The Book of Bantorra eps 1 & 2:



This is a world where people turn into "books" (slabs of stone containing their memories) when they die; these books are protected by a group of "armed librarians," fighters with various psychic powers. A strange religious cult wants to take these librarians and their organization down, and takes humans and makes them into mindless drones they call "Meat", then using them as suicide bombers.

I'm not sure what to make of this show so far. It's got an intriguing premise and some awesome female characters - and, bonus, the librarians are led by a ruthless, nigh-invincible woman voiced by Romi Paku. (Who, I might add, seems to have been directed primarily to "sound like pure sex." She was more than up for the task.) But the presentation so far has been chaotic, scenes seemingly jumbled together almost at random, and the info-dumps are abrupt and glaring. Also, am I the only one wondering what's up with that bizarrely out of place bow on Hamutz's head? Seriously, I'm gathering she likes a bit of cute to go along with her bloody massacre, but that character design is rather awkward.

Well, it's off to an uneven start, I guess, but it's certainly intriguing enough to keep watching.


Tegami Bachi eps 1 & 2:



Not sure what to make of this one either. It takes place in a world called the Amberground, which is shrouded in eternal twilight. We start off following a man who transports letters from city to city across dangerous wastelands filled with huge and deadly mechanical insects. He arrives at a village to pick up a package, only to find the village in ruins, and instead of a normal letter, there's a young boy chained to a cross with a postage label stuck to his arm.

The world is delightfully surreal and the premise has promise, but so far it's been fairly rife with cliche. Oh, Gauche has a little sister at home with crippled legs, and he's trying to make money so that he can find a cure for her; oh, Lag's mother was kidnapped by bad guys and taken away to an impenetrable city he can't get into. There's probably a fresh way to do those plots, but so far, they're playing out in bog standard fashion.

(And on a tangent, it gets on my nerves that disabled characters are almost always portrayed as young girls, usually helpless characters that exist for no other reason than to give the protagonist - usually male - a person to project his desires to protect something onto; and when they're not completely helpless, they're still young girls, and are eerie and have psychic powers. I have rarely seen disabled adults in anime, and I don't think I've ever seen a disabled man, save for a spare few with supernatural afflictions and those dying of old age. Mothers are almost as often the endangered thing to save, which is also annoying, but that's another rant.)

Nevertheless, it's damn pretty, and it's been entertaining and sweet so far, so I'm going to keep watching for now.