Sonny Boy

Thirty-six students find themselves and their school building suddenly adrift in a void-like dimension. When supernatural powers awaken in some of them, a sense of detachment begins to divide the group. Despite the student council's attempts to impose order, they clash with the students possessing special abilities, who rebel against their strict control.

This conflict leads them to discover that this world has its own set of rules—and following them is necessary for survival. After one of the students decides to take a leap of faith, the school switches dimensions once again. While they deal with the unique challenges and circumstances that each world presents, the students must unravel the mysterious phenomenon and find a way back home.

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

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Sonny Boy is based on an original story written by director Shingo Natsume who previously had his hand in directing shows such as One Punch Man and Space Dandy.

Sonny Boy's first episode debuted on Funimation's YouTube channel on June 19th but regular broadcasting began from July 16th.

Winner of the Excellence Award at the 25th Japan Media Arts Festival.

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Yusa, Kouji
Japanese

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Watanabe, Shinichirou

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Cook, Justin

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Fukushi, Yuichiro

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Matsui, Yuuko

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"Shounen Shoujo (少年少女)" by GING NANG BOYZ (銀杏BOYZ)

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Sep 30, 2021

SingleH

Recommended

The only thing I don’t understand about Sonny Boy is what other people don’t understand about Sonny Boy. The story is a reimagining of The Drifting Classroom, only now, some of the students lost in limbo have thematically relevant superpowers. People all over the anime community have given this show a reputation for being abstruse, or “2deep4u” as the saying goes, but I could not disagree more, and in fact, I actually think the show almost suffers from being too simplistic. Sonny Boy is a metaphor for entering the Japanese school and work system, and the emotional issues of these characters stem from their middle ... school graduation. It’s hard to see beyond what’s here at school; some of your friends are developing amazing talents and maybe you’re not; you have to take a leap of faith out into the real world; nothing comes for free, you have to stand up and work for it. Pretty much every episode can be boiled down to embody similarly basic coming-of-age themes, and everything interesting or innovative the show does is certainly not achieved though the depth of its writing. The very first piece of exposition at the beginning of episode one makes this crystal clear. “People who were nothing special yesterday suddenly gaining tremendous power. Of course they’ll want to test themselves to find out what they can do.” Tremendous power can symbolize adult responsibility, independence, or a salary, and testing one’s self can symbolize pushing boundaries which others may not have the confidence or maturity to: learning to drive, moving out of your parents’ house, starting a family of your own, and so on. It’s honestly really in your face. The school exists in its own pocket dimension where all your needs are met, all your resources are replenished, and all your wounds are healed, whereas the worlds they travel to outside the school hold actual risk and uncertainty. My friends…this is not subtle.

As a work of art, Sonny Boy is a modern masterpiece. It’s not flashy, but it consistently blew me away with its fluid animation and detailed artwork. As expected, this show is animated by 80% freelance talent from Shingo Natsume's friends list, and the names he continues to attract despite post-2011, post-Maruyama Madhouse being such a dilapidated ghost town never ceases to amaze me. Sonny Boy’s commitment to hand-drawn, non-digital stylization is worthy of everyone’s applause, and the work of art director, Mari Fujino, another genius to come out of Studio Pablo—such as Yuji Kaneko and Seiko Yoshioka, just to name a few—is stunningly beautiful and goes hand in hand with Natsume’s atmospheric tone. Every episode is endless wallpaper fuel, filled to the brim with cool, memorable shots, beautiful backgrounds, and excellent music which compliments the ambiance perfectly. I repeat, the messages delivered by each episode are pretty obvious and a little on the nose, but if I’m going to concede a single point to the people who are calling this show confusing, it’ll be this: what makes Sonny Boy a bit more difficult to watch than your average anime is how little is spelled out. We’re treated to so many short moments, gestures, and facial expressions which all tell a little story in and of themselves, and they exhibit character development in a nuanced manner any other show would devote five minutes to explaining with overwrought, melodramatic dialogue. But this is something I really liked about it. The show doesn't spoon-feed you, and it rewards you for paying attention and treating its characters like people. It’s not “high-IQ.” It’s just dense visual storytelling. Very few times in my life have I had the privilege to witness a series which pushes all my buttons so well and in so many ways, and even if you don’t share my exact aesthetic preferences, I promise you'll agree when I say Sonny Boy is an audiovisual masterclass.

