So Shoushimin Series turns out to be a split cour. Interesting – I guess that helps explain why it was only ten episodes, though it strikes me as the sort of series that could pretty much stop at any random point in the narrative and not have it feel out of place. I don’t know whether I’ll cover the second cour. One way or the other it won’t be in the poll a second time, it’s a decision I’ll make for myself. I give it credit for being different from pretty much everything else in anime, but I don’t know if that in itself is enough to keep me bought in.
Far be it for me to compare Shoushimin to Shakespeare, but I have have a much ado about nothing feeling when I look at these ten episodes. I do enjoy a good show about nothing, anime and otherwise – when done right, they can be masterpieces. But there really wasn’t enough of any one element to make this one genuinely interesting. It wasn’t funny enough to succeed based on humor, and the mysteries weren’t accomplished enough to carry the weight. The characters were neither interesting nor likeable enough to be the main attraction. It was just sort of a bunch of stuff.
Would this have worked if it had been the sort of KyoAni visual feast Hyouka was? Well, no show isn’t going to be better for being visually spectacular. Even if Hyouka had been as hollow as Shoushimin, it was so gorgeous that it would have been worth watching just for that. As is, the visuals here were just another of those middling elements that failed to make much of an impression. Ironically given the series’ title and theoretically its central theme, it suffered from nothing about it really being extraordinary.
I do like the fact that Jougarou actually told Yuki straight-out that she’s seriously screwed up. Call what she did to the girl gang what you like – I would say “entrapment” comes the closest to the mark – it was as Jougarou said a lie, and pretty twisted. And her trying to justify it by saying it was a pre-emptive act of self-preservation just cements the impression that Osanai is an incredibly self-absorbed and selfish person. She’s really doing him a favor by “breaking up” with him, though I have no doubt they’ll wind up back together soon enough. Though it would be more interesting if they became arch-enemies (but that wouldn’t work, as Yuki would have Kobato for lunch and make him pay the check).
As it stands, the setup for S2 seems to find both Jougarou and Osanai headed into actual relationships. With her it’s the redhead from the newspaper club (he does have a name, Takahiko). He has intel that the kidnapped girl the real newspapers are talking about goes to their school, but I don’t think he has any idea who it is. Kenken Watergates the idea of exposing the truth, leaving Takahiko pissed off. With Jougarou it’s Nakamaru Tokiko, who probably appeared earlier but in what context I’ve forgotten. She tries to call him “Jo” but Jo nips that one right in the bud.
More than anything, I think Kobato and Osanai wind up back together because they enable each other, and no one else could deal with being with them. That’s a matter for the second cour I suppose, along with whatever Yuki whispered to Kengo and that van blowing up in the final frames (was that the kidnap van?). Again, I’m unsure of where I stand going into all that. I’ll check the first episode or two out and see if anything is clicking with me and go from there. All the while hoping KyoAni and Yonezawa get over themselves and we get a second season of Hyouka someday.
Bob
September 16, 2024 at 9:53 pmThis grew to be one of my favorite shows of the season, and I’m overjoyed that it got a second season to cover the remaining novel material. Jogoro and Osanai are fun and compelling characters, and I’m looking forward to seeing how their relationship continues despite the breakup. The stellar visual direction kept conversations compelling in a way that many other anime fail, and I find myself rewatching episodes to catch hints and new meanings that I’d missed prior. For instance, Sanae appears in episode 1 and Osanai avoids her.
Nadavu
September 17, 2024 at 7:58 amCredit where credit is due:
OP is pretty good
ED is awesome
Cocoa does taste better when you first mix it with just a little bit of liquid
Charlo-gasm
Other than that, I feel that I don’t know enough about Kobato to actually care about him, and the more I learn about Osanai the less I care for her. The only character I feel like rooting for is Journo-Hinata, and he’s actively pursuing someone I can reasonably envision as a villain on The Fable.
Guardian Enzo
September 17, 2024 at 8:07 amHe does sorta look like him now you mention it.
geha714
September 18, 2024 at 7:51 pm“Would this have worked if it had been the sort of KyoAni visual feast Hyouka was?”
I think Shoushimin didn’t need to be like Hyouka visually but needed more space and time to convey its story and characters IMHO. I think not having a compelling secondary cast (except Kengo and his sister (more of her next season please) unlike Hyouka hurt it and Jogoro/Yuki had a very different dynamic than Oreki/Chitanda which is still developing. I liked the show enough to keep watching it next year but I think the show held back too much.
Guardian Enzo
September 18, 2024 at 7:56 pmTBH I liked Satoshi (most interesting character in the cast) and Mayaka more than the A couple, Though I liked all four of them.
Nicc
September 20, 2024 at 7:54 amMy postings are late this week as it’s been busy for me at work. Staring at Excel and Quickbooks documents for 6 hours a day does a number on you. Now, onto the first finale of the season. I already read about the announcement for the second cour before watching this episode and so how the season finale played out made sense. It’s still a bit odd to stop at just ten episodes, but that’s what we got.
The conversation continues on and Kobato does indeed call her out for setting up the whole thing. She reassures him that this can’t be traced back to her and if it somehow does, she stil has got an ace up his sleeve, but that’s not the point. “You can’t treat crime like snacks”, as he said. I don’t know if it was just good acting, but she seem genuinely shocked when told that this all wrong. Both have utterly failed at being ordinary and the split was necessary as they’re just enabling each other if they continue like this. Osanai’s plan for a sweet summer ends on a bitter note, but I also think she was telling the truth enough enjoying the sweets. I think that her love of sweets is always at least one thing she’s always truthful about.
Summer vacation ends and it’s back to school. It looks like it’s time to introduce some of the new faces that we’ll be seeing in the next cour. First is Tokiko, who left Kobato a note to meet her at a classroom after school (How old fashioned). I thought she was going to hire him to solve a case, but it turned out it was for something else. Right, so it didn’t take long for the school to figure out that Kobato and Osanai broke things off. They went from being close to treating each other like strangers (They didn’t even greet each other when they passed by in the hallway). Her proposal to him is bascially, “You. Boyfriend. Now”. He doesn’t even get a chance to accept or refuse the offer, but he goes along with it for now. It looks like he’ll give it a shot to start a relationship with an actual normal person.
Then there’s Takahiko, who seems to be a member of the school newspaper club that we haven’t seen before. He wants to school paper to cover more about the kidnapping, but Doujima tells him to back off and makes an executive decision to drop it. Then there’s his friend, Hiya, who we only see a little of. He has an encounter with Osanai at the library in which he asks her out and she accepts. Is she also going to give it a shot with a “normal” person or did she just find herself a new mark? There’s a part of me that thinks she set this all up between her and Takahiko and then Kobato and Tokiko. Considering what she did for the revenge plot against the gang, I wouldn’t put it past her. The episode ends with a van being set on fire. If I didn’t already know that there was going to a second cour, I thought it was a metaphor about how their relationship ended. And, that’s it for this season and it seems that it will return in Spring 2025. I’m really not sure if I’ll be able remember what this show was about by then (Was this show about high school kids watching “The English Patient” while eating Junior Mints?). Thanks for your coverage for this show.