Experimental Post – Chaos;HEAd Episode 1 Overview

Author: nova

Just recently I decided to experiment a bit on blogging and so for purely scientific purposes I made it my goal to episodically blog one series of this season. And I chose Chaos;HEAd for this purpose, reason mainly being that it seems like a series I can easily wrote stuff about. It’s my first time, so please be gentle bear with me.

The episode, and so the series, starts off with a scene in a ruined city, with the main character lying on his back on a pile of rubble. A pink-haired girl appears and creates a huge…uh…something very sharp-looking out of thin air (hay is dat sum mahou shoujo guise?). From what I could tell, this is probably very close to the end of the storyline, so we’re getting started in a textbook have a look at the end before beginning-style. Which is all okay and dandy I guess, but I couldn’t help the feeling that overall it was a pretty clichéd scene. So okay, we got a dude who has some monologue babble about stuff reflecting from eyes, a girl who has a big, nasty bladed weapon that appears with bright pink light and a puff of pink feathers and says “I’m sorry” before preparing to apparently impale the guy after they’ve kissed. So far I didn’t feel very impressed. But thankfully that was just the first few minutes.

The OP sequence wasn’t much to write home about either. The song is a basic rock ramble that I’ll hardly remember by the end of the episode and visuals just about as bland. I can notice the good quality of animation, sure, but by looks of the OP we got some kind of mix between harem and magical girl going on here.

But just as conventional-looking the stuff has been so far, the first scene after OP sure turns the table around. What we see is a guy living in a cargo container placed on top of a tall building (hell, I gotta get one of those for myself) with not much anything inside but a computer, a whole bunch of otaku goods, lots of boxes and trash all around. And of course, the dude is sleeping on the sofa instead of the bed which is quite possibly loaded with random stuff (ah yeah, I know this stuff). BUT WAT. He’s woken up by a hot girl in weird clothes, in a way that would make any man green of envy and RAEG. Of course anyone can tell that she’s not real – either this guy got some state of the art holo-projectors or his imagination powers are on the level far beyond just nine thousand. I actually learned something from this scene – minimal attendance chart for graduation? Hell, that’s genious! This is where the first “sono me…dare no me?” (Those eyes, whose eyes are they?)-scene takes place, giving us a tiny hint of something supernatural going on.

The following scene is in the school, where Takumi acts just about as awkwardly as we can expect. I remember the same stuff happening to me back in my high school days – as sudden, brief silence when I happen to walk in – and the irking feeling it caused. Being a sworn 2D-con, my man Takumi of course responds by mocking those damn 3D wimminz in his thoughts. But what would be an awkward nerd at school without a popular, jock-ish friend Suzaku Misumi who seems to understand what kind of guy Takumi is but still keeps babbling about his girl-adventures and other happenings he obviously couldn’t care less about (some murder chain case downtown? Who gives, that’s just real world…).

Takumi couldn’t care less about the 3D world stuff like school, so we skip right to the evening back at his container lair, where our man is engaging in basic nerd passtime – playing MMORPGs (damn that Seira chick, wish I got one while playing online). At this point I have to point out how great job Takumi’s voice actor Yoshino Hiroyuki is doing at playing a deluded nerd who has a grudge against the real world. After a nice raid on whatever game he was playing, Takumi gets a link during an IM session to a news article about some bizarre chain of deaths happening nearby. Of course, before he has any time to consider it, his loud little sister Nanami decided to stop by for a visit. Damn those containers, they really aren’t nice when someone’s banging on the door, that’s something the R&D should take a look at. Also, only a true nerd’s sister would greet her brother with words “Survival confirmed“…

…and instantly proceed to clean his room while scolding him for being too lazy to not do it himself. For those of us who have a little sister, I’m sure this scene is familiar enough to not need any description. But damn Takumi, you fantazise of your own sister having a sip from your Coke bottle? Shit, living in a container is alright, not being interested in 3D is still understandable, but…oh, and I think this loud sound I hear is all the siscon bastards hooraying. A good illustration of Takumi’s social awkwardness is his great difficulty to speak clearly even to his own sister. And man, he doesn’t have a cellphone! Then again, what would one need a phone for when you have internets…a true nerd’s logic. Maybe I should consider that myself.

