Last week, I took a long look at Elfen Lied. Long story short… I didn’t particularly care for it. But there’s another show based on a manga by the author of Elfen Lied, one that I hear most people refer to as a knockoff of Elfen Lied, like it’s doing the same thing the way a lazy and uninventive sequel does: repackaged, reprocessed, and not as good as the first time around. So, since I was, to put it mildly, not a fan of Elfen Lied, you might think I’d have a bone to pick with Brynhildr as well.
Strangely enough, I actually don’t. At
least, not relative to Elfen Lied. I can’t speak about them manga to
manga, not the least because Brynhildr hasn’t received an official
English release, but as anime there is a marked difference in
quality, and in my mind it’s Brynhildr that comes out ahead. It
takes the most basic skeleton of Elfen Lied and applies not just a
new skin but new meat and vitals that result in, at the very least, a
marked upgrade over its predecessor.
So, the basic story of Brynhildr in the
Darkness starts about the same way as Elfen Lied: girl with
superpowers escapes from an evil science lab that was doing horrible
experiments on her. There are a few detail differences. First, it’s
not just one girl who escapes, but several. Second, they’re not
top-rank powerhouses like Lucy, they’re the screwups of the group
with, in theory, lame powers or harsh drawbacks that make them not
worth keeping. Third, they escape not thanks to a frenzy of
violence, but rather due to an accident, if admittedly one
manufactured by folks trying to aid and abet the escape.
On the other side of the opening, we
have our main character, Ryouta. Ryouta could not be more different
from Kohta while remaining in this role in this story if he tried.
Ryouta is an unusually bright high-school boy with a photographic
memory and (we see as the show progresses) a head for tactics. The
fact that he has a brain is refreshing enough, but he’s also pretty
good at dodging the typical harem-protagonist antics he’s set up for,
which can get a laugh in this otherwise quite dark show. The plot
begins in earnest with Ryouta taking note of a new student in his
class, a girl who goes by Kuroha Neko and who is the spitting image
of a lost dear friend of Ryouta’s that he knew as Kuroneko and who
was supposed to be dead. Strange things happen, most notably
mysterious forces saving a student from impending death, and as night
approaches, Kuroha visits the observatory that serves Ryouta’s
one-man (to begin with) Astronomy club to tell him that his death has
been predicted but can be avoided if he very carefully listens to
what she’s saying about magic powers and other such nonsense.
Ryouta, cleverly enough, both tells her off and takes some of the
warning, not getting on the bus that was supposed to kill him. He
still ends up in deadly danger walking home though (guess it still
wasn’t the BEST move), and Kuroha saves him, revealing herself as a
“witch” with destructive magical powers sufficient to obliterate
the boulder that would have squished him.
That’s one episode, folks. One episode
and Ryouta is right in the thick of things, learning about the
existence of these witches (at first just Kuroha) and getting
involved in their story as an active participant, not a Useless
Adult. Simple things that I never thought I would be grateful for.
Over the next episodes, Ryouta and the audience meet more witches (Starting with Kana, who is largely paralyzed but is the one able to predict death) and learn the facts of their existence, including their escape from the lab that’s hunting them, and the consequences they face. Not only is the lab that created them actively hunting them down, but they also have a nasty Lysine Contingency: They need special pills called Death Suppressants, and if they don’t get them every 36 hours or so (24 is ideal) they will die horribly, melting into puddles of goo. The escapees have a small supply of these pills, but no obvious source of more, meaning that their expected lifespan is harshly limited if they can’t obtain extra pills. In addition, the witches are controlled with a device called a Harnest implanted in the back of their neck: it has three buttons – one will cause the witch to “hang up” (temporarily losing their ability to do any magic), one will “eject” the witch (killing them horribly), and the third button… nobody knows what that one does. Witches can also “Hang Up” if they overuse their magic, for which the definition of overuse differs for each witch and magic type.
With the help of another escaped witch,
Kazumi (Who has the fairly awesome power to mentally interface with
and hack technology, set to be discarded only because she refused to
use it) they find the factory that produces the pills, but have to
deal with a deadly ambush from a lab-aligned witch. When Ryouta
manages to foil the attack and get the witch to hang herself up, the
lab demonstrates their new security measure and remotely ejects the
witch in question. This lets us both see the absolute horror of a
witch melting (a moment that is more intense true gore than anything
in Elfen Lied) and the thing that crawls out of the vacated Harnest,
some sort of green slug monster with eyes and mouths that are all too
much.
Next the gang meets Kotori, another
witch with the ability to swap places with someone else in proximity
and line of sight at the cost of immediately hanging herself up.
After failing to save yet another from the lab’s latest killer witch
(defeating her by having Kotori swap her into a position to be hung
up by button press), they properly bring Kotori into their group,
convincing her that it’s alright to live and that the lot of them can
share their supplies.
Kuroha has two more leads, from the woman who died to set the witches free: a communication device and a “fertilized alien egg”. The latter, along with a sample of Death Suppressants, goes to a scientist relation of Ryouta who’s more than interested when magic powers are displayed and who could, if they have enough time, synthesize the Death Suppressants.
