Hitori no Shita ~ The Outcast

Title:Hitori no Shita ~ The Outcast
一人之下 the outcast
Overall:Unevaluated
Keywords: , , , , , ,
Notables: Animation - Emon Animation Company
HAYAMI Saori
TAMARU Atsushi
Zhang Chulan comes home from college to pay his respects at the grave of his grandfather, a renowned mystic. But he finds that the grave has been robbed, his grandfather's body is missing, and funny things are happening with other graves as well.

12 episodes
OverallArtAnimationCharacter Design MusicSeries StoryEpisode StoryReviewer
Unevaluated Stretch [series:3241#628]
(Four episodes watched):

As I watched episode one I quickly got the feeling that, while rough around the edges, some sort of story with a little finesse was coming together here. The previous show I had watched had seemed like basically acts of violence with a loose plot to string them together, but here I was becoming interested before anyone was killed or injured. What was the deal with this super strong woman, Baobao, who seems to be some sort of zombie hunter? I like her, because she isn't a stereotypical zombie hunter--she hasn't got some magical weapon or ability, she just hacks them to pieces with a big knife when they come at her. Her social skills could be better, too, which was amusing; zombie hunters are often awesomely cool, or at least supposed to be. Why has one body been abducted from this graveyard while others have transformed into zombies? The story seems to be set in China rather than Japan. One thing I didn't entirely like was the effort to use SD as a shortcut to humor; it didn't work well. I was left wondering whether horror or humor had priority. But at the end I was curious where this story would go, so episode one got it's job done.

However, the countless different sorts of Chinese psychic martial arts confused me a good deal, and after three episodes it still wasn't clear what the basic conflict within the story is and who are good guys and bad guys. But the chemistry between the two main characters is still there, and I got a genuine laugh now and then. One thing I noticed was that zombies in this show are much more restrained than usual--they seem to obey orders from someone instead of automatically lunging at you to eat your brains. That might be interesting, if it were expanded upon. On the other hand, the fight in episode four was painfully unexciting; characters conveniently stand aside and twiddle their thumbs so that their opponents can do all the talking they wish. It was more a war of words than an actual battle. You just know that nobody important will get hurt, just a few insignificant zombie minions will get hacked to pieces. And chances are that all of these characters will wind up as allies before too long, since no particular effort has been made to demonize the villains. In other words, this is predictable. I found myself rapidly losing interest in this show; a couple of okay characters couldn't save it from a mediocre plot.

Last updated Friday, October 07 2016. Created Sunday, July 31 2016.

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