Series: Shikabane: Corpse Princess – Part One
UK Release date: 23rd May 2011
Distributor: Manga
Certificate: 18
Running time: 325 mins
Director: Masahiko Murata
Starring: Keiji Fujiwara, Nana Akiyama, Tatsuya Hasome
Genre: Anime
Format: DVD
Country of Production: Japan…
Language: Japanese
Review by: Nick Bain
Anyone who is familiar with Yoshiichi Akahito’s 2005 manga series of the same name will not be surprised to see the supernatural comic book adapted into a thirteen part anime series brimming with action and unsurprisingly, action heroines toting heavy weaponry of various kinds.
Shikabane: Corpse Princess follows the story of 15-year-old Ouri Kagami (voiced by Tatsuya Hasome), an orphaned schoolboy living within a Buddhist Temple, watched over by his adopted brother Keisei Tagami (Keiji Fujiwara). With a graveyard behind his house, Ouri doesn’t fear death, but he is soon to find out that he does not understand it.
One night in the temple, Ouri sees his brother lean over an apparently dead girl and bring her back to life. That girl is Makina, (Nana Akiyama) a Shikabane Hime who is dead, but remains in the world to do battle with the evil and numerous Shikabane – demons created by the torn souls of people who die with powerful regrets and wreck their anguished rage upon the local towns.
From that meeting, Ouri’s life and understanding of those he holds dearest is changed forever. He finds himself drawn inexorably into a dark, violent world where monks and undead warriors do battle with demons, summoned and controlled by a Traitor Monk with anarchic plans for the human world. Ouri’s fascination with Makina draws him ever deeper to a place where sacrifices must be made to save the world from ultimate destruction…
There is much that is predictable about Shiabane. The well-known archetype of the young boy who meets the superhuman femme fatale is an overpopulated genre of anime. But within this premise lies a story that is brave, compelling and not a little frightening. Early episodes in which the demons take root in young children are particularly harrowing and establish a confident tone that increases as the broader story unfolds.
The series breaks down into an episodic structure in which monsters rise and are vanquished in the space of a short episode. Fast paced, gun totting action is tempered by the political machinations of the order of monks who hold many of the secrets not just of the Shikabane monsters, but also of the Shikabane Hima, who are far from the simplistic demon slaying heroes one might expect.
Indeed, Shikabane does an excellent job of dealing in shades of grey. Aside from our young hero Ouri, all the other characters are in some way touched by death. Some carry this as physical scarring, but others, like Ouri’s brother Keisei, leader of the local order of monks and master of the beautiful but deadly Makina, feel this in the increasingly challenging duties they must carry out in the name of the order.
The series has an extremely effective antagonist in the form of traitorous red monk Akasha (Mitsuru Miyamoto) who, whilst being drawn evilly and sinisterly spoken, is far from the cut-out villain of many anime series. Akasha’s story and motives are every bit as complex as the dilemmas facing our heroes and, like Ouri, we, as an audience, can be seduced by his motivation and even his argument, if not his means of making it.
Unsurprisingly, given the young man meets super girl scenario, there is an expected frisson between the undead warrior girls and their master upon whom the Shikabane Hima are dependent to heal their wounds after the numerous battles, which are energetically and colourfully animated to give them real impact.
Great praise must go to the animation, particularly of the variety of Shikabane monsters who are rendered both graphically and with the same imagination as might the creatures in a Guillermo del Torro film. So good are the creatures, in fact, that some suspension of disbelief must be adopted when watching them vanquished by zombified Japanese schoolgirls.
The writing in the series is far from spectacular. Each episode is grounded by rather stilted expositional dialogue heavy explanations of a plot that we might have enjoyed puzzling out on our own. There is also very evident, poorly interwoven recapping of the plot within each episode, which may have been useful for those watching episode by episode on television, but gets quite tedious for those watching on DVD.
The plot is extremely strong and gets stronger as the series progresses but it is easy to be left with the feeling that the series creators didn’t have the confidence to let it unfold without constantly explaining what is going on. This is sad because the material is unquestionably brimming with potential.
Shikabane: Corpse Princess is a beautifully crafted, strongly plotted genre piece which anime fans will instantly connect with, and it does offer its fair share of surprises. But for a lack of subtlety in its telling, this would be an addictive and entirely rewarding way to enjoy high quality anime. NB
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