The Season of New Leaves
Summary
A thousand
years from now, in a land protected from the dangers of the outside world by
the Sacred Barrier, a girl named Saki Watanabe awakens one night as objects in
her room suddenly begin to float and fly about. Her parents are overjoyed –
she’s been visited by a Blessing Spirit and can now attend the Unified Class,
where she will be able to develop her newly gained psychic powers. Being a late
bloomer, she is reunited with her friends from her old school, Harmony
Elementary, on the first day of class. They tell her she is the last student
from Harmony, which is strange, since there were a bunch of other kids still
there when she left…
It reminds
her of the rumors that some kids don’t graduate from Harmony, they just vanish.
This causes her friend Satoru to bring up various scary stories that surround
the school – from gossip that there are graves in the courtyard, where students
are forbidden to go, to chilling claims that the mysterious, malevolent being
known as the Trickster Cat haunts the school. Saki doesn’t tell the others that
she’s certain she did see it at the
school. She’s also worried about a conversation she overheard shortly before
the arrival of the Blessing Spirit, where he parents were obviously worried
because it hadn’t come yet, and about what the Education Committee might do.
Her mother insisted that she “[didn’t] want to lose any more children!” That’s
news to Saki. A few days later, Reiko, the group member whose Power is the
weakest, disappears.
Thoughts
Hard to say much about the actual story so far since the first episode
doesn’t give us much to go on, except hints that the psychic powers everyone
has may have been the cause of modern civilization, at least in Japan, going kaput! (well, judging from the way those
who’d developed psychic powers in the opening scene were using them, splat! may be a better word) and that
some not-very-pleasant things may happen to those who don’t develop them, or
develop them too slowly or unsatisfactorily.
Still, this looks very interesting and shows lots of potential. The
hints it gives are just enough to be intriguing, with suggestions there’s
something sinister under the surface, and the prevalence of evening and dimly lit
scenes suit the atmosphere, while the mixture of traditional-looking buildings
and clothes mixed with modern touches such as the Harmony Elementary sounding
somewhat like a more modern-style school, the characters’ uniforms (which come
across as a mix of modern
uniforms and traditional robes, especially in cropped character
portraits that only show the collars), and suggestions of the survival of
traditional religions, such as a reference to the Buddha, give hints that this
is our world, but changed. Saki’s flashback to Saddharma Farms, which her class
at Harmony visited on a field trip, mixes in a lot of these elements. It comes
across as a modern-style farm, despite lacking advanced technology, while the
animals such as what the students call ‘bag cows’, that red wasp-thingy, and
the giant silkworm are familiar if unusual, and Saki’s comment that the Unified
Class reminds her of the farm is one of those hints that something not-right is
going on behind the scenes. After all, a farm is a place where animals are
raised en-masse for a specific purpose, and she’s saying a school where
students are being taught to use psychic powers has the same feel…
And, maybe it’s just because I watched this fairly late at night, but
the Trickster Cat is pretty damn creepy. In a good way. Listening to Satoru
talk about it like it’s a fireside ghost story, mixed with how Saki’s mother
reacts (that jolt of surprise makes her denial an obvious ‘I know you actually
saw something, but don’t want to admit that’ type of “you just imagined it”)
hits the right balance between keeping it mysterious but with just enough
menace to underpin the hints that there is
something out there. Seriously, that
flashback where Saki was walking down the hallway, and there was some light
where it turns a corner, and you see the shadow of a swishing tail…Yeah, that’s
what I’m talking about. Didn’t give me nightmares or make it hard to fall
asleep, but that’s some great spooky atmosphere.
Yep, this is definitely looking interesting. So far, I’ve got no reason
not to keep watching.
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