Take a young man with an irresistible urge to cut long hair and combine it with a girl whose hair cannot be cut, and you have the premise for the start of this crime-based thriller series. The plot of this first episode is that Kiri uses his past experience and a special tool that happens to be the title object of this series to cut Iwai’s lengthy, cursed locks. When he succeeds, Iwai is very greatful and the pair of them look to go on various adventures with Kiri’s magical scissors and at least Iwai will be able to go to school.
Where this episode and series is fatally undermined is in two different ways. The first is simply the character of Kiri. He’s introduced essentially as a hair fetishist, but it takes on the form of wanting to also kill the girls whose hair he is cutting. That also takes on a further significance when one of his classmates says that a girl’s hair is her life. That theme continues throughout the episode as Kiri’s desire to cut hair becomes ever more associated with the murder of others. What really bothered me in this case was the way this contrasted with the fact that it was going for a touching moment at the end when Iwai could finally be freed from her curse. There’s no ambiguity in this show as Kiri’s flashbacks also seem to swing wildly between his wanting to be helpful and being a hair-thirsty killing machine.
On a lighter note, this series also seems to have a thing for nominative determinism. Kiri cuts stuff, the Byouinzaka sisters use hospital tools to do their killing and I’m sure everyone else that gets introduced will have something else associated with their names. It just speaks to a level of focus with these characters that a ton of attention was paid to trying to base character names around what tools they use rather than making them better written. I’m not even going to get into Iwai’s character other than to say it is a gigantic step backwards in terms of female leads in anime.
As for the production quality, it was about what you would expect for a first episode. It looked good and a lot of money went into making it look like no corners were skipped visually. The soundtrack for the show was pretty pedestrian in that it seemed well placed early in the episode, but seemed to trail off into unnoticeable territory. That’s not exactly what I want out of a suspense thriller.
Why You Would Continue: Strong potential for action coming up in the next couple of weeks with probably bloodshed
Why You Would Drop: Protagonist is impossible to identify with in most cases, silly characters who also could have been named after Megaman antagonists.
My Verdict: Dropped
Lower Mid-Table 
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