REVIEW: The Severing Crime Edge (2013)

by Dustin Kramer

The Severing Crime Edge, based on a manga by Tatsuhiko Hikagi and directed by Yuji Yamaguchi, tells the story of Kiri Haimura, a young man with a desire to cut hair so intensely insatiable it would make Raymond Bessone put down his golden shears and take a job at Supercuts. After his family has had enough of his hobby/obsession, Kiri is lucky enough to stumble upon 14-year-old Iwai Mushanokouji. Iwai seems like a normal enough girl until you learn that she is cursed with floor-length hair that can never be cut. As luck would have it, Kiri’s flamboyant scissors are also cursed … with the ability to cut anything. It’s a match made in heaven–that is until psychopathic murderers start coming after poor, innocent Iwai. You see, Iwai is what’s called the “Hair Queen,” and anyone who manages to kill this helplessly hairy teenager will have their heart’s deepest desire granted to them. The would-be murderers are known as Authors, their tools of the trade: Killing Goods. Kiri’s magic blades just so happen to be one of these famed weapons, passed down to him from his ancestor Grayland, a man allegedly responsible for some 200 deaths. The scissors even have a name: The Severing Crime Edge. Can Kiri protect Iwai from the so-called Authors, their Killing Goods, and a lifetime of bad hair days? Let’s find out.

This kind of story is every bit the reason I first started watching anime as a “tween,” if you’ll excuse the modern parlance. The tonal conflict of a fairly dark subject matter and the wacky melodrama of the series’ conceit makes for the brand of weird, idiosyncratic entertainment that initially drew me to the Asian art medium prior to my development of … what’s it called? Oh, right–taste. The characters are immature, naive, and emotionally and sexually stunted. And they would have set my young heart on fire. As an adult, I can see how an unexperienced, impressionable mind could misdiagnose this kind of entertainment as “mature” or “good,” but you can’t fool this grumpy, old man.

Throughout the brunt of the story, I was pretty sure The Severing Crime Edge was utterly incapable of intellectual profundity. However, I think the narrative inadvertently winds its way around to something kind of meaningful, believe it or not. You see, the Authors are constantly being manipulated by the Killing Goods they wield. The disembodied voices of the weapons’ original owners (Originals) are constantly whispering in the Authors’ ears to kill and kill again. Therefore, the Authors must exploit Insteads, people that they use their Killing Goods on in nonlethal ways to satiate their homocidal hankerings. Iwai is Kiri’s Instead, and allowing him to cut her hair everyday eases his bloodlust (and makes her super kawaii to boot; we call that a “win-win”). The show establishes the Originals as more than just common criminals. Like Jack the Ripper, they feel like legends. And in that light they are, in a way, almost justified for their actions. So when a last-act twist reveals that The Severing Crime Edge’s Original, Grayland, may not have been all he was cracked up to be (perhaps he randomly and ruthlessly killed two people instead of the purported 200), the sense of mythology that mitigates the brutal reality of these horrible crimes suddenly disappears, leaving Kiri with a heavy burden of guilt. Maybe I’m reaching, but I couldn’t help but recall Launcelot’s words to Jessica in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice: “The sins of the father are to be laid upon the children.”

And with that out of the way, I’m going to rail on the show a little bit. Here we go.

I can’t make heads or tails of the main relationship in this series, which apart from the action is the only reason I might watch something like this. At one point, Kiri confesses to Iwai that his pining heart just can’t take it anymore and subsequently mounts the teenage girl. After licking her chest, nibbling her ears, and sampling the subtle piquancy of her hair, he ultimately ends up kissing her on the forehead and says he can’t do any more than that. She swears that her lips will be waiting for him when he is ready, and I am now confused. After all the foreplay that precedes the comparatively weak release of scenic tension, you’d think that a bit of tongue wrestling wouldn’t be that big of a deal. This moment pretty well illustrates the depth and breadth of the colorable couple’s affair for the entirety of the series. What should ostensibly be the emotional core of the narrative ends up feeling like an afterthought–something thrown in for romance fans.

And boy, oh boy, is this thing chockablock with fan service. Besides your typical panty-shot fare, there is a bit of nudity courtesy of the flat-chested, 14-year-old Iwai and an even younger character who appears later on. Iwai’s ever-changing hairdo feels like a blatantly cynical excuse to sell a wider variety of PVC figures with adorable, ever-so-slightly different haircuts. There is also a character who has huge, bouncing breasts. Shocker. The trademark boob shines rendered atop her impossibly large rack are an unfortunate rosy red with solid white centers, making her tits look like two giant pimples ready to explode. All these wonders and more in the fabulous world of The Severing Crime Edge!

Production values and animation quality are all over the place here. Aside from run-of-the-mill still frames and your expected corner cutting, there are some weird inconsistencies between shots. The character outlines are inexplicably thicker and more pronounced in some compositions, whereas thin and unremarkable in others. Even the utilized hues within a single scene’s color palette can vary slightly before its conclusion, likely indicating a slapdash shuffling of animation directors and/or key animators in the midst of a scene’s production. On the plus side, the action stands out as some of what the show has to offer visually. The animations are fluid, and the blocking and movement are coherent and competent. However, when there isn’t an action beat in progress, the characters are constantly dumping information about rules of this world that never end up mattering one iota. The hair-cutting scenes in particular are kind of amazing in all their visual embellishments. Additionally, they feel like the only moments where Kiri and Iwai are genuinely developing and growing closer, and they’re clearly some of the most expensive moments to animate.

As a final criticism, the rare nuggets of compelling drama can be pragmatically confounding. For example, an Author fighting Kiri uses a book of judgement to summon a noose around the young man’s neck. Kiri is hanging from this rope, holding magic scissors that can cut literally anything. So he cuts the rope, right?

No. No, he doesn’t.

I can see how The Severing Crime Edge could have appealed to a younger version of myself, but it’s just not for the me of today. It has very little philosophical or emotional depth, despite stumbling onto a weighty theme or two. So in the end, if a piece of entertainment art can’t engage you intellectually, it should at least be able to entertain you. But The Severing Crime Edge isn’t very good at that either. Now I’m going to get a haircut.