Well, it was a very shaky 18if episode this week. After episode 2 when the show went for much darker territory, and episode 3 when 18if filled my heart with its bittersweet moments, episode 4 goes back to the style of premiere episode and even when putting these two episodes together, this one gets pale in comparison. The director of this episode is Hiroko Kazui, who mostly known as the storyboarder of later Monogataries series, and key animation of Tokyo Godfathers. As you can guess from the title “The Witch of Gluttory”, this episode is all about eating, food-porn about curry rice and donuts. Here come one of the main issues of 18if, and it isn’t about the different directors handling each episode; the 18if’s cases lack urgency. Only episode 2 produced some sense of urgency because the cast tried to save the bad guys in real life. Other episodes though, no one in the risk of danger, even the Witch that it’s hard to see any importance of saving the case throughout the episode. One thing worth mentioned is that the girls don’t necessary have a Sleeping Beauty Syndrome or in a coma to become a witch; as Airi still keeps her normal daily routines at day and become a chibi witch at night.
The episode follows a girl who has eating disorder known as bulimia because she wants to maintain a skinny body. Thus, she consumes a large amount of donuts and cakes at night, then immediately purges them out. I know18if is very inconsistent in its art and quality, but what they’re really consistent so far, is how jerk they portrait the male characters who break the Witches’ hearts. This one simply breaks up with Airi because he finds someone else who skinnier than her. Jerk. She ends up feeling insecure about her weight, which lead to her eating disorder and her distaste to her favorite curry food. Well, she isn’t really distaste the curry meal, because she still cooks them tastefully, and in truth I still can’t connect it with her problems. Look, this episode is way too vague about her issues. I bet most of us after watching this episode don’t even know whether she gains weight by eating a lot or loses weight by throwing those foods. Can anyone even guess who was the other little girl in her dream? You can’t? I guess so – why include her then? Consider that this aspect was already the episode’s strongest, you would know how misfired this episode find itself in.
Because when you start mentioning other aspects then it falls apart rather quickly. The dream sequence is string of cartoonist wacky adventure (with overloaded cakes) and experience a severed tonal issue that it’s hard to take any of this seriously. Not only Haruto, our recurring cast fares so much worse and overall are inconsistent with their character so far. The scientist has a “curry kick” and singing and exaggerating with no purpose whatsoever; Lily suddenly has an urge for donut that makes her more superficial and goofy than engaging; and Haruto has zero chemistry with the Witch that I don’t feel any emotional investment in any of this. The story and its pacing all have its problems and worse they can’t even maintain a consistent tone. 18if is fascinating project, that’s for sure, but they need to do better than this to really engage us. This episode is a big “meh”, not bad enough to be a disaster, but unmemorable and uninspiring.
