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.
Irozuku? More like Irozzzzzz…