Dream Eater Merry


Dream Eater Merry is a Japanese action fantasy manga series written and illustrated by Ushiki Yoshitaka. The series is serialized in Houbunsha's seinen manga magazine Manga Time Kirara Forward. The manga was adapted into an anime television series by J.C.Staff which aired in Japan between January 7, 2011 and April 8, 2011.

Plot

Yumeji Fujiwara is a young male student like any other who, after an event that occurred 10 years previously, gained the power to see the aura of other people's dreams, and the ability to predict what kind of dream they will have next. Since then, he has started to have strange dreams of cats following him for an unknown reason. The boss of the cat army, John Doe, tells him that his body is needed to access the real world. One day, as he was returning home from his errands, a mysterious girl falls on top of him. This girl, named Merry Nightmare, is actually a dream demon, who's searching for a way to get back to her world. Yumeji decides to help her, and a gate to the world of dreams opens again, this time in full daylight. She appears in the daydream worlds looking for an answer to how to get back to her world. Meanwhile, an evil dream demon named Pharos Hercules is leading other dream demons to make humans into their vessels in order to raise an army, killing those that oppose him which causes humans to lose sight of their goals and ambitions. Yumeji eventually becomes Merry's partner, using his ability to scout out dream demons so Merry can hunt them.
After Hercules' downfall, Merry's quest in returning to the dream world continues. In the meantime, a mysterious boy named Kyou Shiragi transfers to Yumeji's class, where dream demons are suddenly manifesting; as a result of their losses, they cause humans to accomplish their goals instead of destroying. With dream demons seen by previous vessels, Yumeji and Merry now have to investigate this unusual phenomenon.

Characters

Protagonists

Antagonists

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Writing Club

All-Girls' School

Other characters

Anime Original

Media

Manga

The manga series by Ushiki Yoshitaka began serialization in Manga Time Kirara Forward magazine from August 10, 2008 and is still ongoing. Twenty three tankōbon volumes have been released so far, the first of which was released on October 27, 2008. It has been licensed in France and Germany with the title Merry Nightmare.

Anime

An anime television series based on the manga Yumekui Merry was announced in the September issue of Houbunsha's Manga Time Kirara Forward magazine. Produced by J.C.Staff, the anime series is directed and written by Hideki Shirane, and music composition by Keiichi Oku. The anime series aired in Japan on the Tokyo Broadcasting System between January 7, 2011 and April 8, 2011, later rebroadcast on the Mainichi Broadcasting System, Chubu-Nippon Broadcasting, RKK, and the satellite channel BS-TBS. The opening theme for the anime is "Daydream Syndrome" by Marina Fujiwara while the ending is by Ayane Sakura. Both artists belong to the Japanese musical ensemble and dōjin circle, IOSYS. The anime has been licensed in North America by Sentai Filmworks under the title Dream Eater Merry.

Episode list

Reception

In their Winter 2011 Anime Preview Guide, the majority of Anime News Network's staff of reviewers gave modest ratings for the first episode. Theron Martin states the series is straddling the line between the typical and the really weird, but figuring out what's going on should be half the fun. Hope Chapman comments that the first episode was unusual in that it was nicely paced and "goes down easy." Gia Manry compares Yumekui Merry to a poor man's Soul Eater with its definite sense of style over substance.