Half HP productions, what were you thinking?

All right, audience, let's see if you can figure out what this show's about before I tell you.

Exhibit One.

Exhibit Two.

Exhibit Three.

So. What in the awakening hells is this thing?

If you'd like to read this out loud, to really feel the effect, you may want to take a large breath, because it's a:
Lovecraftian steampunk fantasy/sci-fi magical girl/anthropomorphic book big robot fighter mystery mystical action anime.

It's called Demonbane.
I blame the mercury in all the fish Japanese people must be eating.

You might have caught the "Lovecraftian" modifier there at the beginning. It's set in "Arkham City," the protagonist dropped out of "Miskatonic University," and the grimoire he meets is called "Al Azif." Whatever the main character's name is, he correctly identifies her as the Necronomicon.

Yes. By the way, Exhibit One was the protagonist, Exhibit Two features both him and the book, and Exhibit Three shows the "Deus Machina" (I'm not kidding, that's what they call it) the show's named after -- Demonbane.

Here's a quiz: Who's the better Herbert West?

or


If you said the second one is better, cut your wrists with some glass. I'll wait.
Just to be sure -- you said this asshat is the better choice? Go to the special hell.

Also, Herbert's specialty is robots, apparently, and not, uh, reanimating the dead. Like, you know, Herbert West did. In that short story, by the guy, Lovecraft.

Jesus.

So, you're Half HP, and you have an aborted child of a show on your hands, that didn't make it far enough in the creative crucible (that, to continue my conceit, I'll call the mother's womb) to have defining features. Oops. What do you do, HP? What do you do?



That's right. Fanservice. Unapologetic, asinine, unreasonable fanservice. For reference, the first woman is a nun, the second is a bookstore owner who does two things: show off her mammaries and refuse to sell the protagonist anything, claiming he'll get something even better later. The third is the book, who is A) underage, I think, and B) not a human, but an image projected by the book's soul, or something stupid like that. You know, they could have gone to the trouble of making her look just a little Arabic. I mean, it's anime, we're not expecting sensible crap here, just put her in a turban, it'd be fine.

Oh, right, remember I mentioned magic? Magic?. Yes, because the most powerful book in existence, with the keys to summoning Yog-Sothoth, Nyarlathotep (lurker in the dark in the hizzie!), and possibly Azathoth, the blind god at the universe's center, needs to make out with an idiot and bind herself to him so she can do something. With sparkly blue magic circles appearing in mid-air for no reason I can understand.

Did I even point this out yet? Protagonist douche gets all green-hued and mismatched eyeballed when he morphs with Al Azif -- because we sinned greatly in our past lives, and the first two decades of Guyver weren't enough to even our karma.

You know, this started out with a funny, mildy irresponsible detective flunked from the magical studies section of the local university (their program is hell to get into, but they have a nice private library and, really, the ACT isn't that hard). But suddenly cute magic-girls were flying at me, and big robots showed up, and Howard Phillips is screaming, squamously, from his much-visited grave in Providence.

Incidentally, when I looked up where he's buried, I found out some grave robbers/pranksters tried to dig him up, but couldn't find the body (don't mock me, Lovecraft and Howard used italics to add emphasis to overblown sentences all the damned time). You know why? The desecration that is Demonbane spilled out into the dimensions of the great old gods, and retroactively destroyed the body, and the coffin containing it.

Will I watch the second episode? Yes. Why? No one's willing to suit up in latex, so I have to punish myself, I guess. Maybe if I watch enough, I'll never see Guyver again.

Perchance to dream, right?