Himitsu - The Revelation - Episode 1

Cross Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex with the movie Minority Report, and what do you get? Himitsu - The Revelation it seems. This anime works upon the theory that, using MRI technology, the final moments of a victims life can be extracted from their brain up to 48 hours after their death, allowing for murders to be solved by seeing the victims final moments to identify the perpetrator. If that doesn't sound like a great idea for an anime series, then I don't know what does.

This opening episode introduces us to the world of using MRI to solve murders, and indeed the rather dysfunctional team behind such investigations, via the first day of a newcomer named Aoki, a specialist in lip-reading - it seems that futuristic MRI technology doesn't extend to a decent pair of speakers. What follows is a pretty solid opener, giving us a look at the technology itself, as well as laying down the foundation for some other points that are doubtless going to be revisited again - namely, the mental pressures on the team of watching countless murders, and the effect on relatives of the deceased from having their loved ones memories trawled through by strangers... certainly some interesting moral points can be made once you think about it.

Anyhow, the animation is poor, and some of the incidental music is rather badly chosen (during a supposedly sorrowful scene with the husband of the deceased, his monologue was somehow accompanied by something akin to Samba music), but I don't want to let that detract from what could be one of the best concepts of this season. As I've mentioned, this first episode was solid and introduced the ideas behind it well enough, so there's a fair amount of potential here - Now, let's see if they can utilise it.