This series opens with a young boy being awaken from his sleep by a black cat that calls his name, he makes his way to a shrine(?) located on the property. When he slides open a door to a inner room he calls his brothers name and goes inside where he discovers a girl lying on the ground who appears to be dead. Then as he’s about to investigate further he hears people about to enter the room so he hides, and then he sees his brother (Keisei) and several other people enter the room who look over the girl.

       As the boy is watching the scene he wonders who the girl is, and the cat tells him that she is a Shikabane. The boy then sees his brother embrace the girl and she begins to stir, and the girl soon awakens and call the boy’s brother by his name.

       Later, we see the police raiding a apartment of a suspected serial killer, he jumps to his death as the police are about to arrest him. Then the next morning we see breakfast at the temple with Keisei supervising the meal. Then we see the boy (Kagami Ouri) from the other night getting ready to move out of the temple and he gets tripped by Keisei spilling all his “eros” manga on the ground.

        We find out that where Ouri was living at is a orphanage, run under the Buddhist tradition, and while Keisei is not really Ouri’s brother he considers him his brother. At school, Ouri tries to get some of his friends to help him move but they make excuses to avoid work. Then back at the temple we see Keisei and the Shikabane taking the assignment to track down the serial killer who did not die from his 20 story fall, they assume he became a Shikabane that feeds on humans. One of the assistants (Honda) treats the Shikabane girl with very little respect.

       After school, Ouri returns home to the orphanage to collect his things and to say goodbye. In another part of town the Shikabane girl (Makina) confronts the serial killer and his victims, and she tells him she will kill him. But, It seems that he now has the power to give birth to other Shikabane, and his victims begin to rise from the dead to help him attack her. They start to battle and the guy transforms into a flying creature and he takes flight with Makina and the other victims.

        As Ouri is walking to his new living quarters, Makina manages to escape from the flying monster, but she falls to the ground near Ouri. He runs to the crash site and remembers her from before and discovers that she is dead, the black cat shows up again and talks with Ouri. Ouri then embrace Makina just like Keisei did the other night, and as he’s holding her we see some terrifying visions that she has. When she awakens and she speaks with Ouri for a while and then she dashes off to meet Keisei who is riding a motorcycle and takes off.

       Keisei and Makina make their way to where the serial killer is at and Keisei tells Makina not to harm the girls because they are most likely not dead, they are only being controlled by the serial killer. So Makina begins to do battle with the monster on a rooftop. At one point Keisei helps Makina with her battle with the monster, and after a fearsome battle she manages to finish him off by destroying his brain, that’s the only way to kill a Shikabane. Ouri has followed Keisei and Makina to the battle site and watched the battle. Once Ouri finally gets to his apartment he finds his friends passed out inside his room, and then we see Makina taking a shower back at home, and we see the damage the battle caused to her body. Well, that’s all for this episode.

        

       As summer has turned to fall I have decided to pick up a series that I though would be on the darker side to coincide with the coming of Halloween and the dark cold winter. When I saw that the manga Shikabane Hime (Corpse Princess) was being made it to a anime, I figured what could be better than watching a anime about a dead girl having to kill 108 demon/monsters/vampires/zombies in order for her to gain entry into heaven.

          Well, after watching the first episode of Shikabane Hime I can’t give you a conclusion about the direction that this series will take, but I will give you several impressions on where I think it will go. 

       The characters seem likable enough and seem to fit their roles. Keisei, the head of the orphanage and also the leader of the hit squad seems serious enough about his job, but also seems to have a wise cracking playful side to him. He also seems to be linked to the Shikabane (Makina) in some other way than just their working relationship.

        Ouri, the male protagonist of the series, seems to have a little more backbone than you typical male of this type of series. He’s shown that he’s not afraid of spirits or the dead girl Shikabane (Makina) so that’s a plus. He’s also shown that he might have a stronger connection with Makina other than being a random person that she encounters.

       Makina, the corpse princess, I find her character to be quite interesting. She’s a girl that seems to have done something in the past that has condemned her to current situation of having to kill undead in order to gain entry into heaven. She could quite possibly turn into a mega tsundere, just look at the first episode when Ouri embraced her like his brother did, she expressed classic tsundere characteristics. Who could possibly need more loving than a cold, dead, lonely girl who fights undead hell-spawn for a living. But, I have two words of advice for any guy wanting to hookup with her, be sure to place her under a kotatsu or a electric blanket before hitting that.

          Now to the title of my post, “it’s raining dead schoolgirls”; Anime set in modern times, no matter what the circumstances almost always puts the girl in a school uniform even if it makes no sense at all. Makina is a dead girl who has to battle the undead hordes for a living, and what does she wear to battle, a school uniform. Twice we have seen the damage that her body has taken in her battles and you would think that she would wear something that offers her body, undead or not, something that offers her a little more protection.

       When Ouri was walking to his new apartment and Makina crashed to the ground near him causing a crater to form, he runs over to the crash site and what does he find in the crater? The corpse princess Makina lying in the crater in a schoolgirl uniform, and now I thought to myself that I’ve scene it all, “it’s now raining dead schoolgirls”!

         I think that if anime did a retelling of the “Garden of Eden” story from the Bible, Adam would be buck naked, but Eve would be wearing a school uniform even though she doesn’t know why, oh it would also take Adam 26 episodes to get up the courage to tell Eve that he likes her even though there’s only two of them.