Zetsuen no Tempest, hmmm… Let’s see Action, Seinen, Mystery, Drama, Psychological, Fantasy, Supernatural, Thriller; Hanazawa Kana set to voice a posthumous ojousama character; great classical-arranged orchestral background music. From the small overview I wrote, I’m already drooling and obviously excited for the future episodes to be further discussed through the episode entries in this project! I simply can’t completely describe how I am enthusiastic about this series!

Similar to the visual aura of earlier BONES-produced seinen series, Zetsuen no Tempest has the smooth dark, apocalyptic visuals paired with the fairly-detailed animation the studio is known for. The character designs have great level of detailing, sharpening, and polishing. Queues used in the designs has the studio’s signature on the tiniest of details. Setting art; including backgrounds, and similar objects are also very good. It’s a little bad that vehicle arts’ detailing aren’t impressive. This series’ aura is perfectly exhibited with the level of lighting used in the animation. Different scenes have different colour tones and moods, and the animation adjusts to what the scene portrays. Even though this series’ visual quality obviously differ from the infamous Guilty Crown, admittedly, there are queues where some character design queues and scene-specific colour tones are similar to the scenes in the infamous anime. Thankfully, the execution and other technicalities of this series’ visuals are still a lightyear ahead of the crackpot’s.

Another sterling in this series is how schizophrenic the audio presentation is. Leading the immersive experience is the spine-reaching mood-setting voice acting present. They totally give clues and ideas on the characters’ personalities, their pains, their frustrations, and their darker sides. Voice acting further boosts the aura emitted by the visuals and apocalyptic story premise. All hats off to the entire cast who works on this series, and to the director for helping make each voice stand-out. The greatest thing about Zetsuen no Tempest‘s sounds, perhaps, are the classical-arranged orchestral scores used for the background music. Not only they paint the mysterious apocalyptic premise further, but they also set a new standard for arrangements and compositions. It’s my first time listening to something that surpasses the astounding audio mastering in the Code Geass soundtracks. The opening theme song is performed by the Japanese Alternative Rock band, Nothing’s Carved in Stone, and it has perfect English lyrics and vocals. It’s so good that you would mistake the song for something American. Beat is catchy enough for it to play a handful of times in your head. Next episodes would have an ending theme song performed by Hanazawa Kana.

Those who have prejudice against Mari Okada and her works may leave and quit reading this article now. She does the series composition; yet I don’t see any of her queues in the first episode, at least yet. Like what’s suggested in the title, first lines, and in the main characters’ personalities; this series has a lot of intertextual references to Shakespearean works. This series kicks-off with a seemingly-innocent start with the main protagonists’ lighthearted daily life featured, only to later unfold a mystery and depth in the story and two main characters. Through flashbacks and the Shakespearean references, we can say that this series might end as a tragedy — something that the Psychological themes can mix well with. Supernatural and Fantasy themes, of course, exist too. The lines for the first episode suggest a lot about the depth of the mystery, and more about the hidden desires of the characters. The first episode totally convinced me to pick it up for watching and blogging, and I hope that this would be consistently great and powerful up to the end.

As much as I want to recommend this to everyone, there’s a significant amount of content here that would not appeal to this generation’s typical anime fan. If you like the sound of the series based on this article, watch this.

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