This series starts in an spectacularly trippy manner, dropping our protagonist Haruto straight into the middle of a conflict with the Witch of Thunder, who rules the dreamworld into which he's fallen.
The Witch of Thunder is an insane god-child, who has an army of "cute" creatures that are the transformed result of people who have previously fallen under her spell.
Since she exists in a dreamworld, it can operate on impressively surreal rules, which include cats in smoking jackets, a ghost sister only Haruto can see and some unexpected and rather cool split-screen "film"-ography.
The quick reveal (and presumably central conceit of the series) is that the Witches are coma patients (suffering "Sleeping Beauty syndrome"), who are dreaming and inventing the world in which Haruto finds himself. There's a lot of Puella Magi Madoka Magicka influence here, although the resolution may or may not be a little happier.
Second episode, we see our next witch, who slaughters people pretty much from the start, in revenge for previous crimes. Impressively horrific murders, which is a bit of shift from the first episode.
Interestingly, it still seems like Haruto lives and works in another dreamworld of his own.
We see our first encounter with dreams affecting reality, with people murdered in dreams dying in real life. And we learn the motivation of our cat scientist, whose sister is suffering from the syndrome.
The murderous killers are fantastically horrible though. As the audience, we have to hope the witch is defeated and they're kept alive, but they're also really nasty people.
Nope, they're dying off in really gruesome ways. This is getting impressively grim. Turned into more of a horror series than I expected. Which is quite a nice change from what I've been watching. And Haruto has either just jumped off the slippery slope, or has a more elaborate plan. Either way, this is getting fun.
Holy crap, dream warfare. Everything suddenly took a turn for the dark. This one has definitely grabbed me properly. I'd say give it a try.
Highly recommended.
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