That was definitely one of the strangest little premieres I've seen in a while.
I'm not sure if it's an effect of the busy direction or simply the bizarre material in question, but I've almost no clue as to what it is I just saw. I'm pretty sure
I liked it, and there were definitely little things going in favor of it, but even after watching an entire episode, I couldn't tell you with confidence what
Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge is really about. I suppose the best description I could give at the moment is that it's a
series about hair, or a series about a hair fetishist and the curious circumstances surrounding him and the mysterious cursed girl he meets, but none of that really encapsulates the point of the series or what kind of story it hopes to tell. The only thing I can say with certainty is that those are pretty vivid depictions of what a fetish looks like.
If I had to establish a genre, I think I'd go with mystery or horror, if only because there are
various dark undertones and because everything is so strange in the first place. The series is certainly intriguing in its weirdness; Haimura Kiri (
Hanae Natsuki) is a fetishist who loves cutting hair, and when he stumbles upon Mushanokouji Iwai (
Koiwai Kotori) and her uncuttable hair, he's made aware of the existence of objects known as Killing Goods, one of which he unknowingly inherits from a murderous ancestor. This object, a pair of scissors nicknamed the Dansai Bunri no Crime Edge, is the only thing able to cut
Iwai's cursed hair, due to their previous usage as a murder tool. There are other people in possesion of Killing Goods (specifically, a pair of sisters in Iwai's household) though what their purpose is and what these girls are doing in Iwai's home is unknown.
Other than the little tale of Iwai's depression and how Kiri makes life livable for her by cutting her hair, I've really no idea where this premise is going. The direction may be partially at fault; scenes skip from one to the other too rapidly for things to sink in, and while the
fetishization of Iwai's hair is strangely captivating in the way it's portrayed, the characters aren't all that well fleshed out yet. The atmosphere too, while boasting a heavily emotional soundtrack and nice visuals, can feel rather rushed or interrupted in strange places. I feel that perhaps the studio tried to cram too much into one episode, leading to a sense of disjointedness; there's also an almost one-shot quality to the premiere, with far more focus on the relationship between the Hair Queen and her deliverer than on what the
Killing Goods really imply about what's going on. All in all, I'm pretty lost as to what to do with this; it will probably take more than one episode to let
Dansai establish itself as whatever type of series it's aiming to be.
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