Zombie slaughter anime 屍姫 / Shikabane Hime, or “Corpse Princess”, has begun airing and it seems the anime could attain moderate popularity, though between middling production values and an eccentric attitude to service the title may have difficulty aiming higher.
The stylish and dark visuals, particularly the cityscapes and gloomy Japanese architecture, are strikingly good looking, but the actual character animation is none too convincing, something exacerbated by all the jumping around.
There is no service to speak of in this anime; what it does possess in abundance is “non-service”: unseen hands seem to tug skirts into improbable positions even from the very lowest angles, objects intervene, etc. This seems to be taken to such extremes I can’t help but think of it as service of a sort. They could, after all, have put the camera anywhere…
Nobody can reasonably begrudge a title for not showing flashes of pantsu, but deliberately using such shots and then covering them over is a little odd (although Minamike shows how stylish it can be). This seems to be a trademark of the manga, where similar lengths are gone to in the name of avoiding exposure.
There are some comedy elements, presumably in to break the tension, but to my mind they seemed rather out of place. Perhaps they will develop well, but at this stage I can’t help but think sticking to the living corpse massacring would have been a better bet.
The seiyuu performance seems unremarkable. I did not think much of the heroine’s voicing but this may be be subjective. Male protagonist gets the usual spineless “kind and youthful” performance – very bland.
The story is a standard secret organisation battles with hideous supernatural enemies unrecognised by society pattern. The female lead happens to be a supernatural undying fiend herself, though not given to eating people, and for mysterious reasons coming to know a young lad her age, the protagonist. I’m sure you can see where this is going.
It does not look as if Shikabane Hime can be called an unqualifiedly good production at this stage, although the moody horror parts are done rather well. We should know after a few episodes, but at this stage I would say it is probably far from exceptional.
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The way I see it, if a skirts gonna fly; let it fly. If the producers didn’t like the thought of the resultant exposure, remove the event from the story completely. Don’t censor it in any way at all. 99.99% of the time such scenes do not add to the story at all. They’re purely service and as such should be left in, handled with modesty or completely removed. Teasing the viewer is no way to win him/her over.