Some shows really like to drag their feet, but the pacing in this one is almost too fast. In just one episode, we introduce the protagonist, get his tragic backstory, pair him up with his first partner-in-crime, who is of course the former princess of a country, so she has a tragic backstory of her own, then they try to sneak into the castle to steal the bad guy’s masks, have some furious action where the protagonist utilizes several masks to show off various powers, only for our hero to realize he’s bitten off more than he can chew when the castle ruler shows up, so his new friend puts on the forbidden evil mask that kickstarted this whole plot in the first place! Aaaaand… end episode. ‘Cause we always gotta end on a cliffhanger, duh. Phew… lemme catch my breath before we continue.
Alright, so let’s try to slow down and smell the roses. This is a world where masks can bestow great power upon you. A cat mask lets you see in the dark and be super agile, a chameleon mask lets you camouflage, a spider mask lets you shoot out sticky webs and climb walls, and so on and so forth. Neat, right? Well, years ago, the main character was being bullied by his peers, so he went digging through his master’s things. He wanted to study his master’s best work, but all he did was accidentally unleash an evil mask that made him kill his own master as well as all the other apprentices.
To be fair, why would you create an evil mask in the first place? Just don’t do that, stupid! Then once you realized it was evil, why would you keep it around in a lockbox? Just destroy it, stupid! And if you really gotta keep it — because you can’t destroy it for whatever reason — why put it in a box that a kid can easily find and open? Put it inside a real safe with a code only you would know, stupid! He didn’t even hide it! It was just sitting in a room that anyone can access! Of course, I’m being facetious. I’m sure once the story slows down for once, it’ll explain to us why the master mask maker couldn’t do any of those super obvious things. But for now, we have to worry about the bad guy in front of us.
Fast forward several years later, our protagonist Peru is going around the world, stealing masks so that he can finally destroy them once and for all. Ah, so they can be destroyed. And yet, he still has that evil mask in his possession? Why? Mmmmm… gotta be patient, gotta be patient… hopefully, the show will explain this to us later. At the moment, he’s in Lisblanc, a sad, depressing country full of sad, depressing people. Why are they like this? It sounds like a power-hungry psychopath overthrew (read: murdered) the former rulers and is now governing with an iron fist. And he did it all with the power of masks! The former princess Sona has to resort to being a street urchin who steals just to survive. The only reason why she ends up with Peru is because he left the super duper evil mask unguarded long enough for her to swipe it. If you gotta bring it with you, why not have it on your body at all times?!
I think going forward, the show needs to have some really good answers if it wants my buy-in. I tried to sit back and let the story just unfurl itself naturally. But by the time we get to the very end of the episode, when the bad guy has Peru pinned to the ground helplessly, we see Sona once again pulling out that poorly secured lockbox with the evil mask. Of course, it calls out to her. It wants to be set free, so it offers her immense power to strike back against the man who killed her parents. So what do we see? We see Sona shatter the metal lock on the box with a simple strike from a blade. Like c’mon, the world’s most dangerous mask is so precariously unprotected! It might as well not be locked away, because twice now, a mere child can get access to it!
The OP has Sona traveling with Peru and one other guy, so she’ll obviously make it out of this situation just fine. Anime also likes pointless cliffhangers, but I’ve harped about this enough just two weeks into the season. I don’t have a ton of faith in this show. It looks like Everything Else fodder at best.