Hidan No Aria episode 01

Well here's a series I knew of before the Anime announcement, Hidan No Aria. But like Dai Maou though, it was through it's manga version, and not the novel version. That's kind of going in the weird direction right? The first adaption, and then the second adaption. But something tells me I won't dive into the original source like Dai Maou, for reasons as lame as "not enough time". This episode review will be seen from the manga reader's view, so if I suddenly spout something unknown, it probably would help to read the manga a bit.

So, episode 01 starts in a rather thrilling way... Imagine sticking a bomb under Paperboy's bike, and the gameplay is "deliver XXX newspapers before the timer expires while dodging obstacles, oncoming traffic and inbound bombing runs, if mission fails, BOOM!" For some reason I'm finding myself wanting to play a game like that XD

I want to know who started that, you know. The part where like the first 5-10 minutes of a movie has this really interesting lead-in that is supposed to keep you in your seat, lately lots of anime has been opening their first episodes in a similar fashion *cough*Strike Witches S2*cough* so not only do you get this Paperboy sequence in the beginning, a good chunk of the episode has it again, so the first episode has a little less content than it looks. After the OP comes a little slice of life that is supposed to introduce you to the protagonist, where you'll think the girl who visits him (Shirayuki) is his girlfriend, and where you'll think Kinji is a model student, but when he gets to school his bike was rigged for impact. Ah, as the Americans would say, that's a hot seat. On his bike. I think I got that wrong. But he's still biking around town like the Biker Mice and he's got a Uzi armed Segway painting his six.

I don't even know if I called it correctly, but the title girl, Aria, is probably the main character. Meh, I guess only for a shoujo series, but anyways, she spies him from atop a building. Sure, from that height it's not too hard to see a bike being chased by a unmanned Segway, but I’m impressed that she managed to time her jump that well, because I know it’s not easy calculating the various factors of speed, wind, distance, or anomalies of third parties. Heck, what if the Segway decided to fire at her chute? It'd be a short end to this series :P

She does manage to save his ass (literally), but I found it quite amusing how far they actually rolled (from the street, past the school gate, into the equipment shed. I'd say 50-80 meters lol). The scene between Kinji and Aria while stuck in the stack of jumping horse things was amusing, and nice to see animated. But then a couple more Segways show up. First thing I'm thinking of is, imagine if all these guys were chasing Kinji on the bike. No way Aria would be here right now XD. Anyways, Kinji's all excited from having a rather flat chest literally on his face, so he's gone and activated Gentleman mode, and brings out of the line of fire and saves the day. I just love how Aria is all blushing over it.

Aria's still pissed at Kinji for having a good view of her chest, and she hides back in the jumping horses to fix her skirt, with Kinji loaning her his belt. She's still in a tirade, and they duke it out when Kinji escalated her belligerence by actually comparing her to a little kid. Kinji simply walks away from Aria, who slipped and slid on bullets, while still ranting. Here's something fun though, Kinji's bag was mysteriously preserved from the bike bomb, and he continues to class with it. He encounters Aria in class, and she returns his belt leading to a rather hilarious scene between romance conditions and Aria's anti-love stance. Next thing we know Kinji is back home, and one has to wonder if he even managed class with Aria as hot-headed as she was. But she barges in and ends the episode calling him a slave. Yippee!

Aria so gangsta!

One of the things I want to do with some Anime this season, is to see what differences occurred between the Anime version, and it's manga/novel/game counterpart. In the case of Hidan no Aria episode 01, I will only compare to the manga since I don't read the novel and others have said the manga is quite a close adaption of the novel. The episode only covered the first 2 chapters of the manga, and a little of chapter 3. What I'm going to do here is list the (noticeable) differences between Anime<->Manga.

--The Anime went a little in depth into the whole Shirayuki thing at the beginning, compared to the manga, where she had just a couple of lines. This will seem odd in the next few eps.

--In the Anime version, Sayonaki's lectures covered some of the basics of what you needed to know for this story.

--The Segway chasing Kinji was cheap looking in the manga (loudspeaker tied on top of gun), whilst in the Anime it looks like the Segway was made for the Uzi mount lol.

--To avoid the hail of fire from the multiple Segways near the end of the ep, Kinji sidestepped. In the Manga, he leaned back. I would have to say the Manga version looked a little too impossible.

That's basically some of, if not all of the big differences, as you can see, it followed the story details quite closely.

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