EVIL!!!
Spent the day watching " Bakumatsu Kikansetsu Irohanihoheto" with occasional 'bouts of curling up in PAIN and dying.
OP theme by Yuki Kajiura - 'cause it was totally recognizable, I was like having a Tsubasa Chronicles flashback. The ED rocked in the usual despairing love J-Pop way.
It was a pretty good show, mostly historical, with some action, mystery and supernatural thrown in. The paranormal stuff is really no biggie until the last 3 eppies - where the show takes a detour from Japanese bakumatsu-era history and it's all Mount Doom and Mordor and WTF.
What's with the aspiring megalomaniacs and the obsession with the occult? I mean sure evil is grand and all, but it's kinda indiscriminate.
This time; all the interested parties were after "The Lord's Head" - which is the head of some Chinese guy who pissed off the then Emperor and got beheaded and decided to seek wrathful vengeance - 2004 years prior to our story, sometime after the Chinese decided to ship the head over to the "land of the rising sun" (Japan) to bury it and hope it stays that way. It didn't, big surprise.
The skull looks pretty much like The Masque of Red Death and it's big in the way of evil and mayhem - and giant, floating fortresses in the sky.
Our hero, Akizuki Youjiro has the task of sealing it - he even gets a fancy sword. Throw in some bloody revolution and ENKA; and we're all set for fun and angst with sad pretty boys and their enemy that kinda resembled a vampiric lord of darkness.
There was a female character that kinda made me annoyed, but I'm trying to let my misogynistic ways DIE - she reminded me of Inoue from Bleach, not in any real way, but by the virtue of sucking -she too forgot her original goal for STALKING our skull-sealer across Japan and claiming to "share his destiny". She ends up being consumed by Skull-vil and stabbing her "love" in the back! I laughed and laughed.
Our hero saves her and after he seals the EVIL!!! away - he leaves her to go travel the world! Again I laughed and laughed.
And again I find myself betting that Inoue Orihime (Bleach) will turn to the Dark Side, because evil is clever at using one's weak points, especially when it comes to the "you can save him" angle.
But I realise this is just me being crazy, because I haven't seen the "character development" and the "purpose" and I don't really think that Karakura is going to go up in flames 'cause Urahara has had time to prep and he's prolly had Tatsuki, Keigo and Mizuiro running around setting up wards and stuff. But apparently if one isn't embroiled in a bitter-hate-fest, you see the development and stuff.
My cardboard wall of "Bleach no-likey" is taking some serious hits with excellent posts and fiction and it'll pretty much fall later today, when I wake up.