During its run thus far, Himitsu - The Revelation has managed to hit the mark, then miss it wildly, then hit the spot once again. Unfortunately, while episode seven has some interesting concepts to drive it, it doesn't really bring them to fruition, making for a rather frustrating affair.This particular episode deals with the death of an airline president in a fire - While it looks initially as though the president's death was caused by his own carelessness after leaving a lit cigar at his bedside, it soon becomes clear that there are darker factors at work. Enter Section 9 and their MRI technology, which fails to give any clear indication of the murderer but does reveal a previously unknown will written by the deceased, as well as the fact that this rather anti-social businessman doesn't have an eye for faces.As I just mentioned, there are some interesting ideas on show here. For starters, the concept of a man who can't see faces and expressions is an intriguing one (and something which does actually have a medical basis, which this episode missed out on, instead blaming it on the deceased's anti-social tendencies, which seemed a bit daft to me), although it was rather spoiled by the overly saccharine ending. Then, if points of law are more of your thing, the question was raised as to whether a will seen via the MRI technology seen in the show should be accepted as a legal document? There's an interesting one for the lawyers out there to squabble over.Despite these concepts which tickled the more cerebral side of me, the episode ultimately failing to turn those points into a winning formula. Aside from the fact that I really want to bludgeon the composer of the incidental music repeatedly with his own Casio keyboard, there were a couple of major flaws that really spoiled things. Firstly, the Section 9 employees seem at times to be... how can I put this politely.... completely stupid. When Maki reveals that the dead man had been found with his face slashed, Aoki's first response is basically "Do you think he was murdered then?". No Aoki, in the inferno caused by his cigar the pointed crystals from a chandelier dropped onto his head and cut his face... Of course he was murdered you moron!! There are a few other more minor examples of this kind of daftness, but that was the one that screamed out the most to have fun poked at it.Worst of all however is one scene which pretty much tops Allison to Lillia in the nonsensical plot development stakes. We see Maki following the girl who is named in the dead man's will by car, he jumps out of the car to follow her after getting stuck in traffic, then suddenly he is the girl in drag so that he can tackle a knife-wielding assailant. What? What?! At least try to make some sense guys, please, it isn't that difficult to write a coherent script that explains away plot points like this.So, once again Himitsu - The Revelation gets points for effort here as far as creating an interesting scenario to speculate goes, but between poor animation, characterisation and scripting, any intrigue that arises from said scenario is lost completely.
(Read the rest of this entry)
(Entry meta)