What depth it lacks in the theme department, it more than makes up for in the character department, and not simply because they brought Hisashi Eguchi back from the grave. Natsume stated in an interview, “Sonny Boy is a simple story about a boy growing up and people drifting apart,” and the only reason he imagined it with such an abstract presentation was simply because “life can be absurd and inexplainable sometimes, and you find yourself asking ‘Why?’ a lot.” To me, this is very obvious. The tangible plot of Sonny Boy is a straightforward mystery box which just so happens to have a great deal of surreal elements, but this simplicity is a good thing, because with all the symbolism and character details you already have to keep track of, any narrative structure more complex than this would’ve been way too overbearing and—now that I mention it—probably would’ve made the series as confusing as everyone already says it is. What makes the cast so good is a combination of the expressive character animation I mentioned earlier and the fact Natsume personally wrote the script for every episode, making every character feel consistent. I was actually worried about him writing, because while Natsume is a fantastic director, I wasn’t sure how confident I was in his ability to direct AND write his own original project. While his themes weren’t as profound as he might've hoped, his character writing was first-class, and while some episodes were definitely more verbose than necessary, he still proved my worries wrong. There’s a cute, snarky cat girl whose cats work for Jeff Bezos at Nyamazon, an Indian exchange student who literally invents bitcoin, a New York Yankee’s fan who builds a religion around baseball playing monkeys, and a five thousand year old talking dog. This idiosyncratic charm defines nearly every character, and the few exceptions are still well-realized and serve as a much needed anchor.

Rereading everything I’ve written here, I suppose there’s always a chance I’m subconsciously handwaving parts of the show which are obviously lacking, or perhaps I’m similarly making excuses for what the average viewer may see as wasted potential by overselling what already stands out, but I sincerely think this is one of the most visually compelling anime to come out in years, and aesthetically speaking, I’m not sure if an anime has ever resonated with me in quite the same way. I imagine it's a simple lack of all the abhorrent digital filters, aftereffects, bloom, and other post-production alterations which are layered on top of every modern anime, but this show is just SO gorgeous. It looks like it has all the hand-painted goodness of older anime, but also the crisp visual resolution of digital anime. Its internal consistency is incredible. A lot of modern anime mix 2D and 3D together (where the 3D is usually poor quality), and then adds other effects on top of that. This is just the 2D and little else, with only two noticeable 3D models used throughout the entire show. It looks like Mamoru Hosoda's One Piece film without all the shitty CG. And I hardly did justice to Eguchi’s masterful character designs, or for that matter, the masterful music. The soundtrack for this show is just so immaculate, and it was advised by Shinichiro fucking Watanabe! It uses genres and styles you almost never hear in anime, and hardly for the sole sake of standing out or being pretentious. It just works. It sounds like seminal stage progrock, or some weird Close To The Edge stuff, and I love it. There’s a subtle yet worthwhile distinction to be made between something which is trite and something which is simply commonplace, and I think Sonny Boy has more than enough heart and soul in its creation to excuse any level of unoriginality you may perceive in its coming-of-age themes, and if you tried to call these audiovisuals anything close to lackluster, they’d scoff.

Thank you for reading.

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Sep 30, 2021

danielsalt

Recommended

Here is my very own, humble, spoiler-free take on Sonny Boy:

Sonny Boy is an anime that had a lot of promise, and quite frankly, it absolutely delivered. Likely inspired by The Drifting Classroom, Sonny Boy is the surreal story of a class of students that is sent adrift into a void-like alternate dimension. With a touch, but not much focus into its fiction, Sonny Boy explores the relationships between charismatic, captivating characters and the inner challenges they face along the length of the story.

Admittedly this anime is not for everyone, but it stands out from the bunch. Watching this anime weekly the pace already felt ...

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Sep 30, 2021

nightshadekait

Recommended

“You’re going to go adrift. It will be into a world governed by the absurd.”

Sonny Boy is dense, messy, and sometimes pretentious beyond thematic purpose. Watching Sonny Boy requires patience and thought. In one episode, the audience is expected to sit through an entire five minutes of one character just talking about monkeys and baseball, and unless you’re someone who is either decently knowledgeable in baseball strategy or who is particularly fond of long metaphorical narrations, I don’t see how that could be appealing. Throughout its seasonal run, the show constantly divided the anime community, often sparking new chances to usher in the age-old conversation ... of “this is an elitist anime” vs “you just dislike it because you don’t get it”. And though I hate to admit it, both arguments may actually be kind of right this time. Sonny boy can be difficult to enjoy because it’s hard to grasp, but every episode also made me question whether its artistic value was just a result of symbolism-hungry anime watchers digging through scraps. The show is a divisive mindfuck with a jumbled narrative. Yet still… Sonny Boy has managed to touch the hearts of those willing to stick with it. So if you think that there’s even just the slightest possibility of this anime resonating with you, I cannot recommend it enough. For beyond Sonny Boy’s many flaws, there is so much to experience.

