Ok. This series started on the "monster-of-the-week" formula, so it may be very misleading. Even the sypnosis that a Shikabane Hime must kill 108 corpses to go to Heaven is misleading. The real plot and story has really nothing to do with it. The truth is, this series does provide a reasonable and interesting plot development in the SECOND half of the season only. And the last four episodes or so does have enough plot to build up decent cliffhangers that forced me to watch the raws and chinese subs (instead of waiting for the english subs because of my impatience). But keep in mind that there is a second season that follows up directly, so this whole first season gave me the feeling of PREQUEL to the actual story (which turned out decent)
Art - 7/10
Sometimes, the actions are animated in a pretty sloppy way. The characters' design are sometimes too simplistic.But you may argue that it was done intentionally as a more "stylish" way of animation. The colors are all in the range of grey, dark red, black and deep blue, blending into a nice gloomy atmosphere befit of a horror action series.
Sound - 9/10
Nice fighting music and nice insert songs, opening songs and ending song by angela. The music is very catchy and the voice acting is not bad. Ouri (main protagonist)'s voice sound pretty unique and has a good touch of innocence and tonelessness, befitting his strange attitude towards death (a key element in the plot)
Characters - 8/10
I would say the characters are decently developped for an anime series. Ouri's evolution is clearly portrayed throughout the series. Makina's realtionship with Keisei is revealed bits by bits in a very good rythmn. At the same time, Makina and Ouri's relationship also evolves with each episode in the SECOND half of this series.
Enjoyment and Overall - 8/10
The first half was pretty random and generically boring. The second half really redeemed itself. This is series is underrated because the first 6-7 episodes didn't have enough to keep the audience from labelling this as "another generic action series". Although it is far from being a breakthrough, the second half really made good progress in terms of plot and character development. It does deserve the slightly above average rating of 7.5 to 8 out of 10.
