Breimh’s Anime Review – Red Data Girl

A modern fantasy based on Japanese Shinto legends. Suzuhara Izumiko is a 15-year-old girl, who has been raised and protected in a shrine deep in the Kumano mountains. She is quite shy and destroys all the electric devices she touches. When she begins to think about going out of the mountains and moving to the city, her guardian Sagara Yukimasa recommends her to enter a high school in Tokyo and forces his son Miyuki to serve Izumiko for life. Miyuki and Izumiko repel each other but their relationship begins to change when a terrifying accident occurs on the school excursion. Izumiko learns her fate as the last representative (yorishiro) of a Himegami goddess and Miyuki learns of his duty as a guardian Yamabushi of Izumiko.
Published by: Funimation
What makes a great mystery? Something I have asked myself from time to time is what the formula is for drawing me into a show and keeping my attention. This one brings up that question again, because it challenges my previous notions of what the formula is. The artistic style for Red Data Girl far surpasses many others of the genre, mixing CGI and hand-line seamlessly. The story, while not my usual cup of tea, pulls at me to continue watching though the attitudes of the characters sometimes leave me baffled as to how they manage to continue to remain in the same space as one another, and at others want me to strangle the writers for throwing in too much below-the-surface tension. But, it is the mystery that holds me transfixed, wanting to watch until the story plays out to the end. I do find things I dislike about this one, but they are personal reasons, and thus I give the series 4 out of 5 stars, and encourage others to offer their own opinions once they’ve viewed it.