遠山の目付

第０１話　「願い石」　“Wishing Stone”

Releases
[l33t-raws] – 640×480/24fps, dx50, 192kbps-mp3
[Lunar] – 640×480/24fps, xvid, 128kbps-mp3

Comments
The title of this anime 「あさっての方向」 translates roughly to “The way to the day after tomorrow”. If that sounds like a mystical title, well, this show does have that element to it. I originally started watching this show because the little girl looked adorable, and she wasn’t particularly annoying in the way that most anime gaki tend to be. Unfortunately, she’s only a ‘little’ girl until the end of the first episode, so I guess I’d better have other reasons for watching.

The anime is a drama/slice-of-life show about a little girl named Iokawa Karada, who wishes to grow up faster – and gets her wish. A woman from her brother’s past, Nogami Shouko, gets caught in the effects and turns into a little girl, effectively switching places with Karada. Some people will immediately think Freaky Friday, but thankfully it’s not nearly so simple. The switch doesn’t actually happen until the end of the episode though, so I’m actually getting ahead of myself. Obviously, we need some time to acquaint ourselves with the setting and characters before the plot goes about messing them up.

Karada lives with her (much) older brother Iokawa Hiro, who Karada feels has sacrificed too much in order to take care of her. As a result, Karada tries to be dependable and responsible, and desires more than anything to become an adult so her brother can be free to live his own life. She didn’t strike me as being childish, despite obviously looking and souding like a child, and I liked the contrast between how she interacted with her brother and with other people. It can be difficult to correctly portray a child trying to be mature without making it seem comical or exaggerated, and I think this show pulled it off rather well. The question now, however, is whether they’ll have the same success portraying a woman with the mind of a child.

I am not quite as happy with Shouko, who seemed more childish than Karada most of the time. Throughout the episode she had all the emotional stability of a woman who has spent four years waiting for a man that never came back – which is to say, none at all. This episode does possess the emotional complexity one would expect in a good drama, and most of it revolves first around Shouko and Hiro, then Shouko and Karada. From the moment they meet in the first scene of the episode, you can tell that something isn’t quite right. The glances, the dialogue when they’re talking over Karada’s head, and the way Shouko acts in general just conveys a general sense of tension. By the end of the episode Shouko is pathetic enough to be jealous of a girl young enough to be her daughter. She’s not a particularly likeable character, and I wonder whether that will change once she’s transformed by Karada’s wish. Maybe the chibi factor will offset some of her personality flaws, although it’s more likely that it will just make me want to stab her repeatedly.

We’re introduced to two other characters in this episode, the Amino siblings Touko and Tetsuya, who are basically a gender reversal of the Iokawa siblings. Touko is the typical mature, experienced older sister, and Tetsuya the typical anime gaki. An interesting twist here is that Tetsuya actually looks quite a lot older than he is. This creates a loophole that allows him to be in love with Karada without technically being a pedophile, while still giving off pedo vibes because of the massive difference in visual age. Clever. This is probably my least favorite aspect of the anime, but due to Karada’s transformation, I won’t have to put up with it after this episode. Well, unless Tetsuya switches to going after chibi-Shouko, but I doubt that will happen – there’s simply too much drama to exploit in the relationship now that Karada is suddenly much older than Tetsuya. Touko is unremarkable but likeable. I typically enjoy watching her kind of character, and she’s emotionally simple, so unless she pulls a Shouko she’ll be just fine.

The atmosphere of the anime is quite relaxed. The art consists mostly of faded watercolors, although the style varies between sharply detailed foregrounds to color-blotted pencil sketches. I normally don’t approve of such large variations in quality, especially within the same episode, but it was fine here. The music is an excellent fit, which is interesting considering there isn’t that much of it. The only BGM for many of the scenes is nothing more than the chirping of insects, which did more for the atmosphere than any kind of music could have. While the production values appear far below Kanon or Negima, I’d say that they fit the minimalist feel of this anime quite nicely.

I feel like I’ve gone through several paragraphs without actually saying anything, but that doesn’t surprise me. This anime is something to just sit back and relax with. There’s no humor or action to comment on, the plot barely moves, and aside from Karada and Shouko the characters aren’t particularly interesting. That’s not to say that this is a bad anime, just that it’s not engaging and clearly isn’t meant to be. But, we’ll see where the show goes in episode two.