Mayoiga Episode 1: [Look Before You Leap] [First Impressions]

So it begins,

Mayoiga is one of the shows I’m the most excited about with Boku no Hero Academia.
Man, I’m a sucker for good physiological mystery.
Will this one be good?
Let’s see, let’s see…

The episode stars with the tour guide presenting the bus tour in a rather strange way. According to him, this bus should be considered as the Noah’s Ark, heading towards a promised land where they can all start new life and say goodbye to reality. The guide calls himself the Mystery Emperor Dahara and asks everyone to present himself. Everyone then, does so.
All the members of the tour have different reasons to be here. But all of them seem to want to escape from something, hoping hat this secret place will offer them a better life than reality. Some of them have pseudonyms which  are really strange like “Pink Goddess” who is a guy,” Speed Star” and so on. Well, I said pseudonyms but for some of them like “Pink Goddess” they also said their real name right after so….

There’s also 3 Yuuna but the guide decides to go with Yuuna, Yuune and Yuuno to simply things. Then we are introduced to the main characters, Mitsumune and Speed Star, Varukana who’s a bit nervous and wants everything to go softly, Lion and Masaki. Only Speed Star and Mitsumune seem to know each other.

The Nanaki village is rumored to be a phantom town in which people can disappear, which is not located on any maps and not known by the police. So it’s the perfect place if you want to hide from something, someone or have a new start. Well, to me, it doesn’t look like a good idea  to go there since there are obviously fishy people wanting to hide something that would go to this place. Who knows what kind of psychotic personalities can be there? According to the guide, his society managed to find the location of the village thanks to the help of a certain individual but we don’t learn anything else about this special someone for the moment.

There’s a lot of rumors and hypothesis on why nobody can locate the village, from political conspiracies, mass murders, toxic gaz, moving villages or other stuff. All those theories seem really exciting to Mitsumune but not so to Speed Star. After a bit the bus members sing a song about an unlucky hippopotamus , like it’s a holiday trip. Almost everyone is singing even Mistumune . Speed Star asks him how does he know the lyrics of the song and Mistumune replies that this song is quite popular. Right after that Speed Star starts to sing it too. Did he know the song before and if yes why did he ask this question to Mitsumune? Or does the lyrics come naturally?

They have a break at a service station, we learn the real name of Speed Star which is Ayato but he doesn’t want to be called this way.  Mitsumune is also a pseudonym and that my friend, tricked me since I thought it was his real name. That’s way more intelligent to take a false name which looks like your real one instead of “Pink Goddess ” or “Speed star” if you want to trick people. I have my eyes on you Mitsumune, don’t you dare play the care free guy, I won’t believe you.
Anyway, Ayato is not convinced that the village exists and does not intend to be friends with anyone whereas Mitsumune truly believes in  this village and wants to start over. He also received several messages from his mother asking him where he was and if he truly hates her. They both take it quite lightly like “ooh you have some over protective parents” but you know, if your son disappears like that without saying anything it’s quite normal to be concerned. I’m really curious about Mitsumume’s backstory now. In fact, I’m curious about everyone’s back story.

Mitsumune meets with the Masaki girl who’s quite an interesting character too. She’s a bit superstitious and believes that if she does this or this, something good or bad will happen. Like if she can hold her breath for that long, she will pass an exam. She talks a lot but doesn’t feel very well. She also asks Mitsumune if he thinks she’s weird and he strangely responds yes, without really thinking. He then gets back on the bus in order to find medicine for her.

On the bus he meets with Lion, the girl with he cat hoodie. She’s strange too but that doesn’t surprise me anymore. She tells him that crows eat their friends when they are dead, presuming that something bad will happen to this bus. Mitsumune responds by saying that it’s fine, even if the people on the bus are close they won’t become friends or family so they won’t eat each other.
AGAIN! THAT DUDE IS SO FISHY! I LOVE HIM ALREADY! Who says that kind of stuff?! Only a really practical, logical mind can comme up with this! This guy is so fake… I love him.

Back on the bus they all play a creepy game in which they list different kind of torture. After that, they have to read their “death letter” that they were supposed to write to make people believe that they’d gone far away to commit a mass suicide. Which can be, what they are actually doing if you ask me.  At this point, the driver tells everyone what they needed to hear and what we’ve all be thinking all this time: What’s up with starting over? They are all young and haven’t experienced many things in life. Normal people try to live and solve their problems the best way they can instead of running away from them. Even, if he doesn’t say much Ayato seems to think the same way whereas Mitsumune disagrees and then agrees. He looks like the kind of guy that would go where people would tell him to go, his opinions seem to change like the wind.

After that, he has some weird dream or hallucination in which we see him walking on a thin line, falling down, waking up in a sort of hospital with his mother hugging his replica. What I understand from that is, he tried to commit suicide or just fell by accident and when he woke up, he wasn’t the same anymore. He was a different person and nobody, not even his mom could see it. That could also explain Lion’s sentence ” You’re a time bomb, if you keep on holding things too much you’ll explode”.

The driver goes crazy, revealing to everyone that he also has problems and would like to run away too. His plan is to make everyone die in an accident so that they can all say goodbye to this world. At this moment Jack, the silent dude stands and walks towards the driver saying that all the adults are the same, they all deceive you at some point, which shows us that this dude has a problem with adults and authority in general. He punches the driver and Masaki pukes on him so the bus is forced to stop.
During the break, Mitsumune offers a drink to Masaki and they talk a bit. She knows that Mitsumune is not his real name but think it suits him since it’s bright and cheerful like him. I don’t think this dude is really bright and cheerful, in fact, even if he says that he choose this name for no particular reason I do believe it was to make people think that he’s a bright and cheerful guy.

