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Darker Than Black (TV).

I liked the first episode a lot.

Just one comment on what Delta said: I didn't at all get the impression that this was about vampires.

The animation looked pretty good but it lacked the style I've come to expect from BONES. I also didn't care for the character designs that much. There was something about the eyes of the male characters that bothered me. The music was also not as great as I was expecting. You see the name Kanno and you think of a memorable soundtrack but I can't really recall any of the music except the ED song which was rather average.

There's was a mix of hype coming in for Darker than BLACK, most of which was clamoring about how great and cool it would be, BONES behind animation, Yoko Kanno doing the music, and the characters (notably Hei) just seeming bad-ass... It's rather interesting to see reactions to it afterwords since it's rather slow-paced and rather subdued. It's quite a low-key kind of show. So, as a result, you have a good number of folks complaining that it's "boring" and that "it can't compare to Code Geass" (Darker than BLACK replaced the time slot for Code Geass). So, yeah, there's a lot of whining for those with no real sophisticated taste, which after watching the first episode, I expected such.

Myself? Well, I came into it not with the highest expectations despite this being a BONES title (hey, I love Kurau: Phantom Memory, RahXephon, and Wolf's Rain)... Actually, I don't really have much expectations to begin with, since I just wanted to see the direction that BONES would take us. So far they're setting up the plot, which involves a various intrigue such as the giant wall, Hell's Gate, that was erected over ten years ago, different folks who inherited powers when it went up at the cost of losing a lot of their human emotions (these people are known as contractors), and the response to those types with different agencies investigating the wall. You also have Contractors getting into trouble with the police, so that adds the conflict of different factions trying to forward their different agendas.

The characters haven't really been defined. When I said that this series appears to be low-key, I honestly meant it. Hei, our anti-hero hasn't had any real time to showcase much so far even though he involved himself with helping out a woman named Haruguchi, but even I don't expect him to do so as he is a Contractor (see lack of human emotions mentioned earlier). We also see glimpses of Yin and Mao, so nothing to comment on them, and Huang gets a few lines and is the most expressive of the group so far. On the flip side we have Misaki Kirihara who is a detective in the NPA (National Police Agency) that looks into Contractors, and we've only seen her run the usual routes so far.

Art is stylish but not particularly "overwhelming," like something that you'd find in, say, Haibane Renmei, The Big O, Texhnolyze, or Mushishi. Still, it's quite vibrant, and stands outs well. The animation definitely adds more punch to it with a lot of nice details and fluid movements. There's a lot of chase scenes so far (With no cars, that's a plus!) so it comes out to a really nice effect.

Keeping in with the "subdued" theme that I have running, the music isn't standout-ish but more than gets the job done. Not nearly as much piano as I'd hope from Kanno, but no real complaints. As I stated earlier about watching this being a pain, the opening and ending themes get rather jarring and the video pauses while the audio continues on. That's my own computer's limitations, so on one hand I can't make a fully accurate judgment, but I will say that what I was able to watch (after going over them both numerous times) is that the music complements the visuals very well. The opening is somewhat typical yet it works. I do prefer the ending theme over it (coincidentally, this is the one which I have more trouble watching), with it only focusing on Yin and a bed of flowers than surround a pool-like area. It's nicely soothing.

Darker than BLACK has a lot of potential. I do wonder a bit how long BONES will go with the episodic nature of the show, since I'm hoping that they divvy up the central plot and incidental sub-plots into the adequate amount of screen time. The first episode isn't stellar or unique, but it can easily shape up to be one of the strongest anime series this year if played out right.

Just make sure that you don't have the attention span the size of a rodent so you won't end up like the drones who say it's "boring," and you should be good to go.

One of the few really interesting shots for me in this episode was when his eyes narrowed as Miss Hostess Bar (I forgot her name) ran from him after the kiss.

I want to see more cat action, too.

They are called "Contractors" because they had to make a contract with some kind of supernatural entity. That contract always has two sides: "I'll give you powers, but you have to do <something> for me every time you use them."

Also, the lady refers to Dolls as 'mediums'. A medium is generally someone who communicates with the supernatural world, who can see it and our own. It would make sense to me that these dolls are the agents of communication between the Contractor and the being he has a contract with.

Where do you get the idea that you lose part of your emotions? I didn't see anything to suggest that.

That's the contract I'm seeing... they get powers in exchange for doing some ritualistic excercise (but its too early to say why the entities might want them to do those various things).

I was thinking the doll would be the cat-guy. Black cats are, mythologically, often familiars and stuff.