It has been a while since I have done an anime review and technically the anime isn't done airing. It won't be until the third week of June that it will be finishing up. I'm not doing a full anime review but rather focusing on a particular episode. The series is at its half-way mark, so I'll be covering the gist of the plot and the episode that I am interested in the most.
Akuma no Riddle is a story of twelve assassins and one target. The plot is that the twelve assassins are to quickly kill the target before the others do. The assassin is to give the target a notice before they can actually kill the target. They then have forty-eight hours (according to the translators) to kill the target. If they do, they are rewarded with whatever they want; money, information, protection, or anything else that is within reason. It would be a rather short anime if it weren't for the fact that one of the assassins decides that she is going to protect the target rather than kill her. All thirteen are girls by the way.
That's the gist of the anime. The episode that I've been obsessing over is both the best yet and my favorite. It starts off with one of the assassins, Hitsugi, lost and looking at a map for directions. Another one of the assassins, Chitaru, stops and asks if she needs help. As it would turn out, they are going to the same place. Skipping ahead to the foundation anniversary (which is several months after the two of them met) Chitaru tells Hitsugi her true intentions on joining the "Black Class." It is to find and kill an assassin that goes by the name "Angel Trumpet." (The assassin is given the name by the type of poison they use, which comes from a plant that goes by the same name. Brugmansia is the scientific name. In case you wanted to look it up.) Angel Trumpet had killed someone that was close to her sensei and Chitaru hopes to bring her smile back by killing Angel Trumpet. Skipping ahead to the play that the Black Class is performing for the foundation anniversary; Romeo and Juliet. During the play, Chitaru starts to put some pieces together and comes to the conclusion that the target, Haru, is in fact Angel Trumpet. During the middle of the play, Chitaru challenges the protector, Azuma. They take their fight outside. While their swords clash, they exchange words, Chitaru explains her intentions for Angel Trumpet and Azuma defends Haru against Chitaru's accusations. They stop as a new person enters the field, Hitsugi. She reveals that she is in fact Angel Trumpet. The thoughts that Chitaru had of Haru being Angel Trumpet quickly grow into doubt. As the play goes on, Chitaru looks through Hitsugi's things for proof that she is who she says she is. She picks up the stuffed bear, that Hitsugi is always seen with, and opens the back of it up. She finds a dart gun filled with poison. Juliet, Hitsugi, has just been given the sleeping potion from the priest and is about to drink it when Romeo, Chitaru, walks onto the stage with the poison. She hands the poison over and Hitsugi, while staying in character, tells her that she finally understands. Despite the affection that Chitaru has for Hitsugi, she decides to carry out her mission. Chitaru does the whole sweeping someone off their feet and holding them with one arm while leaning over them and draws a dagger on Hitsugi, to everyone in the Black Class's surprise. In case you have no fucking clue as to what that looks like, here is a picture. While Chitaru had made up her mind on finishing her mission, she is still hesitant to actually go through with it. Hitsugi says that it is alright and takes the dagger, while it is still in Chitaru's hand, and plunges it into her chest. The priest (who is the go between for the person behind the whole assassination and the assassins) comes out to tell Chitaru (this is still in character) that Hitsugi's wish was to leave the school with her. Upon hearing this, Chitaru breaks the seal on the poison bottle (the one that Hitsugi had in her bear) and drinks the poison. A smile and a quick brush of Hitsugi's hair, Chitaru succumbs to the poison and collapses, with the audience clapping, the curtain falls.
While I admit that it is a total rip off of Romeo and Juliet, with the whole double suicide (depending on how you view it, it can look like a double suicide) and stuff like that, I have to say I really enjoyed this episode. The reason I enjoyed it was that I got to see more of my two favorite characters (they grew on me rather fast during the six episodes) and that there was a definitive ending to the characters. Up until this point the failed assassins have, for one reason or another, "transferred" to another school. At the end of the third episode they allude to something else happening to the first failed assassin, which leads the watcher to believe (or at least has led me to believe) that the same thing occurred to the other failed assassins. While it might be an acceptable end for some people, it wasn't really one for me. A part of me also couldn't bear for my two favorite characters to mysteriously "transfer." Actually I had put some thought into it and the idea of them "transferring" and it pissed me off quite a bit. Which is why I liked the ending that they gave the viewer. It didn't have the bullshit of trying to figure out what really happened to the failed assassins but, as a mentioned above, was a nice definitive ending. Perhaps the best thing about the whole episode was the piano and violin score that played during the suicide scene. It really brought the scene together. While animation needs to be clean and without screw ups, the voice acting needs to be believable, and the plot should be interesting, all of that can mean jack shit if the music, or in some cases the lack of music, doesn't help with the mood. That is why this is the best and my favorite episode so far in the series.
I love this episode a lot... but it has some flaws that are probably cleared up in the manga (which I would read but I have no faith in the translators.) The issue I have is the conclusion that Chitaru came to about Haru being Angel Trumpet. She had little to nothing to go by for that conclusion. The other issue I had was that, while they point out that Chitaru's sword is in fact a real one, Azuma's isn't and yet she is somehow able to hold her own with a prop sword for more than a few blows. The prop sword of course breaks, but I really think it should have done so when they first clashed, rather than the ten blows later. The final problem I have is that there isn't enough screen time for the relationship between the two girls, Chitaru and Hitsugi, to develop. While admittedly they have several months of off screen time to develop it, it just doesn't feel right.
Akuma no Riddle is an interesting anime in itself but it happens to have a lot of problems with it. Some you can get from just watching the first two episodes. This is another one of those anime where they really needed more episodes (and I already knew this before episode three) for the story to really take any affect. What the... whoever it is, is trying to do it cram each assassins story into one episode. With of course the exception of the sixth episode where they literally killed off two of them and have again left it up in the air as to what really happened to one of them.
Fun things they did with the characters that mean little to nothing to us English folk. One being a play on homonyms. The Japanese language is composed of one-hundred two syllables and there are a lot of words that sound the same but have different meanings (homonyms.) Admittedly the English language has them, too, but not as much as the Japanese language. On the class roster Hitsugi and Chitaru are number four and nine respectively. In Japan these two numbers are considered unlucky. Four (四), in Japanese, can be pronounced several ways but one of them being し (shi.) This is also a homonym for the word death (死.) Nine (九) can be pronounced く(ku.) This is also a homonym for the word agony (苦.) Hitsugi (柩) the character's name is actually the writing for the word coffin. Fun, right? Someone else pointed those facts out and I merely confirmed them with my cheap ass dictionary.
While I want to suggest this anime to people... it really isn't the best in the business. I mean I would rewatch it again but for anyone else it might be worth watching once. Honestly, if you don't want to watch all of them, I would suggest watching the first three and then skipping to the sixth one. The sixth one (the one I have been going on about in this rant) is worth watching as far as I am concerned. I don't know what exactly is going to happen in the rest of them, so I don't know if they will be worth watching or not.
If you haven't guessed it by now I was highly satisfied with this episode, but at the same time very sad. I really liked those two and am, however, glad to see that they died rather than the whole mysteriously "transferring." I don't know how I would feel about them if they were to live on. A part of me just doesn't think that it would be the best ending (even though a double suicide should probably never be the best ending for anything) for the two of them. Yeah, it would be great if the two of them lived on and we got to see more of them, but the bittersweet ending that they gave is just so satisfying. Not to mention that it seemed like the logical closing point for the two of them after Hitsugi revealed who she truly was.