Second episode had a noticable drop in animation quality, but it’s BONES so it’s still at an acceptable level for TV animation. And there’s nice bit of water animation as a character walks into a river.
The script plays a nice trick in giving you so much information that other scripts would save as twists that the actual twist comes as something of a surprise.
The main characters and their situation reminded me somewhat of the Atlas Games rpg Over The Edge. A cell of undercover agents with unusual powers and backgrounds working against similar cells for other organisations in a foreign town is a scenario you could drop straight into that rpg.
I continue to enjoy the characterisation of the police characters, particularly the two junior detectives as there’s some efficient animation of their body language in this episode.
There’s also some very nice timing in this episode. Okamura’s work on Wolf’s Rain had something of a considered languid pace and there’s a lot of that here too. He makes it work to wonderful effect in this episode as when Hei casually abandons his cover personality at the drop of a hat, it suddenly changes the pace of the whole show.
Shaping up to be a fun show, hopefully the animation budgets for forthcoming 2 part stories will be split more evenly as they won’t have the need to create a first episode buzz.