At some point a strange music starts playing and instantly makes Mitsumune cry. This music seems to come from a big watch showing that it’s midnight and a strange girl named Koharu arrives, singing a rather creepy song. She’s the special someone supposed to show them the way to the village. Then they go back on the bus. After crossing a bridge they are supposed to arrive to the village. But since there’s 11 episodes left I don’t think everything will go as planned.

Charibo’s thoughts: 

GOSH I ‘M EXCITED!

I think this first episode was soooo good. I cannot wait to see the next one. I’m hooked, I like everything about the show. The animation looks fine, the music is amazing, the background songs are just creepy enough. And the characters… GOD DAMMIT THE CHARACTERS ARE NICE!
Sure we didn’t get enough character development in this episode for everyone but I did not expect much. However, it’s just episode one but the main guys who I suppose are Lion, Mitsumine, Ayato, Varukana and Masaki did have a bit of spotlight in this episode, enough to make them look interesting in my eyes.
I’m especially fond of Mitsumune. I-I-I just can’t explain, he reminds me a bit of Nagai from Ajin. He’s really fishy, he sure has a lot to hide and that makes him so interesting in my eyes. Like Lion noticed, he’s the one to watch out for. Even if the opening and the key visuals make us think that Masaki is going to be the key of the mystery I have my eyes on Mitsumune!

Oh and this anime is tagged as Mystery and Drama but as the R -17 +on MAL so we can expect some violence. I don’t know if this show is going to turn out like Corpse Party or Another though. I think rather than dying in horrible ways, everyone is going to disappear is mysterious ways. I’m a sucker for mystery and have a strange fascination for the survival genre. While the opening reminds me of Shiki the whole content makes me think of Bokurano that I absolutely loved. I just hope it won’t be as depressing as Bokurano, man, that stuff was though.
I have mixed feelings about the Opening. I love the visuals but I couldn’t get into the song which sounds too discordant to me. But again, discording sounds in cinema or animation is used a lot to reveal that something isn’t working, that something is off and about to break. Which is the exact state of Mitsumune and I guess the whole cast: on the verge of breaking down. They all have something to hide and want to run away from their problems but something is telling that those problems are going to catch up with them.

Oh! Now that I think of it, it actually reminds me of Final Destination 5, where the characters are on a bus, about to cross a bridge but they manage to escape before the bridge collapses. However, since you cannot escape death like this, they all die afterwards. So yeah, it strangely reminds me of this movie… Oh well, if the bridge breaks in the next episode I’m going to laugh a bit.

Will I watch this: Yes, Yes and Yes again

Will I review this: I really want to

Stay tuned for more blogger’s impressions! 

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Berry’s First Impression

I’m on the second season of Assassination Classroom and I STILL don’t know everyone’s names, so don’t expect me to remember everyone’s names in this show too. There’s so many of them. I might have to keep a list of them with their name and picture next to each other just for reference.

Well, what a strange show. The tour guide is just as creepy, making this whole trip seem like a field trip. Also, there are children here. Did they need a permission slip for this trip I mean what in the world? There are adults here, but there are also children so whatever website they use to meet each other, I suppose age doesn’t matter. But for the children, what the bus driver said was true unless they’re in a REALLY bad situation at home and don’t know what to do. There are 30 people on this bus leaving for this village to start a new life, and while some said their reasons for leaving in their introductions, some of them didn’t so I’m curious about them. I bet some are blowing their problems way out of proportion and this was the easiest option to escape but…whatever, I’ll just wait.

This show is creepy. I know bad things are going to happen. Like deaths and disappearances. We’ll also have the mystery of Nanaki Village and the true reason for it. It’s all so weird but it’s the kind of weird that I like. Also, these people seem a little out of it to me. The hippo song was weird, because it started out innocent but then went to talking about getting its limbs torn off. Like??? But then they were playing a game of naming a sort of torture while clapping and smiling, and if they said something dumb they would have to read a suicide note. Is this a normal game in Japan, or is this a game this particular group came up with? Because it’s very morbid and strange. Everything is, and it’s making me uneasy. But that’s good, that’s good, because a show like this is supposed to make me feel nervous.

Not a whole lot happened in this episode, they haven’t even reached the village yet but they will next episode. We got introductions, barfing, a weird nightmare, singing about sad hippos, and almost getting killed by the bus driver. Next episode they’re probably just going to settle in. This was a weird, but great episode. We have a feel for everyone’s characters so far, even though memorizing their names is going to be a chore. Mitsumune…hmm, I can’t totally pinpoint what kind of person he is. We’re being told he’s not as cute and innocent as he looks, and maybe so, but he hasn’t shown anything weird yet. But I guess I’ll have to pay attention to him. I really liked this episode and the show really has my attention. I said I would review this show, but I’m still thinking about which shows to take. I covered 5 shows last season while juggling schoolwork, which I had a lot, and it was tiring, so I’m not sure if I should take 3 or 4 shows. Along with AssClass, for sure I got Jojo, and I really want Bungou Stray Dogs, and Show By Rock!! will not be this season so I have another spot open. I don’t know if I should REALLY cut back this season or just grab the shows I want. 4 shows at most.

Possibility of watching: Definitely

Possibility of blogging: Unsure. I’ll decide soon. College makes me cry.