Sekirei - Episode 1

The Summer anime season has only just started, yet it appears that we already have ourselves a prime contender for 'fan service series of the season'. Minato Sahashi is your typical male anime protagonist for this kind of thing, a guy who has failed to get into University twice and appears to have no prospects in life or love... That is, until some mysterious girl literally falls into his lap. A cute, big breasted mysterious girl. Who has no qualms about undressing in front of him. Or kissing him out of the blue. Or sprouting wings from said orgasmic kiss. See what I mean about the fan service?


Anyway, the girl in question is called Musabi, and she's a Sekirei - A girl who appears to be little more than a plaything for the director of a hugely powerful company, who seems intent on creating some kind of game where said Sekirei fight one another. Who are these Sekirei, and why is he doing this? Well, that's one for a future episode...

While the first half of this opening episode is really rather disjointed at times (making it a little more tricky to follow), I suppose it does a reasonable job of laying out the baseline for the plot, although the whole thing seems a little rushed overall. You certainly can't accuse the plot of being revolutionary either, gluing together plenty of well-worn elements in a suitably predictable fashion - We certainly won't be seeing any new ground broken here. Still, there are some decent character designs and an almost ridiculous wealth of big voice actors on show, which does give this effort something of a high quality feel. Personally, I was particularly intrigued by the opening scene which (girl with sword aside) felt like it had been ripped straight out of Half-Life, from the klaxon sounding to the design of the corridor and security guards.

Anyway, all of that aside, this was a pretty average opener to what promises to be a pretty average series. Still, it could be entertaining enough, so we'll have to see what it can muster up (although the preview suggests that the word 'harem' may well appear in my episode two deconstruction).