I do love mysterious horror stories, especially when the viewer is as much at a loss as to what is going on as the characters themselves. The supernatural Red Garden is growing with this creeping intrigue, it’s bizarre and confusing and a lot of my interest is now centred on eventually finding answers.
In some quarters it is being compared with Gantz, though beyond the familiar premise of confused teenagers fighting off an unknown enemy, it’s a misleading reference. Where Gantz was extremely cold, violent and absolutely cynical, Red Garden has fluffy hair cuts, scared girls breaking out into theatrical song and air-heads more worried about ripping their expensive shirts than being eaten by werewolves. It’s a completely feminine anime, where fashion sense collides with survival. Elegant and extremely self conscious.
The characterisation feels very American, drawing on stereotypical high school cliques to bring together four distinct personality types, but it works quite well in the heat of battle with the girls forced to put aside their superficial differences and fight to survive. The constant crying and self pity can be tiresome, but it makes a refreshing change to see people who are genuinely too scared to move when faced with a razor toothed terror.
Red Garden – 2 – Expensive shirts and werewolves
3 responses to “Red Garden – 2 – Expensive shirts and werewolves”
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I have to agree with you that the realism that is portrayed in this show is excellent. In fact, the realistic blow in episode 3 gets even more disturbing for me, and i was like what in the world is wrong with Lu and her assistants.
These poor girls really depict their situation very well and for ep 2, i actually like the opera styled depiction of their agony to wait for the clock. It’s poignant yet disturbing at the same time. -
For some reason I read your subject as "Explosives shirts and werewolves" over at Animenano, and as such was expecting this to be one of those fighting shows were the characters clothes gratuitously and inexplicably disintegrate as soon as they start battling it out.
Imagine my disapointment is discovering it seems to be quite the opposite ^^; -
“These poor girls really depict their situation very well and for ep 2, i actually like the opera styled depiction of their agony to wait for the clock. It’s poignant yet disturbing at the same time.”
This time the song wasn’t as bad, it seemed a bit more restrained. It was certainly odd to see the hard faced mysterious older woman joining in though; she actually looked fairly depressed too. Hopefully we’ll see more on that front in episode 3.
“Imagine my disapointment is discovering it seems to be quite the opposite ^^;”
Sorry to disappoint! 😉 I would like to write about Fist of the North Star one of these days though!
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