Spacequakes. That’s natural disaster gripping the world. For some random reason, an area of space will just encounter some kind of quake that will utterly destroy anything in that area.
Enter our main character Shidou, and his little sister Kotori. They’re living their typical everyday lives. Go to school, meet up for lunch in front of some diner and whatnot. But in this particular fateful day, a spacequake has been detected.
Now normally, everyone will evacuate to the shelters as SOP. But earlier Kotori made Shidou to promise meeting her in front of the diner no matter what happens. And when Shidou checks the GPS to see where Kotori is, things go badly when she’s marked to be in front of the diner, where the spacequake is about to occur.
So zoom! Shidou goes to find Kotori, but the spacequake occurs as he is looking for her, and to his surprise spots a beautiful but sad looking girl…
who immediately points her sword at him and asks if he as well is trying to kill her.
Enter mecha girls into the scene, and a fight breaks out between the girl with a sword and these flying mecha girls.
As for Shidou? He gets knocked unconscious as collateral damage. Makes sense. But upon waking up, he finds himself in an unfamiliar facility run by his little sister (now with a different personality), and he receives a quick briefing on what is happening. The earlier girl with a sword is a spirit, and when spirits enter this world, a spacequake happens involuntarily.
But what’s Shidou got to do with all of this? Simple. Kotori also briefs him that aside from the mecha girls’ strategy of killing spirits, there’s another way of dealing with them, and that’s Shidou’s job. What is it? It’s to date them.
I’m glad to see that they slowed down the pace, adding random filler scenes just to slow things down. My greatest fear for this was actually that they rush through one entire volume in episode one, like what they did in Campione. Thankfully, it was slow and steady. Although things kind of suddenly rushed up during the final few minutes…
I’ve already read about four volumes of the novel, which I think is what the anime will cover, so I’ve got no complaints about the plot. It was pretty much accurate. It would be idiotic if they deviate this early. Presentation wise, I thought the latter parts were too rushed up, and Kotori’s explanation to things was way too jumpy. I think that would work against the show for non-LN readers.
Fight scenes were as expected. Note that the novel itself isn’t that big on fight scenes. Don’t expect heavy flashy action actually, especially this early. First two arcs have really lackluster fights.
So why watch it? One word: Yoshino. Well actually, the backstory for the characters (technically Shidou and Kotori) is quite interesting, and I’m a sucker for shows that borrow from mythology / philosophy (this one is based on Jewish Kabala).
But on the other hand, it works for me since I am, in general, a fan of action-ecchi-harem stuff, especially involving fighting girls. Your mileage may vary.
