The
Anime
Librarian
Home
What's New?
Reviews
Core Collections
Activities
Features
Glossary
Links
Contact Us
3x3 Eyes

3x3 Eyes is a creepy series with the interesting premise of an immortal and a dead teen working together to gain, and regain, their humanity. The show offers a good mix of intense horror, occult conspiracies, humor, romance, and general high weirdness. Pai, a 300 year old girl from Tibet, meets Yakumo, a boy abandoned by his wandering archeologist father. Yakumo works in drag at a transvestite bar, but otherwise is a perfectly normal teenager. As they say, only in Japan. After meeting Pai, Yakumo's life is turned upside down, and the adventures that follow make you wish the series was not quite so brief (the manga ran for 15 years before finally wrapping up in 2002).

Pai, voiced by the wonderful seiyuu Megumi Hayashibara, is an engaging mixture of sweet and scary. She longs to shed her immortality for the bittersweet joy of being human, a baffling desire that Yakumo only slowly begins to comprehend as the series progresses. Discovering a dark, hidden world while accompanying Pai, he grows in wisdom and strength. 3x3 Eyes is really a coming of age story in an occult setting, which is not to say the series is short on action or demons. As in most monster-packed shows, the nightmare denizens run the gamut from pretty hokey to genuinely frightening. While the animation shows its age in comparison with more modern offerings, the sheer sweep of the vistas in Hong Kong and Tibet is breathtaking.

The majestic score establishes a sense of brooding menace, hinting at dark things creeping around the edges of the everyday. Somehow, the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Despite flaws, the series is unique and distinctive, and delivers interesting characters along with well-paced action. And that's plenty more than you'll get from most regular horror movies, be they B's or Big Budget Blockbusters. If it was only a wee bit longer…


  • Studio: Pioneer
  • Format: DVD
  • Episodes in series: 6
  • Series Completed: Yes
  • Number of DVDs: 2

 
  • Audio Tracks: English, Japanese
  • Subtitles: English
  • Genre: Magic and Occult
  • Ages: 16+
  • Cautions: Violence
  • Reviewer: George
  • Core Collection: Magic and Occult