Hello everyone and welcome to a very late post for Sonny Boy episode 5! Sorry about that. Between my new 40k models coming in and this episode just being freaking weird I didn’t have much motivation to write. However that’s no excuse! You people come here to read posts about currently airing shows and come hell or high water you will get them! So without further ado, lets jump in.
Right off the bat I have to explain the reason for this being so late: What the fuck is this show? I’m… not totally sure on how I’m supposed to parse this. The themes are all very straight forward, we identified them before. Sonny Boy is all about growing up and transitioning out of highschool and into the wider world. About figuring out who you are, what you stand for and finding your place in society rather than letting others dictate it for you. I think this is all pretty clear, yeah? But the manner in which Sonny Boy presents it is so abstract as to almost be intelligible. I can’t tell if this is just Natsume being himself, as both ACCA and Boogiepop had their own eccentricities, or they simply aren’t that confident in what they are doing. Only time will tell I suppose.
Moving on lets talk about Nagara as two big things happened with him this week. The first? We learn how his power really works. That he isn’t jumping to new worlds but rather creating them, and thus he can’t actually return them to their own. This of course raises two questions: How did they get here and how do they get home? For the first we seem to be getting mixed signals. Of course Mrs. Aki, the evil teacher lady, is accusing Nagara and there’s a lot of information to support that. He’s the only one with a power pertaining towards worlds and to be frank, he has the motivation for it. At least unintentionally. And yet as a counterpoint we have Mizuho claiming that she is responsible for them being here. How? We will have to wait and find out.
As for how they get out of here there’s really only one option presented to us: Nozomi’s light. It’s getting closer and closer and I have my suspicion as to whys. I think that the light only gets closer as they overcome their own personal hurdles, as they grow as people. And that the worlds Nagara creates, each with their own rules and “Win conditions” as we saw with the mice, are what push and enable them to confront these hurdles. I think it fits the overarching themes of the show myself. Of course it’s possible that only Nagara’s personal hurdles matter, but for now I’m extending it to the whole class. For now though its the best I’ve got.
This brings me to the second half of Nagara this week, Mrs. Aki. And boy is she kind of a bitch. Mrs. Aki is turning the entire class against Nagara, using him as a scapegoat to unite the rest of the class against. At the same time she’s setting Asakaze up as a sort of false prophet, a “Chosen One” who can protect them here. My suspicion is that she represents the adults who would lead these kids astray. Who would use them for their own ends without a care for how they feel, etc etc. It’s not a difficult leap if I’m being honest, its exactly what she’s doing to Asakaze. But for now we lack information as to why she is doing this. What is her goal? What does she get out of this? Is she even the real Mrs. Aki? Once again, time will tell.
What’s surprising in all of this though is who didn’t side with Aki. Oddly enough it seems that the Student Council, the villains up until now, are rebelling against her as well. Do they see what she’s trying to do? Or do they simply not want to share power? I’m really not sure and it surprises me that Hoshi would go this way. Maybe I misjudged them up until now and they really do care about class unity. About keeping the peace. But I dont think that really jives with their actions in the first and second episodes. I could see this as a sort of redemption arc! Sonny Boy is all about growing up, about becoming adults, so maybe this is how they do that. Whatever the case though I’m glad to see something new out of them.
All in all I think this was an… alright episode of Sonny Boy. But in case the time it took to write this post and the State of the Season wasn’t obvious enough, it’s starting to lose me. I find the visual presentation to be pretty but often incongruous with what is actually happening on screen. As if the story and the storyboards were written with two different ideas in mind. Combine that with the story itself being very abstract in its execution and I just can’t get that excited about it. Sonny Boy is feeling more like an arthouse anthology project than an actual serialized narrative for me. And that’s a shame.
“Sonny Boy is feeling more like an arthouse anthology project”
I feel like that’s exactly what Sonny Boy should stay as. Usually series compensate to have certain length and here I feel like we get to see the raw mind of the creators, unconstrained.
If it stayed as that rather than trying for some overarching story, I agree it would be better. But I fear that its actually trying to do something with all of these episodes and that in doing so it is defeating itself.