At long last the fall lineup is complete, as Kyoto Animation’s Tsurune: Kazemai Koukou Kyuudoubu finally makes its debut.  And a late one it is, too – the show was originally scheduled to nod on the 14th but was pushed back a week.  Unusual it is for KyoAni to have serious production delays, much less pre-airing – their reputation is quite the opposite in fact (they were premiering episodes of Violet Evergarden six months before the actual airdate).  I have no idea what the issue was here, but there were nothing in the final product to suggest a troubled production that I could see.

Be that as it may, my expectations for Tsurune – like Gridman – were heavily colored by the studio presenting it.  What’s the problem with Kyoto Animation, you ask?  What’s that you say – you didn’t ask?  Well screw that, I’m answering.  The problem (well, the biggest one) is their production model of adapting light novel properties that they own.  Financially, it’s clearly successful.  Artistically I would argue it’s been a disaster, as the studio has degenerated into creative homogeneity more and more over the years.  Is it any coincidence that the studio’s most accomplished works – Kanon, Hyouka, the Koe no Katachi film – have adapted material outside their production ouroboros?  I don’t think so.

Still, I keep coming back – as with Trigger, though for different reasons.  KyoAni is always going to deliver high-quality production values, some of the best in the game – not generally on the level of Hyouka which was exceptional even by their standards, but way above industry norms.  The taste of Hyouka lingers like an unforgettable glass of sublime wine or whisky, a reminder of what’s possible if the magic is captured again.  They haven’t come remotely close on the TV side since (the first season of Chuunibyou was the best of a mediocre lot), but Hyouka director Takemoto Yasuhiro is supervising Tsurune, so hope springs eternal.

The Kyoto Animation show that’s most likely to spring to mind with this series is of course not Hyouka, but Free.  While I loved the idea of Free – KyoAni going after a different market and royally pissing off much of their entitled fanbase – in practice it’s been a colossal disappointment.  Free knows exactly what it’s priorities are – they aren’t telling a good story or developing characters – and it’s ruthlessly efficient and effective at achieving them.  If the lingering afterglow of Hyouka was the hope, the spectre of Free hung over Tsurune like a curse, a foreboding about what might be to come.

I think it would be foolhardy to draw any conclusions about what sort of show Tsurune will or won’t be based on one episode.  That being said, I liked this premiere, and rather a lot – the B-part especially.  It didn’t reek of pandering the way Free did right out of the gate, and it kept some of the KyoAni house style flourishes well in check.  We certainly have what could be an interesting premise – yet another traditional Japanese art being explored (though Western schools certainly practice their own versions of it). And as exotic and primal as Kyudo is, KyoAni seems like the perfect studio to bring it to the screen.  And nothing we saw here suggests otherwise.

The hero of Tsurune is Narumiya Minato (Uemura Yuuto, like most – though not all – of this cast a relative unknown), a lad starting his first year of high school.  He’s loved archery since he was a child, though he seems to have given it up.  His neighbor and childhood friend is Takehaya Seiya (Ichikawa Aoi), an academic and athletic high-performer it’s implied is going to the same high school as Minato in order to watch over him.  While teacher Tommy-sensei is intent on reviving the Kyudo club (with both boys and girls), Minato declines on the ground that since his mother died, he’s handling most of the housework (seemingly mostly for himself, as he has no siblings and an absentee father).

Minato is troubled, clearly.  The premiere isn’t melodramatic about it, but it’s refreshingly matter-of-fact in showing us that this boy is still hurting about losing a parent.  However his mother’s death is related to the “target panic” we see later in the episode, the latter is clearly the reason he’s given up archery.  And while I detest the idea that Minato was cajoled into performing against his will, I get the sense I was supposed to – which is encouraging.  Also encouraging is the gorgeously shot scene at the close of the episode where Minato meets a mysterious archer (Asanuma Shintaro) and his owl at a moonlit shrine (this being Kyoto, it’s pretty much all gorgeous).  It’s the best scene of the episode, and it’s always good to close with your best – and it leaves me curious to see where that development is headed.

It would certainly be ironic if both Trigger and Kyoto Animation won me over in the same season after so many disappointments.  It’s way too early to say that’s the case with Gridman, much less Tsurune, but the early signs here are pretty encouraging.  There’s not much to go on with first-time director Yamamura Takuya, but the presence of Takemoto-sensei and Yokote Michiko handling scripts are good augers.  Of course Tsurune looks great – it’s a Kyoto Animation show set in Kyoto about handsome and gorgeous young boys and girls performing a stunning martial art.  But more than that, the postage rate* seems to be pretty low with this show, and it’s not vamping in the way so many KyoAni shows can.  Hope spring eternal, but in this case there may actual reason for it.

*KyoAni mailing it in