They prettier the male cast, the better the anime.
Well, not really, but Shonen Onmyouji seems to correlate the points. The series is about Masahiro, the grandson and perceived heir of famed onmyouji Seimei Abe. In volume three, the action is seemingly nonstop. It picks up after Masahiro’s long-time childhood friend (and potential love interest) Akiko has been cursed by the demon Kyuuki. Masahiro has taken Akiko’s cursed pain into himself in order to save her life, but then must face Kyuuki in order to lift the curse from himself and forever save Akiko. Not only this, but Masahiro is struggling to deal with the fact that, as a Lord’s daughter, Akiko must become a courtesan bride to another prince. All this fuels his drive to become stronger and further push his powers. He, with the help of Guren and the twelve celestial shikigami that serve his grandfather, must contend with vicious demons in alternate realms and lift curses set upon an ailing man by a vengeful spirit. But all these events begin to come together as machinations of an outside agent as tests to Masahiro’s limits and to keep fate from aligning properly. It’s action all the way, with just the right touches of humor and romance. Oh, and did I mention the beautiful men? The best of all worlds!
Two sides to everything.
The first thing I noticed about the clear DVD case was the alternate jacket covers. On the default side you’re treated to a stoic illustration of Rikugou (one of the twelve shikigami) and on the alternate cover is one of Genbu. And each alternate cover also sports alternate screenshots of the episodes, so you’re not getting the same thing twice in that part of the outer package. There’s also a slip inside the case with both cover art pieces on either side, which I found rather nice. The DVD menus are fairly simple and run of the mill, sporting basic menu options and background music. The soundtrack and animation are also absolutely fantastic. The English dub isn’t on part with the original Japanese cast, but I found it wasn’t that bad really. There certainly have been worse.
Huh. I know they’re there somewhere…
I’m not quite sure what to think. There is a huge gap in the extra content of Funimation produced DVDs and Geneon. Shonen Onmyouji has probably the least amount of extra content you could have in an anime DVD, You only get DVD credits and a list of Geneon anime previews. Even the list of trailers is much shorter than I was anticipating—you only get trailers for Elemental Gelade, Black Lagoon, and Ayakashi-Yotsuya Ghost Story. I was first puzzled by the lack of titles present, but found out why. Geneon trailers are very cinematic, almost as much so as the anime they’re advertising. You almost get the feeling you’re watching a movie trailer from the theater as opposed to a simple DVD. However, this severe lack of extra content isn’t much of a shortcoming. Geneon doesn’t try to hard in throwing on useless extras like textless opening/ending songs or huge amounts of trailers—they want you to focus on what’s important, the anime on the disc itself. It’s nice to not have so much crammed onto a disc that it distracts you from watching the show.
It’s good not to have pretenses.
Anyone jumping in to Shonen Onmyouji expecting typical boy has power=boy fights in tournaments and gets more power shonen formula is going to be let down. It is fairly run of the mill in terms of story topic and formula, but it pulls in elements from other genres of anime so much that it’s hard to define as “simply shonen.” But it makes no pretenses of being the next classic shonen series in a long list of greatness, and it simply focuses on moving the story along. It’s also a really easy story to jump into because each episode is recapped and you quickly pick up a feel for the characters and easily learn who they are. All this combines to make for a very enjoyable show and volume three is sure to not disappoint.
