Shoushimin Series 2nd Season – 12 (End) and Series Review

For once, I’m in agreement with the zeitgeist about an anime. The second season of Shoushimin Series was way better than the first, and it seems that’s the consensus. It’s 8.03 vs. 7.33 on MAL and 3.9 vs. 3.5 on Anime Planet. That’s a pretty massive difference but in my view it’s entirely justified. It starts on the right foot with the OP, which is an absolute banger both visually and musically (right there with Kuroshitsuji and Uchuujin MuuMuu for best of the season). But of course it’s the content that makes the difference, and it’s leaps and bounds more engaging this time.

One could go deep into the weeds about why that is. And to an extent I suppose that’s my default mode on LiA anyway. But sometimes better is just better. There were basically only two mysteries this time, and they were both way more interesting than any in the first season. The seemingly endless navel-gazing cafe scenes were almost entirely missing. Kobato and Osanai were absent enough in the first half of the season to make me miss them. And when they returned to the spotlight, the series embraced their dysfunctional natures in a really compelling way.

There are still practical matters with Shoushimin Series  that kind of drive me nuts. Like the total lack of coincidence, though that’s a feature of so many series it’s unfair to single one out. And some basic logic stuff, like – why did Jougorou not just push the damn down button on the elevator? You’ve got a crazy nurse with a hammer chasing you and your first thought is “let’s go up to the roof”? It feels like it happened because it needed to happen for the story’s conclusion, not for any logical reason. But there’s a contrived quality to Yonezawa Honobu’s writing even when it’s really good, so I suppose this is all part of a stylistic thing with him.

As for what happened with the hit-and-run, in some respects it’s sort of a mundane conclusion. Shoutarou didn’t fake the first accident. He covered up his sister’s presence because he didn’t want anyone to know that he and Eiko were together. Why? Their parents were in the middle of a nasty divorce, the kids were being split up (Shoutarou would change his surname to Miura), and they were forbidden to see each other (which is why he hid the charm she gave him). Having unwittingly blown their cover Jougorou stopped them from seeing each other. And that meant Eiko wasn’t with him when things went south in his life and Shoutarou tried to commit suicide (fortunately not successfully).

In a sense, I can sort of get why Eiko would feel homicidal towards Kobato-kun for that (and as I suspected, Yuki’s presence at both accidents was – ROFL – coincidental). There is a sort of “no court in the land would convict you” quality to this pair – they’re annoying and smug AF. But where this season got it right was in showing us both the depths of their depravity and their self-awareness about it. I suspect Jougorou’s desire to “become ordinary” stemmed in part from his fear that he’d caused something terrible to happen to Shoutarou. Which is, in fact, pretty much true even if Shoutarou is decent enough not to really blame him for it. Kobato was, in his arrogant way, trying to do the right thing. But he was also doing it for the fun of it.

That’s the thing – we’re getting some nuance here. Osanai-san called Shoutarou (with Kengo’s help) because she wanted to resolve things and save Jougorou. But she also relished the idea that in exposing Eiko’s crimes to him, she could exact her revenge on Eiko for the second accident. Both things can be true. And the pair of them can laugh (till it hurts, in Jougorou’s case) about the whole affair while she can also show genuine emotion over Jougorou being safe and finding some peace with his role in Shoutarou’s troubles. They’re messed up people, but they are people. And as twisted as Yuki’s view of Jougorou as her “next-best option” is, they are sort of made for each other.

So what’s next for these annoying but interesting brats? Well, he’s set back for a year, presumably, having missed entrance exams and looking at a long recovery. She’s off to university in Kyoto, there to find new people to piss off and new cafes to squee over (believe me, we have plenty of both). But she extends an open invitation for him to follow her and find her, and one supposes he will. For all their give and take, Jougorou is basically at Yuki’s beck and call and has been from the start. She’s the one who pulls the strings, make no mistake, and he wouldn’t want it any other way. Is that love? Wiser minds than mine will have to make the call on that one.

