Well, I can’t say that this show doesn’t just throw you right into things. In one episode we’re introduced to a post-apocalyptic Japan with loads of details and plenty of character both main and incidental. It’s a lot of work in not a lot of time, which already shows a good deal of skill.
The basic outlay is that there was some terrible explosion in the past that turned Tokyo into a crater, most of Japan into desert wastelands, and unleashed something called the Rust Wind that ruins what it touches, including afflicting humans with a degenerative condition known as the Rusting. The society that has evolved from the ruins is a mix of apocalyptic death-seeking and aggressive pursuit of profit and vice.
And, granted, this is pretty much half of post-apocalyptic scenarios since Mad Max, albeit this time with a more functional governance than average. In this world we follow a few plotlines at once. In one, a man who claims to be a monk attempts to get through a border checkpoint with a glitchy passport reader delaying things. In another, a young doctor does his business in one of the cities, proving very popular as he does what people need, sometimes even working pro bono from his clinic or the brothel where he seems to have an arrangement to provide care. His biggest interest, though, seems to be his sister, who is suffering from an advanced case of Rusting.
Also apparent is that in the normal society of this world, Mushrooms are dangerous and forbidden, as most people believe (and it’s unclear if it’s true or not) that mushroom spores will spread the Rusting. At the border gate, the guard gets chatty, talking about the wanted poster for Bisco Akaboshi, “the Man-Eating Mushroom”, a terrorist who has a bow and arrows that cause giant mushrooms to sprout wherever they hit. In the city, a smuggler deals in small samples, desirable for epicures of the strange and dangerous to deal in. One of the buyers proves to be the doctor, known as “Doctor Panda”, who wants the mushrooms to attempt to synthesize medicines.
At the Doctor’s home, it turns out that, in a fairly nice turn, the sick sister is not a helpless waif but a big tough girl who, while now sick and largely unable to work, is also the captain of the guard. I’ll give the show some credit for that. On a more typical note, it seems that the leader of the City, a sort of mob boss figure, is steadily putting the doctor in his debt, hoping to get a skilled physician in his back pocket rather than on the street tending to just anyone.
Meanwhile, that terrorist “mushroom keeper” is on the loose. We see some of his rampage, and it’s implied that the monk at the gate was, in fact, him (no surprise there), which ultimately leads to giant mushrooms sprouting up over the city, interrupting a talk between the doctor and the city boss. The doctor rushes home, where his sister has suited up and goes ahead and knocks him out in order to go into battle. When he wakes up, he’s still got the mushrooms he harvested from the crisis, and begins to do chemistry with them. That’s when an injured Bisco appears behind him and the episode ends.
The episode does a great job at generating immersion and establishing characters. We know who the doctor is, as well as his sister and the boss of the town, and have some good tension between them. We also know the madame of the brothel and have seen some of her girls, getting more of the world from their perspective as well as a few distinct voices. There’s also the manjuu-seller who deals mushrooms to our doctor protagonist and has a distinct personality. Most of these characters are probably one-offs, but they still feel like they’re more than just generic warm bodies to fill space. Similarly, the world is the right level of enigmatic. We don’t know what the deal with it is, but we know enough about what life and society is like that we do want to know more about its deeper mysteries. Bisco, for now, we don’t really have characterization for. We do know he’s more clever than he perhaps would be taken to be, given his act as the swaddled monk, but we haven’t spent enough time with him to know what his real ideology or goals may be. And, like the world, it’s handled in such a way that we want to know. We’re only a single episode in, and we know what Bisco does – fight, with a magic bow that makes giant mushrooms grow – but we don’t know why he does it or who he is as a person, that’s left to explore.
It’s always hard to tell from a single episode, but right now this one looks like a potential winner.