Let’s try this again.

So, Blissmo posted about episode 1 of Mouryou no Hako about a week ago and hated it, so I stole her images and went on a journey to write her wrongs, since she obviously won’t cover the show anymore. Mouryou no Hako is not only my favorite show of the season, but this episode was my second favorite opening episode of all time.

Mouryou no Hako is for the kind of person who likes shows with lots of flowery, cryptic, philosophical dialouge, and that is me. It’s also for people who like very intense and dramatic imagery – also me. It’s dark, but not brooding or shocking so much as gallant and smirking. It’s got style and class. The easiest comparisons that come to mind are ef ~a tale of memories~ or Paranoia Agent or Vampire Princess Miyu OVA. It’s a dark but glittering essece of romanticism, like an old-school vampire story where the girl falls in love with her vampiric captor before he drains her life juices in a gothic castle.

Since you probably haven’t read the second Boogiepop volume, and therefor don’t know about the opening chapter, I won’t bother to make the comparison. I can probably tell you that if you like Boogiepop, you’ll like this, though. The first episode has some yuri overtones, but not the trampy yuri, more like the Blue Drop or Marimite dramatacular yuri full of pent-up emotions. And emotions there are many – the girl who narrates this episode is an emotional bomb, full of joy so overflowing you can swim in it at the sight of her companion and full of rage so thick you can cut it with a knife at her mother and her stepfather. Much like the victim of vampirism, she falls in love with something she doesn’t understand, obsesses over it, and lets it take her, placiing everything she is into it only to watch it’s existence threatened by itself. She is confused. Meanwhile the other girl is one who thinks she understands everything and has that sort of inhumanity that makes her take your breath away. Actually, episode 3 of Boogiepop Phantom is another good comparison.

Add in the absurdly great animation. Madhouse has done it once a fucking gain making something visually unbelievable. I’ll say straight up, the scene around the 10-minute mark where the two girls are dancing brought ters to my eyes it was so beautiful. CLAMP’s designs really come to life here. In addition, the thick atmosphere made the show’s two creepy bits extremely creepy. The one in the beginning left my jaw dropped and the one later had me shocked. Very very fucking good directing, especially from someone doing their first show as the head man (though he’s been working for Madhouse for a while). Better still is that the scriptwriter has worked on a lot of great projects.

Mouryou no Hako doens’t show it’s whole hand in the first episode, but what it gives is un-fucking-believably good. I can safely call this the best of season and mos likely to land on my favoirtes list.