The communicator, meanwhile, provides a cryptic map and threatening demands, which lead to a trail of even more strange clues. On the lab’s side, there’s no giving up: they need a particular witch back (referred to by number, which the witches themselves don’t use), heavily implied by the framing of the scenes to be Kuroha. This leads them to send out more capture attempts, ending with unleashing their most powerful witch, Valkyria, a psychotic girl with antimatter magic and a familial devotion to the lab’s head. Technically, they send her with a team of other A-rank witches, but Valkyria kills them all out of the gate. Well, all except Hatsuna, who has the power of insane healing and regeneration (she heals herself from melting eventually) and becomes the last witch to join our main group.
The final struggle against Valkyria and
the lab… could be a lot better. Until Valkyria appears, Brynhildr
is a well-paced affair. It has critical reveals and game-changing
events pretty much every episode, but also enough time to catch its
breath and devote some scenes to lighter moments and character
building that ultimately make the harsh action and gore more
effective. The ending, though, is action on rails… and it doesn’t
even make sense. We meet the scary Germans (a group called
Hexenjagd) who help out but don’t really explain themselves, and both
Hexenjagd and the villains, including layers of shadowy council above
the lab, babble on about aliens, the end of the world, Ain Soph Aur,
and other stuff that’s way, way more esoteric than it needed to be
and not well used. Kotori, it turns out, is the special witch the
lab was looking for, and the thing in her Harnest can destroy all
life on earth if it hatches, while supposedly the other horrid green
things will eventually hatch and devour their witch host bodies,
creating a race of monsters and… honestly, I don’t care. Kotori
dies, Kasumi manages to not thanks to our healer, Valkyria blows up
thanks to Kuroneko who then loses her memories, the Death
Suppressants can be manufactured in time to save the heroic witches
who are left, and the higher-up villains and hatching alien monsters
are left hanging for further evil. There. I’d have liked it better
if the first intro didn’t give us a better Kuroha/Valkyria battle
than the actual show did.
Speaking of the intro, and I know this
is a total aside, but Intro 1 to Brynhildr, “Ejected” (Or
“Brynhildr in the Darkness ver. Ejected”) is one of my absolute
favorite anime intros, despite the fact that it has no lyrics: it’s
atmospheric music over powerful, meaningful, representative imagery
and is well worth the watch even if you don’t pursue the full show.
So, yeah, the plot structure is similar
to Elfen Lied: Lab loses girl(s) with powers, sends out waves of
hostiles to acquire and/or destroy her, repeat until done. So why is
this show so much better? There are lots of reasons which I am quite
happy to go into.
First off, the plot. In Elfen Lied,
the story was plodding and ponderous. Not a lot was accomplished in
the early clashes, because they failed to change the status quo. In
Brynhildr, the struggle for survival that puts the heroes on the
offense means that there’s always something to be won as well as
something to be lost. They aren’t just waiting passively for the
next wave of attacks – they’re learning, gaining, struggling, and
striving on their own to unravel the mysteries they’ve been presented
and do what they have to in order to live. It’s much more engaging,
and means that the time invested in the show doesn’t feel wasted.
On a second point, the characters. I
didn’t go much into their personal stories in the recap, but their
motivations and emotions are strong and they’re generally likable
enough that you don’t want to see them meet an agonizing demise.
They have individual personalities that are fun and play off each
other well and personal struggles that make them more able to be
related to as people.
Kasumi, for instance, is first introduced with a very mercenary attitude, but showing her kindness turns her around some. She takes a flirty, even seductive approach to Ryouta that’s initially played very much for laughs (which are much needed in the overall depth of Brynhildr). However, as the show goes on, it becomes increasingly apparent that her acting out stems from some very real issues, chief among them (which she gets more than one heartfelt scene regarding) being her desire to have a child, and leave a mark of herself on the world even if she’s doomed to someday melt away and be forgotten. Her feelings are treated with grace and maturity and towards the end, when it’s believed that the Death Suppressants will be synthesized but only in time for one of the witches if the rest stop taking their meds right away, the others one by one offer to sacrifice their futures in order to offer Kasumi a chance at her dream. Of course, as mercenary as she might have been in trying to get more Death Suppressants for herself before, she can’t take her friends sacrificing themselves over that, and the result is a scene that’s emotional and good without being predicated in gore and destruction.
Kotori, on the other hand, has issues
we work on earlier. She went through something similar to the offer
Kasumi receives, where a friend sacrificed herself to give Kotori the
time to see her next birthday. Kotori is initially prepared to die
once she’s achieved that goal, and has to be convinced that it’s
alright to live on even when that life has come at the cost of
another. Which is, in some ways, an interesting and complex question
about guilt and responsibility, which the episode that shows Kotori
grappling with it handles very well.
The other characters are fun as well.
