This is the story of a woman seeking revenge against the ones who killed her village, leaving her the sole survivor. Making use of her clan's power to form a bond with an animal and gain incredible strength, she works with the Japanese Government to get revenge on the one behind the attack on her village. Decent enough premise, though in a show like this it is very important to get the audience emotionally invested in the main character. It is especially important in this show considering the government she works for is painted as a tyrannical group.
The first thing I want to point out is the show looks stunning. It's not just a matter of animation, but the art style and the atmosphere is top-notch. It's a great example of being able to make use of a lot of vibrant colors and still have a very dark and gruesome atmosphere. I love when she makes use of the power of her bloodline and you see portions of her face shift between human and an almost demonic-looking skeleton.
That is where the praise I have for this show ends. It's not that the story is bad, it's pretty well crafted, despite some twists that are easy to see coming. Even character motivations all make sense and should be easy to work with. The real problem comes in that the characters themselves don't even feel like characters. Eleven episodes in and almost every character seems to be defined entirely by their tragedies. Eleven episodes in there are two characters who sort of feel like they have something more to them, but it's a case of being too little, too late.
On a whole, this show has a problem with showing the world as well. At no point to I get an idea of the government's tyranny through the visuals or story, the show just occasionally reminds you it's a thing. The citizens of Tokyo may suffer, but you don't get a feel for it. The whole idea is that Yukimura, our lead character, is blindly serving something so horrible to achieve her revenge. But not only does the show fail to get you behind her, but it also fails to establish one of the villainous forces of the show as all that bad. It's a character-focused kind of story with virtually nothing to its characters.
If a show could be carried purely by its visuals, the show does a pretty good job at it. But if you're looking for anything more, there just isn't that much here. There are other things I could nitpick about the show, like the really weird twist that one character you thought was a guy is a girl (Seriously, this reveal didn't matter at all), but it's a case that fixing them has no impact on anything. The core of the show fails to deliver, so despite the great visual design, I can't recommend this one.
