Alternate Title: Hitsugi no Chaika, Chaika’s Coffin
Manga Adaptation by Bones
Simulcast on Crunchyroll

Premise

After a war that tore apart the content of Verbist for three generations, lazy retired soldier Toru Acura wanders the world with no place to go. When he meets Chaika, a mysterious teen sorceress carrying a large coffin, Toru and his bossy adopted sister Akari, decide to tag along when Chaika ‘hires’ them for an infiltration job.

Aqua’s Verdict: Nail In My Coffin

Oh, light novels. Back in my stupid days, I thought light novels made for better source material. After all, a novel is still a few steps higher on the scale of high art, and with the smaller number of pictures, light novels would have no point in wasting time on fanservice, no? Too bad, over the last few years, the light novel has become the dreaded laughingstock of the anime community. Often associated with overly long titles, trite male power fantasies and stilted, unnatural and overly baroque writing that rarely ever survives the shift to screenplay. Luckily, Chaika has yet to embrace the former two, yet as some sort of twisted compensation, is even more guilty of the latter. There is not a single line in this pilot episode that doesn’t sound mannered (“Even if you’re my brother, I won’t allow you to insult the Brother I so deeply respect!”) and lifted straight from the pages of a book you’d want to light your fireplace with. Characters narrate bloated exposition at each other and inform viewers of their personalities with all the natural finesse of a chainsaw. Around the halfway point, the whole thing has been so badly set up you don’t even know who’s supposed to be a good guy and who a bad guy, who’s doing what, why they’re doing it and why the heck anyone should care.

It doesn’t help that the world of Verbist is about as boring as fantasy worlds go, consisting of the same vaguely medieval villages, forests and perfectly symmetrical mansions you see in every other anime of dubitable quality. Chaika looks like the cast of Sword Art Online accidentally walking in on the set of a student film project, leading to a very distinct case of the main characters looking nothing like the world they live in. Verbist is simply a setting no viewer would ever want to learn more about, fueled by generic conflicts between evil empires and vaguely defined magic that uses sniper rifles just because they’re cool.

Whatever cool idea (exploding unicorns!) or fluid animation could be salvaged by the bunch of Bones interns who undoubtedly got the ungrateful task of animating this glorified commercial for sleeping pills, is quickly ruined by the bunch of hackneyed wax dolls this show calls a cast — from the titular princess who talks like she was raised by apes for some inexplicable reason to the main character’s vengeful, abusive sister who somehow still needs to tells him she actually loves him a lot because God forbid an anime character has a little sister who doesn’t want to blow his horn. Unless you’re as dumb as the writers think you are, feel free to bury this one. If not, don’t be shocked by the inevitable big reveal that Chaika is the heir to the evil empire that got overthrown by the war — even though the very first scene makes this about as obvious as my disdain for this disaster. You can’t fool me, Chaika.

Marlin’s Verdict: Dead on Arrival

There is just something wrong with Light Novel characterization. This is the fourth LN adaptation this season that has had a somewhat interesting setting absolutely spoiled by horrible characters. Listening to Chaika talk in her broken sentences is like nails on a chalkboard, and totally diffuses anything important she could ever have to say. The brother gets his one scene, but apparently just exists to be a weird comic relief-slash-muscle. The sister is the biggest offender, being the absolute worst kind of abusive girl archetype. Why did the shop owner yell at the brother when it’s clearly her fault for running around smashing shit up? It broke up any legitimacy brought up from the interesting if somewhat bemusing fight against a unicorn. That’s right, the main characters kill a maneating unicorn. If only it stayed like that.

Lifesong’s Verdict: Off to a Good Start

Light novels bring with them a certain expectation of exposition when they become anime, likely because the source material is usually full of it. I am always a bit surprised when they jump into things without explaining themselves and manage to make sense. Light novel culture seems to be okay with if not outright expectant of exposition. Chaika avoids giving us a major discourse on the world and instead throws us right into the action. In essence it avoids offending western sensibilities by keeping the long winded nonsense to a minimum. Perhaps this is because the original author Ichirō Sakaki is something of a light novel veteran. He has six other light novels turned anime under his belt, two of those being Outbreak Company and Scrapped Princess. My expectations are high given the reputation at stake.

The eccentricities of the cast make them fun to watch. Chika’s language barrier and odd mannerism is particularly interesting. Is she even human? She seems more like some sort of golem or even a robot. I suspect her language will improve and serve as a vehicle for developing her character. Outbreak Company worked much the same way with Myucel. I would be lying if I said Chika was even one tenth as fun to see on screen as Myucel, but I am hoping she will develop into a similarly moving character given some time. The two siblings remind me of older anime cliches. The brother who couldn’t care less about his situation and the sister who is passive aggressive about his attitude before ultimately becoming a violent machination of destruction. In the end her violence is blamed on the brother of course. This somewhat archaic cliche manages to feel both old school and surprisingly fresh in modern application. Just the fact that they don’t want to fuck one anther nearly has me leaping for joy. Yes, a lack of incest between siblings needs to be established. That is the current state of anime. I am only marginal excited for this anime. It hasn’t amused me like Outbreak Company’s first episode did, nor does it even have the same level of charm. That said, it is off to a good start and has left me hoping for the best.