destroying all monsters

Darker Than Black meets Ouran High School Host Club!

Cat accessories are as much a requirement in modern anime as hot baths, beaches and festivals. This is the awesome Kiko; all she needs is a high-powered motor.

ONE OF THE anime I’ve kind of been half-watching this season is Darker Than Black, the Spring effort of production house Bones – well known for solid and successful ’straight to US license’ series like Eureka Seven, Fullmetal Alchemist and Scrapped Princess. I say half, because like its forebears mentioned above, it’s not really hooked me in and forced me to find the time to view it but if I have a spare hour and nothing else to watch, well I give it a spin.

While I’m damning the show with faint praise, I may as well inject that there’s plenty of reason to give Bones credit for such a well received run of anime. It has covered an interesting spread of stories, settings and subjects and the animation quality etc. has been top notch throughout. While I think it is somewhat safe and predictable when it comes to its choices, Darker Than Black does introduce an interesting concept that has added a nice twist to the first third of the series.

This fun gimmick is a two-episode short story format, which is scripted by different writers. Various other background staff, from the episode director to storyboard artist have also been rotated around, making this something of an ensemble effort by Bones, and I’m beginning to think that DTB is all the better for this. Obviously, this also means that the show might be something of a hit or miss affair, depending on the people behind it. While I thought the second story arc (eps 3/4) was somewhat poorly done, for example, Bones has more than made up with it with the first part of the fourth arc (ep7).

One of the Bones shows I didn’t mention in my introduction was Ouran High School Host Club – one of the funniest and most memorable productions of 2006 – after all, it just seems so out of place in the company’s line up. Episode 7 of DTB features a number of Ouran staffers in key positions, and they have injected just that right amount of that indefinable something to take the programme from the usual to the really rather special.

Darker Than Black has a strong story backbone linking the two-episode segments (although the details are deliberately murky at the moment), and a very definite central cast, based around a shadowy organisation that employs a Chinese operative called Hei, whose usual duty is as an assassin. Each short story also sees its own self-contained (at least as far as I can tell so far) characters and ep7 introduces the two members of the Kurasawa detective agency, the eponymous Gai and Kiko Kayanuma, and in typical Ouran fashion, they somewhat relegate Hei and the other regulars – maybe with the exception of Mao – to the background.

Playing with the usual conventions of detective noir; chain smoking private ‘dicks’ and voiceovers, mysterious female clients etc., and plenty of slapstick and verbal sparring, I’m beginning to think that I’d rather be watching an anime based on the affairs of the Kurasawa detective agency rather than the Hell’s Gate and whatever dodgy organisation it is that Hei is working for.

Whatever, with the third arc also impressing, featuring the former ‘contractor’ Havoc, I’m starting to become rather taken with this show. Well done Bones, you’ve grabbed me, now let’s see you keep it up with an Ouran-tastic next episode!