Comet Lucifer

Episode 4

As someone who enjoyed plenty of snow days growing up, I've got a bone to pick with whoever runs the school system in Garden Indigo. When once-in-a-decade bad weather is on the horizon, what kind of moron waits until halfway through the morning commute to cancel classes? I don't care if Comet Lucifer needed a convenient excuse to get everyone out of the house before the bad guys showed up to nab Felia, that's just sloppy administration. I look forward to next week's episode, which I assume will involve angry parents yelling at a beleaguered principal. Forget all the chase scenes and giant robots, I demand a three-week storyline full of subcommittees and school board meetings! Who's with me? Anyone?

Just as things start to calm back down in Garden Indigo, news arrives that a typhoon is headed for the town. As the only person old enough to remember the last storm of any real consequence, Do Mon promptly freaks out and puts everyone to work weatherproofing the house. Felia helps gather dinner ingredients from the vegetable garden, assuming you consider using telekinetic powers to make the plants dance helpful. During an evening barbecue to celebrate the newly repaired house, Roman pressures Kaon to go along with their engagement. Arranged marriages turn out to be the least of the group's problems when Gus takes advantage of the chaos brought on by the storm to kidnap Felia.

Unlike last week's self-contained plot, this episode doesn't seem quite as, well, episodic. It feels like the wheels that drive the story are starting to turn, and some of this week's events will likely have consequences that extend beyond the end credits. Comet Lucifer appears to be setting up a confrontation between Gus and Sogo, which will hopefully bring us up to speed on what exactly makes Felia worth kidnapping in the first place. The shadowy government folks are also starting to put some kind of plan into motion, although I doubt we'll see them do anything besides deliver ominous monologues any time soon. Still, even a little narrative progress is a good thing.

In another positive development, Do Mon seems to be on the verge of adding depth to his kindly innkeeper personality. He loses his levelheaded composure on a couple of occasions in this episode, which makes him a bit more charming and a bit less of a vending machine for life advice. More importantly, we get a brief glimpse of an old photo of him in a uniform that resembles the one Gus wears, suggesting a potential connection between the two of them. On the comedic side of things, even I will grudgingly admit that the dancing vegetable scene is amusing. The visuals go far enough over the top to be humorous, and it's the best use for Felia's powers that the show has been able to come up with thus far.

This episode is a little light on action scenes, which is more of a problem than it would be if the series had better writing. With nothing to grab our attention, it's easier to notice just how little Comet Lucifer has done to distinguish itself from similar shows. From the cheesy arranged marriage storyline to Sogo's burning desire to prove his mother's theory about the crystals, this series continues to feel utterly generic. Most coming-of-age adventures borrow ideas and characters from existing works, but I still can't point to anything that makes Comet Lucifer special. That sense of “been there, done that” isn't a fatal flaw at the moment, but it threatens to pull the rug out from under its future emotional high points, keeping them too predictable to fully enjoy.

I'm increasingly convinced that Comet Lucifer is aiming for a younger audience than I originally thought. This series is extremely light on objectionable content, and it doesn't seem to be in a hurry to make the audience think particularly hard. Looking at it as a “My First Anime” kind of show, it's not all that bad. However, it'll have to step things up soon if it has any ambitions of being something more. With Sogo presumably on course to charge in and confront Gus, the next couple of episodes should give us a pretty good idea of what to expect from the remainder of the season.

Rating: B-

Comet Lucifer is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Paul Jensen is a freelance writer and editor. You can follow more of his anime-related ramblings on Twitter.