HOLY ANIMATION, BATMAN!
What They Say:
Osamu Mikumo is a member of Border, an organization designed to protect Mikado City from alien invaders knows as Neighbors. One day a mysterious new student named Yuma Kuga transfers to his school and turns out to be a humanoid neighbor himself. The two are supposed to be natural enemies, but could there be more to neighbors than Osamu has bargained for…
The Review:
Content(warning as portions of this review may contain spoilers):
World Trigger’s anime adaption has suffered pretty badly over the passing weeks and mostly in part to Toei’s ineptness. Whether it was the music placement being bad, the pacing horrendous or the lack of budget notably showing there always seemed to be something that managed to take away from things each week. However after all of these errors, this week actually delivers on a pretty solid episode and while it may be too late to save the adaption from commercial failure, it’s something that’s greatly appreciated and shows that Toei can actually make this work when they try.
Things continue from where they left off last week with Osamu explaining Chika’s situation to Yuma. It offers some pretty interesting material as it provides some info on Osamu’s reasons for joining Border. Yuma figures that Osamu joined to protect Chika and while Osamu admits that’s part of it he also suggests that there was much more to it than that and that his sense of justice played a part in it. The exchange also provides for a bit more world building as Yuma explains that Neighbors are generally attacking the planet in order to obtain Trion from it’s citizens and the higher someone’s Trion potential, the more likely they are to be targeted. Osamu’s is of course extremely low as was established previously but Chika’s is abnormally high and the reason she’s managed to evade capture is due to her Side Effect allowing her to detect Neighbors. Thankfully unlike the boardroom scene from a couple of weeks ago, even though most of this material is just conversation it’s much better paced. While it doesn’t move as swiftly as it probably could, it doesn’t feel as much like it’s intentionally trying to stretch things either and allows for it all to properly sink in.
The real highlight of the episode though, comes when Miwa from one of the previous episodes and another Border agent intrude on their conversation after detecting the use of an abnormal Trigger. They initially assume Chika is the Neighbor in league with Osamu but Yuma doesn’t hesitate to reveal his real identity and a battle breaks out. Even some of the decent looking action animation in previous episodes of the show cut cut some pretty clear corners here and there but most of the animation here actually looks pretty good and feels like it’s finally delivering on the potential of it’s source material. As for the content of the fight itself, Osamu feels that as skilled as Yuma’s proven himself to be, even he might not be able to handle two elite Border agents at once, but Jin assures him that it’s the other way around and that they don’t know what their dealing with. Exactly which assessment is right will have to wait for the next episode though as things end on a bit of a cliffhanger.
In Summary:
After several episodes of medocrity, World Trigger’s anime adaption is finally delivers on an episode that makes the source material shine instead of fade. The music placement works, the pacing is decent and the fight scene actually looks…animated. If the series can continue to have more episodes like this, then it might prove itself to be proper adaption after all so hopefully this wasn’t just a one time fluke.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll, Hulu