Demonbane is the second and last anime to premiere this month. It attempts to combine nearly every genre there is into one anime. There’s hints of sci-fi, magic, comedy, romance, ecchi, and even mecha! But does it work?
Daijuuji Kurou is a magic school dropout who does odd jobs for a living. He seems to be good at finding lost cats, for instance. He gets an offer for a high paying job which requires him to find a magical grimoire. Instead of finding the book that was asked for, he gets the legendary Necronomicron! Who knew the Necronomicron was so cute? Her real name happens to be “Al Azif.”
Along the way, an evil group called “Black Lodge” (with a name like that, they have to be evil, right?) tries to steal the book/girl from him. He makes a pact with Al, and turns into a super mage, complete with rock star makeup! At the end of the episode, Al summons a giant robot called Demonbane to counter the robot of the annoying bad guy, Doctor West! What an episode!
So like I wrote in the intro, Demonbane tries to incorporate pretty much every anime genre in existence into this show. The setting seems to be neo-victorian (old styled cars + helicopters?) where magic also exists. Or is it really Washington DC? I have a feeling there’ll be romance (between Kurou and Al), and there was a decent amount of fanservice (including possibly the world record for largest screen area taken by panties!). The Demonbane mecha at the end of the episode makes me fear that this anime will degenerate into mecha vs mecha action (I don’t really care for that genre).
After watching the first episode, I’m still not quite sure what to make of this anime. They seemed to stuff a lot into this episode, and it felt really rushed. It probably has to do with the anime only having 12 episodes. While I do like the magic and romance elements, the sci-fi parts are kinda turning me off.
The character designs are hit or miss. I like Necro-chan and Hadou Ruri, but everyone else is kinda lame. Kurou’s face looks odd to me, and Doctor West is just plain dumb. Also, why do designers insist on giving anime women insanely ginormous chests? It’s really distracting (in a bad way)! Less is more!
As far as animation style, there’s a lot of good stuff here, but also a lot of crap. Good = Al’s chibi form, Bad = Doctor West’s flying into the sky and turning into a star… The animation is above average, but suffers from bad CG syndrome.
There wasn’t an OP or ED for this episode. If I get em, they’ll show up right about here.
I guess that overall, I’ll have to see more to make a final judgement on this anime. As of now, I consider Demonbane a slightly above average anime that has a lot of drawbacks. I want to like this anime, but it has yet to be seen whether Demonbane can rebound or will fall even further.
8 replies on “Kishin Houkou Demonbane – Anime First Impressions”
“I’ll have to see more to make a final judgement on this anime.”
Actually if you wanna see a bit more about this anime there’s actually an ova of it released sometime on 2004.. As for me the first episode kinda answered some questions i had on the ova.. I just thought if you watch the ova maybe it could help you paint a bigger picture of this new series. =) I also still need to watch more eps. on this though. Think about cramping a lot of genre’s in one anime. >.> It might just make it work or it might be its own downfall. It’s a make or break situation i guess.. Oh well enough of my ramblings. I think I’ve just been thinking too much over it. ;p
I actually got that OVA and I was planning on watching it. It looked like it didn’t really have anything to do with the anime.
Thanks for the comments! Despite what you might think, I really like reading everyone’s comments, even if they’re kinda rambly…
Demonbane was originally based off a visual novel of the same name. [HOLYCRAPSPOILARZ]AND YES, PEOPLE, AL GETS RAPED BY A D000GIRL IN THE BAD ENDING.[/HOLYCRAPSPOILARZ]
The sequel isn’t H, but includes hat seems to be the record number of pantyshots in a non-H game and the best thing ever since Fate Hollow Ataraxia’s minigames: SIMCITY. Or rather, Simwhatwasthecity’snameagain? With robot battles every so often to break up the slow pace.
I Love Al Azif! XD
shes so cute and smexy!
im gona watch this anime real soon!
after reading this i’m really interestend in it! ^-^
thanks a bunch!
~Areo-Kun~
I love how you were able to make the picturse so easy to see and so clear. #^_^# i think ur doin a graet job! keep it up! #^_^#
Hey, guys ya really need to watch the whole series before you can jump to conlusions! It gets darker towards the end (hm..don`t they all), but also sweeter (in a romantic sort of way) :D. From what I`ve gathered, the ending is different here, than in the manga (haven`t read that)
Overall it left a good impresion on me!(though I`m not into mecha/ecchi) I suppose it could have been better, as in the action being less condenssed… but apart from that, no complains here!
That Kurou`s a cutie! And Al`s got one heck of a personality! 😉
[…] adaption, and it tries to squeeze a great deal of information into a mere twelve episodes: the first episode feels like it’s playing at double-speed, the OP/rapid-fire clipshow is only one minute long […]
cute¡¡¡¡¡