Ep. 01: Kamitsubaki City Under Construction

The other day, in a video about shows I said I was interested in covering, I made the statement that nothing on Thursdays had grabbed my interest. I can now see that I was very, very wrong. Somehow, Kamitsubaki City Under Construction slipped my notice. Maybe because the cover art is a bit busy and I couldn’t make out what was on it? Either way, I’m late but I’ll fix this mistake here and now.

After experiencing an event known as The Blackout, which cost the lives of many of its citizens, Kamitsubaki City has worked hard to restore itself to a livable state so that it’s citizens can continue to live their lives. Unfortunately, their attempts at utilizing a new energy source called Fragments to replace things like hydro, coal, or solar that we use today has come with some pretty dire consequences.

Fragments are somehow harvested from the emotions of the city’s people and converted into a means that is keeping everything going. Yet as we all know, emotions are not all positive. And from the way the story is being told, not all energy harvested is equal. The negative energy of the people–and I’m sure there’s a lot of it, given all they’ve been through–creates creatures called Tesseractors. Those then go on to create even more death and carnage.

But that’s only half of the problem with these beings. Tesseractors are monsters that were once human. And the only thing that seems capable of stopping them is the song of beings known as Witchlings.

That’s where our main girl, Tafu, comes into the picture. After tragically losing her parents in the Blackout, she has been managing to get by while living with a sort of big sister figure named Erry. Tafu has spent much of this time unwilling or unable to speak. She does sing, though, and unknowingly that has likely been doing some good for those around her. I found Erry’s reaction to Kafu finally speaking rather touching. A sign of the tragedies of this place healing, even as more are waiting in the wings.

One day, while going through a tunnel, Kafu is approached by a boy named Laplace. He explains that her singing has great power and that it can be used to defeat people who have become Tesseractors. There’s something strange about him. He mentions, though I’m not sure how much she was listening at this point, that the madness he is trying to help her stop is the reason he exists. Whether he means he exists because of it, or that his meaning of existence is to stop it, I’m not sure. But that definitely makes him intriguing.

The major conflict of the show comes in the form of the building Erry was going to for a meeting being attacked. Kafu goes there to find out what has happened to Erry and ends up fighting the Tesseractor that has attacked her. I’ll tell ya, here and now, this is another scene where the show does not hold back on the violence and carnage of the imagery.

We see Erry get sliced up like a stack of deli meat. Definitely not the ‘enemy turns into mist and leaves a card’ or ‘energy surrounds people and they collapse’ type conflicts that a show like this would have had in my childhood. But given that this has a 16+ rating, I can understand and appreciate the more grim representation of a conflict like this. It did catch me off guard, though.

The far more interesting thing, in my opinion, is that although people are turned into monsters they do seem to battle with their sentience. In the confrontation we see in this episode, Kafu shows up too late to save Erry. But when she and Laplace are confronting the Tesseractor who killed her, Kafu hears the voice of the human this creature once was, who laments that she killed “Miss Ericka”.

I’m assuming Erry was her nickname. The fact that these creatures were once humans, and that this transformation into monsters is somehow tied to emotions, makes me wonder if we’re going to get a glimpse into who they are and why this happened going forward. Something akin to how Tanjiro slays demons but empathizes with the fact that they were humans who experienced tragedy in their own lives, maybe? We’ll have to wait and see.

As I said in the beginning, this show took me by surprise. And now, having watched the first episode, it has me very intrigued. Who is Laplace exactly? How and when will we meet the other Witchlings who will be helping Kafu protect Kamitsubaki City? Is anyone besides Laplace aware of what is going on? Do they are, or are they trying to cover it up? How is Kafu going to keep moving forward now that she’s lost Erry, just ss she lost her parents all those years ago. I’m impressed and I have many, many questions. C’mon, next Thursday. You can be sure I won’t be late next time.