On the suggestion of a friend, I decided to take a look at a relatively new anime called Yumekui Merry. The only thing I had heard in regards to it was on its animation, and after watching the first episode, I definitely liked the animation for it. The concept seems pretty interesting and worth pursuing. The theme song is definitely to my liking as well ^_^ .
Here’s a bit of a walk through the first episode:
The episode opens with one of the main characters, later to revealed as a girl named Merry Nightmare, in a dark, bleak-looking world having just woken up to the sound of crows. She gets up and starts walking and there’s a focus in on this large clock … not sure if it has any significance yet.
After the theme song (which is pretty awesome), the story then cuts to a boy in a strange world who is being chased by a horde of cats… and there’s a large fish skeleton there. Not sure why. Cats like fish? These cats (who walk on two legs instead of four for some reason) end up catching up with the boy, but end up leaving him, since they are out of time and tell him that he is to face their master one-on-one. The sequence is then revealed to be a dream.
It turns out that this boy (named Yumeji) is able to predict dreams making circles with his index finger and thumb, and using said circles as “glasses” to see coloured dots on a person. The percentage of red, green and yellow dots that appear determine the contents of a dream to happen that night. He also seems to be an aspiring author.
Inevitably, these two character meet in an animesque style: Yumeji is walking around in the morning and she lands on him while jumping out of a tree. After a bit of confusion, Merry leaves him to look for her hat, which Yumeji picks up.
Later in the day, Yumeji finds a cat underneath the hat, and a moment of deja vu leads him to meet the cats’ master, who wants to get out of the dream world and into the real world by using Yumeji’s body. But just in the nick of time, Merry shows up, demanding the cats’ master to take her back to the dream world. And so an epic battle begins and ends with Merry victorious, but still unable to get back.
I believe that the series does have some potential. I am liking the majority of the characters so far: Merry is headstrong, but she does have a bit of a “human” side to her (although I’m not sure what exactly she is). Yumeji’s classmates, while standard for a high school setting, still seem like a lot of fun. The only character I’m a bit worried about is Yumeji, since there is the possibility of him ending up as the clumsy guy who is in the middle of a love triangle for no particular reason (possible girls in this love triangle include his childhood friend Isana who he is living with, and of course, Merry) or there’s also the other possibility of him becoming another Ichigo from Bleach (please don’t let that happen).
The concept of being able to travel between dreams and reality is not entirely new, but Merry seems to be unique in the sense that she was originally from a dream, somehow managed to get to the real world, but wants to go back. There have been many tales of people losing touch with reality, but I don’t think I’ve seen any situation like Merry’s before, so I look forward to what’s to come.