After gathering some spine and pretty much showing his sister the door, Takumi gets another feeling-of-doom-scene followed by a creepy IM session with someone calling himself “Shogun“, who tells him that more deaths are going to happen in Shibuya. Suspecting a virus-spammer Takumi decides not to click on any of his links (wise strategy…at least if Xak is the one posting) – however, not very surprisingly he ends up accidentally opening one, revealing a picture of a gruesome murder scene too nasty even for 4chan.

Then Chaos;HEAd decides to make a 180-turnaround and we get a bit of moeservice in a scene at a tennis field where Nanami encounters possibly the only person in the world who can only throw a ball either backwards or on her own head. Meanwhile Takumi, spooked by Shogun’s freaky-ass shit, decides to go pwning some noobs at a local internet cafe (PK, you badass you). On the way back home we notice that 1) It’s dark 2) Nobody’s around 3) The place is Shibuya 4) Some weird metallic clashes are coming from somewhere. With his sense of self-preservation being on a vacation, Takumi stumbles across the rather disturbing murder scene – exactly like the one he saw in the pic linked by Shogun and we all saw in the promo-art before season began. You know, the pink haired girl with blood all over her. And apparently she knows Takumi’s name…OHSHI-

Denial being one of the strongest antibodies a human mind can deploy against stress, back home at the container Takumi tries to convince himself that what he saw was merely an illusion – despite having one of the cross-stakes from the murder scene with him. Nasty stuff indeed, but Seira-tan is there to help poor old Takumi (damn man, the jealosy) to be positive. On the following day however Takumi is plagued by delusions and what seems to be rather extreme case of gynophobia. Running away in terror he manages to hurt himself and out of the blue a dojikko/onee-san-type girl not just offers help to him get back home, but tells him that she’s been interested in him ever since they saw each other. Wait, didn’t that happen in the traffic lights like two minutes ago?

Despite his gut-feeling trying to save his ass, Takumi is unable to resist the urge to bring the girl into his container and it comes apparent that she shares much of the same interests as him. In a short cutscene of Nanami having a conversation about Takumi being a sorry-ass eternal single one of her friends point out a specific type of girl who would very likely end up with him…little does Nanami or her friends know that it’s already happening! Or would it?

Now think carefully. You stand in traffic lights, there’s a girl standing on the other side. You get a terrifying vision in which she dashes at you armed with cross-shapes stakes with a blood-thirsty expression. You ran away like hell, on some side alley hit a parked scooter and hurt your leg. The same girl appears, tells you how she’s been interested in you, helps you home, enters your trashy container apartment filled to the brim with stuff screaming OTAKU-STAY-AWAY and instead of running like hell like any sensible female, she’s all like “Oh so cool!” and being oh-so deredere for you. And if that wasn’t enough, she asks you out to go to an anime shop with her. So I come to the conclusion that either the chick is after the money or she’s just a plain lunatic. I do find her reaction to finding one of the metal stakes at Takumi’s place notable as well. TL;DR: ITS A TRAP TAKUMI! RUN FOR YOUR FUCKING LIFE! Oh well, for now the insane chick decides not to do anything nasty to the poor nerd. However, on the next day at school…OHFU-

I’m sure Takumi could challenge the infamous Satou Tatsuhiro from NHK in delusions, although he isn’t quite as far down the hikki-alley yet as Satou is. What I find the most interesting about Chaos;HEAd is definitely the male lead and I’m sure Takumi’s antics will be interesting to follow in the future. He’s a loser, nerd and a flawed person, but he isn’t the type that you’d hate by instinct (that prize goes to Kouichi from Failbarrels). I apologize for this massive TL;DR of a post, I’m totally new to this type of blogging and I’m still trying to find the style that suits me best. Congrats to anyone who made it this far -.-