Genjo did a nice job with the subs - They look pretty nice, especially the OP ones. And the OP is a wonderfully quirky little jazz piece that seems to have its lyrics based around the general theme of the series.

Medium-sized wall of text ahead, nothing that should take long for the average reader.

As for the show itself, for a first episode it looks like they decided to go for the show-and-show-and-then-some-tell gig - The main character, Torou, appears to have a condition (Narcolepsy - sp?) where he lapses into dreamland at seemingly random moments, and they all mostly involve a dream from his past where he was kidnapped with his sister. However, the odd and kooky parts are when he starts floating around familiar places, namely an out-of-body experience, or so I’ve heard, “O.B.E.” for short. For the most part, it seems to be a sort of everyday-type thing to showcase the main character (Or rather to show how boring his days are.) We are also given brief introductions with the two other mains seen in the OP - Nakajima and Ogami. The former is a noisy student who seems to have some interest in the other two characters, as well as some knowledge behind their backgrounds. The latter hardly comes to school, but from the conversation between these two, it would appear that he harbours some sort of grudge with Torou due to the kidnapping incident. Lastly, there appears to be a girl that can see ghosts - She appears to have seen Torou during one of his OBE sessions, when he was floating high above in the sky.

Thoughts -

While I’m not so hot about the character designs, the three mains are well enough that it doesn’t bother me. I rather liked Ogami and Nakajima’s designs. Although, in terms of simple but fluid animation character designs, I think Dennou Coil still has the upper hand here. In Ghost Hound, they really appear to be pushing the minimalist aspect unless it comes to close-ups - In several scenes the characters are completely devoid of shading. Animation from this lack of detail, as expected however, is above average. There are several notable scenes with lots of people at once, with multiple movements being carried out - Something of a rarity in anime.

At least there was some dialogue though - Texhnolyze’s Pilot Episode being completely devoid of dialogue, while effective to showcase the visuals of the series, put a lot of people off from catching it in its entirety. Another interesting aspect is the emphasis on sounds - Rarely is it done to this level. There’s an entire cacaphony of sounds to be observed, the small little things like water splashing around in a bottle - Or the atmospheric sounds during one of the dream sequences.

While an excellent conceptual episode, it wasn’t very outstanding for a pilot, but I guess it’s the episode to try and give the viewer a general idea of the layout behind the anime. Seeing how this is an anniversary production for IG Studios, I really hope they’ll up the ante in the coming episodes. I’m going to watch this all the way regardless though.

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