Brynhildr in the Darkness Review (Anime)
Brynhildr in the Darkness is one of those shows I did mostly within a day which is something I haven’t done in a while. It proved to be a pleasant surprise!
Brynhildr follows highschool student Ryouta Murakami who’s unable to move on from losing a dear childhood friend, Kuroneko, in an accident, and has nightmares about the event regularly. As the sole member of the astronomy club, he spends his free time looking for aliens in space as it was Kuroneko’s dream to find them, and when transfer student Neko Kuroha joins his class, he finds her resemblance to his departed friend striking. It’s not long until he has a chance to get to know her better after she saves his life and, like her friend who foresaw the event, it turns out she has magical powers. Murakami then pledges to help save these girls from being captured and returned to the laboratory that they’ve escaped from, and to give them the chance to live normal highschool lives.
Brynhildr in the Darkness tells a decent story with characters that I grew to care about, and one that kept me guessing as each episode ended. My biggest problem with the show is the needless fan-service which occurred more and more as the series went on and just seems to be there – as in it even stops trying to be simple titillation and is there for zero purpose. I’ve seen enough breasts thanks to this anime and the fan-service moments don’t mesh well with the series which is surprisingly violent, serious in tone and tells a desperate tale of survival in a world where death is constantly haunting the main cast. If anything, it was refreshing to see that Murakami doesn’t really care about seeing the girls naked, opting to focus on the more important things going on. The characters in this show deserved better and when they weren’t being put in fan-service scenes solely for the sake of it, they were very likeable and I found the character’s interactions with each other to be humourous and genuine. The story itself comes packed with various twists and turns, providing more than one shock as I was watching!
Arms Corporation handle the animating duties and they’re known for their fan-service orientated anime including, and not limited to, Queen’s Blade (nobody knows how this got the greenlight) and Ikki Tousen, so the fan-service becoming more prominent as the series goes on isn’t entirely surprising. Brynhildr in the Darkness isn’t the best looking anime about but it certainly looks nice and captures the feel of desperation rampant in the series well, and the violence, although it isn’t visceral, can be rather uncomfortable to witness. I like the character design, changing outfits and action scenes, and there’s always something to encourage you to keep looking at the screen. It kept my interest throughout the entire show and whilst I’m not itching to watch other anime from this studio (seriously, who greenlighted Queen’s Blade?!), I’ve enjoyed how they’ve handled this show.
There’re both English and Japanese voice-over options available and before I get into talking about the English Dub, I want to mention how odd it is that you can’t have subtitles whatsoever unless you’re watching it in English – I don’t require them, but not having them available for the English Dub too is a strange, lazy move. The English voice-over isn’t outstanding and I’m not very familiar with much of the cast, I am familiar with Emily Neves and Blake Shepard who, like some others, should be appearing in more high-profile shows than they currently are. I enjoyed the dub a lot despite it not always sounding entirely natural or flowing smoothly, but overall it’s a great effort that succeeds in bringing the story and characters to life. The OST has some fantastic piano-laden tunes and I liked the first OP, and so I was saddened to see it change with only four episodes left to a heavy metal track. There was only one sole ED which. The OST’s reliance on piano makes for great listening and I’d happily listen to it outside of the show, and it complimented the various tones of the show nicely.
Brynhildr in the Darkness isn’t one of the best anime I’ve seen and how it executes its story is questionable at times with more than a few silly reasonings to certain happenings, but I enjoyed it more than I expected to regardless. I may not be able to recommend it at its asking RRP price yet I think it’s worth checking out if you manage to find it cheaper as it may surprise you too, and I certainly wouldn’t be against a second season. Brynhildr in the Darkness may not be one of Animatsu’s strongest licenses but it’s far from their weakest.
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