I guess this is what happens when a project originally announced as a series then turns into a movie, and then a 25-minute ONA. In essence, "I don't know what the hell is going on" is an understatement.
I said in my preview post that this was one of the series I was most looking forward to this season. Now that I've seen it, I honestly don't really know what to make of it. What little I could get out of the plot (if you could call it that) was what I got from the synopsis on MAL and other places; the only thing that they explicitly explain is that Koto is looking for the White Rabbit because once she does she can go home. Aside from that, everything is a random mess of conjecture. The original Alice in Wonderland may have been chaos, but at least it was a chaos you could follow. Here, it feels like the creators threw in whatever they felt like, creating actual chaos. Craziness can have a point; look at FLCL, which on the surface seems like a complete mess, but after multiple rewatchings, the method behind the madness becomes clearer and clearer. This doesn't seem to be the case here, although I will admit that it felt like the characters had a lot more depth to them that we simply didn't get to see because of time constraints. The three "council" characters especially come to mind in this respect; I would've liked to know a lot more about their motivations, or how their plan was even supposed to work in the first place. And there are also characters that get very little screentime and are not explained at all: two characters who I assume are involved in the maintenance of the town, and another character that looks just like Koto yet wears a fox mask. Basically, it feels like vital information was cut in order to fit the time constraints.
The art style is more consistent than the plotline, but it still feels a bit all over the place as well. Maybe it was meant to underscore the craziness of it all, but it felt a little too jarring at times to go from re-imagined Kyoto imagery to pixel color blocks and then back again. But even with that visual whiplash, you can't deny that it is well-animated. It's always interesting to look at, and the action (which takes up a lot of the running time) is well choreographed. The opening fight scene is really indicative of what the viewer is in for; crazy visuals, unexplained powers and impossibly large weapons. The character designs also do a good job of treading between the familiar and the extraordinary; Koto's deceptively simple schoolgirl design allows for her over-the-top expressions to carry more impact, the design of the demon character draws heavily from 70's shoujo style, etc. At least the creators didn't skimp on the animation side of production. It's clear that this was thought out, but to what end? There's too much left unsaid to make sense of what the story is even about, let alone what it's trying to accomplish. Even from what little we get, it doesn't feel like we've gotten the whole story. Maybe the point was to drum up more interest for a full series? If they're willing to explain everything with a complete season run or a movie, then I'm still interested. But if nothing else comes out of this, then this is not much more than an interesting piece of animation that left too much unsaid.
Images from You Tube.
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