You watch the first episode and think it's a stylish comedy about eye powers. By episode twelve you realize the show spent eleven episodes disguising a tragedy that was always inevitable. SHAFT's direction turns narrative chaos into visual poetry, every cut, every color shift, every moment of stillness is doing story work that the dialogue never could. The Kagerou Project's eight-minute songs contain more emotional clarity than the show itself, which means you'll spend weeks rewatching both to piece together what actually happened. The convoluted mess is the point. A group of kids with impossible powers trying to save each other from a time loop they don't fully understand, and failing anyway, one detail at a time.

Shintarou Kisaragi is an 18-year-old shut-in who has not stepped outside in two years. On August 14, soda spilled during a quarrel with Ene, the cyber girl living in his computer, wrecks his keyboard. Because the Obon holiday has closed most shops, he must brave a trip to a department store, where he ends up a hostage in a robbery. Two fellow captives turn out to belong to the Mekakushi Dan, a band of teenagers whose eyes hold strange powers, and after the incident Shintarou and Ene are drawn into the group. The members track down others with eye abilities and teach them control, but as each one's past surfaces, their powers seem to fit together, hinting at the truth behind them. Adapted from Jin's Kagerou Project song series, the show mixes comedy, romance, sci-fi and the supernatural.