Naegi Makoto is a very typical high school boy. For this reason, he found it really odd that he got accepted, no, invited to study in a top class high school that is the training ground for the country’s best youths. Those who enter this school are all known to excel in their own specific fields. But Naegi supposedly just lucked into getting invited. Charity act?
But no. He later finds out that it wasn’t good luck but bad luck that got him selected, as he collapses immediately after entering the campus and wakes up in a mysterious barricaded room.
There’s instruction left inside the room, telling him to assemble at some hall for their school entrance ceremony. And there he finds the 14 other freshmen in the same predicament as him.
Each one is peculiar. Each one also has their own field where they excel. For example, we’ve got a shaman.
The kids exchange their “WTF is going on” among them, that is, until the ceremony begins and the principal arrives.
Yes, the bear is the principal. Actual kind of creature is unknown.
The principal welcomes them, and spells out their situation: They’re all stuck here for an undetermined amount of time, and the only way to get out is once you kill someone. So let the killings begin.
But of course, no one really buys that immediately, because human nature is to doubt, and none of the characters actually begin partially insane. So the kids hold meetings to figure out what to do.
They manage to establish that they are really stuck with no way out, and that they have enough resources for them to survive. So, well, while figuring out what they can do to escape, a few days pass by.
The principal, though, isn’t happy with this. He wants death. He wants killings. He wants despair. So he gives each and everyone of them a DVD, something that would make them want to leave. For Naegi, it’s a video of his family, and a highly suggestive clip that indicates something bad might have happened to them.
Each one has their own version, and soon enough, some of them are shaken and disturbed. So, let the killings finally begin?
This still feels so much like Battle Royale, only that the escape mechanism is easier, and there’s still the mystery of why is the bear doing this. For Battle Royale it was quite clear from the get go. But the clear differentiating feature really is that this portrays itself as absurd, from the animation style to character design.
But that absurdity might actually save this show on two accounts. It sets it apart from other pseudo Battle Royale stuff (Hunger Games? lol), but most importantly gives it another dimension it can possibly succeed in if ever the mystery and psychological aspects of this show fails to deliver. But of course, the risk is that the absurdity might actually steal some of focus from possibly good stuff. Just like how I find this romance angle to be unnecessary, unless said girl is a cunning backstabber.
This pilot episode pretty much sets up the premise of this show, which is promising. But so far nothing has really happened yet, so we have yet to really see if this would be good or not. I hope, though, for the sake of all of us, this actually delivers depth.
