Senkou no Night Raid is ambitions in many respects: it features a selection of spoken languages including Chinese, Russian and heavily accented Japanese and it takes place in a time when Japan's misguided "Co-Prosperity Sphere" idealism was still prevalent. That the series comes from A1 Pictures, responsible for Kannagi and Sora no Woto, and like the latter series is aired within the "Anime no chikara" (The Power of Anime) slot; its pedigree not in question. The first three episodes then demonstrate a series confident in story but shy with characters - a tale of espionage and artifice told using adolescents with super powers. With an estimated thirteen episodes and only the vaguest hints at an overarching plot, like Higashi no Eden before it, the short run could be the worst thing to happen to such a promising series.
straddles the line between demanding political manoeuvring and pulpy action thriller
Set in Shanghai in 1931, a group of four young adults are trying to retrieve a kidnapped company president; their rescue attempt is beset with problems though from an exploding car to a chase by boat turning out to be for a decoy only. After meeting with their handler, they mount another attempt to extricate the hostage, this time from one of the enemy's heavily manned forts. This does not pan out much more successfully than before and is only the first in a series of missions for the group, each of whom is gifted with a special, near magical feat which enables them to perform tasks impossible for others. Investigations into violinists passing information to the enemy as well as a serial bomber exhibiting similarly fantastical powers will test their burgeoning abilities, however their nemesis could well be far stronger than they yet know and is the sibling of one of their members.
When one's premise is a magical fuel present only in breast milk and requires young children to extract this via the most obvious method available, having an censored version available on all but the most liberal of television channels seems counter-productive. The uncensored version fills in a lot of the gaps that the other egregiously includes, obtuse close ups of faces and innocuous body parts only go so far before hard static cuts are made to conceal raunchy or revealing motions; unfamiliarity with the concept of Seikon no Qwaser would cause significant difficultly in understanding what the alternating moans of pleasure and pain were in reference to. The volume and abject lewdness of these scenes is quite staggering and it is no understatement to call the opening episodes of the series a panoply of pornography that don't attempt to mask their intentions.
a disgusting and reprehensible attitude that is only bolstered by the violence and borderline sadism
At St. Mikhailov Academy, someone is murdering local girls; the incidents began shortly after the dean of school disappeared, leaving only a cryptic note to his biological daughter Tomo and adoptive daughter Mafuyu. Tomo is a sickly girl who is often absent from school which, now with her father missing, causes both her and her self-styled protector Mafuyu to be bullied by some of her classmates. After a chance meeting with a silver-haired Russian boy, Mafuyu is attacked by a masked psychopath and is drawn into the world of the Qwaser - alchemists with an affinity for certain elements and the need for soma, found only in selected girl's breast milk. The young boy, Alexander, is the Qwaser of iron and after joining the school and moving into the local dormitory, he vows to protect Tomo against all aggressors.
