What are the Blade Children?
Spiral: Suiri no Kizuna (Bonds of Reasoning) is the story of this mystery, into which Narumi Ayumu is drawn after an apparently attempted suicide at his school. The girl involved was a member of this mysterious group, a group that Ayumu's older brother, Kiyotaka, was investigating at the time of his disappearance two years earlier. So, against the wishes of Narumi Madoka (Kiyotaka's wife, and current detective), Ayumu begins his own investigation, assisted by the school's lone member of the newspaper club, Yuizaki Hiyono.
At first, Ayumu is simply challenged outright by the Blade Children, who claim to know something of the whereabouts of his older brother. Their "tests" are primarily tests of Ayumu's mental prowess and cunning, but occasionally test his luck as well (the Magic Squares/Bomb puzzle, for instance). As he begins to gain their trust, the mystery of "What are the Blade Children?" is supplanted by "Why are the Hunters trying to kill the Blade Children?" as the Blade Children's ostensible leader, Eyes Rutherford, is targeted by an assassin.
The Blade Children themselves are fairly normal, if prodigies can be called normal, and are physically identifiable as different only by a single rib missing from their ribcage. (They're also depicted with cat-like slit eyes, but that's probably just for the audience's benefit since none of the characters ever comment on this.)
Unfortunately, the anime ends without reaching the answers it set out to find, due to the fact that it caught up with the manga on which it was based. (The fourteenth and final volume of the manga was released in September of 2005, the anime aired between 2002 and 2003.) The final arc of the anime deals with a similar concept as volumes six through eight of the manga, but takes place under different circumstances.
The manga was followed up by the
prequel,
Spiral: Alive, starring three new characters:
Genki Girl Sekiguchi Imari, reluctant serial killer Amanae Yukine, and Sawamura Shirou, a boy who wants to be a detective just like Kiyotaka. Oh, and they're also in a
Love Triangle. (Insert
Murder The Hypotenuse joke here.) While these three are the central characters, old favorites such as Ryoko, Rio and Kousuke are still central to the plot, and most others have at least made cameos.
Spiral is not to be confused with the manga
Uzumaki, which means "spiral", or the
Ring sequel
Rasen, which ALSO means "spiral".
While we're at it, don't confuse the two with certain terms from
Naruto, or with
Spiral Energy.
This program provides examples of:
- Adaptation Dye Job: Eyes has purple hair in the manga art, but the anime "upgraded" him into a White Haired Pretty Boy. Kousuke's hair also goes from pinkish red to a more purplish red in the color art for Spiral: Alive. Word Of God was that this was for contrast: in the black-and-white manga, there were too many characters with gray-screen tone hair, so Kousuke was switched to being inked black—as per his earliest pre-production designs. The color art was adjusted to match.
- Adults Are Useless
- Affably Evil (Kanone in the anime)
- A God Am I (Yaiba vs. Kiyotaka, Hizumi vs. Ayumu)
- Ancient Conspiracy
- Back From The Dead ( Amanae in Alive)
- Badass Bookworm (Eyes, Rio)
- Big Bad
- Bishonen
- Blind Without Em (the cause of the attempted suicideIn the manga, the cause of an actual murder)
- Brother Sister Incest (Variations)
- Bunny Ears Lawyer (Kanone: fighting god, lover of kitties. Even worse is Kiyotaka in Alive: his idea of a disguise is a cartoony frog suit. Which he wears while riding a bicycle. Despite it not having eye holes.)
- Cain And Abel (Eyes and Kanone. Played with in that they seem to be the "childhood friends" variation, but then Eyes reveals to Ayumu and the audience that the Blade Children all have the same father, so that they fit the sibling version.)
- Chessmaster (By the middle of the Kanone arc in the manga, everyone is pretty much convinced that Kiyotaka is God.)
- Composite Character (Sayoko Shiranagatani originally wasn't part of the Blind Without Em incident, but the anime co-opted her from the locked room mystery story to simplify things and create a better segue between them.)
