Well Twitter didn’t implode in the end. Maybe we were all panicking too much; that’s what we as humans are pretty good at. It has gotten more than a little cold across North America though, and I’m sorry if you’re going through it yourself. I do hope that your holidays went well though, and that your Fall season went as well as you hoped. I’m going to use what I’ve learned at the end of this year and make some more educated show choices. Because while I did find some enjoyable shows, I do not want to have to think about whether I ought to drop shows all the time. I’ll talk about my dropped show at the end of this post; in the meantime, my other two shows wrapped up this week, both of which came out on Christmas Eve of all days.
Raven of the Inner Palace Episode 13
Given how Feng Xiao Yue was destroyed in last week’s episode, I wasn’t sure exactly how they were going to do a ‘final episode’. He had been portrayed as a main antagonist in a show that didn’t really have much in the way of notable antagonists. While I’m satisfied with the ending we did get, I still got this feeling that it could have been a little more impactful.
Gaojin is wounded from his fight with Feng Xiao Yue, and it seems like Shouxue is being haunted by the Owl once again; seems like she can’t escape him even in death. But a good chunk of this final episode was about who allowed him into the Inner Palace in the first place. Turned out it was Yu Yong the whole time. The old man from the Ministry of Works, and the very same guy who warned the emperor not to get too close to the Raven Consort. He had grown envious of how far Shouxue had progressed socially, when Li Niang could not. Li Niang was the previous Raven Consort, and committed herself to living the solitary life she was destined to live. His assassination attempt fails though, and instead of being executed, he is banished from the palace.
I think we got a bit of an ambiguous ending, one that leaves room for new stories to come. We’re presented with so many new things to think about that the writers likely wanted to keep for a second season, if there is ever going to be a second season. The light novels are being translated now, and there’s plenty of material for writers to work on should they decide to make a sequel. We can take Gaojin’s injuries as one big example here. His wound has since closed, but instead he has suspicious-looking bruises that look like fingernail marks or claw marks. They are clearly a result of Feng Xiao Yue’s blade, but has that left him cursed somehow? Also, what about the dream sequence right at the end, where we see a silver-haired Shouxue fly through the clouds? She says then that she will wait for the day where she will ‘be herself again’, so does this mean she wants to continue socializing or does this mean something more?
So many questions that I’m curious to know the answers for. Raven of the Inner Palace became an underrated gem for me, with the world-building, moody atmosphere and mystery. If it does get a second season, then well done. While I am interested in what the answers are to the questions we are given in this final episode, I’m undecided on whether I would pick to cover a second season or not. Shouxue’s voice actor, Saku Mizuno, has also done a good job here too. For a rookie to take on two main roles in one season is really something, as not only did she voice Shouxue here, but Ryo Yamada too…
Bocchi the Rock! Episode 13
I expected this final episode of Bocchi the Rock! to focus on their cultural festival performance, and I liked how instead of showing it from a spectator’s point-of-view, we had it through Hitori’s eyes instead. She’s able to watch Kita improve her rhythm guitar play so much. She has to improvise when a string on her guitar breaks by picking up a bottle on stage. And she makes the show memorable to everyone, by randomly stage-diving. There was one distinct moment where the only thing we get to hear is Hitori breathing in and out; this really set the mood of how she is really feeling onstage, scared and excited at the same time.
Bocchi the Rock! ended on a very happy note. The four of them are happy with how the gig went, but the show doesn’t immediately end there; instead they go back to their usual routine of school, working at Starry!, and practice. Hitori has to go and get a new guitar though, as her current one ended up getting damaged. Unbeknownst to her though, her guitarhero Youtube channel was a family one, and the dad ended up monetizing it, meaning she is now 300,000 yen (about $2,200) richer. Her buying a new guitar is a step in a new direction, that she is able to take the initiative and make her own musical career decisions, instead of just using Dad’s old guitar. I saw it as a very subtle way of Hitori progressing from shy rookie to a guitarist committed to their work.
Also, Kita took the next step and stopped using ‘Gotoh-san’ now. We may not have had a full-on confession with white lilies blossoming in the background, but you can see a real connection now, and it isn’t just because they are classmates and are in the same band. Her stepping in to support Hitori on stage when she finds out a string snapped on her guitar was cool to see. This showed us that Hitori has more support in the band than she thought.
Like in Raven of the Inner Palace, we are left with an ambiguous ending. The manga is still ongoing, and considering how well-received this show was, I’m sure Cloverworks are already thinking whether a second season would be worth it. I for would definitely welcome one.
I really am going to miss this show so much. So many things were done well here and made the show what it is: art direction, experimental animation, character design, portrayal of Hitori and her social anxiety (both comedic and serious), and the original music. These are all songs that viewers are going to remember well, and may likely get Western viewers into the Japanese indie rock scene, which has been going strong for a long time. Both K-on! and this gave us cute girls making a cute band and making cute music, but Kessoku Band felt more authentic somehow, perhaps because of the levels of support they are getting (school, Starry!, other bands, etc.). K-on! will remain to be a landmark show for Kyoto Animation, and I’m glad that Cloverworks didn’t go on that same direction whilst at the same time giving us the ‘cute girls doing cute things’ we were expecting.
