When I first heard about Kagihime Monogatari: Eikyuu Alice Rondo (Key Princess Story: Eternal Alice Rondo, for the benefit of those who can't be buggered to go look it up on Google Translate), it sounded like an interesting enough fantasy adventure. Two episodes into Kagihime (shortened for the benefit of us both), I pitched it to my friend as Rozen Maiden, with people instead of dolls. Halfway through, I would have told someone that it's not-quite-but-almost-like the bastard child of the Unwanted Harem and Magical Girl genres. Now that I'm finished with it, I can honestly say I don't know what it is. I'm dumbfounded. Not because it's terrible, but because for as much as it has going against it, Kagihime manages to be an excellent watch.
The story starts out with Aruto, a boy obsessed with Lewis Carroll's A. L. Takion's Alice novels- He's such a big fan, in fact, that he's writing his own. One night, as he's finishing up his latest entry in his fanfic story, he looks out the window to see an oddly-dressed girl with white rabbit ears leaping through the air, and, thinking she's Alice herself and that he absolutely can't miss the chance to meet her, Aruto runs out the door and after her. He follows her to his school's library, where she's doing battle with another strangely-dressed girl, each using keyblades large, keylike weapons. As he tries to figure out what's going on, he gets caught up in the middle of the fight, and Alice sticks her key into the other girl's chest, turns it, and out pops a book. As it turns out, she's not Alice herself (though her name is close enough), but a Seeker of Alice- a female fighter that goes around and takes the secret stories from other Seeker's hearts, in the hopes of getting their hands on Takion's unpublished third novel, The Eternal Alice. Aruto jumps at the chance to help Arisu ("That's spelled in hiragana, not katakana!"), because the two of them really want to read it. And then, things get more complicated. Aruto's sister Kiraha (who is in love with him), Kiraha's friend Kisa (who is madly in love with her), and the top student in their school (who is intrigued as hell as to why Aruto can enter a closed space that only Seekers should be able to get into) join them. Oh, and The Eternal Alice can grant one wish, which means that Arisu and Aruto are pretty much the only ones who want to get their hands on it for its literary value, and the rest are in it for themselves.
This is a surprisingly mature anime for the description I've given it- It's a bit on the ecchi side, without that actually being the focus (even though most of the girls Aruto finds surrounding him have rather *ahem* sizeable assets), some of the concepts involved give you just enough details to realize their true impact (taking a girl's story means being able to look at the parts of their past they wish they could bury the most, and taking it away means stealing the memories that made them who they are), and the ending is fairly bittersweet. It handles its subject material with respect, and the villains are really well done. There's a bit of a mystery hidden in the story, but it's not until clues start coming together that I realized that all the little things that have been bugging me were doing so for a reason, and in my opinion, that's either last-minute brilliance, or it was planned from the start.
Unfortunately, Kagihime makes itself exceptionally easy to pick apart: Takion wasn't the author of the Alice stories, Lewis Carroll was (though, then again, Takion's also an antagonist, so I'll let it go). The moment I saw Arisu using her weapon, I immediately thought "Kingdom Hearts!". Kiraha's one defining trait is that she's in love with her brother, and although Kisa has a reason for having developed an obsessive crush, when we finally see her Story, it comes off as... weak. And it feels more like an excuse than an actual deep-rooted psychological reason. There were a lot of other Seekers shown with almost no screentime, and I don't think I would have minded if maybe the show had more episodes to focus on them as villains, as it did in the beginning- even if that would have turned it into a villain-of-the-week format, it makes the endings to the fights disappointing. Did we just totally miss something awesome? Why'd they skip that?! Not to mention, all the above mentioned main characters work together as a team to take down the other Seekers, but we hardly see them battling in tandem unless it advances the plot somehow. Now, I'm all about plot, but in Kagihime, the focus is divided fairly evenly between character development and story, and the fact that we never get to see Arisu, Kiraha, Kisa, and Kirika develop as a team seems like a perfectly wasted opportunity. There's also the matter of Episode 13, which is included in the episode count but doesn't actually contribute meaningfully to the story at all- It's self-parodying comedy that takes place after the story's over. Kรคmpfer pulled that crap too, and in that case the extra episode actually managed to be worse than the show preceding it. Wouldn't it make more sense to package the extra episode as an OVA, and knock down the official episode count by one? I'm almost certain I'm picking far too many nits here, but it just bugs the crap out of me.
