So, it looks like Iwai will be coming to school with Kiri. Is this the start of a school rom-com? I wouldn’t bet on it.
What They Say:
Episode 2: “The Portrait of Heresy”
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
As Kiri and Iwai get onto the bus, the younger Byouinzaka sister is already on board. She is nearly paralyzed in amazement at the sight of Iwai with her hair cut. In a panic, she hurriedly tries to call her elder sister in order to know what to do. Kiri seems slightly proud of himself, while Iwai is somewhat embarrassed. As we see the bus ride progress, we find out that Kiri has asked Iwai’s guardian to allow her to attend school now, and she will be in his class.
Unfortunately, Iwai is forced to wear a bright red elementary school student’s backpack to class (the reason why is learned later, much to our displeasure), which, combined with her size (she is very much on the small side), makes her stand out in their junior high school class. It turns out okay, however, as most of the girls think she is very cute and also like her silky smooth hair. The sole exception being Kashiko, the blonde who teased Kiri previously, and whom we are now informed belongs to a family that runs a hair salon.
Okay, fun over, time for more exposition. In a new info dump, Iwai tells us what her father told her about Killing Goods. We already knew that they were passed down by blood and were used in horrible crimes, but she now mentions those who are empowered to wield them, those who are called Authors. We are told that the use of the Killing Goods fill them with murderous impulses and over time the Authors have their souls corrupted.
We can see the near-drug like effect of the Killing Goods and the corroding of a soul occur right before our eyes as we see Yamane Byouinzaka, the younger of the sisters, practically itching to kill Iwai. In a rather chilling scene, Yamane tells Iwai and Kiri about her ancestor, a nurse who instead of saving patients, tried to kill them with drugs. Thus the evil syringe she constantly carries (it even has a name, as I suspect all Killing Goods do, but frankly I don’t care). Of course, it was pretty predictable that she would take a stab at killing Iwai. And it was predictable that Kiri would pull out his scissors to stop her. We learn some more exposition during the fight, as Yamane reveals that whoever can kill Iwai with their Killing Goods will gain the power to make a wish on the weapon, a wish that can even defy the laws of Nature or such.
Sadly, the fight does not go too well for Kiri, as Yamane manages to inject him with her drug. As Kiri sinks under the drug’s power, Yamane has a flashback. We learn of her first victims, her own mother and father. Her elder twin, Houko, was there to see it and learned that Yamane was hearing voices from the syringe. She covered for her younger sister and might have hastened her parents’ death in order to protect her. Houko comes to the present scene now and we fade to black…
To be picked up with Kiri being alive and witnessing a rather disturbing sight: Yamane almost in a trance injecting Houko with her syringe. Kiri has no idea what to make of what he is seeing, but enter now Prof. Kanae Sumeragi, the mysterious man we saw on the phone at the end of the first episode, and whom we saw speaking to Houko earlier in this episode. He gives us more exposition: those with Killing Goods and the compulsion to use them can take the edge off of their addiction by using an Instead, a person upon whom they pretend to act out their impulses, in the case of Yamane, she injects her elder sister Houko with harmless saline. The action sates her killing desire without actually causing death.
And that’s not all the exposition we’ll be getting this episode. The professor now leads everyone (Iwai has joined them as well, with her hair back to full length, as it regrows completely every night) to the library, where he shows us Zablefahr, Iwai’s ancestor and the first Queen of Hair. We are now told the details of the “killing game” alluded to in the last episode. The first Queen of Hair passed down two curses: one upon killers and their weapons, the other upon her own descendants, cursed to have long hair like hers. But if the killers can kill one of her descendants, they can make a wish for whatever their heart desires. How does the Professor know all this? He is part of an intellectual secret society, Gossip, who follow these kinds of things and have been watching the murders related to Zablefahr’s dual curses. The professor, however, has been protecting Iwai from the Authors, since she is small and helpless, unable to protect herself. With Kiri, however, everything has changed. She now has a strong protector, who himself is probably an Author and who wields one of the Killing Goods. As these weapons are indestructible, any would-be protector for Iwai would need to have an equal weapon. So, the game is now on.
Since there was not quite enough world-building that took place in the previous episode, it was fairly obvious to me that we were in for a considerable amount of exposition this outing, in order to fill out the gaps left from the start. We learn a lot about the Killing Goods, the Authors, the nature of the curse, and the game, involved. We also see the vague attempts to inject these rather shallow characters with personality traits (the professor is a lolicon, while Houko seems to be something of a masochistic self-sacrificer for her younger twin, who has been driven psychotic by her cursed syringe). We also see how Kiri and Iwai are perfectly made for each other: Iwai needs a protector while Kiri would likely have been driven psychotic by his scissors if not for the fact that he sublimated his killing impulses into cutting hair from a young age (thus how he did not end up like Yamane). Iwai provides the perfect outlet for him, as her hair will constantly need to be cut. The haircuts will also work to protect Iwai, as the Authors will not be alert to her status as the Queen of Hair if it’s cut short during daytime.
The set up and exposition should now be done, except for introducing new Authors and their Killing Goods. The next episode already promises the first of these. And herein lies a potential problem: if this show becomes nothing more than an Author of the Week series, with Kiri pitted against a different Author every week, this could get boring real fast. I hope they do try to put together a more complex and interesting plot. Cool new weapons each week won’t cut it for me.
In Summary:
Most of the information we lacked about Killing Goods and their wielders is filled in during this episode, as we even see one of these descendants of killers, Yamane Byouinzaka, in action. The wielders of Killing Goods are called Authors, and they are driven to kill by their cursed artifacts. Kiri may be one as well, but he seems to have his murderous impulses in check, perhaps redirected now to saving Iwai, the target of the Authors. So, a lot of exposition, all of it necessary, and delivered in not too tedious a fashion. A greater danger, however, hovers over the horizon as this show might just become a “psychotic killer of the week” series. We will have to see if they try to avoid that trap.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed by: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Apple iMac with 4GB RAM, Mac OS 10.6 Snow Leopard
