New Anime Series! Zetsuen no Tempest episode 1

YAWNS!!!!! Somehow time got away from me again! I got caught up with Pokemon and watching Quarantine for the 493843 time and suddenly it was almost time for bed! Curses! Well I got to get at least 2 anime posts up today so I feel accomplished so here is the second one!

Episode 1 and my life is already in danger? HOW FUN!

Up now is the new anime Zetsuen no Tempest. Spoilers for episode 1 include yaoi vibes evaporating in the snow and butterflies being the root of all evil. ENJOY!

While taking these screenies the side glances were easier to spot.

Episode Summary: Yoshino is walking to school reading a book when his friend Mahiro bikes by with his sister on the back. The sister Aika is cold to Yoshino and she explains to Mahiro that is because Yoshino is a fake person. Elsewhere a barrel washes up on a small island containing a very pissed off girl. She curses the man who stranded her on this island Samon. Said Samon is cruising on a boat and his men ask if this will be enough to stop Hakaze, the stranded girl. Samon comments that while Hakaze is the strongest mage in the world the conditions of the island will make her unable to practice magic. Thus their plan can still go on. At home Yoshino is eating and reading a message from his girlfriend about meeting up the next day. In the background a TV plays talking about military personal doing…something. At school girls talk about how Yoshino is very cute without Mahiro around but Yoshino shuts them down with comments that he has a girlfriend. A teacher after class questions if Yoshino has seen Mahiro and Yoshino comments not in a month. Despite that large of a time frame Yoshino doesn’t seem that upset. On the way home Yoshino is beaten up by some guys. Yoshino muses if Mahiro had been there they would have been able to take the group. Yoshino thinks back to a time where Aika yelled at Mahiro for getting in a fight. Ultimately she blames Yoshino because if he didn’t constantly back Mahiro up Mahiro would have to run away instead of fighting.

If you say so....

Yoshino walks home checking his text message until he stops at a grave site. It turns out a year earlier Aika was killed in a home invasion gone wrong. Mahiro handled her death very poorly while Yoshino tries to be rational. Feeling as if the police would never find the killer or bring justice the case Mahiro decides he wants revenge to make everything make sense again. While in the present Yoshino visits the grave and a woman shows up asking who is he and how he knows Yoshino. She calls herself Evangeline and explains that Mahiro has showed up in two different regions in the past month and now those regions are under quarantine. Butterflies begin to descend on the area despite it being winter. Evangeline decides Yoshino isn’t giving the right answers and Yoshino attempts to flee sensing things are going poorly. Right before Yoshino is shot Mahiro comes out of nowhere and saves him. Yoshino is in shock as Mahiro glows blue and bounces around avoiding the bullets. Evangeline demands to know what the government is hiding and who taught Mahiro magic. Eventually Mahiro grows tired of the game and knocks Evangeline unconscious.

Look at me accepting everything!

Yoshino is like is this real life as he follows Mahiro through the city. Evangeline had mentioned something called the black iron syndrome and it appears it has happened to the town. Mahiro explains it is a condition where organic material turns into metal AKA peoples. Mahiro says that this syndrome is happening because a family (Samon and folk) are trying to bring back an ancient tree that will probably destroy the world. Despite this sounding beyond scary Yoshino believes all these words out of Mahiro’s mouth. In case Yoshino needs more proof Mahiro uses the wooden doll around his neck. It communicates with Hakaze who is still trapped on the island. She is trying to stop her brother from summoning this tree and has made a contract with Mahiro. She was able to contact him (well anyone who picked it up) via a bottle that washed up on shore. Mahiro is all for saving the world because Hakaze has promised to find Aika’s killer. Mahiro also takes the time to ask Yoshino how his girlfriend is and apparently she is fine. As Mahiro and Yoshino look up as something…weird is summoned it is shown that the text message Yoshino got from his girlfriend was from Aika. THE END!

Everyone in town just turned to stone, you know magic, and the world is ending. Yeah my girlfriend is fine.

X____X Well then. Very interesting indeed. I wonder what I would do if suddenly my friend popped up with magical powers and strange things started happening to me. I don’t think I would be like okay I believe you and I will join you on this quest. I think there would be a closet and a box of tissues calling my name.

What does this mean? X___X

There was a bit of jumping around in terms of timelines. Like when such and such happened. Not enough to cause my brain to explode but it did force me to pay close attention and try to figure out what was going on. I guess showing things in order would be too simple right?

Well SOMEONE is cranky.

To start off I thought that Aika’s comments about Yoshino were a little harsh. Especially since they live in Japan. Meaning that people often have an outside persona they use for interacting with the whole country and then an inside persona they show to only close people. Maybe for some those two personas are close or are the same thing. Maybe I am not explaining it well since I am not Japanese but I was like….well Yoshino seems to look like a nice enough person. Who are you to judge or state things like that?

