Uhhhh…I STRENUOUSLY disagree. With some exceptions, I don’t find the standard ’submissive/homemaker/moe’ model of female anime characters interesting or engaging at all. And Ryougi is freaking awesome.

I can believe that Nasu has a philosophy degree. There’s pretentious, genuinely deep, so deep that it seems pretentious, and so deep that it seems deep again. A lot of Nasu’s work falls into the third category. It’s mostly Shinto ideas with some Plato thrown in.

Or hang out with better friends.

But it really is in every Type-Moon’s work. Tsukihime talk about a philosophy of life and Fate/Stay Night talks about Philosophy involving ideals. If you played the visual novel of both games you will clearly see it.

Talking about Shiki, you can say that she is a tsundere, but in another sense she is not. I the later movies will show you that.

Also loli tsundere are kind of cute. Grown up tsundere are just sad since when women grow up they should know better.

Personally I, I’m not taking KnK seriously as a group of feature films, that was never the intent. I don’t even know why it’s getting the feature film treatment, it should’ve been released as an OVA series or something. Either way, since you are someone who prefers girls of the loli moe variety I can understand why type-moon wouldn’t appeal to you. When it comes to eroge/visual novels they were the ones who set the benchmark for the “dark” themed VNs where the protagonist is outclassed by women who have substantially more power than them. Before that, eroge with supernatural elements and dark themes were mostly about raping girls as some kinda monster, with paper thin plots. I think type-moon stuff appeals more to people who like tsundere archetypes and such rather than the standard issue ditzy, vulnerable moe girls.

That said, I will watch the rest and see if it all does come together in the end. But right now, this opener is pretty weak. As far as 7-part OVA/movies/whatevers go, Giant Robo had the better opening episode.

The novel is indeed harder to read. The information is even more cryptic, and the story is told in non-chronological order. For example, the epilogue is half written as prologue and lure reader to think that the one who saw a girl (Fujoh) committed suicide is Mikiya, then the scene that mikiya awakes is written before the scene Shiki kills the ghost, etc. By the way, the whole novel itself is already written in non-chronological order so it would not be surprise if the first chapter would be a bit confusing.

I feel like Rakkyo is a work for adult audience. You have to think hard watching the anime (at least it not as hard as reading the novel). Nasu, the author of the story, graduated in Philosophy so it would not be strange if story will contain a lot of metaphor and philosophy that require you to think. Just watch it when your mind is clear and ready to think about something.

As such, I think leaving a lot to puzzle over is fine — in fact, I enjoy it more (until I find out that, no, it doesn’t really make any sense at all after watching the final episode). The first episode didn’t leave me confused so much as intrigued, and ready for more clues.

I didn’t even mind the dialogue — it felt more like characters feeling their way in a situation than like Philosophy Expounded.

Well, I’m not here to preach up the show. Not everyone will love it, of course. I just wanted to say that if you stick to it, you may find you like the story after all.

I don’t really have an opinion on the whole character introduction aspect of it; as people have already stated, there’s quite a few more movies down the road that can make up for it. I’m mostly bothered by the story of the floating blind girl in this movie–there was too much pseudo-philosophical talk going on. If they had mentioned the flying/floating thing after a little more speculation and perhaps only twice, it could have been a short and poignant metaphor. Unfortunately like many series, they took one idea and stretched it thin.

That’s a lie, but I certainly would never watch something for that reason alone.