Man, there’s a serious shitload of good anime out there right now, that’s for sure.  There aren’t many days when at least one really good show isn’t airing, and sometimes two.  It really does harken back to the halcyon days of Spring 2012, the last truly great anime season, when it seemed like every day was an event.  I don’t think I can make a call until this season is in the books on whether it reaches that level – my instinct now is that in terms of sheer greatness and sheer quantity of quality it’s just short,  But 11 years is a long time, so it could just as easily be me.

No doubt there is some risk of saturation with so many good series.  Especially when a lot of them are relationship-driven, as well as seinen (which dominates the top of the leaderboard).  Each of the really good ones carves its own niche though, to be sure.  And Kimi no Houkago Insomnia is no exception.  It’s very special, as anyone who reads the manga will tell you.  The look, the vibe, the themes – Ojiro Makoto has created a very distinct world here, with absolutely stellar characters.  Two of them most obviously, but not only them.

We begin with Ganta settling into his role as club president.  With Isaki in two clubs that’s the only option, but truth be told he’s cut out for it.  When Ganta applies himself to something he does it seriously – and he’s smart as well as curious.  If the kids are to be allowed to keep their clubhouse they have to be a real club – which means scrounging for funds and going to meetings and presenting reports.  To help, Kurashiki-sensei (would that all teachers were so chill) sends the pair off to meet with the last active member of the club, at the end of a puddle-jumper train ride somewhere into rural Ishikawa (which doesn’t ever get that urban to begin with).

After a few fits and starts and a long walk through a lot of rice paddies, they end up at “Betty” – which turns out to be a rather hoppin’ game center.  The small blonde woman cleaning up initially tries to chase them off for violating curfew before realizing they were the kouhai she was warned about.  She introduces herself as the manager, Shiromaru Yui (Tomatsu Haruka) and brings the kids to her trailer (who was minding the arcade, exactly?), where her cat Rollo (Ojiro-sensei clearly loves cats) is waiting for her.  And thus begins the real story of Insomniacs After School.

Having Tomatsu join the cast is a fantastic turn, for starters – she’s pretty much always great.  But Shiromaru-san is a very important character, Ganta and Isaki’s bridge into a world they know nothing about.  Shiromaru is a true believer – she loves the stars and cameras, and despite her very offbeat communication style she eventually – after preparing dinner – gets down to the brass tacks of the “peeper club”.  I’m not necessarily a big camera guy, and this gets pretty geeky to be honest – but as with Go or Karuta or the koto, interesting people passionate about something make that something itself interesting.

Now the stars, those I am interested in.  And so are Isaki and Ganta, once they get to know them a little.  And Ganta being a bit of a techie and tinkerer has a natural affinity for the minutiae of photography.  Which there’s a ton of, especially where astrophotography is concerned.  Ganta’s joy when he gets his first good star photo is infectious, and it seems as if Shiromaru enjoys having someone to share her passions with. In fact she promises to check in on the club occasionally – and turns up at their next meeting with Kurashiki-sensei to offer some advice.  Ganta suggests a Perseid meteor shower viewing party as the club’s centerpiece event, and Kurashiki more or less orders him to enter a student astrophotography contest as a means of winning over the school power brokers.

In truth, this amounts to kind of a slice of life episode centered around a character we’d never met before (I love the little details like the pancake sequence, and Rollo sitting on her shoes and tipping her off to the vibrating phone), but it totally works.  When it ended I just thought to myself that the whole thing just had a marvelous warmth to it.  There’s the sense of an adventure just beginning here, a new world waiting to be explored.  And for two kids who’ve suffered the way these two have from insomnia, having so much to look forward to is really a gift beyond measure.  But then, the same could be said of the audience…