The show must go on in any form that it can in pursuit of the Scarlet Angel.
What They Say:
Her father passed away very early and her mother lives and works in a crowded Chinese restaurant. Kitajima Maya, a 13-year old girl, has to carry the burden of making ends meet. However….
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After getting the first half of Glass Mask on DVD from Sentai Filmworks, it didn’t sell well enough to justify the second half being released. That’s been a sore point for the few fans that bought this series, but thankfully the show is still available on Crunchyroll for streaming. I had delved into the unreleased episodes a bit after realizing the DVD wasn’t going to come, but with the way the simulcast seasons kept growing, there was just no way to get back to it. But in the midst of a minor lull over the weekend recently, I powered through the second half and just devoured the journey that Maya and Ayumi are on in their quest for the Scarlet Angel.
The first half of the series really put young Maya through the wringer as she was saved, brought into the realm of acting and introduced to the many masks one can wear. She has such an incredible, natural talent to take on a role that it’s something that you can be hard pressed to call acting because of how she becomes subsumed by this new personality that she takes on. One of the reasons she does this beyond the absolute love and passions he has for it is that her “real” life is just such an absolute mess in a way that it’s an escape for her. She has the huge goals and the talent to achieve them, but she’s being thwarted constantly on every side. And a lot of these challenges are done by those that care for her in order to really bring out more of what she’s capable of.
The second half has Maya dealing with the way life has really pushed her hard yet she continues to try and do her best, to find venues to play in and expand her roles. With her refusal to work for Daito Entertainment and more specifically for Hayami, she’s ended up with various other outfits and they have low budgets, different kinds of talents and a certain rawness to them that she can draw from and grow from. It’s exciting to watch her shift from the polished things she was doing under Tsukikage to now almost being a street performer, dealing with outdoor venues and new kinds of challenges that has her bringing to life troupes that never thought they could attract crowds like she’s able to. Unfortunately, each time she seemingly helps to bring a new troupe to relevance, they get signed on somewhere and she’s pushed out of it through Hayami’s influence.
The series runs through some very fun moments here, but what dominates the second half of the series is when she gets challenged by Tsukikage to win a particular award within the next two years or forfeit her shot at the Scarlet Angel to prove her worthiness. Ayumi is given the chance based on the work she did in a play the two shared together early on here, The Two Princesses, but this new challenge really forces Maya to find something that will let her excel. What she lands in is a play called The Forgotten Wilderness in which she has to play a girl named Jane who spent years being raised by wolves. It’s a fantastic evolution overall as she tries to grapple with it and seeing her efforts pay off is hugely worthwhile. What makes it even more exciting though is that as it does hit and becomes a hit, the director changes the style of the play every few days making it a completely new experience for all involved.
The downside to this half is the last run of episodes which brings us to the Scarlet Angel itself. While Maya has had a lot of losses along the way, you know she’s going to make it to the final competition between Ayumi at least. There is a lot to like with it, but it also feels anti-climactic because the whole play has been built up so much throughout the series that it can be only so much. Tsukikage has a heck of a lot of things for them to do in order to get closer to the part that they aspire to, and it’s designed to show their individual talents but also to bring to a head the way they’ve been competing with each other. Ayumi’s issues with Maya and the way things are so instinctual and seemingly effortless come out and Maya is completely shocked by it since she’s always looked up to Ayumi and has long felt inferior. The resolution isn’t huge, but it’s good to see them actually work through things and to see that Ayumi has a really, really dark side to her that’s even shocking to her.
The Scarlet Angel arc of the series does have some big things going for it though beyond that as even the visuals are engaging. The mystery of the story is explored well and it all makes sense as to the naming and what it’s really all about. That comes out in a small fashion at first but it also gets very well explored by finally seeing Tsukikage’s past dealt with over the course of an episode. Seeing some of the similarities to Maya’s story is a warming element and it’s something that makes sense as to why Tsukikage took such notice of her in general. This also expands into Hayami’s father, Eisuke, as it’s shown why he became such a big admirer and how his interactions soured so many things over the years for Tsukikage and bled into the recent years as well. A lot of things aren’t exactly wrapped up but there are points of closure that are used to deal with some of these things.
The most fun I had with this half of the series overall though is how it dealt with what Maya and Hayami went through. His playing the game of pushing her to greatness by being cruel outwardly definitely keeps a distance between them, which is hard because he does have an interest in her to be sure but knows there are so many barriers. And his interest in seeing her become great is a huge factor for him. But he makes up for it by encouraging her as well with the purple roses, which is used a lot as she’s pushed further and further to the outside and needs some sort of connection to what she can do. Hayami’s struggles with this is nicely done, especially as we do see more of his past explored as well and come to a greater understanding of his hangups and why he acts as he does. You really do root for these two to get together, but like Maya’s journey to the Scarlet Angel, there are so many hurdles that it can alter things heavily along the way. I really enjoyed the way their story unfolded.
In Summary:
Glass Mask is a series that when I first saw it on DVD for the first half, I fell in love with it because it was just pure, unadulterated fun. It has its tragedy and pain and just about everything else associated with the theater and being an actress, but it also has such a heart to it and a sense of wonder that you can navigate those murky waters with ease because of it. The second half of the series works through a whole lot of material, both for the characters and the number of plays, alterations and challenges they face to get made, but it never loses sight of the characters themselves. Maya continues to be the strong lead and it shifts up who all is involved at any given time. With more context to the past given and some very good sense of closure for many story lines, the payoff here is strong overall, even if the Scarlet Angel itself is a bit anticlimactic after all the buildup.
Grade: A
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
I just finished watching this, and i loved it. 51 episodes in three days. But WTF was that 51st episode all about? It had a End of Evangelion feel about it. Almost like everyone was high on LSD. In fact, Hayami has an alucination where he and maya end up naked, floating in a cosmic watchamacallit, and tsukikage ends up dissapearing after some esoteric monologue.