 'Dark and moody' seems to be a trend this year, and Interlude definitely seems to be riding the trend. It's an improvement over combat maids, at any rate...
Episode 1
Nightmares of the end of the world and a strange dark-haired girl - the
only thing 'interesting' in our lead character's otherwise dull
everyday life (his name is never mentioned in the series). A vision of
the future, perhaps? Things keep getting stranger, too - memories of
events that are different from his friends. Times when the people
around him just disappear - apart from the girl from his dreams. The
school counsellor ripping a strange creature from a student's body. A
late-night chase through the city, followed by strange creatures...
Just what exactly is going on? Following up one of his 'dreams' leads
to City Hall, and a clue - the Pandora Project. But just what it is,
and what it has to do with his dreams, has yet to be revealed...
Interlude follows the example of Figure 17 by going
for 45-minute episodes instead of the usual 25-minutes, meaning it has
to impress to keep the attention, and at least in this episode it does
that by stringing you along for as long as possible without actually
telling you what's happening - by the end of the episode, all you know
is that the mysterious 'Pandora Project' looks likely to be a key plot
point, along with the girl with the ghostly 'hedgehog', who seems to
have something of a complex for our un-named lead, who she refers to as
'oni-chan'. Past that, your guess is as good as mine.
Because of the way it's presented, it's also kind of schizophrenic
in nature - real life is bright and fun, with school life bringing a
decidedly normal feel to events, while the 'dream' world (for lack of a
better description) is where things get decidedly dark and confusing.
It holds together quite well, though, with enough happening to keep you
watching & with the story being fast enough that you don't stop to
think about how little you're being told about why this is all happening.
Presumably things will be made clearer in the remaining two episodes, or I'll be highly annoyed. At this stage, though, Interlude ranks as one of the better OVA series of late, and is worth checking out. |
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