Rolling Review – Irozuku (02)

Episode Synopsis:

Hitomi gives a non-threatening impression of herself to Aoi, who returns the azurite. Her great-grandparents proceed to enter her into the local high school, where she has to deal with the reputation Kohaku has earned for being a magic-user in addition to the rumor that she is going out with Aoi. In an attempt to dispel both of these preconceptions of herself (well, at least one them, intentionally), she musters the current extent of her powers for a small display of light, which is easily out-classed by some consumer-grade magic dust. Apparently satisfied, everyone seems to return to their normal routines.

Hitomi proceeds to be adopted by the photography club that she met in the previous episode, but breaks with them after school to hunt for Aoi and his drawing. When he offers words of encouragement after letting her see the drawing again, her feelings towards magic begin to change…

Review:

As a low-fantasy show that seems to be taking its time moving through the plot, I am definitely enjoying Irodzuku (compromise!) ( づ is weird) so far. It doesn’t feel like a whole lot happens in this episode, but most of it is setup for what will probably be the new normal (Hitomi at school in her grandmother’s shadow), and some of it near the end is spent drawing out some significant scenes, to my enjoyment. I’m a sucker for slow, atmospheric stuff, and the audio over these (music in one, simple sound effects in another) is icing on the cake. The colors reflected in Hitomi’s eyes during the picture scene were so subtle that, to my shame, I only caught them on the second viewing.

The vibe here is definitely more reminiscent of Nagi no Asukara than any of the other shows Dan mentioned in P.A. Works’ stable, which is predictable, since Shinohara Toshiya is the director for both. Hopefully the smaller episode count will keep this story from going in too many directions. The studio is rocking those backgrounds, though, as well as brief close-ups of the environment, though I confess to not knowing exactly what we were looking at in this one:

As far as eyes go, I’m more concerned with consistency on the tertiary characters than I am with proportions on the main cast,

but I’m also a fan of Hidamari Sketch, and when I went to google a picture of that show for reference, the first thing that came up on my browser’s auto-complete was “hidamari sketch wide”, so…

Another insight into Brendan, prompted by Hitomi commenting on the school’s chalkboards, is that I once made a condescending remark in a similar vein while being given a tour of my new high school when I moved to a small town from a large city (where I attended a school full of dry-erase whiteboards). That was in the year two thousand and one, about when the students of this school were born (for reference, Nagasaki currently has about a third the population Las Vegas had back then). Man, I’m old.

Summary:

Not sure why eyes on mooks is still such a widespread issue in anime in this era of digital animation, but I’m looking forward to more time drama.

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