This time: a baseball player. It’s interesting how every episode of Kuchuu Buranko deals with the media of some sort. This formulaic format limits creativity: unlike Aoi Bungaku the variety isn’t really this series’ strong point. Instead, what it needs to do is make the whole series greater than the sum of its parts. The best example of how this is done right is Jigoku Shoujo. At this point, it’s a bit too early whether Kuchuu Buranko will be the same but there’s an actual good chance that it will pull this off.
What I mean by that is the following: this episode was very similar to the previous one: a writerbaseball player is very popular, however he experiences psychological problems off of it. Parallels are drawn between him and a different writerbaseball player. Irabu meanwhile tries to take up writingplaying catch-ball and he eventually gets cured by realizing that he was wrong in his stereotypical assumptions.
After four episodes, I finally realize that the similarities of the stories isn’t lazy scriptwriting, but instead meant to be that way. This episode wasn’t meant to stand out with its story, but rather with the subtle difference with the previous story. Ignoring the second episode, this series has been about people who are very successful at what they do, but just have a problem as they’re at the height of their popularity. It could be failing to cooperate, or simply forgetting the past. They’re so focused on the right now that they sometimes forget what they already accomplished.
The big difference between this series and Mononoke: Mononoke’s individual series had a lot of depth, but they were straightforward and standalone. Kuchuu Buranko on the other hand isn’t that deep with its individual cases, however they have overlap, they’re not straightforward at all. There are two ways in which you can watch it: just watch an episode brainlessly, and end up with a rather boring series about a bunch of depth-less people, or you could try to look behind the exterior, and try and find connections and hidden meanings. And that’s why I like this series.
Also, is it me or did that kid have a Bake Neko t-shirt?
Rating: * (Good)
May I suggest some proof-reading? 😐
Crap, how could I have missed that?
That’s actually interesting. Maybe there is a little more to this series than meets the eye. I might give it another chance to see if I can see these deeper layers and connections you’re talking about. Because, as far as I had noticed, the symbolism was all either really shallow/simplistic or self-referential. But maybe there is a cumulative effect taking place which adds weight to what is already there. It would be awesome if that were the case, because I was really disappointed when I first watched the show.