The series is set on the continent of Verbist. At the beginning of Episode One, we learn that Arthur Gaz of the Gaz Empire has fallen, and his daughter Chaika is seen as a tool whose purpose is to set a fate surpassing the imagination of man in motion.

Next, we see a young man named Toru Acura trying to find something to eat. When a nearby bush rustles, he thinks it’s a rabbit. However, Chaika pops out of it, wearing a coffin on her back. When Toru tries to get answers out of Chaika, she only answers in phrases that generally are one to three words in length. Their conversation is interrupted by the arrival of a unicorn.

They flee, and end up jumping off of a cliff and landing in water. When they reach the shore, Chaika notices that Toru is bleeding and tries to tend to his wound. Unfortunately, she’s out of first aid supplies. When Toru believes that he’s done for, Chaika takes a magic weapon out of the coffin. Toru recognizes what it is and realizes that she’s a wizard. Toru also realizes he needs to buy time for Chaika to be able to use her magic, so he says an incantation and starts going after the unicorn. Between the two of them, they are able to defeat it.

Chaika treats Toru to breakfast after he leads her to the nearby town, and they are interrupted by Toru’s younger sister, Akari. She attacks Toru because he forgot about the fact that she was waiting for the edible plants that Toru was supposed to get for breakfast. When Chaika learns that they’re both out of work saboteurs, she hires them to help her retrieve something important from the manor of Count Abarth.

Meanwhile, Count Abarth is paid a visit by Alberic Gillette, who asks for Abarth to give him the article that he acquired in the Battle for the Imperial Capital of the Gaz Empire. Abarth becomes angry and sends Alberic and his attendants away. We later learn that Alberic and his group have been following Chaika.

At the end of the episode, Chaika, Toru, and Akari go to Count Abarth’s manor to steal the article, but are caught by Count Abarth.

Overall, this wasn’t too bad for the first episode of a series, since the job of this episode is to establish the characters, the world they inhabit, and the story that they’re taking part in. I have to admit that I was a little confused when Alberic visited Count Abarth, because I had no idea how it fit in with the story. However, we learn rather quickly that Chaika is after the article in Count Abarth’s manor, and everything clicked together for me.

Chaika’s way of speaking got a little grating after a while. I hope over the course of the series that she’ll spend enough time around other people to start learning how to say more than one, two, or three word phrases. I also have to admit that when I saw that Chaika carries a coffin around on her back, I couldn’t help but think about Shoulder-a-Coffin Kuro, since the main character of that series also carries a coffin around on her back.

Even with my complaint about Chaika’s dialogue, what I saw in this episode made me interested enough to want to watch the next episode of Chaika – The Coffin Princess in order to find out what happens next.

Additional posts about Chaika – The Coffin Princess:

Advertisement