Despite that, though, Kagihime manages to hold itself together. It starts wrapping up early- The show's come to tell a story, and it stays on top of that fairly well. I can think of maybe one or two filler episodes, toward the beginning, but other than that it's all business. The character designs are neat to look at, and a lot of things are based on other fairy tales, not just Alice in Wonderland- The costume of one Seeker of Alice with a serious hate-on for Aruto was obviously inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, and I think I caught Goldilocks and the evil witch from Snow White in there, too. And the backgrounds? Oh my God the backgrounds. Every scene is frigging beautiful to look at, and there were some points where I was watching the scenery as much as I was watching the characters. Just like OtoBoku, the amount of attention paid to detail is staggering.
So.
Love it or hate it, this anime is a diamond in the rough. It's ecchi without being too terribly perverted, the story is great but the way it's told is flawed, the characters are two-dimensional but they have real, deep-seated issues... And yet somehow, despite how blatantly it contradicts itself, I can't help but like it. Kagihime gets a pass.
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This is a surprisingly mature anime for the description I've given it- It's a bit on the ecchi side, without that actually being the focus (even though most of the girls Aruto finds surrounding him have rather *ahem* sizeable assets), some of the concepts involved give you just enough details to realize their true impact (taking a girl's story means being able to look at the parts of their past they wish they could bury the most, and taking it away means stealing the memories that made them who they are), and the ending is fairly bittersweet. It handles its subject material with respect, and the villains are really well done. There's a bit of a mystery hidden in the story, but it's not until clues start coming together that I realized that all the little things that have been bugging me were doing so for a reason, and in my opinion, that's either last-minute brilliance, or it was planned from the start.
Unfortunately, Kagihime makes itself exceptionally easy to pick apart: Takion wasn't the author of the Alice stories, Lewis Carroll was (though, then again, Takion's also an antagonist, so I'll let it go). The moment I saw Arisu using her weapon, I immediately thought "Kingdom Hearts!". Kiraha's one defining trait is that she's in love with her brother, and although Kisa has a reason for having developed an obsessive crush, when we finally see her Story, it comes off as... weak. And it feels more like an excuse than an actual deep-rooted psychological reason. There were a lot of other Seekers shown with almost no screentime, and I don't think I would have minded if maybe the show had more episodes to focus on them as villains, as it did in the beginning- even if that would have turned it into a villain-of-the-week format, it makes the endings to the fights disappointing. Did we just totally miss something awesome? Why'd they skip that?! Not to mention, all the above mentioned main characters work together as a team to take down the other Seekers, but we hardly see them battling in tandem unless it advances the plot somehow. Now, I'm all about plot, but in Kagihime, the focus is divided fairly evenly between character development and story, and the fact that we never get to see Arisu, Kiraha, Kisa, and Kirika develop as a team seems like a perfectly wasted opportunity. There's also the matter of Episode 13, which is included in the episode count but doesn't actually contribute meaningfully to the story at all- It's self-parodying comedy that takes place after the story's over. Kรคmpfer pulled that crap too, and in that case the extra episode actually managed to be worse than the show preceding it. Wouldn't it make more sense to package the extra episode as an OVA, and knock down the official episode count by one? I'm almost certain I'm picking far too many nits here, but it just bugs the crap out of me.
Despite that, though, Kagihime manages to hold itself together. It starts wrapping up early- The show's come to tell a story, and it stays on top of that fairly well. I can think of maybe one or two filler episodes, toward the beginning, but other than that it's all business. The character designs are neat to look at, and a lot of things are based on other fairy tales, not just Alice in Wonderland- The costume of one Seeker of Alice with a serious hate-on for Aruto was obviously inspired by Little Red Riding Hood, and I think I caught Goldilocks and the evil witch from Snow White in there, too. And the backgrounds? Oh my God the backgrounds. Every scene is frigging beautiful to look at, and there were some points where I was watching the scenery as much as I was watching the characters. Just like OtoBoku, the amount of attention paid to detail is staggering.
So.
Love it or hate it, this anime is a diamond in the rough. It's ecchi without being too terribly perverted, the story is great but the way it's told is flawed, the characters are two-dimensional but they have real, deep-seated issues... And yet somehow, despite how blatantly it contradicts itself, I can't help but like it. Kagihime gets a pass.
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