Odd Taxi Episode 13
For episode 13 of Odd Taxi, it wasn’t so much the car chase that was the ender of the show, but Odokawa’s illness revelation. Visual agnosia, a rare neurological condition that disrupts how the person recognizes what they see. We get little flashbacks of a young Odokawa, neglected by his mother and adulterer father, and bullied by classmates and teachers. When he rescued from the murder-suicide of his mother, the visual agnosia he develops makes him see people (and himself) as the animals he loved to see in the zoo and his big encyclopedia. It’s a fascinating twist that I’m sure a lot of viewers didn’t entirely see coming. It certainly would have been cool to have the whole universe in the show populated by anthropomorphic animals.
All of this almost makes us forget about the car chase itself, with the Yakuza chasing Odokawa in a stolen police car and forcing him off an unfinished bridge while lottery money flies out of the taxi car’s trunk. It was very interesting how the other characters we meet along the way are able to watch this flying car just as how they contemplate their own lives. The comedy duo who are undecided whether they want to carry on or not. The internet celebrity who has had to come clean about his crusade to hunt down Dobu. The vengeful gacha addict attempting suicide. Members of Mystery Kiss wondering if they should turn themselves in for disposing of Yuki Mitsuya’s body. It’s all very poetic, and that along with the visual agnosia revelation wraps a bow on many of the questions that have been left unanswered, some of which I had entirely forgotten about…like who was really hidden in Odokawa’s apartment, or who Mitsuya’s killer really was. Both of those are revealed at the end, and both of them I didn’t see coming at all.
When this came out last year, a lot of people put Odd Taxi on their top 5 lists, but even though there was so much to enjoy here, I’m not entirely sure whether I myself would have. It tells a cold noir story that satirizes contemporary Japanese culture. Associating an idol group with anthropomorphic animals is one thing, but the Yakuza is something else. I think the clash between the show’s aesthetic and hard-hitting story is what has made this show stand out to viewers in particular. Odd Taxi came out in a season where a lot of other shows were more noticeable (My Hero Academia season 5, Tokyo Revengers, Don’t Toy With Me, Nagatoro-san!), and so the fact that a show like this which was relatively unheard of until then became as well-received as it was is really something.
Fall Season Review
As the final season of what has been a very weird anime year for me, I choose to look forward, to what 2023 will bring me. Not just the Winter season, but beyond that. The three shows I did pick this season ended up giving me different levels of enjoyment. I’ll get to my most-liked ones in a moment, but I would like to wrap up my thoughts on The Eminence in Shadow, the show I ended up dropping.
My frustration in the show may appear like it is directed towards main protagonist Cid for being the abominable douchebag that he was, but looking back now I think it was more than that. I liked the idea of isekai being satirized. It has been a genre that has appeared in many shows in many seasons for many years now, and it really feels like it’s going nowhere now. Show stories all seem to merge into one; main protagonist is hit by Truck-kun and is transported to a fantasy world where they become master of the universe. Often is the case that these MCs use the second chance they have been given to live better and happier lives – lives they have always wanted to have.
In The Eminence in Shadow, Cid has wanted his chuunibyou life to be real, and in the world he is sent to, he gets just that. Perhaps the combination of self-awareness and already-existing misanthropy is what made him such an unpleasant person after all. I found myself invested far more in the secondary characters and the new world instead, and he just became more of an eyesore to me than anything – something that a main character is not meant to be. I’m not going to sit here and tell you to avoid the show though; I’m sure a lot of people have loved the heck out of this show. I think it’s just tragic that in the end, it was unable to hit me the way I had hoped it would. And so instead I turned to my two other shows, both of which delivered in their own ways.
I admit that, when I was ploughing through the Fall season schedule deciding on what to cover for Otaku Theater, I was struggling a bit. I knew that I didn’t want to cover Chainsaw Man (for several reasons), and a lot of the slice-of-life shows in the schedule just did not grab me. And then I saw Raven of the Inner Palace and somehow something clicked. Supernatural mystery set in ancient China is something I would have never normally picked before, but curiosity really got to me here, and I’m glad that curiosity worked out in the end.
True enough, we had to watch that flower animation scene used several times in each episode (watch it and you’ll know exactly what I mean), but the characters were all fascinating and compelling on screen. Watching Shouxue’s struggle was equally compelling, as there was so much intrigue about her. Being a part of the cursed Luan Dynasty, being raised to be a solitary consort not answering to the Emperor, having a raven spirit inside her. While I still think that the writers were kind of hoping viewers were aware of what goes on in the light novels, the plots and subplots were still fun to watch. And by the way the show ended, I think the writers want to push for another season too; whether they will actually get it or not is something else. I enjoyed the time I had here, but do I want to return to it? Probably not.
That’s a different story when it came to Bocchi the Rock! though, which just got stronger and stronger by each episode. While this was being promoted, not a lot of information came out about what the show was exactly going to be about. Cute girls forming a cute band? Sure, but what else could there be? Each of the girls in Kessoku Band were able to shine with their own separate character designs, but it was Hitori that was the glue. I think that while a lot of visual jokes were made about her social anxiety, I thought it was good that the show took time every now and then to present her condition as the serious thing that it is. While we’d get to see her crawling into trashcans proclaiming that is where she belongs, we’d also get more contemplative moments where she asks the others why they would bother entertaining someone as insignificant as her.
I’ll have a lot more to say about the show in a future post though as, no doubt you have already guessed, it has made my top 5 of the year. Like I said earlier, I’m choosing to look to the future now. A new year, a new start. Don’t a lot of us say that though? The Winter season starts in a couple of weeks now, and while we get a lot of sequel seasons (as per usual), a lot of other shows have made viewers curious. So what has made you curious for the Winter?