[Categories: Anime Reviews]
Darker than Black 3
A new arc, a new character…this time it’s a high schooler named Mai who has been suffering from memory lapses. Hopefully she’ll last a bit longer than the previous character did when she suffered similar symptoms because Mai could explain a lot about what the devil is going on. She’s also a pleasant sort of lass who doesn’t really deserve the trouble she ends up in.
The pre-credits opening scene is quite a shocker: one man in protective gear is literally stepping on corpses to escape a place that ‘no human should enter’, only to be greeted by a mysterious flower (giving me a flashback of Wolf’s Rain again). Later we learn that this man Tahara has survived his ordeal and is working at the same place as Hei/Li and has developed a fascination with plants as well as understandably keeping himself to himself most of the time. He is however the father (or at least guardian) of Mai, who has grown to despise his apparent indifference towards her. As the episode progresses we see more connections being made as well as Li showing decidedly ominous amount of kindness towards Mai. The ‘cost’ of his contract appears to be that of eating: whenever he uses his powers he has to stuff himself afterwards! As strange as this sounds, another Contractor has to leaf through an entire book in one go after helping to open a bottle of mineral water…
I was left quite uneasy about Li’s attachment to Mai - he is able to show great kindness to people he meets but that cold, dead-eyed look of a Contractor shows up every now and again, which suggests that he’s just using her too. How I’ll be able to root for a hero who is a deceiving, cold-blooded killing machine remains to be seen but Li does have a coat to die for.
This episode had quite a few humourous moments in between the action scenes and the gory ones, which included the talking cat and the old woman who is Li’s landlady. For now the guy in the cloth cap and the Doll who seems to monitor Li’s movements through ‘feeling’ his presence through water are both minor characters but they are apparently on Li’s side and have a job to do. The policewoman Kirahara only made a brief appearance too, which is a shame unless you’re only following her for the fanservice.
Much of what I made of this episode is pure conjecture so I haven’t set it down here; no doubt my half-baked theories will be thrown out as the series progresses. Once again the visuals are painted in several shades of awesome and the zillions of questions are being thrown up with just enough explained to keep me hooked. It also ends on a literally incendiary clifffhanger…keep up the good work please!
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