Welcome all to episode 4 of Sonny Boy! Apologies for the delayed post, Otakon was this weekend and ended up going so its been busy the last few days. As for Sonny Boy, this is a weird episode, arguably a bad one, but one that interested me nonetheless. So without further ado lets dive in!
To start I thought this episode was pretty visually boring. Large portions of the episode consisted of nothing but wide shots as the characters talked about baseball. No pans, no interesting angles, not even motion to draw or keep the eye. Just wide character shots. And while I liked the lineless mini-versions of the characters, an almost painterly style, that didn’t make the scenes any more engaging. Now a friend of mine made the argument that these shots were to sell the “realism”. That it put us in the shoes of the characters as Cap wouldn’t shut the hell up about baseball. But all that tells me is that they made the scenes boring on purpose, which is even worse. Whatever the case, whatever the reasoning, I didn’t find this episode of Sonny Boy to be that visually engaging outside of the opening swimming scene. With that, lets talk narrative!
To be honest I’m not sure how I feel about the narrative. Overall it seems to be about standing up for what you believe in even if others disagree. Of trying, regardless of if you will succeed or not, and being better for it. Of staying true to who you are. I can get behind all of that! However large portions of the episode were dedicated to this… metaphorical monkey story? Was it metaphorical? Did the monkeys really exist? What was the timeline for all of this if they could have an entire fabled league while the students were on the island since a student introduced them to baseball? It was all rather abstract and I think the way it was presented takes away from the core themes of the episode. Not because they don’t fit in narratively but because it was just boring.
The obvious response to this criticism is that the story of the monkeys was a reflection of Nagara, our MC. That Ace introduced him and Cap/others to baseball in elementary school and that the entire monkey story represents Nagara’s time in the sport. How it started as just good fun as friends but slowly morphed and changed. They no longer played it just to play but for competition and with all the stress that accompanies that. And that at some point in this competition Nagara was responsible for losing them a game. For “holding back” Ace’s genius like the Umpire monkey did the Blue monkey in the story because he wasn’t playing for the same reasons they were. As Nagara said when talking about the Umpire, what died wasn’t the monkey but Baseball itself. While this is a valid interpretation, one I agree with, it was still presented poorly.
Moving on lets talk about something cool that happened this week, Nagara discovered his powers! Or at least how to use them, since we figured this out last week. You would think that this would lead to some answers. That we could start figuring things out and moving forward, but it’s really only introduced more questions. Why can’t he control it, is it still tied to his mental state? Is he overlapping/merging worlds like when he saw/brought in the monkeys and in doing so changing the world/rules? Or can he jump through time and that’s how he saw the monkeys on the island? I don’t think this is bad per se, with this Sonny Boy has expanded its options and story while still moving the character forward! But how Sonny Boy ends up using these new options will be very important moving forward.
Finally lets talk about the final scene of the episode, the big booba, Ms. Aki. Who is she? Probably a teacher from their school. What’s her role? Probably to be new a new antagonist. Where did she come from? Who the hell knows. I suspect that Nagara brought her into this world with his power somehow when he was flicking through realities like a TV screen. Whatever the case I’m curious what she will bring to Sonny Boy. We already had an antagonist in Hoshi so we didn’t need one of those. However she could also serve as a unifying force, something to threaten all of them and unite them against he. Or Sonny Boy could do something completely weird and out of nowhere, who knows. For now though I can only hope that she does something to spice things up because this island is getting a little droll.
So yeah all in all I would say this episode was a shoot and a miss. Sonny Boy went for something interesting in the monkey story but I think it fell short. The presentation to support it just wasn’t there, however meaningful the themes behind it. Hopefully Ms. Aki, whatever her role, can liven things up in the coming episodes. We know that episode 6, from Director interviews, is supposed to be a big shift/turning point so we can expect the next episode to be setup for that. Lets hope it pays off eh?
Too much monkey business
This show was inspired by The Drifting Classroom, so there had to be a baseball story, as there was in that manga. I just wish it had been a little more Dorohedoro and a little less whatever this was.
Agreed.