Mayoiga / The Lost Village Episode 1 – The Okada Hammer

First Impressions:

Theme / Story:

Let’s cut down to the chase. This show feels as if Mari Okada watched Mirai Nikki, several times, and felt as if she wanted to try her hand at it too. This means we’re going to have an interesting competition this season, between Okada’s take on Mirai Nikki, and Big Order, the other work based off of Mirai Nikki’s creator’s work. In terms of Okada shows, I’m most reminded of M3 and WIXOSS. I hear references to director Mizushima’s Another, but as I haven’t watched that yet, I can’t really comment on it.

The show makes use of Okada’s variation on Chekhov’s Gun, which is more akin to a hammer, where we have symbolic language and motifs brought up, and spelled out, and which will get constantly hammered on in the show from now on. “I hope we won’t cannibalize one another” is the big one. The symbolism in the dream sequence ranged from more subtle (not being the child his mother wished for, or the ants walking in a line) to the extremely explicit (being someone who’s bottling everything inside and is likely to blow up if he continues).

(Full episodic notes at the bottom of this post.)