English Dub Review: 18if “The Witch of Thunder”

So, that’s what an LSD trip is like. Huh. I wonder If I’ll get flashbacks to this anime…

Spoilers Below

Haruto Tsukishiro is a boy stuck in a dream…A dream within a dream. Every time he wakes up, he finds himself in the same bedroom, but the outside world is a psychedelic wonderland that only My Little Pony’s Dischord could love. What, a guy can’t enjoy character development in a children’s show? It has a better plot than Dragon Ball Z, I’ll tell you. Anyways, checking his phone, he finds a new app, one marked by a red door. When he clicks it, a girl calling herself the Witch of Thunder jumps in and throws everything topsy-turvy. He is rescued by another girl, a white-haired one in a white outfit, who returns him to his starting room, then tries to lead him through another door. Though the girl is not on the other side, he meets up with an anthropomorphic cat named Katsumi Kanzaki, who introduces him to the whole concept of the series. Haruto is in the Dream World, an alternate universe created by the collective subconscious. Katsumi is a brilliant scientist researching the Dream World, and how it connects to the many worldwide victims of Sleeping Beauty Syndrome. People all over the world are falling asleep, and never waking up. He’s also looking for a girl named Lily, the white-on-white girl from before, who may be the key to understanding everything. But, as much as Katsumi wants to use Haruto to find Lily, the boy is only interested in going home. He provokes the Witch of Thunder into attacking him again, in hopes that Lily will intervene and show him a way out.

If only it were that easy. The Witch is all powerful in this area of the Dream World and warps “reality” to her whims. She turns Katsumi into a cake and feeds him to her plushy friends in the nosebleed section. As for Haruto, he now looks like Boo-Boo From the Yogi cartoons. And she hacks off his arm. That’s when Lily arrives, telling him to simply kill the witch. It’ll be a release for her. Lily proceeds to show him the life story of the witch when she was awake in the real world. She had been raised to be a straight-A student, proper, professional, and mature. She gave off a cold air. But, when one of the popular boys at school admits feelings for her, she accepts him straight away. Turns out, the whole thing was a bet. He thought she’d turn him down. Everyone at the school makes fun of her. Then, when she arrived in the Dream World, she binds herself there, becoming a Witch. Haruto jumps into the fight, and while he initially loses (by decapitation, no less) he takes control of the Dream World, ignoring everything that reality would tell him to speak to the girl directly. He convinces her that it’s okay to not be perfect and to go off and have fun every now and then. With this, she awakens from the dream, and he finds the Blue Door back. As he goes, Katsumi asks the boy to come to his laboratory to discuss things further.

Wowee, this anime is nuts. It’s the good kind of nuts, though. The abstract, deconstructed universe of the Dream World reminds me heavily of the game series Shin Megami Tensei: Persona, especially the third installment. This series is drawn from the mobile game 18: Kimi to Tsunagaru (in English, 18: The Puzzle that Connects to You). It’s a fairly simple, jewel-matching puzzle game with gorgeous art, thumping music, and an intriguing story. I’ve been playing it ever since I found out this anime was coming to Funimation, and what it lacks in innovative gameplay, it makes up for in style. The series deviates from the plot as presented by the game, but seems to keep to the universe for the most part. The Art of 18 Project is also bringing out a VR Game, which I’m fairly certain would make me puke if it’s set in this same universe. The great part about this series is that chief supervisor Koji Morimoto intends to bring in different directors for each episode, only further amping up the disconnect between the anime and the real world. Morimoto is a giant in the anime world, having been an animator on the legendary film Akira and also worked on one of the portions of the Animatrix. Unless I’m misreading things, I think this episode’s director is Akira Nishimora, who has done storyboard and direction on a good number of Gundam series, as well as Angelic Layer. Now that you know this show’s pedigree, it’s time to start picking apart this piece of animation.

And animation! Wow, let’s talk about that because we have quite the load to unpack on that topic. First, it takes a very twisted mind to put a traditional animation crew through the direction this show had. It spun around its subject more times than a Matrix jump kick. It would zoom and zip around, changing character sizes at whim. Everything was relative in this show, and nothing was stable. It was dizzying, disorienting, and very cool. I also liked the effects they used where they overlaid still panels over moving scenes. It brought emphasis to the subject of each shot in ways that normal cinematography would have a hard time doing. It also kept things from getting stale, when it very likely could. For example, Katsuri’s exposition on the subject of Lily could have been a drag to listen through. But, by playing around with picture-in-picture, they gave you more to look at, leading your eyes in a dance around the screen that only furthers your “WTF” face. You can see this effect to the right during Haruto’s decapitation scene.

All of this wild direction comes at a price, however. For an animation that comes with the time crunch of a television episode, it becomes increasingly difficult to maintain quality while keeping your deadlines. There is so many animation errors and irregularities in the character art from shot to shot that it almost felt like the animators weren’t given a model sheet to work off of. I feel like the in-betweeners had significant difficulty keeping up with the frame-by-frame insanity, and sacrifices had to be made. That being said, being made by Gonzo, this anime perfectly blends CG and traditional animation, using the two in concert to make consistent elements in the universe. The best example of this are the scenes of Haruto looking out his window. You have a hard time telling what is CG and what is traditional. Art-wise, I feel like the series is lacking some of the style of the game. Katsuki looks completely different. He’s far more cartoony in the anime, where in the game, he’s lean, cool, and a bit rugged. The vast majority of the character details have been dropped so that they can do more with the animation, and I feel that the series suffers a bit in the art for it.

So, now let’s talk about the plot. Other than dealing with the crazy setting, and the hijinx therein, the plot of the episode ends up being extremely thin. It is a remix of the first eight stages of the game, and only serves as an introduction to the series concept, but I sadly seem to like the way the game presented it better. There was more of a feeling of a desperate struggle to reach the end, instead of the acid trip that we got. I feel like the emphasis on abstraction and over-the-top direction detracted from the story’s impact and action considerably. Now, as I said, other episodes in the series are supposed to have different directors, so this may change as we go.

Voice acting has an all star cast here. Haruto is played by Ricco Fajardo, whose voice I’m used to hearing behind Yuri from Chain Chronicle: Light of…. whatever that word is there. Opposite of him as Katsumi is John Michael Tatum, who has been around the block a few times: Berkhart from Chain Chronicle, Scar in Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood, Kyouya in Ouran High School Host Club, just to scrape the surface of his supporting roles that I recognize. John did a great job in this anime, and I feel like he stood out as the best actor among the cast thus far. Ricco’s performance was somewhat flat and disconnected, and it didn’t seem like he was supposed to be. Then again, it’s a dream world, and he can be as blase about it as he wants. On the other hand, Monica Rial as the witch was not the level I am used to from her. It came off cheesy and cliche as the witch, and one-dimensional as her human alter ego of Yuuko. Then again, she’s having to suffer through acting as AnchoR in Clockwork Planet, so that might be draining her a bit. If her character continues on, I’ll be watching to see if she improves.

Altogether, I feel like this anime has a good amount of promise. The premise has endless possibilities, and the animation is so visually interesting, I had a hard time getting my head wrapped around it all. Though this episode had its problems, I hope they will start ironing them out as the plot picks up. Until then, I give this episode seven red doors out of ten. I want to paint them black.