Andou and Tomoyo celebrate a victory as an onlooker questions their relationship.
What they Say:
Episode 5 – “Sensitive Age.” A group of five boys and girls suddenly acquire supernatural powers. Ready to fight in galactic battles to defend human cause… they are struck by the realization that there are no wars, no conspiracies, no evils empires, no nothing in their high school life. They instead decide to idly have fun by wasting their powers away.
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers).
In yet another display of his ultimate Chuuni tendencies, Andou brings a guitar (one for which he’s provided a name as if it were an ultimate weapon) to school. His “Infinity Maria” serves as a brief distraction for the club. Chifuyu uses her power to conjure its twin, and a misunderstanding leads Andou to snap both of them in half in an effort to win a bet. After yet another silly meeting is over, Andou, guitar case in hand, realizes he left his school books back in the club room. It’s then that he gets a glimpse of Tomoyo’s huge secret, one which hits pretty close to home. Rather than tease her, though, Andou encourages Tomoyo to have fun with what she’s doing.
Tomoyo gets some positive news at a later date, and Andou offers the congratulatory gesture of treating her to something sweet. Is this a date? Or is it just an outing between friends? Tomoyo struggles with deciding how to frame her relationship with Andou as the two go out for cake and spend the day perusing their favorite bookstores. Tomoyo almosts asks Andou out for a follow-up date before losing her nerve. As the two walk through town, a certain observer suspects there might be something going on between the two, and she isn’t happy about it.
It takes more than one sprung leak to sink a ship. Likewise, one dud of an episode isn’t generally enough to ruin an otherwise decent anime series, and thankfully that seems to be the case here. Whereas the last episode began to struggle beneath the weight of its ill-advised and terribly unfunny lolicon jokes, this episode serves to continue what the series has done best thus far – join together mildly silly antics with some surprisingly pointed observations about being a nerdy teen.
Though it’s still a little bit disappointing to me that the titular powers haven’t really been put to much use (either in a narrative sense or just functionally), the discussions between the characters of how their abilities have affected (or in most cases, not affected) their lives still provide a lot of food for thought that’s pleasantly out of character for this type of series. This episode provided plenty of chuckles as Tomoyo began to really wrestle with her emotions, but the real appeal for me grew from the conversation she shared with Andou, during which they discussed the relationship of their powers to their real, everyday lives. Or, more accurately, how having cool powers really isn’t related to real life. Magical powers won’t repair a broken familial relationship, nor will it augment the talents that one actually might want to develop. Tomoyo can stop time at will, but all she really wants to do is to have fun writing stories and that takes work and dedication.
On the other side of the coin, sometimes having a cool power is perfect in and of itself. Andou’s lukewarm “Dark and Dark” flame isn’t functional but for the fact that it really does look cool and Andou enjoys brandishing it. Perhaps this is a message to those of us in the audience who continue to clamor for some more meaningful plot or more action in this show about secret powers – maybe there really is no deeper meaning to the abilities of the Literature Club beyond how cool they look, and what’s more important are the mundane lives of the users and the people who they’re slowly developing into as they change and grow and interact.
The one really bothersome aspect of this episode, though (and the reason why I didn’t feel like I could score it any higher), is that it seems to be setting up an interpersonal conflict between Tomoyo and Hatoko. This isn’t terrible by itself, but having the two characters butt heads over the main character, which is the direction this situation seems to be heading, is really a step back for a show that has often defied expectations and been more perceptive that it might seem to be on the surface. Things could certainly unfold in a better way than I’m imagining, but as the series is kind of an odd blend of old tropes and refreshing re-imaginings of them, I feel justified in being cautious and a little annoyed – this catty kind of conflict is honestly pretty sexist.
In Summary:
I’m still torn over whether I should hold out hope for something “bigger” than a show about the interactions of some high school kids, or whether the way in which this series tackles those interactions is good enough to keep the series interesting. I continue to find myself pleasantly surprised by the series’ ability to do right by its characters when it’s really needed, especially after a week during which this didn’t seem to be the case. I would honestly be pretty happy if the series were focused on Tomoyo and Andou alone as the other characters really haven’t added a whole lot even in episodes that ostensibly focus on them. I just don’t know whether toying with the idea that the characters’ magic powers might be more central has messed with my expectations to the point that the end product will never be satisfying even if it manages to accomplish a lot of the more emotional goals it seems as though it’s setting out to accomplish.
Episode Grade: B
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment: Acer P235H 1080p LCD Monitor connected via DVI input, Logitech S220 2.1 Speakers, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560
“this catty kind of conflict is honestly pretty sexist.”
No, it’s definitely that comment itself that is far more sexist.
When are people going to realize that most of their attempts to be anti-sexism are themselves sexism? That seeing things in terms of gender that were not explicitly framed in terms of gender is the very essence of what sexism is?