There’s no question about it, Yonzeawa Honobu is an interesting writer. He’s not a mass-produced model, and he has a strange and often fascinating way of looking at the world. Sometimes it infuriates, sometimes it bores (this was all true even with Hyouka), but in the end it paints a picture that you want to look at. I was totally ambivalent about this season when it was announced, and I was certainly unsure about covering it. But if you told me now there would be a third (I have no idea if there’s enough novel material), I’d be quite pleased to hear it. So as for Shoushimin Series 2nd Season, I’d say it’s very much mission accomplished.

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6 comments

  1. G

    Thank you for not giving up on Shoushimin after the first season, it’s always great to read your series review! And the more so when the creators of the anime manage to change viewers opinions within one season.

    As for third season, perhaps it’s another writer’s peculiarity, but as much as with Hyouka, things end here, at a rather pivotal moment, for a time being (if not forever). There is a slim chance a new novel will be released in the next 5 years or so. I personally would really like for this to happen, but I would not bet on it.

    P.S. As for the lift button, I think the whole situation was made quite believable – how it was framed by the camera viewpoint, the Up button was the closest to his stretched straight hand so he pressed one on reflex rather than giving it any thought and most likely regretted it instantly, but there was no second chance.

  2. I suppose that’s as good an explanation as any.

    Thanks, it was a fun cover this season. Too bad there isn’t any more (though my understanding is there’s plenty of Hyouka if someone wanted to do another season – or so I’d heard).

  3. G

    Also the dialog when Kobato asks Osanai whether she has hammer with her to help with murderer nurse fight and she asks him back with full seriousness something like “Do I look to you like a person carrying hammer with me?” was a piece of humour that can only be that funny in such circumstances in this series.

  4. N

    I don’t know how I feel about Tall Hinata never being visited again after getting spiritually crushed by Osanai. On the one hand, I want closure (and I want to know what BFF arsonist has to say for himself), but on the other hand — it’s just that much more effective that he disappears into the depth of mediocracy, never to be seen again.

    Osanai tearing up when Kobato got his closure with Hisoka was not believable at all. Felt like a cheap way to try and make her more sympathetic and less of a pyscho – but why? She is a psycho and the more the series leaned into it the better it got (and the more sympathetic Osanai was, paradoxially)

    The ED is great, but there’s one stretch in the middle where it’s static and background characters fly around, that seems a bit lazy. So I have to give first place to Kuroshitsuji here. In both season 1 and season 2 I enjoyed the superimposement of Kobato/Osanai on real-life Gifu. I kinda wanna visit there, one day.

    This was a great season, all said and done, and unexpectedly so.

  5. I think this is it for the novels, it’s completely caught up (in fact the last novel, the case of the winter bonbon aka the whole car hit and run affair, was published *during* the anime’s production; I saw a translation of a tweet by the author joking about how he’d entertained delaying writing it a bit more just to make the anime staff’s job even harder). I don’t know if it counts as a completed series but maybe it does; it’s open ended, sure, but it covers their whole high school years and there’s no real ending to “close” here outside perhaps of taking their weird romance to the next level.

    Anyway, it was enjoyable. I didn’t nearly dislike S1 as you but I do agree S2 was more interesting and compelling (and also as you point out had a banger OP – though I think this season’s award for that goes to Witch Watch, its first OP was ridiculously beautiful). In some respect I might like Shoshimin over Hyouka. Hyouka has more artistry but less interesting characters (though Eru Chitanda is adorable and plenty of fun to watch). Shoshimin is this strange exploration of two misfits (probably neurodivergent in some ways) trying to fit in through their strange funhouse mirror understanding of what “fitting in” even means and failing, eventually looking for their own way of life that allows them to exist in society without hurting everyone around them (…at least unless they deserve it, in Osanai’s case). It’s definitely a much more compelling arc than anything in Hyouka, and honestly just a rare one to see explored in fiction, full stop. There’s stories of misfits whose only problem is being misunderstood, or lacking confidence, and there’s stories of redemption by people who made intentional mistakes and try to make amends, but the question “what do you do if through no fault of your own you are simply broken in a way that hurts others, and how do you earn your right to exist anyway?” is pretty unusual (and uncomfortable) to ask.

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