Clockwork Planet (Episode 1)

Everything must die. Time is a cruel, yet predictable force. Always moving forward, never repeating. It doesn’t matter what you are, Human, dog, rock or even planet, time marches mercilessly on. In the future our planet will die, it will become just a distant memory of the past.

In the future, the world has already died. But an engineer named Y, manages to rebuild the earth with only gears and clockwork. And so, Earth is renamed the Clockwork Planet.

Over 1000 years since the planet was reborn, a young man, Naoto Miura, comes into contact with RyuZU, a broken clockwork doll, who has fallen from the sky into Naoto’s house. Naoto, a self proclaimed “lover” of clocks, although seemingly unable to fix them, sense the issue with RyuZU, manages to fix the broken gear in her heart. And so, as her saviour/repair man, RyuZU promise to never leave Naoto’s side.

At her companies headquarters, Dr. Marie Bell Breguet is attempting to fix a problem with the world gears. As with all things, everything must die, and the Kyoto region gear is about to fall, along with the 20 million inhabitants. The military are aware of this, but are happy to let it happen. So Marie, along with her bodyguard Vainney Halter, must find a way to fix the problem.

A good start to a promising series. With one overly sexualised scene where RyuZU forms the official bond with Naoto by sucking on his finger……..yep that really happened. The interactions between Naoto and RyuZU has humorous moments, along with the back and forth between Marie and Halter. The premise seems solid and the different factions introduced in the pilot, alone, are intriguing! With the bond scene aside, this does seem like a promising Anime and definitely worth this watch as we start the Spring 2017 season!

Can the show keep the story ticking, or will it crumble like the world it has created, only the killer of all things will tell.

Time.

Kado: The Right Answer (Episode 0 & 1)

Koujiro Shindo, a staffer for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, is tasked with buying an old steel production factory. Along with his partner, Hanamori Shun, they are requested to do it by a superior right before they get a month long break. Shindo agree’s immediately and gets straight to work. Although a renowned negotiator it is his skill in solving everyone’s desire’s in the discussions. So even though he was there to make a simple purchase, he manages to bring in a whole group of people to fix the issue at hand and have the factory generating a valuable material again.

The episode alone, seems like an interesting anime to watch. The writing is very strong with well built characters, the animation is solid and the voice acting is great to boot. However, this is not a simple “slice of life” anime, this is an anime with a massive unknown. At the end of episode 0 or the beginning of episode 1, the plane that Shindo and Hanamori are on is swallowed up by a massive floating cube and disappear inside it.

The whole of episode one is looking at the response from outside by the Japan government. What is the cube made from? Where does it come from? Can we blow it up with AP rounds? There are all burning questions that they have.  And pretty much everything that they try! At the end Shindo appears at the top of the cube with Yaha-kui zaShunina, an humanoid of unknown origin. The most likely theory is that Shindo will work as a negotiator and try to get the best for both groups.

I have a very good feeling about this show. It started off very well with a very good introductiory episode in episode 0, setting up all the characters and making it more than just a “hey this guy is good at what he does, trust us”. There is a lot of intrigue and it should be interesting to see how this plays out.

Definitely worth watching this one folks, most promising start I have seen this Spring season!

Thanks for reading, leave a comment below and let us know if you will be following the show!