Every episode of Sonny Boy is an unexpected moment. Almost every scene in this anime comes with it’s own unique feeling, story, themes, and focus. Like opening a book with random curiosity of what’s inside, no page is alike. Though the show begins with students suddenly getting thrown into a new dimension, it slowly breaks apart into a myriad of story pathways each with their own things to offer. One episode looks into how the students got where they are. Another episode looks at what the students plan to do next with their lives in their new dimension. There are a couple episodes that uncover the secrets of various students and their unknown pasts, giving them depth while still retaining a sense of mystery. It’s intriguing, and there’s tons of fun in trying to guess what's going to happen next. The way Sonny Boy's creativity branches out to build its story is so crucial to what makes watching the show unique that it would be counterintuitive for me to try and explain things in detail for prospective watchers. But just know that this anime has no limits. The synopsis is just the starting point. The true plot of Sonny Boy is a fluid ball of unknowns revolving solely around the fact that anything can be a metaphor and anything can be explored.

While there is no set formula to Sonny Boy’s aesthetically erratic storyline, there are set rules to the setting. Like in every good work of creative worldbuilding, there must be some semblance of reality in order to create a sense of relativity amongst the viewers. In Sonny Boy, the setting comes with rules that force the characters to act as they would in a real society. Students form groups, they argue, they converse, they share things, they hide things, they create currency, they create cults, they are forced into labor. The societies the characters interact in and the experiences these environments create are all subplots that could act as their own anime. And as a result of the believable setting, the characters within this setting feel very believable too.

Sonny Boy is a fantastic character drama. The characters are psychologically nuanced, they are flawed, they often represent something philosophical to some degree, and their deeper personalities are shown through us through atypical deconstructions over time. With over thirty students, the show definitely doesn’t give every single person screentime, but everyone that’s important to what is happening is a well-structured character with their own likable points. The show covers just the right amount of cast for its run with surprisingly touching depth. And though the character writing in this show is amazing enough on its own, it does even greater wonders for the show as a whole. The realism and subsequent attachment audience members will feel towards the characters is the solid foundation that allows the show to do all sorts of crazy things without making it feel like it’s completely lost all reason.

On to technicalities, Sonny Boy’s art is... subpar. That is if you’re looking at just the drawings themselves. If you simply paused at one scene and looked up close to see the linework and the detail, you would be disappointed. Sometimes characters in Sonny Boy just don’t have faces. The show is absurd enough that no one can tell if it’s a budgeting issue or an actual artistic decision, but there are times when things are just missing. Shoelaces don’t overlap properly, and people walk weirdly. It happens often. But what Sonny Boy’s art lacks in detail, it makes up for in framing and directing. In those aspects, Sonny Boy is truly beautiful. Like the rest of the show, the art is far from the norm. But it’s that exact slight eeriness and boundless creativity that makes the animation so fun to look at. It is, in every sense I can think of, true “art”. The positioning of characters against the background in every frame is well-thought out. Slower moments are paired with just one or two characters on the screen to emphasize the quiet atmosphere. Even the slightest character movements like stares and head turns are impactful because of the way scenes are directed and edited. The show focuses on the right things at the right times, and it knows when to back off or look close. It’s cinematic and engaging.

The music is one of the best parts of Sonny Boy. The ED is an immersive song that usually just plays over a black credit screen. It works in stark contrast to the quiet that plays in the majority of most episodes which makes it obvious and eventually, super easy to look forward to. The way the music suddenly comes in amidst the vast and empty world with empty sounds makes the ending literally and figuratively “music to one’s ears.” The background scores are wonderful and often ethereal. Highly tense and psychological moments get paired with magical sounding light eerie tunes that add to the events occurring on screen. The music stands out without being out of place and while still adding to story points and showing expert use of dynamics. Everything was simply picked out with perfection and masterfully directed into the show.

Sonny Boy is an absolute gem that does so much more than one show probably needs to do. It isn’t afraid to explore, analyze, question, and discuss all at once. Through the limitless creative freedom the show allows itself, it takes the anime medium and art in general to heights often unseen. By having flawed characters that deconstruct away from tropes, and settings that reflect society but still overflow with unhindered originality, Sonny Boy is the culmination of all the good things anime may have to offer. It's a revolutionary must-see.

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