Flower and Asura – Episode 09

Episode Synopsis:

Kichijouji arranges for a joint training camp with several schools including Lilac from Kyoto. Lilac allegedly has several talented Broadcast Club members and the goal is for the Sumomogaoka team to meet and learn from the competition. Hina meets several new friends, one of which is Misaki. Misaki reveals she’s been in a slump during her high school tenure in Recitation. When Hana inadvertently invites both An and Misaka to lunch, an emotional collision occurs between the two estranged friends.

Review:

Man, outside of Episode 01, I get all the real An heavy episodes, don’t I?

First things first, it’s time to meet some new people. There’s Pokoko Botanboko, Xiangling and Misaki Kumori.

In this episode, to reinforce what I pieced together myself, we get more concrete rules about Recitation and how it’s judged. One really important piece that I’m glad the show took the time to reiterate is that Recitation is not acting. Hana attempts to add distinct voices for the characters in the passage they are given and is immediately stopped. This isn’t the same as her reading for a group of children, so she’ll need to learn the technical angle of things to expand on her craft. I really felt this because as an amatuer artist, I’ve always tried to draw my own way and learn in a hackneyed fashion. As I’ve begun to take formal classes, I realize that there is a technical method to being a better draftswoman and I’ll need to embrace that to move beyond being a middling hobbyist.

The workshop sequence inspired me to look into the passage on display (Kenji Miyazawa’s Gauche the Cellist, in case you were curious). This was one of those works where I desperately wished I had a better grasp of the Japanese language. Even though I’m sure native Japanese audiences don’t need it, I wish we as foreign viewers had some context of the emotion behind the scene being read from Gauche. With most of the other pieces of literature we’ve used previously it was easy enough to ascertain the emotion on hand. This one though was totally obscure to me and the chosen visuals made it even more curious. Are the animals Guache speaks to angels in disguise?

The only new cast member that holds weight (and because I refuse to recognize Pokoko Botanboko as even a FICTIONAL name) is Misaki. It doesn’t take a genius to figure out even before the emotional collision that she is An’s estranged friend from middle school who beat her for a spot at Nationals at that time. Misaki believes her skills in recitation came from having An push her to be her best. At first, she thinks that on her own she cannot muster the motivation to improve.

Misaki’s eagerness to belong in An’s life is painful to watch. She’s overeager like a puppy desperate for attention. Her endless praise of An belies a deep sense of insecurity you can feel palpably churning in her. I give credit to the writers for managing to inject emotion into sequences without having everyone explicitly state things.

I gave a pass to Episode 05 when An and Hana became friends by the end. Here in Episode 09, I will chastise the speed of resolution between An and Misaki. Misaki says something powerful to An in her frustration at her abandonment. This feels like something An should have needed to chew on for a bit and eventually come to an understanding of why her actions were hurtful. In her quest to improve and be the best, she leaves people high and dry in her wake. The final moments prove Misaki has it in her to improve on her own merit, but it would have been so much more impactful for An to realize how she hurts others, and for Misaki to eventually find a reason to love (or leave) Broadcast Club on her own. There’s a major missed opportunity here. Perhaps we’ll deal with this more in the future.

As a final note, I think this show is beautiful to look at and listen to and I want to praise one moment in particular. When Misaki finds her voice, she conjures the image of a bamboo forest. The lighting is a vague shade of greenish blue, which is true to the Bamboo Grove in Arashiyama. When my husband and I went, I was stunned at the way the light filtered through the tall bamboo and gave everything a blue-green color. It was utterly magical and highly recommended if you can make it there.

Summary:

There’s more concrete rules around recitation which is great since we are careening towards the tournament. I wasn’t thrilled with the handling of the An/Misaki collision. The conflict was given weight in previous episodes and it didn’t feel worth it when their feelings were resolved in the span of 5 mins. Hopefully we see more of An having to reconcile with the cost of being the best if the series continues into more seasons. Minus a little hiccup, I’m looking forward to the tournament now.

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