Anime review
For those who read here who might be interested in looking into a new anime series there are two that have just been released over here that are two of the best series I've seen.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni aka When They Cry: In the small village of Hinamizawa there is a belief that once each year at the Cotton Drifting Festival, Oyashiro-sama, the local god, will kill one person and demon another away for sins committed against the village. For the last four years this has happened and while the villagers are content to blame the curse, the police are not. Keiichi Maebara, whose family recently moved to Hinamizawa, stumbles upon this secret and as his paranoia and suspicion of his friends increases, he swears he can hear the foot steps of Oyashiro-sama behind him, ready to demon him away.
When They Cry is a murder mystery/tragedy series. There are 6 different arcs shown in the series, four question arcs and two answer arcs. Three of the answer arcs focus on the weeks leading up to the Cotton Drifting Festival, and the aftermath. What strikes odd about these arcs is that hey cannot happen at the same time, details are too drastically different for them to be just different perspectives. Each serves only to further destabilize what you believe to be the truth, there is nothing that can be taken at face value. Whatever they may reveal or answer slightly is outweighed by the questions that arise. The fourth answer arc is perhaps the most straightforward, but still full of mystery in and of itself. It takes place several years prior to the series start and shows us the dam incident that is often referred to and just what effect it had on the village.
The Answer arcs serve to give some clarification to the questions raised in the previous arcs, however they still remain vague, only answering the most obvious questions while barely alluding to the overarching incident that plagues each iteration.
This show does wonderfully at thwarting one's attempts to piece together the puzzle, and as the show began a second season the story is not yet complete although the end of the first season feels quite fitting.
Mushishi: Ghosts, spirits, demons. These are some of the words used to describe these mysterious creatures that few can see and even fewer understand. These creatures are known as Mushi. They are quite odd, some eat sound, others hide withing the darkness of the eyes, some can even give rebirth to the dead. Quite often the unusual nature of these creatures can cause problems for humans and animals living alongside them and that is where the Mushi-shi step in.
The series follows the Mushi-shi Ginko, a person who specializes in the study of Mushi, as he travels the country side. We follow him from case to case as he is called to help with the creatures. Ginko strives to prevent destruction of the Mushi as a solution since whatever problems they cause are often just a side effect of their own attempts to survive. in the whole series there is only one Mushi that seems malicious.
Mushishi has no continuous storyline, each episode is self contained with Ginko being the only major recurring character. While this formula can fall short for some series, it works quite well for Mushishi. Ginko's a wanderer and for a wanderer there is no constant direction life takes them, they simply go where they go.
Higurashi No Naku Koro Ni aka When They Cry: In the small village of Hinamizawa there is a belief that once each year at the Cotton Drifting Festival, Oyashiro-sama, the local god, will kill one person and demon another away for sins committed against the village. For the last four years this has happened and while the villagers are content to blame the curse, the police are not. Keiichi Maebara, whose family recently moved to Hinamizawa, stumbles upon this secret and as his paranoia and suspicion of his friends increases, he swears he can hear the foot steps of Oyashiro-sama behind him, ready to demon him away.
When They Cry is a murder mystery/tragedy series. There are 6 different arcs shown in the series, four question arcs and two answer arcs. Three of the answer arcs focus on the weeks leading up to the Cotton Drifting Festival, and the aftermath. What strikes odd about these arcs is that hey cannot happen at the same time, details are too drastically different for them to be just different perspectives. Each serves only to further destabilize what you believe to be the truth, there is nothing that can be taken at face value. Whatever they may reveal or answer slightly is outweighed by the questions that arise. The fourth answer arc is perhaps the most straightforward, but still full of mystery in and of itself. It takes place several years prior to the series start and shows us the dam incident that is often referred to and just what effect it had on the village.
The Answer arcs serve to give some clarification to the questions raised in the previous arcs, however they still remain vague, only answering the most obvious questions while barely alluding to the overarching incident that plagues each iteration.
This show does wonderfully at thwarting one's attempts to piece together the puzzle, and as the show began a second season the story is not yet complete although the end of the first season feels quite fitting.
Mushishi: Ghosts, spirits, demons. These are some of the words used to describe these mysterious creatures that few can see and even fewer understand. These creatures are known as Mushi. They are quite odd, some eat sound, others hide withing the darkness of the eyes, some can even give rebirth to the dead. Quite often the unusual nature of these creatures can cause problems for humans and animals living alongside them and that is where the Mushi-shi step in.
The series follows the Mushi-shi Ginko, a person who specializes in the study of Mushi, as he travels the country side. We follow him from case to case as he is called to help with the creatures. Ginko strives to prevent destruction of the Mushi as a solution since whatever problems they cause are often just a side effect of their own attempts to survive. in the whole series there is only one Mushi that seems malicious.
Mushishi has no continuous storyline, each episode is self contained with Ginko being the only major recurring character. While this formula can fall short for some series, it works quite well for Mushishi. Ginko's a wanderer and for a wanderer there is no constant direction life takes them, they simply go where they go.