Interlude

Drama : Med/High
Comedy : Low/Med
Action : Low/Med
SciFi : High
Ecchi : Low

The English version has a good dub (even I thought Tama's annoying voice fit) but they did have a major problem with the lip flaps. It felt like I was a bit seasick from seeing voices that didn't match the flaps.

When you finally get to third episode and everything is explained you have to stop, rewind and replay just to make sure they said what they did say.

BTW : The girl on the right I don't get. She's in the 2nd OVA intro and in the end, but I don't remember where she came from.

Edit : The main character's name is not Madoko. As far as I can tell, we NEVER learn the main characters true name.

The fansub release of the third OVA is now out and the third episode promises to tie everything up and explain the strangeness of the first two episodes ..(which it does, but I am still pondering what was told in the story .)

This is a very strange series. The opening credits are a single person standing on a stage, under a single spot light, speaking a somber soliloquy. While starting off like any happy high school romance series, it quickly takes a dark turn and the story leaves behind the reality that we all know so well. But this series works very well as a horror mystery, with a lot of supernatural suspense.

Soliloquy - A dramatic or literary form of discourse in which a character talks to himself or herself or reveals his or her thoughts without addressing a listener.

* Madako questions his understanding of reality, and is called upon to wonder about his reality, a different reality of his dreams. What is real. and what is truth?

* A high school counselor extracts a strange black parasite from the chest of a student, crushing the beast harshly, and splashing it's slime against a wall, where it evaporates into nothingness.

* A young girl stands up high looking down on Madako walking across the high school courtyard, calling him her onii-chan (brother) and asking him to not remember..

* The nightmare world that Madako chooses to enter is one of isolation, zombies, flying hellbeasts and cannibalistic hunters, but he does encounter a girl with a bow, the girl whom he saw on the train platform, and together they try to figure things out.

If you like a very heady mystical suspense story, which mixes in a lot of abstract conceptual criticisms of our current world order, then you might really enjoy this series, (this series attempts to ask and answer the question. What is reality? .) Otherwise, this is a really spooky and scary story of that talks about time, reality and our perception of what is going on around us. In any case, I really want to (over-rate) this series as a "buy", because it is NOT ordinary and tries to explain something that only the conceptual artists (or manga sources?) understand, for this very strange series. But it succeeds in, not only, being very entertaining, but also in offering something worthy of some measure of thought .

Sorry.. I really like this series, not only for its artistic quality, but also for the questions that it poses to the viewer. My suggestion would be to watch it for your self and make your own conclusion.