Kana can’t move more than a couple muscles (she speaks with a
keyboard, Stephen Hawking style, though her voice has much more
inflection than text to speech should) but has all the attitude in
the world to make up for it. Kuroha is a genius in terms of her
ability, but because she was brought up in the lab and has lost lots
of her memories as a side effect of magic overuse, she’s lacking in
practical knowledge. She also gets easily flustered, and can lash
out at nearby objects with her magic without realizing it when she’s
agitated (often by one of the other girls flirting with Ryouta). And
Ryouta himself I mentioned earlier – he’s mostly a “nice guy”
but he’s also clever and tries to avoid biting the nonsense bait when
he can, which as at least a little character and fun to watch. All
of this is way better than what we got with Kohta, Yuka, and Nyu in
Elfen Lied.
Third, the relationships. Elfen Lied
had a poorly handled, thinly sketched love triangle: Kohta
bicker-flirts with Yuka, who’s jealous of Nyu. Nyu and Lucy both
like Kohta because he seems to be the only person who ever treated
her even vaguely like a human. It’s pretty bad, though in large part
because it’s executed with bad characters. Now, Brynhildr is more of
a harem affair: Ryouta does a lot of work to save each of the girls
from horrible death, and as a result they all become at least
somewhat attached to him (except maybe for Kana). But let’s boil it
down to the basics: Ryouta and Kuroha. Because Kuroha is an actual
character, they are pretty much guaranteed to get more and better
play than Kohta and Nyu. But let’s put aside Elfen Lied for a moment
– Haruhi knows I wish to not revisit it – there’s some material
in the main relationship of Brynhildr that is quite interesting on
its own.
For one, there’s the question of
identity. Kuroha Neko is the spitting image of an older Kuroneko,
who Ryouta cared for very deeply, but Kuroneko is supposed to be dead
and Kuroha has no memories of herself as “Kuroneko”. Of course,
if she abuses her magic too much, she loses memories, so that leaves
the door open that they might be the same person – a possibility
confirmed to the audience fairly early in the show, but that the
characters aren’t permitted to know until much later, setting up a
good dramatic irony.
But how much does it matter if she’s
the same body? Kuroha has forgotten everything from before she was a
witch, she’s basically a new person even if she was Kuroneko at some
point, and she asserts as much. And, over time, Ryouta seems to
develop feelings for her – which might be reciprocated – as
Kuroha independent of his memories of Kuroneko.
The question isn’t shoved in your face,
but it’s absolutely there to consider.
On the other side, knowing that she
really is Kuroneko, it’s also possible to read Kuroha’s unconscious
smashing events in a different light. She doesn’t admit feelings for
Ryouta early or easily, but all the same when someone else flirts
with him she acts up in a destructive manner that she’s not entirely
aware of. Is this because she’s a tsundere type and not being true
to her own feelings as Kuroha, or is it because Kuroneko, who
reciprocates Ryouta’s strong old feelings, is still in there and
lashing out? We never get an answer to that, which I’m comfortable
with.
The cherry on top is that we do actually get to see Kuroneko very briefly. In one of the two really good scenes out of the ending (the other being Kotori ejecting herself to avoid hatching and causing the end of the world), Kuroha’s third button is triggered, which in her case unlocks her full powers (at high risk of death). She regains her Kuroneko memories and personality, along with an unfathomable tier of abilities that she uses to trash Valkyria, sadly by flying up into an all consuming white light where we don’t get to see any action. The good part is earlier, right after she turns; she greets Ryouta, affirms the feelings that Kuroha wasn’t really ever able to say, and then simply no-sells a major attack to the tune of (and I’m paraphrasing, not quoting here) “Do you mind? I’m trying to have a moment with my boyfriend?”
This both proves that Kuroneko still
exists inside Kuroha, and further questions whether or not they’re
the same, since Kuroneko has a bold and confident personality that’s
not a lot like what we saw out of Kuroha for most of the show. After
Valkyria is defeated, she’s left amnesiac again – both of her
existence as Kuroneko and of her entire experience as Kuroha, she’s
totally blank. Ryouta has to see and regard her as a new person, and
make a new connection with her… or is it rekindle the old one?
This isn’t resolved when the final credits roll and again I’m fine
with that. By then, her memories haven’t come back in the least and
she still sees Ryouta as a stranger, but there’s been enough material
in the show that it’s theoretically open ended. And leaving it in
that state but with a vaguely hopeful open end is much more honest
and fitting with the tone of Brynhildr than a tacked-on happy ending
would have been.
So, my final thoughts on Brynhildr in
the Darkness… it was a fun ride. It had good characters, good
gore, and an engaging story. The ending (and I mean something like
the last third of the show) did start to fall apart, with rushed
pacing and nonsensical turns towards esoteric doomsday scenarios that
didn’t feel germane or necessary. It does feel a little bit
exploitative with as much horror and fanservice as it throws out
there, but I don’t think that absolutely has to be a bad thing if
those elements are used in a good and artful way.
On the whole, I feel like Brynhildr in
the Darkness deserves a B. It was engaging enough, but not amazing.
It had good ideas, but they weren’t as developed as maybe they could
have been. It was fun, but I don’t think it was high art. I do have
to credit the show that it got me to at least look up the manga and
be a little frustrated at the lack of localization, but nothing in it
really reaches towards greatness and there are quite a few notes that
do try to pull it back down. I’d check it out if you’re in the mood
for something that can be dark and gruesome, but that remains
watchable.