I've had a falling out with anime over the past year. Nothing was interesting. Nothing was new. This show isn't necessarily either, but it gives a new dimension to the hackneyed shounen dynamic of an underdog undertaking a new challenge in his life as a matter of circumstance which he found he
is surprisingly apt at dealing with.
But this show isn't just finding itself going through the 12 banal steps of the hero's journey like Bleach or Naruto. Such series become trite with repetition. Powers become bigger and larger and we lose the intimacy associated with smaller scale story-telling which ends up having larger bearings on audiences. This is perhaps why hero stories like Fate-Zero work so well, which expresses character intent, feelings and reasoning through all their past and present experiences. As a sports anime, this show wouldn't be good if it didn't use repetition as a tool to propel itself into our interest by staying one step ahead of what we're able to keep up with. Slightly more on that later.
However, I'm not saying Nana Maru San Batsu comes close to anything of a caliber which I just described. But its niche really shines by incorporating it into an academic-decathlon style that explores the real reason of interest to watch it:
rhetoric, syntax and diction. These three things and more all lead into the way language influences our understanding of others when they communicate with us. Therefore, especially being about a quiz bowl, this show addresses how we respond to questions and interpret them. This becomes the main driver of our interest, making us reflect on what we say and how we verbally express ourselves and are consequently interpreted.
Think of the sentence "I walked into a bar with that son of a bitch." Then, stress each word in the sentence differently each time you say it to yourself. The meaning will be different each time. This show explores that nuance in speech and interpretation. As a result, the audience becomes more aware of conversational stresses in words. We become more sensitive to character speech patterns and the way they interact with each other when they communicate, or attempt to.
If you're not interested in rhetoric, language, etymology, syntax or diction, then you are going to have a bad time. An even worse time if you don't know what most of the things I just mentioned are. This show is essentially a game of words=a decathlon called a Quiz Bowl, and characters have to answer questions faster than anyone else. But it takes it to a whole nother level where things start to get a little mindfreaky, and characters have to play a guessing game of what questions might be in full if the buzzers are to be rung before they finish in full. It stays one step ahead of itself, like any good show should do. Examples: Death Note, One Outs, etc.
Please consider this anime. It's worth the time imo.
