The Severing Crime Edge is quickly becoming my favourite show of the season. After last week's impression I was still skeptical about how the show was going to mix the darker atmosphere with the various light hearted scenes. While Dansai Bunri has proven itself worthy of a dark toned thriller, the show isn't too serious to cast away the lighter scenes. I know most thrillers do indeed have light hearted scenes, but they are mostly done so on the side as small breaks between the plot and serious events.
Dansai Bunri decides to include the lighter scenes within the serious tones and plot devices. The "Professor", is introduced as Iwai's guardian, and shows a great example of how the show mixes the darker and lighter scenes together into a well woven presentation. Professor explains how he is part of the "organization" known as "Gossip" as mentioned in the first episode, and it seems they get a kick out of seeing useless things like murder cases.
The whole ideal is that the show is completely based around psychopaths, not only will the owners of the Killing Goods eventually succumb to their tool's desires of murder, but that these members of Gossip are also psychologically messed up for wanting to see murders. I really love how this show presents all these psychopathic elements, the whole intention of murder isn't shoved down our throats or explicitly shown, instead we see how lightly everyone seems to act while acknowledging their potential to become murderers. Even Professor's brief explanation about the game revolving murder and the Queen of Hair is lightly described as if something completely normal The whole casual behavior towards serious events expresses how potentially messed up everyone is. I enjoy all these characters because I don't trust any of them, leaving plenty of room for each character to possibly fall victim to sudden murderous intentions without realizing it themselves.
Overall the show has plenty of bloody moments and various thriller-esq chills with a story that is slowly being developed around our main characters. The genres that we found for this show included action, fantasy, and romance; however I couldn't disagree more. The show reminds me of Another, and Mirai Nikki, which are two amazing shows for its thriller and bloody atmospheres that sends chills down your spine. While Dansai Bunri doesn't give me chills like Another or Mirai Nikki, the show at least makes some wonderful dark atmospheres with an acceptable amount of blood with a nice but odd contrast of small romance and light hearted scenes.
A few things I do enjoy are the sound effects when it comes to the more intense scenes, especially when Kiri gets into a fight with Yamane, hearing the attacks of Yamane's needle barely missing Kiri was pretty amazing. I also really love the art style, the facial expressions are very nice and do well to portray the emotions of each character as well as their unique psychopathic demeanor.
~Djr7
