Occult Academy: Episode 1

Plot Summary: Our female lead, Maya Kumashiro, is the daughter of the former headmaster of a private academy dedicated to studying the occult. She visits the school in order to destroy the school due to the hardships it caused in her childhood.

Occult Academy is a show that I looked at with indifference when it was shown on the list of shows coming out this season. It was mostly due to the art style, which really wasn't that colorful and actually succeeded in depressing me. However, after watching, I can safely say that I will probably follow this show.

The episode follows our female lead Maya Kumashiro, the daughter of the headmaster of a private academy dedicated to the study of the occult. During the funeral, the father, accidentally recites a spell in a recorded message that results in the rise of an evil spirit that wreaks havoc in the school for the majority of the episode. The first half of this episode wasn't that interesting, as the scenes where Maya and a group of friends are trying to capture the evil spirit seemed very formulaic. However, the latter half of this episode was focused on developing Maya, thus resulting in the show to actually start garnering my attention. Hopefully, the other episodes will focus on developing the characters or at least presenting supernatural situations that are fresh and interesting (Such as the filler episode of Supernatural!), as this situation was pretty boring.

Personally, the humor seemed to fall flat. I don't know if this is my personal tastes, but it seems that the characters should focus more an delivering good drama and less on trying to deliver a joke. Overall, this was a fair episode. Thankfully, while the beginning did worry me, the ending was enough to keep me interested in the series.

Rating: Fair
Ending: Do they know what animation means? Why the fuck are they using live action footage? Acceptable song though...