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R1 DVD Reviews
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Wednesday, 29 September 2004 00:00 |
 A trip to the bargain bin at one of my online haunts produced a result - the next volume of Descendants of Darkness. You just can't beat cheap anime...
7-9 - The King of Swords (Parts I - III)
Tsuzuki & Hisoka have been assigned to investigate some strange
goings-on around the Kakyoin Group, a cruise ship company - which
fortunately means an undercover trip on one of their ships. Bonus! But
while Hisoka's off spending 'quality time' with Tsubaki, the owner's
daughter, Tsuzuki discovers that their adversary Muraki is on board.
When people on board start dying, including Tsubaki's father, he's
naturally the main suspect - but maybe that's too obvious, especially
when Muraki himself is the second victim...
Nice to see DoD throwing a cute girl into the mix - makes a
pleasant change from the usual guy-guy relationships that this show
loves so much. If you're put off by Yaoi storylines, fear not, though -
while DoD has a lot of undertones, there's not much in the way of overt stuff.
The story itself is fairly standard whodunit stuff - Tsuzuki doesn't
even get to use his magical powers here, so it's about as close to
Poirot as you're likely to get in anime. Unlike Agatha Christie,
though, the culprit here isn't too obvious, although you can
still pretty much predict what's going to happen as you watch. There
are a few comedy moments thrown in as well, both to lighten the tone
& to stretch things out a bit - this could probably have been done
in two episodes without really losing anything, but it works okay as
three without feeling too stretched.
Cheap anime's especially satisfying when it's actually quite good - which is the category Descendants of Darkness
falls into. The only reason I wasn't buying this series as it was
released was lack of money. ^^; Now to keep an eye out for a cheap
volume 4...
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