It has this dark magical girl kind of premise (well dead magical girls but whatever, it still kind of works) and some very melodramatic scenes and dialogue.
SO melodramatic. Like suddenly bursting into moody song melodramatic.
And sometimes the songs are more spoken than actually sung. I don't know if it would be like that in Japanese or if they just did it for the English dub, but it's ... kind of strange.
I actually laughed a little the first time in happened because it was unexpected. Here are these girls fighting for their lives against a dude with glow-y eyes who keeps barking at him (real dog-like sounding barks and not just person-doing-dog-like sounding barks) and then ...
Singing?
Huh.
The story seems to basically revolve around four pretty dead girls who don't seem all that dead but apparently totally are and have been re-animated (but not in a zombie fashion) so that they can spend their nights fighting supernatural baddies while screaming a lot. They come from different backgrounds but I have a feeling will bond in a super girl-y fashion before too long and possibly become a crack monster fighting team (sailor suits probably not included though as this show is supposed to be all dark and stuff).
I'm digging the artistic style here a lot. It is reminiscent of Revolutionary Girl Utena with the big noses and pointy chins. And for once it doesn't seem so off to see an animated world populated by blonds and brunettes and redheads as the setting is New York (as opposed to Japan where many anime are set).
Not that the characters act particularly American really. More like how people from other countries probably think we act. With some Japanese cultural norms thrown in.
But overall, bizarre bursts of moody song aside, I'm liking Red Garden quite a bit. It has some definite horror/supernatural/fantasy/violent stuff going on, and some interesting non-linear storytelling techniques popping up, and some twisty complex mythology being hinted at.
PLUS I can watch it dubbed on HuluPlus which is excellent as that is the only way I can watch while at work (as I do have to at least pretend I'm getting important work tasks taken care of while I'm watching and I haven't gotten my Japanese language skills down yet).
