Summer2010 First Episode Reviews: Occult Gakuen and Shiki

Now it's time for more reviews.  Up today is the horror corner, a staple of all summer TV and movies, although not quite as much as in the past.  I'll be covering 3 animes in 2 posts, so pay attention.


Occult Gakuen
Rating: 7.5/10

Occult Gakuen is odd.  We get a main female lead, Maya, who goes to a school that her father has been building to study the occult to be the new headmaster.  Apparently, he has died and he left her to run the place.  Unfortunately, she hates the occult for breaking apart her family since well...her father left her to build the school.  That said, I found the first episode promising yet sadly unfulfilling.  The beginning starts off with some strange operation that supposedly takes place in the future, 2012 if you can believe it.  Then we get introduced to Maya.  She has the usual cool demeanor with heavy disdain in her father, but carries father issues, how original.  In any case, she goes to the school to see her father's funeral where of course something has to go wrong.  In this case, he rises from the dead like this:

This of course begs the question: How do you stop a crazy old man zombie thingy?  Well the answer is like this:

If you can't tell, that's a chair she's holding and he is flying at her in some supernatural way that apparently only fat old zombie-esque men can handle.  Anyways, we figure out what he actually has become and she defeats him only to see a naked man come from the sky, likely the man from the future.  Another note, what is up with Japanese people lately and adding random naked man appearances, see Eden of the East, I recommend that one personally.  Regardless of that, this series looks promising and I am likely to follow it this season.  You can stream it from cruncyroll.com as well a week after it actually comes out.

Shiki
Rating: 6.75/10

Shiki is the other anime of this post.  Personally, I found this one a bit odd.  You will notice at the end that the pictures for this one are a bit on the boring side.  The first episode felt like a mash up trying to introduce a whole host of characters without focusing on the task at hand.  Not the worst thing you can do, but not the best either.  That said, Shiki takes place in a place called Sotoba and revolves around a series of mysterious deaths.  We see three at the beginning with some rather disturbing corpses for example.  We also meet a young girl, Megumi, who is lovestruck with a guy from the city and is also sick of living in her country bumpkin town.  The only thing she likes about the place is the guy and a castle that is situated in the town.  Of course, this castle is a focal point of the story as the new tenants move in and young Megumi must go see them.  She then disappears and dies at the end of the episode.  Did I spoil it for you?  Well, too bad but I do have to give props to them for killing someone off in the first episode so blatantly.  In addition, the music is composed by Takanashi Yasuharu, the same guy who composed for another horror anime, Jigoku Shoujo, which turned out to have amazing music.  With that, I think that I will continue watching this one for a bit even if I think the character designs are a bit funky.  Enjoy the pictures and stay tuned for the last anime of the day, Highschool of the Dead.

--CsMiREK