Andy’s now with PANDRA, but he still has to prove himself.

What They Say:
As Andy begins to familiarize himself within P.A.N.D.R.A, he is given his first mission to assassinate a mafia leader.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The opening episode to the series won me over more than it probably should have to some degree, but what it presented was a slickly animated and well done narrative within a universe that I had tired of very recently in the Psychic Squad show. While the general ideas of that world worked well, it had a hard time blending the series and comedy with what was to come with the kids. With this series, the shift to focusing primarily on Kyosuke and giving it a very serious look and feel, showing what else is going on in that world, it’s provided what’s felt like the strongest “mature” show of the season that I’ve seen. With a few things hit in the first episode, it pulled the core characters together and brought in Andy to the group as the undercover agent.

With Andy now being a part of PANDRA, at least one that’s being tested and watched, he gets to go through the kind of fun way that the organization exists. It has some serious goals and most of the members play it straight, but Kyosuke has his fun moments with how he lives as well. What becomes interesting is how wary and intrigued by Andy everyone becomes as Kyosuke shows off how he’s seemingly resistant to psychic powers, making him a sort of black hole. But his presence also impacts them in other ways, since if he gets to close some of them may feel varying forms of sickness. That makes it hard for him to get too awful close to, but it also makes it so that some are far more sensitive to his presence, reducing his ability to sneak around a bit in some areas.

While Andy is there and exposed to aspects of PANDRA, they’re definitely testing him as well in order to see how he reacts. Some of it involves bringing him along on a mission they have where some of them do the dirty work while to Andy it looks like Kyosuke is on a mini vacation. But it turns darker as it goes on and Andy’s test gets more serious as he’s assigned the task of being a sniper to take out a mafia boss that Kyosuke is going to dine with. All of it is in PANDRA’s long term survival goals, but it’s a common kind of movie/TV series test to put the new guy through. While the job doesn’t go quite as intended, it still reveals more about Andy and his abilities that certainly sets him up to be a rather intriguing presence for Kyosuke more than anything else.

In Summary:
While the show hits pretty standard points here in showing us what Andy is like within the group, how they’re viewing and treating him because of his ability and getting a handle on the way Kyosuke handles PANDRA in general, it does it with some good style. It’s admittedly predictable in many ways, especially if you followed Kyosuke from the other series, but there’s just such a polished and smooth flow to it all that it hits all the right notes. Andy is better defined here now that we know fully what he really is, or at least what we’re believing he is, and seeing him in action works well. The series continues to have a great look about it and I love the pacing and overall style of it, making it one of the new shows of the season that I eagerly look forward to.

Grade: B+

Streamed By: Crunchyroll

Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.