I like psychological thrillers a lot.
It’s not a subgenre that gets explored enough yet it is responsible for some of the greatest horror and mystery movies ever made like Session 9, Jacob’s Ladder, Insomnia and many many more. When anime explores this concept, we get masterpieces like Perfect Blue.
So imagine my surprise when I found Denpa Teki na Kanojo (DTK from here on out), a psychological anime series!
The plot revolves around Juu Juuzawa, a teenage delinquent whose talents involve picking fights and being effortlessly cool. One day he meets a dimunitive oddball of a girl named Ame Ochibana who claims she was his faithful knight when he was a king in their past lives. Straight out of left field, it turns out she’d like to resume her service.
Understandably creeped out, Juu rejects her company until one of his classmates is found murdered by a serial killer terrorizing the city.
The characters are pretty well written and multi-dimensional which is a feat already, considering none of the characters besides Juu and Ame are seen from episode to episode.
Juu is a fantastic example of this. When I call him a delinquent, understand that I came to the conclusion through very subtle clues. There’s Juu getting into a fight with one man in the opening, ignoring the class president’s plea for him to stop dyeing his hair as it is against school policy and him skipping out on his cleaning duties. There’s no furious principal cursing him out or people whispering about he’s the bad boy; you believe he earned his “delinquent” status organically through years of subtle things. Combine that with hints of his kindness and compassion and you get a really well rounded protagonist.
Now, I like any series that devotes a healthy portion of its dialogue to philosophy. It’s what puts shows like True Detective in a league of its own; figuring out the why behind the what adds a new layer of depth and complexity. Watching Juu and his possibly psychic crime solving partner discuss what motivates the antagonists along with mundane themes like love, sex and acceptance is really really cool.
I expected this show to be gory as it came with a high rating but most of the violence is implied, as should be in a good thriller. It’s the difference between seeing a woman getting beaten to death with a baseball bat and seeing her broken corpse hours later by surprise.
There are some minor problems of course.
One is an issue that plagues all philosophical writing; pretentiousness. Great philosophical dissection is awe inspiring but when it misses its mark it leaves you lost and kind of hating the characters. They hit way more often than they miss but when they do it feels like the tense atmosphere gets sucked out of the room.
Another is that while DTK is really good at building and maintaining tension, it’s not very good a dissipating it. Sure not all endings are created equal but when it comes to thriller/horror you have so many options.
There’s the OH NO THE BAD GUY IS STILL ALIVE!
There’s the “everything is okay, it’s okay now”.
Oh and you can’t forget “traumatized lone survivor”!
But none of those things happen. In fact, you don’t even see what happens to the villains in the episodes after they are caught. Apparently the manga does a little better job of showing this but if it does, I can’t think of why the animated series couldn’t have done the same.
DTK has one, GLARING problem which makes these other problems really difficult to fix. Are you ready for it?
It’s two episodes long.
Yes they are two, 45 minute long well crafted episodes but its still only two goddamned episodes! Two entire plot lines!
Now this is literally not the anime’s fault; the manga itself is only 3 volumes long and the two episodes cover 1 and 3. I am normally not a fan of inventing stuff on the fly when the source material runs out but my god two OVA episodes?
Here’s some of the things that never get answered. Trust me these aren’t spoilers, because the series never clearly addresses them:
- Is Ame actually his knight from a previous life? Hints are dropped that she has a special, almost psychic bond with Juu but beyond that nothing is known.
- What is the overarching plot of this series? It feels like two Scooby Doo episodes where they found out what the “monster of the week” was but never developed a larger bigger plot (which is what made Mystery Incorporated the best Scooby Doo ever).
- There are a couple supporting characters that end up influencing the plot, but it’s almost impossible to figure out who they are. Not their names (they’re up front about that) but you don’t get who they are or why they do what they do. Considering that they deliver some of the last lines in the series, you think the writers would have made them a focal point.
All in all, I give DTK the same recommendation I did for Berserk: it’s incredible and worth a watch but the ending will make you pull your hair out. The fact that you can bang it out in about an hour and a half is a strength and a weakness.