Sort of a sweet message....

Until you realize how old the message is!!!

Then it turned out that Aika was the girlfriend. As my yaoi hopes and dreams are crushed even though they had no foundation in reality…I guess it makes sense why Aika said that. She would see the real persona of Yoshino. So whoosh that goes. But then again fighting back against people who are hell bent on fighting you does not make a person bad. Me thinks that Aika was pissed her brother was getting back up in these fights and that Yoshino should have left Mahiro alone instead of helping him out. Or maybe this was all a front to throw her brother off cause she was dating his friend.

Apparently he doesn't care okay!!!

So with that aside…Mahiro disappears from Yoshino’s life. Since this happened a month ago in current time maybe Yoshino was getting used to his life without his friend and that is why he came across as not caring. But given what we know now maybe Yoshino is good at hiding his feelings. After all Yoshino was at Aika’s gravesite and wasn’t really crying any tears. Maybe on the inside he was very upset but was trying to keep it together for Mahiro. So while Yoshino might have looked disconnected from the situation maybe he has emotions. On the inside.

Clearly you should have let Mahiro get his butt kicked!

The rest of the “normal stuff” was probably just the calm before the storm. Yoshino eating a meal, a news program talking about the military doing something…military, and how even with Mahiro gone people still talk and associate him with Yoshino. Trying to show us that Yoshino might be rough around the edges but in the end has a reason to be a true friend to Mahiro.

You will pay for not killing me!!

Now I know bad guys don’t often make sense but instead of stranding someone an island with the intent of them dying off….why wouldn’t you nuke the island ensuring they will die? Throw some bombs and deadly gas in that general direction. If Hakaze is a normal girl on this island why risk her finding some way off and finish the job? Such a lazy villain this Samon.

He does give off a baddie vibe though.

Of course it might be too early to declare Samon the baddie. We just have…well a lot of dead people on the ground and Hakaze’s word. But maybe Hakaze is a villain too? We are just assuming that Hakaze is a victim. Maybe she is all for this evil tree revival and is pissed that Samon will be the one to take all the glory instead of her. Maybe she was just hoping that someone be desperate enough to not ask questions and be her little…mage in training.

:( Well...that was sad.

So why did Mahiro disappear a month ago? Well that is because his sister died a while back. Murdered to be exact. It appears that Aika was his entire world and the fact that it was a home invasion gone wrong and the police aren’t really helping out have eaten away at him. Mahiro wanted answers and wanted things to make sense. But most of all Mahiro wanted revenge. Maybe that is why Yoshino was trying to be calm, he didn’t want to lose Mahiro too.

Um....wishes usually end very badly. :(

But yes Mahiro disappeared because in his despair and desire for revenge he found Hakaze’s message in a bottle. See, the smartest mage in the world has a plan folks. Throw a bottle in the ocean and hope the person who picks it up believes in magic. Mahiro has been missing in action as he has been promised the thing he has been wanting the most. Mahiro wants to find his sister’s kill and Hakaze has agreed to help him. It might be hard to find her killer if the entire world ends. But wouldn’t this all work better if Mahiro just went to get Hakaze instead of communicating via cute little wooden doll? Just saying.

TADA! I know magic!

All of this came to a head when Yoshino needed help the most. Yoshino was paying his respects to Aika and probably Yakumo when some random person named Evangeline arrives to shoot him or pump information out of him. Either way X___X would have been running away. Evangeline wasn’t very smooth with trying to get information out of Yoshino was she? If she knew Yoshino was friends with Mahiro why didn’t she know about Aika? Just a lot of special going here. If Mahiro shows up places and things go haywire I can see why she assumes the worse. And it doesn’t look like Mahiro is going to tell her the truth anytime soon. Yay for situations that could be made better if only people opened their mouths!

Good thing you were with me!

So after Mahiro saves Yoshino from bullets and butterflies the real story of the series is told. Samon is trying to summon up some old tree and in the process that areas around/near the summoning site are being effected. More like every living thing is being turned into metal. A bit of anime magic has kept Yoshino from turning into metal himself. Like oh okay standing near Mahiro means Yoshino is safe. Thank goodness. No word on what this ancient tree can do but doesn’t sound too good.

Um...yeah. Should be interesting...

So while Mahiro might not care about individual people he cares about revenge. And while Yoshino might be all in shock about this he appears to care about his friend. We don’t know what Hakaze is thinking but she is on an island and might be the only person who can save the world. We also have a bunch of people chanting over a plant. And yes…all any can talk about is the dead sister. If she is dead how come she is so featured in the opening (closing?) song? Is homegirl really dead or are the boys going to have flashbacks of her the entire series? Time to end the post as I was all over the place. XD Hopefully it wasn’t that hard to understand….yay butterflies!