Ric: Visual Novels seem to be getting everywhere this season, Clannad, Akasaka, and now the even Higurashi~esque Chaos; Head pops up for an anime adaptation.
First off, I have to say that the series is very confusing at times, with Takumi’s delusions at some points being very hard to discern from reality. Chances are though that this was intentional and I’m just being a bit silly. Other than that, the series is doing a good job of building up a nice balance of mystery and suspense.
The first episode begins with a dream sequence, in which Takumi is lying in a ditch, a ruined city around him. A then unnamed woman with pink hair (Rimi) walks over to him, apologising and materialising some sort of bizarre chakram thing out of nowhere. Looking up, Takumi believes she is an angel. Rimi kneels down, placing the blade to Takumi’s chest and kisses him, the dream leading into the OP after his final bit of dialogue.
Before I continue with the episode, I have to say that I really love the OP, it fits the series really well and even sounds somewhat similar to that of the original game. It also showed me the crazy hobo character that I’m looking forward to seeing.
Anyway, back onto the episode. After the OP ends, Takumi is woken up by one of his delusions, his favourite anime heroine Seira; she then tells him that he has to attend school today, claiming that he’s weird because he charted the minimum amount of time he needs to spend there to still gain enough credits to graduate. The delusion ends as soon as she says this, leaving Takumi lying on the floor; a feeling of being watched leading to him saying what has become the show’s most used line.
“Those eyes, whose eyes are they?”
Takumi is then shown entering his classroom, looking at the girls in his class; he mentions how he finds “three-dimensional” girls to be even more disgusting than he believes they see him. Before we can go further down Takumi’s crazy train, his friend Misumi pops up from seemingly nowhere, saying that Takumi has a depressing face again. He then says what I consider to be a pretty hilarious line.
*Insert Pikmin theme here*
I know it sounds a bit silly, but I couldn’t help but laugh at this line. It sounded like he’d been playing some sort of bizarre real-life Pikmin clone.
Realising that Takumi has no real interest in the girls in the class, Misumi brings up the subject of the “New Gen”, a series of murders that have been taking place in Shibuya recently. He mentions that witnesses say that the murderer is a beautiful girl, leading onto him wondering if he’ll get chance to meet her (I like him, he’s fun.), he then asks if Takumi would like to visit the murder scene with him, something that Takumi seems to choose not to do.
The next part takes place inside Takumi’s ‘apartment’ with Takumi playing an mmorpg, Seira watching him in awe. Shortly after killing what I would assume to be a boss monster, an online friend of his, Grim contacts him and again brings up the New Gen murders, leaving Takumi a link to a site that has information about it when he finds out Takumi’s lack of knowledge on the subject.
According to the link, the first ‘murder’ was when five high school students jumped off of a tower, an event known as the Group Dive. The second murder being more bizarre involved a foetus being discovered inside a male corpse, this murder being known as the pregnant man. Before anything more about the murders can be revealed, Takumi’s sister; Nanami pops by to check up on him and cue the siscon! As soon as she walks in, his delusions start up again. She says she came to get him to buy a cellphone so she and the rest of their family can keep in contact. Of course, he again chooses not to, making her leave and going back to his mmo.
After Nanami leaves, Takumi sits down in his chair, immediately jumping at the feeling of being watched, uttering the same line from earlier; “Those eyes, whose are they?”
Looking back onto his computer, he sees another user log into the chat room he’s on. Immediately, this user pastes a link, Takumi thinking it’s some kind of virus; he’s sceptical and asks what it is. The user; Shogun then leaves the message “The world changes if you click it.” Scared, Takumi asks why he’s trying to scare him. They talk more and it’s revealed that Shogun is also talking from Shibuya.
Takumi mentions that a lot of strange incidents have been happening, in reference to New Gen, Shogun then leaves the ominous message that more are soon to come, leaving Takumi shocked. Shogun then begins to spam a link to a rather gruesome image, depicting a corpse pinned to a wall by small crucifixes.
Contrasting all of this, the scene then jumps to a school setting, showing Nanami playing tennis, she manages to hit it out of the court, the ball rolling near the incredibly moe Yua who can’t throw the ball forward.
Takumi is shown later at an internet café, not being able to feel calm at home due to Shogun. As he leaves he sees a computer that was left on, information about New-Gen on screen. Remembering the image from the night before, he remarks on how seeing the computer ruined his mood and leaves the café.
This is the point at which the line between reality and delusion becomes unclear, as he is walking home; he gets worried, wondering if what he is seeing is really Shibuya. Hearing a clanging noise nearby, he goes to check it out. Turning the corner he sees the scene from Shogun’s picture last night, the man hung up against the wall by crosses. He also sees the pink haired girl from his dream in the beginning, covered in blood and holding the small silver crosses in her hands.
- Not the best place to wait, m’dear.
She begins to walk towards him and in his fear, Takumi runs away, scared that he’ll be killed next.
When he gets back to his home, he realises that he had been carrying one of the crosses the whole time. He tosses it away and cowers in fear, Seira ironically trying to calm him down by saying it was just a delusion. The scene then skips to an image of Fes singing on a bridge, but that won’t make much sense now, so I won’t go into that.
The next day, while Takumi is on his way into school, he has a feeling of being watched yet again, fearing that it is the girl from the previous night. He turns around when he gets near to school, only for him to see Yua walking right behind him, she says a quick good morning and then carries on towards school. He spends the rest of his day in school lamenting what has happened before yet again running into Yua on his way home, triggering another one of his delusions, in which Yua begins to laugh in an evil manner, dropping crucifixes from her skirt and looking well…evil.
He runs away again, only to crash into a nearby motorbike. Yua comes along to ask if he’s okay and he continues to cower in fear, only for Yua to confess to having been interested in him since she first saw him. Takumi simply takes this as something that can’t possibly be true and tells her to stay away and not follow him. Seeing that he hurt his leg, Yua helps him to get home, despite Takumi’s protesting the matter.
When they get to Takumi’s home, Yua thinks it’s cool that he’s “living like an outlaw”, causing a pretty fun reaction from Takumi. Shortly after they enter, Yua notices Takumi’s Seira figures, mentioning that she’s a big fan of her and that she collects the figures as well. The next few scenes are just the two of them bonding somewhat over their mutual love of the figurines. Even Takumi thinks she’s moe at this point, triggering another delusion, this time a typical eroge style one involving Yua in a skimpy outfit.
Takumi hears a crash, knocking him out of his delusion, only to discover that Yua had knocked down a stack of CD’s. While she cleans them up, she notices the silver crucifix lying discarded on the ground. Something she declines to mention, instead making the excuse that she was surprised at a Seira doujinshi she found lying around.
She then asks Takumi if he would like to reserve the latest Seira figurine with her tomorrow, saying that she had never been in anime shop before and that she enjoyed talking to Takumi. With her magical moe-ness, Takumi finds himself unable to refuse, even though he wants to. Yua then leaves, happy that Takumi decided to go with her. Takumi consoling himself that Seira is his number one.
The next day, Takumi goes into school only to look at a new classmate sitting next to him, the girl who he saw at the murder, flashbacks of the murder appear and then the episode ends.
Anyway, this review has become so long that I think it would be good to split it, so tommorow I’ll tell you all the tale of episodes two and three, until then, goodnight and keep watching the stars!
Ric’s overall rating for episode 1: 7/10
