"In this utopian village, strange rumors about a monstrous cat that abducts children circulate, and students are said to disappear from the academy. The world and its history are much darker than they appear and humanity is on the verge of collapse."
That in particular. This is a spoiler free review, but I'm going to start off with this. This show is absolutely not entirely about that. The premise of some big cat being the antagonist slightly interested me, but this show was by no means a priority for me based on that. The show starts off as such, everything was pretty much as I expected, along with some cool surprises.
But, that simplistic plot soon crashed. What this show gets into is completely unexpected, and was an amazing experience. I'm not going to say that what this show did was incredibly unique (honestly, I got a ever-so-slight Final Fantasy X vibe from it. That in no way spoils anything, but some of the foundation kind of reminded me of it). But even so, what they pulled off was amazing. Every major detail this story had got a good amount of attention. It was at times kind of hard to keep up if you weren't paying attention, but I loved the depth behind everything. I felt like there was a story behind every house, brick, etc.
The story developed well. Initially, while they're exploring the incident with the big cat, it was interesting, but by no means something that kept me guessing. While that incident is still important, other things occur is when I was on the edge of my seat. There were many scenes in this show where I was holding my breath because the situations were so tense.
Everything aside, I really loved the message this show conveyed. Just when you feel like you know who the enemy is, they give you a different perspective on things. Which isn't surprising considering they used a certain establishment to base humanities civilization on. The last episode left me in shock, not because they revealed something I slightly expected, but because I didn't expect the sudden shift in perspective. I'm so used to shows ending in a predetermined way "Bad guy looses, good guy wins, the end". The formula doesn't entirely apply here. The morality of everyone's actions was a common problem in the show (not that they were beating you over the head with it surprisingly enough), and ended on that note. It was a really great way to carry the story and its characters throughout the show.
Even with all that, I can't say I was too attached to this show while watching it. For all its depth, I didn't really feel completely attached to the characters. I don't know if this was intended or not, but as much as I enjoyed them, I had a hard time feeling too much remorse for them. That was kind of a problem being a show based on the darkness of humanity. That isn't to say I didn't feel anything, but I can't say I really had a favorite 'human' in this show. I absolutely had a favorite character, but it was from a place I didn't expect. Long story short, I was interested in what happened next, occasionally an episode ended on a cliffhanger and I had to tune in immediately, but that absolute investment wasn't there for me.
This show may seem extremely shallow just reading the short bio, reading a couple reviews, or even watching the first few episodes. However, there are a lot of really great surprises that you can't even comprehend without giving it a chance. I'm so happy I decided to give this show a chance, I have a feeling you'll feel the same way after finishing it. It's a great story that really gets you to think while watching it, which is very refreshing.
