Hitsugi No Chaika <br>(Chaika-The Coffin Princess)
A common complaint people have against a series with 12 episodes is that the show is too fast paced. "Chaika-The Coffin Princes" stands as a polar opposite. It starts slow, it builds slow, and it requires a bit of patience. But the pay-off is worth it. Based on Touko Machida's Light Novels, the show does a pretty good job of bringing the story to life. Well, eventually.
Five years ago, the reign of the tyrannical Wizard Emperor Artur Graz was brought to an end by the conquests of the Eight Noble Heroes. Afterwards, the continent was peacefully divided into six allied nations. The peace proves to be a problem for Toru Acura and his sister, Akari. Mercenaries by trade, the two feel useless in the new era. They stumble onto a mysterious young wizard named Chaika who asks them to work for her. With nothing better to do and somewhat intrigued by the mysterious Chaika, the siblings sign up. Chaika's main mission is to collect the body parts of the late Emperor, which were taken as war trophies by the Noble Heroes. We only learn later that these body parts still hold large quantities of Emperor Graz's magic and can work as brilliant sources of magic fuel. But that's not all; it's later revealed that this Chaika is actually Chaika Graz, the missing princess, who now wishes to gather her father's body parts for a proper funeral. The government is trying to catch Chaika, fearing that Graz loyalists might strike up a rebellion under her banner. But the situation gets more confusing when several other Chaikas, all identical and with the same voice but different personalities, start to spring up across the continent.
The other Chaikas are all looking for the Emperor's remains too but their main goals are more dangerous than the Chaika we know that of. In fact, our Chaika is so lovable, you learn to overlook the fact that she's playing with fire and is, well, stealing from the continent's saviours. The character development makes full use of the show's slow pace and details how Toru goes from a directionless vagabond to someone with a purpose. Although he started to work because he had nothing else going on, Chaika becomes more than just an employer over the course of the show. Is that clichéd? Probably. But the back-story surrounding Chaika makes the whole thing feel original.
It's pretty clear that the plot has a lot of potential and the show does make the most of it. Only problem, though, is that the show takes a bit too much comfort in the fact that a second season is scheduled. So they don't rush it. They don't even mildly rush it. Heck there is a whole episode revolving around Toru and Chaika bonding while shopping for supplies. Thankfully, though, the series opens up a great deal by the seventh episode and goes out on a high over the final few episodes.
A second season is set to premier in either winter of this year or spring 2015. Like "Naruto" did for "Naruto: Shippuden", "Hitsugi No Chaika" gives you the impression that it is building up for something grander. And that's true, by the time the credits roll on the 12th episode, you begin to realise just how intricate a plot has just started to unravel. You'll need to be patient if you want to enjoy this. Just don't expect much from the first few episodes.
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