Shinigami no Ballad 1

  

Mai has to go for a checkup so it's Kouta's job to take care of Blue. One of Kouta's friends wants him to play with them, but since Kouta's got to take care of Blue... when Kouta arrives at the shrine Blue's out of his box. Thankfully, he's right there nearby.

The next day, Kouta's forgotten to do his homework, but his friend lets him copy his. Mai, looking from the door, smiles, happy to see them getting along again. After school Kouta's going to play a bit of soccer with his friends so Mai's going to take care of Blue... however, rain comes and the soccer game is broken up. At the shrine Mai cares for Blue, but then has another asthma attack... a phone call comes to Kouta's house. It's from Mai's mom -- Mai isn't home yet. Kouta runs torwards the shrine to where he and Mai kept Blue. Blue's there, covered up by one of Mai's handerchiefs. Kouta runs back towards Mai's house, and when he arrives an ambulance is leaving....

  
  
  

Mai's seat at school is now empty, with flowers on her desk. She's gone... after school, Kouta walks in the rain to the shrine and picks up Blue and the box he was in. He sits them on the bench where he and Mai first found Blue, intending to leave him. He blames Blue for what happened to Mai... Suddenly, he hears the sound of a bell -- the girl in white appears, asking him if he intends to leave Blue there. Like this it'll certainly die, a black cat with wings and a bell says, rather angry at Kouta. The girl is a shinigami -- she produces her shinigami ID. She's Momo@Akiko Kobayashi, and the black cat is Daniel@Ai Shimizu. Her job, to put it bluntly, is to take life. So is she there for Blue? Kouta doesn't mind if she takes it... Momo raises her scythe... but Kouta jumps on top of Blue, telling Momo to stop.

Momo's actually there for Mai, but since Mai's soul still was worried about some things -- about Kouta and Blue. If he were to abandon Blue, Mai wouldn't be able to go to heaven... Mai appears to speak to Kouta one more time. She wanted to help Blue like Kouta helped her... she's not regretting that they met Blue. And she's happy she was able to be together with Kouta. She's no longer here, but she wants Kouta to take care of Blue. Kouta cries, then Mai disappears. Momo embraces Kouta, telling him -- dad -- to do his best... Flying above, Momo cries.. she really is a crybaby, Daniel says. But Momo cries in place of those have died and can't cry...

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And so ends the first episode of the last show of the winter season (or should I say the first of the spring?), perhaps the only one I was actively looking forward to. And, for the most part it's lived up to my expectations. Animation and art style is good... It's pretty easy to tell that Shinigami no Ballad is the work of Zettai Shounen director Tomomi Mochizuki -- plenty of odd camera angles (from inside Kouta's alarm clock?), and low camera angles, and concentration on certain body parts, though not to the level of Zettai Shounen. The anime does an excellent job of capturing the atmosphere of the novel, of a rather slow and everyday life as seen in part A this time. Excellent job showing Kouta and Mai's so sweet relationship. Did I mention that Mai's terakawaisu? GJ as usual, Chiwa! :) Mai's a bit different from recent Chiwa characters since she's a rather weak character compared to others she's done. Kouta's quite an easy character for me to symphathize with. I believe I mentioned somewhere before on the blog that waaay back when in 4th grade I and another girl had perhaps something a bit similar to Kouta and Mai's relationship, and I had to go through the teasing as well... perhaps the reason why I'm such a sucker for these kinds of stories ;) Explains why I teared up more than a bit when I first read the story. Mai-chan... 。゜・（ノД`）・゜・。

As one who's read the novels -- this story, "Kimi no koe. echo", is the second in volume one -- the B part felt somewhat lacking to me as some scenes that really got through to me in the novel were left out. It felt very much like things were set to fast-foward. In the novel, Mai ends up chasing Blue into a forest when Kouta's out playing soccer with friends and rain starts falling. While she's searching for Blue all she thinks about is Kouta, repeating his name over and over again. After she finds Blue, she finally runs out of breath, still repeating Kouta's name. Her last wish is for Kouta not to hurt himself or someone else because of what happens to her (I was definitely tearing up when I read that part). Kouta not only blames Blue, but also blames himself, and also wonders what death really means... he also wanted to be able to say one last goodbye to Mai... Probably the thing that disappointed me most that we didn't see Momo's dance to retrieve Mai's soul. In the novel, it's not scary at all to Kouta -- it's described as being "very pretty and very gentle. But just a bit sad....". Hopefully they're just saving it for a later episode ;) As for Momo herself, perhaps I would've wanted to see a bit more gentleness shown from her, but Akiko Kobayashi (Kisa@Zettai Shounen) did a nice job :) And of course you can't go wrong with Ai Shimizu... playing a cat, yet again ;)

Though I have my complaints, that's to be expected as you can't squeeze every last detail from 80 pages of a novel into one episode of an anime. As I said first, I'm generally satisfied with how things have turned out so I'm looking forward to watching more. Kouta and Mai's story is probably my favorite (well, perhaps second favorite since "Snow rebirth" from volume 3 was quite good as well), but I enjoyed the other stories as well. Next time, it's "Sakana no koro", corresponding to the first story in volume 2, "Mizu no nai pool. Pool Side Girl".

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btw, Garten's also blogged Shinigami no Ballad. To answer the question about Momo's background -- in each volume of the novel there's one story that's focused more on Momo herself and the work of the shinigami. There hasn't been very much revealed in the three volumes I've read so far, though. Anyways, I doubt the anime will touch very much on who Momo is due to time constraints.