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.

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.

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Darker than Black asked more questions than it reasonably answered so a second season is welcomed not simply for the chance to tie up loose ends. Lamentably, as so far this sequel is as obtuse as the first and omits an overview of the first season in favour of a cryptic flashback, some light romantic drama followed by some out-of-character fan service. The first three episodes present a haggard, visibly scarred Hei with ill-explored traumas inflicted in the intervening period between seasons; an incessantly annoying teenage girl with a flying squirrel sidekick and a selection of Contractors with a variety of outlandish remunerations. So far so Darker than Black.

It diverges little in both pace and atmosphere of the first series with the animosity between humans and Contractors still prevalent and mention of a shadowy organisation that seems to exist only to be enigmatic rather than any pragmatic reason. The two episode per story is dropped in favour of a more straightforward linear narrative that sees the teenage girl witness her home destroyed by a number of groups searching for (what else) a meteor fragment; through this she meets Hei and experiences a number of her friends either killed or turned into glassy eyed Contractors. Were it not for the shadow cast by the first season this could well be an intriguing genesis for a new series, there is however an all too present fear that BONES will be miring the already labyrinthine mythos and the conclusion will perhaps give a character but not a story ending.

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