What They Say:
Kira wants to shine on stage and make the audience happy…or so his mother says. He’s never had a chance to decide what he wants for himself. But when his part gets cut to just a few lines, Kira has to take a good look at what compels him to act.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Shonen Hollywood had a decent episode last time around as it explored the character of Mii and his relation to the theater group and its history, including the previous members that he had interacted with and had his life changed by. Focusing on the characters in that form of course is standard practicing, we got a bit with Kakeru in the first couple of episodes, but it also kind of slows things down a bit by making it a character of the weekend kind of thing for a bit. Problematic as it is, it does help to get us to connect with the characters in a simple way as the focus is all in on them and it’s easier to just process it. This time around, it’s largely about Kira.
With Kira’s focus, we get a familiar story when it comes to a lot of kids, but seemingly more so when it comes to Japanese kids. Kira is pretty good at what he does, though he’s learning and growing like the rest of the boys as they practice and go through rehearsals and more, but he’s in that position where he’s not completely sure it’s what he wants to do. He’s in it and does it well, but there’s that feeling that he has that the reason he’s doing all of this is because of his mother who wanted him to do it. Even if he does do it well, he has to question as to whether he really wants to do it because it’s his choice or because she got him into it and pushed him further along with it. Finding what you’re good at is hard enough, finding that it may not be what you want to do is all the more difficult.
All of this in his head is making his time in the troupe more problematic as he can’t tell if he really wants to be there and ends up lashing out a bit with it. While Mii’s story was vey much focused directly on him, Kira’s is a bit roundabout in a way and we get a lot of smaller moments with other members of the troupe that helps to establish the way they’re all dealing with things being off. What gets done in the end though is a look back at Shonen Tokyo’s work to find something to do to try and nudge them all in the right direction, to inspire and motivate them, and to get through to Kira as well. While things do go in a fairly expected direction, it really doesn’t do it in a convincing way and you don’t come away truly feeling like you know Kira any better. Especially after how we felt like you could connect with Mii after his episode.
In Summary:
While I don’t mind character focus episodes early on because they are fairly standard things, when they come across as meandering and kind of meaningless as this one does in some ways, it becomes a drag more than anything else. There are some minor decent moments and I like the connective side to what the theater used to do, but I’m still feeling more on the outside with the show having not read the novel and it seeming like you need to know things from that in order to really pull this together. It has some decent ideas, but it’s not coming across as a show with any real progress and, in some ways, even a goal.
Grade: C+
Streamed By: FUNimation
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
