Marquise of Pompadour, are much too thin and badly used.

The character design is realistic and interesting; the animation fluid and beautiful (this is a Production IG show after all) and uses a lot of CGI, in particular to show the opulence and ornamentation of Versailles & similar places which gives a overladen style to the anime which suits the baroque and rococo period perfectly.

Le Chevalier d'Eon plays very fast and loose with History - many characters, including d'Eon, are historical ones and have their real life warped in strange and interesting ways for the sake of the story. If the History of France, Russia and England is well known and dear to you, prepare to be somewhat surprised. On the other hand, perhaps especially if you know the references, it's kind of funny; although it's probably problematic to use a historically transgender character to make her into a guy possessed by his dead sister.

Erasure of Historical transgender characters aside, the series doesn't deal too badly with gender. Despite the lack of female characters amongst the main protagonists (save Lia if you want to consider her as such), many female characters in the story are pretty awesome, in particular the various Queens, and there's the way Lia is treated, not as a Dead Little Sister justifying the male hero's angst and badassery, but as the exemplar model of awesomeness he's vainly trying to achieve - a narrative role I'd never seen given to a female character before. From the whole genderfuck aspect, d'Eon having to progressively learn to cope with Lia's personality sedimenting into him and having to take up a female role at several times is pretty fun and nicely done, although fairly aimless. On the other hand, it's once again at the ending that we get some WTF revelation that kind of stink on the gender front.

In conclusion, Le Chevalier d'Eon is pretty flawed and has a high WTF-factor, but is worth checking out for some brilliant ideas and if you like swashbuckling and cracky takes on History.

Kemonozume



In contemporary Japan, some humans are really big monsters who feed of human flesh. The Kifuken's, the martial school who's always been taking upon themselves to kill those monsters to protect people, current head is an old man, and his two sons frequently bicker about which direction the Kifuken should taken. The older son, with more traditional ideas, meets a beautiful young woman and falls in love with her, not knowing that she is one of the flesh eating monsters. Ooops. But why is the number of flesh eaters really increasing?

Kemonozume is a pretty odd anime, both in animation and storytelling style. It comes across as strangely adult, especially in the way it depicts the main romance (people actually have sex!), in mood it alternates between darkly funny and horrific gore, with small doses of surrealism. The art is sort of sketchy and wildly dynamic in a way that fits perfectly the "claw" motif. Add a lurid jazzy soundtrack, and you can say that stylistically this show is really brilliant.

The storytelling starts pretty awesome as well, with a tense undercurrent of secrets from the past affecting current events, great use of each individual episode to focus on different characters or issues of the story; and the hilarious (in a grim humour way) pre-generic sequences... sadly the ending amps up the surrealist elements, gore and tragedy to the point of nausea and just doesn't feel quite up to the excellent beginning.

The characters are well done enough, although this is the sort of show where there's always some kind of ironic distance to them so you never feel like you can properly like them as characters.

Thematically, the story deals a lot with desires... anger, envy, greed, and especially lust, as monstrous cravings when they are taken too far, and part of this commentary is pretty interesting. It was pretty refreshing to see a couple where the Monster/Beast character was the female character (and monstrous form is not sexy at all, just monstrous!), which is explored in a few fun and creative ways, although too easily folding back to old sexist tropes and missing opportunities along the ways.

So another flawed series, but interesting if you like anime which have a very different feeling to them.


I kinda really liked the OP, btw: