With a great opening tune, this Japanese/Chinses co-production by games developer Happy Elements and Studio Liden Films is a supernatural adventure series set in merry ol' London town.
Baileu Ton is an exchange student visiting London from China with her friend Shinyao. Almost immediately after their arrival, the pair are robbed by an invisible creature that absconds with their luggage and Ton's ring, an heirloom from her great Grandmother, Rijan Sha. Using an old family magic spell, which involves drawing a symbol and then folding the paper into a plane, Ton is led to "Cafe Forbidden", an odd and somewhat unwelcoming name for an eatery!
Cafe Forbidden is run by three handsome young men, who are rather startled when Ton just walks straight through their magic mirror and into the staff-room. Recognising the young girl by her lineage, the chaps decide to help find her missing luggage, and of course she tags along to witness their supernatural powers in action.
Luke is a catguy, who favours hand to hand combat - he has silver hair with a flash of red. Vlad appears to be some sort of vampire with mind-wiping powers, and Tauryu is a Chinese man with a minigun up his sleeve. I mean, it's fine not to have any supernatural powers, but a minigun is overcompensating a bit.
Twice in this episode Ton happens across a mysterious stranger with a terrible haircut and a monocle. Time will tell if he's a villain or a mysterious ally, but to me he was more amusing than enigmatic. Similarly, the outfits worn by the cafe staff on their outing also look a bit daft, but I think that's just a stylistic choice the designers have taken. Long colour-coded coats with braiding look a little 80's, but I suppose it works in context.
Speaking of design choice, London at least is a pretty good representation of the real place (though it needed a lot more bird-poop to really get the atmosphere right!) Hyde Park and Chinatown make appearances, and the title cards during the break look like postcards, featuring The Houses of Parliament and London Bridge. I didn't get the "feel" of the place quite the way I did when watching Banana Fish, which really caught the atmosphere of New York, but it wasn't a bad stab either.
The action, when we get there, is quite fun, though not much we haven't seen before in, say, Tokyo Ghoul. And I suppose that's where the show falls short, in that it's a Yuri title with (so far) not much in the way to make it really stand out. That said, I had fun watching the show - character designs were a little bland, but not bad per-se, London looks good and the setup is solid if only because it isn't really anything new.
By the end of the episode, a soft-reset is in play - Ton's memories are wiped and she's sent back to school, but judging by the "next episode" teaser, this won't remain in play for long. A shame because I'd have liked to have seen the trio helping from the shadows so that we know who they are, even if Ton doesn't.
The end credits are followed by a short presentation by chibi versions of the characters who talk you through the events of the episode, an old trope which, surprisingly, I haven't seen in a while. It's actually rather charming and the writing made me smile.
Is it worth watching more? Well possibly - I wasn't feeling compelled to fire up another episode, but I wouldn't object either. For this show, it really depends on just how tired you are of Twilight style goth pretty-boy tales. As someone who has limited exposure to the format I really didn't mind it at all, but I can see why so many fans are "meh" about it on message boards. Probably the poster child for the phrase "your mileage may vary", it has little strongly for or against it.
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