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Shikabane Hime Aka is an action, horror title from Gainax based on the manga by Yoshiichi Akahito, about a corpse princess Makina Hosimura who battles the undead with the help of her pair of trusty sub machine guns. Makina must kill 108 shikabane (corpses) to be allowed to finally go to heaven. She currently has a contract with the Kougonshuu a religious organisation who battle the undead and is watched over by the priest Keisei Tagami. The main male protagonist of the series is the orphan Oori Kagami who is in the process of moving out the temple where Keisei appears to have previously cared for him.

The series from what I can tell anyway appears to be completely different from the original manga or at least what I’ve read of it anyway, Sadly I have a feeling we may be treading on monster of the week territory yet again. It also appears that Oori might be quite taken with Makina even if she is very much dead, why am I now worried about a possible love story here, please Gainax no! I truly hope I am mistaken but still I did enjoy seeing her slap him for getting too close.

Makina is voiced is Nana Akiyama who is in fact a drama actress as opposed to an actual seiyuu which I think did add a different feel to this anime, Makina does come across as slightly monotone due to this but I personally thought it added to her character rather than caused problems, I mean she is dead anyway so she could easily be devoid of a lot of emotion. It’s interesting anyway to see the casting of actors as opposed to those who are primarily voice actors, this is a trend that appears to be getting pretty popular as of recent years with animation studios. The animation production of this anime (after I finally managed to see it in HD) was actually quite good, personally I’m not as huge a fan of the character designs here as I was of the original manga designs but I don’t think they ruined them too much. Shikabane Hime aka comes across as very dark, well dark to watch anyway with most of the action taking place amongst hues or red, purple and dark blue, did I mention purple. I’m sure this is to add to the eerie appeal, the manga itself is very creepy. I do have one major complaint though with Gainax, if you have read the manga you will know this series is famed for one thing, gore and within at least this first episode there was hardly any, but we did get a very creepy talking cat as a consolation which I actually don’t remember from the manga at all.

As first episodes go I will admit I was largely disappointed with this, possibly because I personally like the manga but also due to the lack of direction within the first episode. All I gathered was she killed a vampire and they liked to mention that she was dead a lot. I will try watching a few more episodes mainly in hope that it improves as I do like the look of the series and the preview for next week did excite me slightly. On a brighter note maybe they are easing the audience in gently to this series as the manga itself does become pretty nasty and twisted.

A let down from Gainax on what could have been very interesting but if there’s a school girl with double machine pistols kicking corpse arse I’m willing to give the series some time to develop. Not the best of this season but definitely not the worst give it a watch as a filler if you like action, horror titles. I have a feeling this could just be a slow starter as there is a chance of improvement, on the plus side at least it looks good.

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