The new Autumn season of anime is upon us. Also, the new season of NHL hockey officially starts today. Contrary to my prediction but to my pleasure, Canucks won their first game against the Red Wings. Anyways, the Autumn season has a rather plump selection compared to Summer offerings. As a routine for each approach of every new season, I have scanned over every single website of the upcoming animes listed in Andrewlb’s anime wiki, to gain a brief idea and superficial inference of the shows and to form a list of titles that interests me. Then I proceed to Animenfo or Anime News Network to read their synopses. Of course, as clichés have taught us, appearences can be misleading, or don’t judge a book by its cover, or whatever hackeneyed sayings of this wisdom you can think up. So eventually actual episodes will be the proof to my expectations. It is not a fool proof way of choosing, but there is a greater chance of picking shows that I will like over than simply selecting randomly from a bin exceeding sixty titles without any guidance.
Its name invoking the notion that someone just stuck two random nouns that does not quite belong together, I have watched the first episode of Pumpkin Scissors, a new anime of this Autumn season. The visit to their site did not appeal to me, so this show wasn’t on my list that I formed weeks ago, but its eccentric name compelled me to check it out. The opening and ending sequences are torturous to my ears, as usual. But I try to view a show’s (for long series, sometimes numerous different) opening and ending sequences in full at least once and skip henceforth, no matter how painful the ordeal may be, because some information may be presented or hinted in those parts and no where else. In this case, there is a strong, almost blatant, foreshadowing of romance between our male and female leads. There is a scene where the male and female lead looks at each other with in warm recognition, and another where her arms and his arms extend from two opposite corners to have their hands overlapping in the middle before subsequently fading away, obviously symbolizing some sort of a bond or connection to be formed between them.
There is a soft undercurrent of humor is this show, coexisting with the dominating atmosphere of post war troubles and dolour. For example, a guy talks sternly about sacrificing a whole village, and then to end it a dog bites his head. While I do understand its significance (for he deserves the bite for saying such things) and it serves a comic relief, but the humor is a bit lame, and sometimes conflicting with the mood. An initial analysis of our protagonists: Randel’s rough attires and his hulking stature houses a gentle personality that is eminently seeping through his face, particularly through his sad boyish eyes. And Alice, she is headstrong, naively headstrong, her mind possessing a kind of dangerous idealized thinking that a dagger can defeat a tank as long as it is on the side of good. Sounds like match? We’ll see. But that is not the thing that gives me reason to watch the next episode, but rather it lies in the mysterious blue lantern that grants Randel the power to defeat a tank wielding only a one-shot pistol on his two feet.
