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anime: Occult Academy
Jul. 27th, 2013 09:21 pm13 episode 2010 gothic/horror/scifi/comedy series.
This series makes me think 3 people were stitting in a bar, talking about anime they wanted to make, and one person went "I want to make a series about this girl whose father was obsessed with the supernatural but she hates the supernatural and then she inherits his school devoted to it and she and her frineds run around fighting ghosts and monsters" and another person went "I want to do this science fiction comedy series about this inept loser who's sent back in time 13 years to save the Earth from an alien invasion and they wouldn't have sent him except that everyone else who's qulified has already been sent back and died and he's all they have left" and then the third person said "well why don't you just COMBINE them?" And so they did, with a pretty good end result.
So, yes, Our Heroine, Maya, inherits her father's school dedicated to the occult. She intends to shut it down and wash her hands of it forever and ever, but then weird things start happening and then a naked dude appears in a beam in light and announces that here's here to stop the apocalypse, and that plan rather evaporates. One of the first things Maya does is whack her father's evil-spirit-possessed corpse with a folding chair. This sets the tone for the rest of the series. In 1999, Japanese teenagers could apparently be both the owner and the principal of a school they're also a student at (though the last may have only been for show) and she quickly reconnects with her childhood friend, Ami, and befriends Ami's best friend, Kozue. Kozue is in love with and always searching for evidence of the supernatural, and so many of their scrapes involve rescuing Kozue from one possession or abduction or another. Some of the horror aspects are on the gross side, but overall, this aspect of the series was grand.
The time travel part...well, I like our time travelling hero, Bunmei, well enough, but I really am over "slightly-perverted inept dude who isn't that bright must save the world, and is somehow more crucial than all the much more competent people surrounding him" (if I was ever even into it at all...) and so I was considerably less invested in averting the alien apocalypse (especially as it's where most of the fanservice and humor I didn't particularly find funny were)than the ghost and demon fighting and local mysteries. In general, the series itself also prefers Mayas supernatural adventures and tends to focus more on them, with Bunmei as the occasional inept sidekick, though the focus does shift later in the series.
Overall, I liked it a lot, and it's certainly a bit different from most anime, and the animation is gorgeous.
This series makes me think 3 people were stitting in a bar, talking about anime they wanted to make, and one person went "I want to make a series about this girl whose father was obsessed with the supernatural but she hates the supernatural and then she inherits his school devoted to it and she and her frineds run around fighting ghosts and monsters" and another person went "I want to do this science fiction comedy series about this inept loser who's sent back in time 13 years to save the Earth from an alien invasion and they wouldn't have sent him except that everyone else who's qulified has already been sent back and died and he's all they have left" and then the third person said "well why don't you just COMBINE them?" And so they did, with a pretty good end result.
So, yes, Our Heroine, Maya, inherits her father's school dedicated to the occult. She intends to shut it down and wash her hands of it forever and ever, but then weird things start happening and then a naked dude appears in a beam in light and announces that here's here to stop the apocalypse, and that plan rather evaporates. One of the first things Maya does is whack her father's evil-spirit-possessed corpse with a folding chair. This sets the tone for the rest of the series. In 1999, Japanese teenagers could apparently be both the owner and the principal of a school they're also a student at (though the last may have only been for show) and she quickly reconnects with her childhood friend, Ami, and befriends Ami's best friend, Kozue. Kozue is in love with and always searching for evidence of the supernatural, and so many of their scrapes involve rescuing Kozue from one possession or abduction or another. Some of the horror aspects are on the gross side, but overall, this aspect of the series was grand.
The time travel part...well, I like our time travelling hero, Bunmei, well enough, but I really am over "slightly-perverted inept dude who isn't that bright must save the world, and is somehow more crucial than all the much more competent people surrounding him" (if I was ever even into it at all...) and so I was considerably less invested in averting the alien apocalypse (especially as it's where most of the fanservice and humor I didn't particularly find funny were)than the ghost and demon fighting and local mysteries. In general, the series itself also prefers Mayas supernatural adventures and tends to focus more on them, with Bunmei as the occasional inept sidekick, though the focus does shift later in the series.
Overall, I liked it a lot, and it's certainly a bit different from most anime, and the animation is gorgeous.