- Crowning Moment Of Awesome (Rio's introduction set off, like, a whole string of these.)
- Death Course (The Excellent Hotel)
- Did We Just Have Tea With Cthulhu (Kanone and Eyes have tea together after the latter gets out of hospital because the former almost killed him AGAIN. Then again they're both quite cheerful about it.)
- Doomed Appointment
- Friendly Enemy (Ayumu and Hizumi)
- Foreshadowing (Hiyono is about to say the name of Kanone's father when he interrupts her. And then there's the fact she knows it at all. No, it's not just her insane info-collecting skills.)
- Gecko Ending
- Genius Bruiser (Kousuke, Ryoko)
- Get Out Of Jail Free Card
- Great Detective
- Hair Colors
- Idiot Hero (Subverted. Ayumu's lounging on the roof, ditching class. He must be just like every other stupid shounen protagonist, right? Wrong.)
- Inaction Sequence (more of an ending alteration)
- Invisible To Normals (no huge explosions, but the Blade Children and Hunters are not common knowledge, and their activities are covered up regularly)
- Killed Off For Real (Manga only: Kanone)
- Little Miss Badass
- Living With The Villain (Ayumu and Hizumi again. Also Ayumu/Hiyono, Rio/Ryoko/Kousuke, and Kanone to a lesser extent: all go to the same school.)
- Locked Room Mystery
- Locking Mac Gyver In The Store Cupboard (partly subverted, as Ayumu blocks the lock before entering the room)
- The Lonely Piano
- Magical Database
- Magnificent Bastard (See 'Chessmaster.')
- Mama Bear: Madoka pulls out the badass to save Ayumu from Kanone.
- Meitantei
- Mercy Lead
- The Minnesota Fats (Kiyotaka is better than Ayumu at everything, even though he has disappeared)
- Morality Pet (Rio and Ryoko for Eyes and Kousuke; some mild inversion in that being one also softens up Rio's own character.)
- Names To Know In Anime
- Neutral Female (Hiyono: though she's usually out of her depth mentally, she does occasionally subvert this by aiding Ayumu)
- No Guy Wants An Amazon (Kousuke claims this is his opinion of Ryoko. In Alive, she wonders why it's only girls asking her out, and her classmates explain all the boys in town are afraid of her and the "Takamachi Ryoko Legend." Which is, basically, a bunch of over-exaggerations of things she actually has done.)
- Older Than They Look : Rio
- Ordinary High School Student
- Parental Abandonment (Ayumu, whose parents are both gone, and who lives with his brother's wife, in a rare case of "Sibling Abandonment")
- Pet The Dog (Kousuke and Eyes, only with cats. And Rio.)
- Power Trio (Kousuke as Id, Rio as Superego, Eyes as Ego. In Alive, Kousuke as Id, Ryoko as Superego, Rio as Ego.)
- Prequel (Spiral: Alive)
- Slap Slap Kiss
- Spanner In The Works: Hiyono deliberately sets out to be this to Kiyotaka.
- The Stoic : Eyes, especially in the anime. Ayumu also has his moments, but mostly he tries and fails.
- Tear Jerker (Subjective, but there are lots of them, especially by the last three books of the manga (Kanone and Hizumi are good at these). Also Charlotte's backstory in Alive.)
- Those Two Guys (Imari's two friends in Alive)
- Time Bomb (the Magic Squares/Bomb puzzle. Also the Blade Children themselves, in a way.)
- Token Loli : Rio
- Twin Switch (Amanae Yukine & Charlotte in Alive. Even though they're not actually related as far as we know. Scanlations, please.)
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee (Manga: Kanone arc. Repeatedly.)
- The Watson (Hiyono or Kousuke, usually)
- Xanatos Gambit (The major appeal of the series is watching Ayumu, the BlaChil and later, the Hunters, attempt to outsmart and kill each other.)
- Xanatos Roulette (Everything from the BlaChil meeting Ayumu to Kiyotaka stealing his crush was planned by Kiyotaka, and it gets steadily more convoluted as the story passes, especially in the manga.)
