Alma’s being drawn in further, both through blunt and subtle means, to helping against the Dark Stones.
What They Say:
Ruri is the new Chairperson of Alma’s academy, and calls him to her office to ask him again to join the battle against the Dark Stone. Meanwhile, a plane departs from a US military base, secretly carrying an extremely explosive material.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With what Alma discovered about himself in the opening episode and the transformation he went through, Ruri is now pushing hard to get him to join what she’s doing when it comes to dealing with the Dark Stones. So much so that she’s installed herself as the new chairwoman of the school he goes to in order to nudge him more towards it. It’s all a bit much, especially with all the changes made to the building because of it as money has come flying in and even the meal menu has been upgraded significantly, which adds a whole lot of unwanted pressure for Alma. He doesn’t get to deal with it much though as Ruri and her group end up just filling him in on some of the details of the Dark Stones, though it’s all very top level and similar to what we heard before.
Sacred Seven spends some time with Alma trying to figure out whether he really wants to be involved with all of this and every time he interacts with Ruri and her group, he learns al ittle bit more about it. What’s forcing their hand a bit is the need to bring him on because a new threat is looming and crawling towards Japan in the form of a massive red cloud that has Ruri and the others quite worried about it being a Dark Stones attack. While this inches closer, Alma is shown some interesting things by Kagami that Ruri would rather keep secret in an effort to win him over fast, including the completely sealed and safe hibernating person that is Ruri’s older sister, Aoi. It’s a bit of a rush of information, though there isn’t a lot of real depth to it and it all feels surprisingly forced at the moment with a very uneven sensation to it all.
The same can be said about the action side of the show as they deal with the Dark Stone in the midst of the cloud. It’s all thrust to the last couple of minutes of the episode and it forces in a connection between Ruri and Alma that’s just too much, too soon really. While the pair haven’t been adversarial or anything, especially since they just met and Ruri has been trying to win him over as best as she can without being pushy, the way she acts towards him just before he has to attack the thing is incredibly awkward to watch happen. The two have no chemistry at this point and neither of them are all that well defined or interesting outside of the main things that define them, him and his powers and her and her wealth and drive to defeat the Dark Stones. And considering the scale of the Dark Stone that they’re dealing with, having it all wrapped up in two minutes doesn’t exactly help to elevate their threat level much since he is completely new to dealing with this either.
In Summary:
While I enjoyed some of the more interesting parts of the first episode, it wasn’t a clean setup episode and it forced a few things that a lot of first episodes tend to do in order to advance to the point they want to. With the second episode, it again comes across as awkward and uneven in how it wants to establish itself, forcing character connections too quickly and in a bad way while also minimizing the big threat that they want Alma to help them face by ending it quickly with regards to this particular monster of the week. The show certainly has potential in a lot of ways, but from the visuals and the design of it, you spend more time picking out the influences of other shows, subtle and blunt as well, rather than what’s actually going on because it hasn’t really managed to make it its own yet.
Grade: C
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
