Tuesday, September 14, 2010

1 - (DUB) - Magical Detective Debut

Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok is quite a mouthful. But a title like that does get the premise out in the open pretty quick. Strange kid is actually Loki banished for some reason to Japan. Oddly this isn't the first anime that borrows from norse myths. There was the ancient and venerable movie "The Little Norse Prince," and later and even more oddly the magical girlfriend as doormat series "Ah My Goddess." Still its strange to have Loki both as hero and in Japan. I don't dislike Loki, if I had to pick a trickster God I'd pick him, the trouble is of course that Loki is a trickster God and the Norse one of that. Not to put the Norse down, but their idea of humor tended to run toward a hot foot with burning coals.

An aside: an authentic story from the time goes like this: A band of warriors are waiting outside a hall debating on how to attack or not. One warrior scoffs doubting that Snorri, their intended victim, is even home. So another warrior says he'll check it out. He sneaks out into the night to see what there is to see. Time Passes. Suddenly the warriors see a shadowy figure. "Hold!" they say. "It is I," says the shadowy figure, "I have good news and bad news." The Warriors ask what the bad news is, "Snorri is indeed there and very angry." What's the good news? "He should be easy to defeat," says their friend. "How do you know that," ask the warriors. "Because I have his SPEAR!" and the warrior falls over dead.

Norse humor, go figure.

Anyway, this anime is standard cute which I find a little hard to take with this is supposedly Loki, and Odin is supposedly sending assassins to kill him. Cute just does not really compute here.

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