Category: Finished Series: Slice of Life/Drama

And suddenly, after weeks of hovering around, Irozuku has some sort of urgency this week. You see, Hitomi’s spell starts to wear off and she only has 2 days left to say goodbye to this world. NOW the cast has some motivation to actually do necessary stuffs before time running out. That means Kohaku has to bare all the responsibility of bringing her back to her time safely, and Hitomi has to sort all her feeling out before the moment comes. Both the visual and the narrative are purposeful this week (something I can’t say for their previous episodes). In specific, the moment where she… whoops… vanishes into thin air, Irozuku makes it feel as if time has stopped. Or the moment later where Hitomi making those paper planes and communicate with Aoi by switching her light on and off, it works because it’s understated. These small moments like this is what Irozuku unfortunately missed during its middle section.

It still comes a bit out-of-nowhere the way Hitomi suddenly disappears and how Kohaku later informs us that it’s a sign that she has to go back home. I mean, we didn’t learn about this Okabe-situation before, and it doesn’t help that the day they want to cast the magic is on the same day with the School Festival. I’m willing to put all these aside, however, because this is the only rare times where I see the cast actually having some purposes. Chief among them is Kohaku, with all the burden of whether or not she can do it, and do it safely. Then it’s also a matter of gathering up the right material, which in this case is the pure magic sand. The rest of the club has some nice development where at first they’re sad to receive the news, but determine to do their best to help bringing Hitomi back to her timeline safely, even if they aren’t gonna see her ever again.

As for Hitomi, she doesn’t take this news too well. She knows it has to be done, but she doesn’t want to leave the world where she has good friends and where she finds her first crush, Aoi. There’s a saying that “either you have a sense of urgency today, or you have a sense of regret tomorrow”, this time both Aoi, and her wanted to say what they feel towards each other. What happens next is that they reach to each other without a single word. As they both race to each other’s house and meet halfway (boy, I’m glad there’s only one route to their houses), and embrace each other in a near-full moon. Time remaining might be too short for the two now, but finally they can be able to express how they really feel.

Irozuku, as meandering as it always is, has some stunning sequences this episode. It furthers proves the fact that 1) the magical sequence is where Irozuku really takes off and 2) its strength always come from its visual department, not in the storytelling. Take the sequence where Aoi steps into Hitomi’s dream, for example. He sees the young Hitomi keeps drawing pictures of her and Mama drifting apart. As he draws several ways of her crossing the middle gap, she silently throws them away – refusing to accept at all. This single scene speaks to her insecurity and her afraid of using magic more than the last 9 episodes had ever conveyed. Or the image of stone-Hitomi gives you a good idea how she blocks away her own emotions. These scenes speak to the same strengths of Aoi’s dream back in episode 6 and I would argue that this is Irozuku at its best.

Another highlight for this week is when the club goes into the drawing that Aoi made. Not only the background designs alone are stunning, but its vivid colors help greatly of making that setting inviting and rich at the same times. It certainly reminds me a great deal of Mary Poppins when our characters flying away by using umbrellas, and the rainbow looks great as well. Before that, Hitomi also shines by committing to practise the spells of transferring them into the drawing/ pictures. Her fallen out/ reconcile with Asami doesn’t do much for me, unfortunately. It’s awkward to begin with, Irozuku approaches it way too clumsily and it has nothing interesting to offer to the table.

We now learn the reason behind Hitomi feeling afraid of using magic. Her mother (which will be Kohaku’s daughter) can’t use magic, which is a rare case in her family. The little Hitomi believes, thus blames herself, that it’s her performing magic was the main reason that her Mom left her. I would say that the stress causes her to lose the ability to see colors as well. It’s a sad little story (albeit still cliche) for sure, and it’s good to see her opening up to Aoi. Now that she can truly express the emotions she kept bottling up inside her, she’s (and by effect, us) facing the more important question: what is her true purpose of going back in this timeline? It’s about the goddamn time Irozuku needs to address it, shouldn’t it?

Another episode, and my disappointment keeps raising up. Irozuku has come to the point where it has to creates its own conflict (all these romance drama), but it’s the development that we already tracked down back in episode 2, and it does a poor job of convincing us to care about these characters. This is all about Shou’s confession this week. Predictably, Hitomi freaks out; predictably, she finds the courage to say no to him and predictably, here he is at the rooftop, screaming his heart out in a typical anime fashion. Irozuku is a show that has solid themes, and has great visual to boost but it has no proper plot to carry the narrative. As a result, more often than not we see the cast doing their usual club activities that could easily interchange with each other, and worse the cast functions more as a single united mind, where passively supporting Hitomi is their default mode.

I blame Hitomi’s insensitive nature in all this. She’s not only clueless about Shou’s interest in her, but she also doesn’t take hint about Asagi’s crush and talks to her about it instead. Great job, Hitomi. So, Shou takes Hitomi out alone for a shooting session, and clumsily (the reason I put it that way is because Irozuku messes up the pacing in this confession scene) asks her out, in which she does the worst possible way, running away from all that. It’s hard to say no to the guy she always looks up to, and it’s also an opportunity for her to really knows who she likes better. Speaking of that person, Aio is a real mess here as he does absolutely nothing, he doesn’t put up a fight, nor does he acknowledge that he also has a feeling for Hitomi. After the rejection, Aio admires Shou for having a ball to confess, and receive rejection and his courage to crying out loud. Both Hitomi and Aoi have a problem of truly expressing themselves, and I figure that the final arc to be them embracing their own feeling to confess to each other.

Not that it’s a high stake to begin with. But for a show that quite literally nothing happens (a criticism that I don’t give very often), it’s a realistic reach for Irozuku. As it stands, I could compress this show into half, or even ⅓ of its length (which is a feature-length film), and it could strengthen the show much better. Irozuku has a clear beginning point A and finishing point B, but it doesn’t know a clear path to go from one point to its destination, so that it wanders around, with a magic wand in one hand and camera in the other, taking aimlessly monochrome pictures as it goes along.