Gekidol Episode 0: New Year’s Special

Rather than a 40-50 minute premiere this was one half of what would probably be the premiere episode and the other half was something else.

Update: It’s confirmed in the official airing of Episode 1 that Episode 2 will have nothing to do with “Alice in Deadly School”. At least the preview didn’t mention it. So Deadly School was simply a Bonus OVA.

We kicked off the show with our heroine Seria watching a stage show. She enjoyed it so much she reenacted her favorite scene verbatim. There was also an angry girl on the side who noticed Seria’s reenactment. We’ll see why she’s upset before noticing Seria another time.

Seria was so entranced by the play she daydreamed in class the next day. One of her classmates, Mako Higuchi, was the most attentive. It’s probably because she has a tsundere crush on her.

As Seria gushed about the main actor a mysterious beauty with a walking cane appeared and presented her a pamphlet, inviting her to check out the Alice in Theatre troupe sometime.

Can’t say much about Eloise’s message to Seria but something tells me there’s something off about her family and it’s not her ill grandpa. Seria considered joining Alice in Theatre.

The next day Mako invited Seria to hang with her kru crew but she didn’t answer her text. Luckily she noticed her passing by and followed. Upon hearing her plan she got agitated. First of all because she applied for theatre too but got rejected and she didn’t want Seria to bear the pain of failure. Second was the worry she’d have less time with Seria should she be accepted. She went a bit overboard with her attempted dissuasion. The mystery woman from earlier, Kaworu, was conveniently there and heard everything. Mako’s yelling was hard to ignore. Seria ended up accepting her invitation after all, much to Mako’s sadness.

Seria got a bit of a surprise when she found out Alice in Theatre’s sponsor was Alice in Paradise. You can tell what kind of business it was.

Kaworu showed her to the back of the AiT building where other members were practicing. She was asked to show her stuff on stage. Not only did she surprise them by not needing a script but she put on a great demonstration. However, when they handed her the script to continue she got tongue tied. Basically she could copy a performance very well but memorizing in any other way was very difficult. Also distracting her during a performance was a no-no.

It didn’t help the other mystery girl (Robot? Android?) on stage just stared at her, barely showing an impressed grin as she seemed to scan her. Hopefully the Director Man wasn’t watching Seria through the mystery girl’s eyes.

 

When Seria noticed the mystery girl observing she had some sort of vision about the city and how part of it was destroyed by some disaster the teacher discussed in history class earlier. Looks like Seria may get random visions throughout the show. After waking up she saw the other AiT members singing and became more determined to become part of the troupe.

After the ED of the first half we joined Kaworu discussing their upcoming play. It was going to be “Alice in Deadly School”, which was the company’s most famous play. The second half of Episode 0 was a glimpse of the Alice in Deadly School OVA. It’s basically Gakkou Gurashi. I won’t discuss it. Enjoy it and feel free to talk about it in the comments.

Dunno if the next episode is tomorrow (as of this post) or next week. When it does air we’ll continue. I’m interested to see where this show goes. Looks like this will be another “stage girl” anime. Interesting because there’s a third one on the way later this year.

PS: Yes. Siera’s teddy bear is also named Alice. Coincidence because she’s part French or is there a connection? Probably the former.