I've never before seen an anime with such illogical dialogue and interactions before. You got 3 children trapped in a world for what appears to be an incredibly long time, at least a century or more. When they finally see their mother, she treats it as if maybe it's been a week at most, and none of them seem to harbor any visible animosity toward their mother and father whatsoever. You would think two drawings made for the sole purpose of soothing the actual human sibling would come to detest that fate at some point in their century captivity? I figured maybe its because they are drawings, they have no emotions..but that's clearly wrong, Yase definitely exhibits emotion. Myoue especially, no visible animosity of being brought back to life in order to be trapped in a fake world for so long, he still wishes to kill himself, so he clearly hasn't come to terms with it and the story ends with daughter Koto having lots of backstory resolve and characterization resolves, and we have Myoue at the end going "Maybe I'll still kill myself, maybe I won't, you'll never know until it happens!"
Then you have mother Koto showing up, but she clearly doesn't seem to have any sense of longing for her children, a hey what's up moment and then I gotta leave, and that still wasn't explained despite Komaru hinting at something bigger.
Then theres the 4th child, who this animation seems to beat around the bush as to whether shes their only biological child or if she too was adopted, teasing at both ideas. She's clearly the favorite of the 4 children, as the moment both mother Koto and Inari actually come back to the Mirror Capital they both express far more emotions and dialogue toward her, espeically Inari. This really bugged me, especially because of the fairy tale ending revolving around "family" when their obviously isn't one. Inari and mother Koto only seem to take any special interest in daughter Koto, Inari expresses this to a T in the 8th or so episode. The only actual notion of "family" is the relationship of Myoue and Koto, he plays the role of older brother perfectly, but outside that there's no legit "family" to speak of. But that also is likely the fault of the adaption, the director probably cut out a lot because he liked Koto's character, so it appears the focus of the story is on her, despite it supposed to be about all 4 of the children. Maybe Im wrong, but it was weird at the end of this episode that Inari and Koto start talking about how the other three children and how hard it must of been for them to be a lone, despite clearly not caring about that at all when they first came back.
That's also another issue with this adaption and maybe even the manga, clearly the animation is focused solely on daughter Koto ever since her introduction in episode 2, you have several episodes focusing on the other 3, but those are just surface scratchers, they don't come anywhere near the development Koto gets throughout the 9 episodes featuring her.
That's another reason I found i generally dislike adaptions of stories that withhold a lot of information and explanation until the end, because it becomes a doctored mess. This is no exception, because the story goes form point A to point Z, they couldn't take side detours to actually sit down and have in depth characterizations for Yase, Koruma, and Myoue. For example all we get told is a sequence of events, like with Myoue, his parents died in a fire, he is saved by Inari, and overtime he put the idea of killing himself behind him, until he wants to die again, then we put up a big "FIN" and its the end of that 1/10th mile detoured road. It's a standard linear story route that cannot branch out beyond the surface.
I was really drawn in by the first episode, figuring this might be one of the best i've watched in a while...oh well... |