I'd have probably kept watching had it been gender-swapped. To be honest, I'd already had my interest squashed by the show's poster. Two boys brandish weapons at us. Gee, how thrilling. However I enjoyed it more than I'd expected and the show looks watchable. The title sequence even has a couple of female characters, which is good. Most of the cast are still men, unfortunately, but that's not a critical problem when one of your two protagonists is the rather charming:

1. SHUN ASANAGA. He likes crystals. He's full of enthusiasm and happiness when we first meet him browsing in a crystal shop. After eventually going home, he has friendly conversations with his ex-archeologist mother and makes plans for dragging his scientist father home from work. It's dad's birthday, you see, and they've got lots of nice food for him.

Shun's adorable. I'd have happily watched this show had it all been like that. However there's also:

2. PRINCE EMILIO LANGHEIM. He's trying to kill King Delzaine, for revenge. He fails. Delzaine is a better fighter and perhaps also a better human being. He makes a few valid points while criticising Emilio's assassination attempt, although also a slightly disturbing one, and then afterwards doesn't even have Emilio executed. He just sends Emilio to the dungeons.

In fairness to Emilio, a flashback suggests that he was nice as a child. Now, though, he's obnoxious in a way that makes me want to stop watching him. His speech patterns annoyed me, although most of that won't survive translation into English subtitles. He's the kind of person who can't stop talking down at you and giving you orders, as if he thinks you're a peasant.

Anyway, Shun gets teleported to this other world, which according to wikipedia is actually inside the Earth. The world is hollow. Shun then has the extreme fortune of meeting Prince Emilio. They have anti-chemistry, in a way that's rather grating to watch. A magic sword grows out of Shun's chest and he uses it to defeat some guards! Why should I care about this? Piss off. There's another sword fight! I don't object to fight scenes in themselves, but these involve the show pulling magic powers from its arse so that a character with no fighting experience can win some token fights that aren't meaningful. That's one show I don't need to bother watching, then. An orange-haired girl appears, which is a mild temptation to stick with the show... but no.

It's good, but you'll want to avoid all spoilers with this one. I'll be as vague as possible.

Satoru Fujinuma is a pizza delivery man and manga artist. Neither life is exciting, which is appropriate for Satoru. He's a rather dour 29-year-old who never seems happy and doesn't seem to have any romantic ambitions. "Nothing good comes of getting involved with others. Well, it's not as if my death will make any difference to anything." He has a colleague (Airi Katagiri) who occasionally says a few words to him, but she's still in high school and he's never paid her much attention.

However Satoru's also a time traveller. He can't control it. He calls it Revival. He'll jump back in time a few seconds, which is always involuntary and always a sign that something bad is about to happen. However he won't know what this is. (I'm a bit fuzzy on the mechanics of all this, but it's still ep.1.) All he can do is look around desperately for anything out of place and try to prevent it. Occasionally (as at the start of this episode) this gets him hospitalised. He wakes up with Airi next to his hospital bed and his mother coming from Hokkaido.

I'll stop there because there's not much more I can talk about safely. Suffice to say that bad things happened when Satoru was at elementary school in the 1980s and that similar bad things are capable of happening in the present day too. This anime isn't safe for children to watch, or indeed for adults who don't like the thought of bad things happening to children. There will be big surprises. This is a dark, mature series with a mildly chilly tone (unsurprisingly for a Fuji TV Noitamina show) but Satoru's clearly on the side of the angels and I'm looking forward to exploring this unusual genre blend.

There's also a live-action movie. I want to watch that too.