Review

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Karakuri Circus - Episode 4 [Review]

Episode 4 of Karakuri Circus concludes the climax of the arc that started last week, with a newly reinvigorated Masuru making a bargain for his life with Eiryo and his Kill Team (which has now been translated as the much more intimidating “Slaughter Team”). Meanwhile, the increasingly intimate Shirogane and Narumi find themselves battling Uncle Zenji's traps and hired thugs; eventually, all three of our heroes end up in the quagmire of a jailbreak, a Karakuri fight, and a mass of bombs that are set to blow the entire castle to smithereens. It's a plot that's both entertaining and messy, with every tender moment and triumphant victory offset by a weak narrative shortcut or an underwhelming set piece. The episode ends up breaking even, mostly due to its shocking final scenes, but “Swirling Tiger” nevertheless serves as a perfect example of the facets and foibles that make Karakuri Circus such a fascinatingly flawed gem.

Masaru has quickly grown into a fiercely steadfast little hero, though this week's story has a few too many stops and starts in concluding his struggle against Zenji than I would have liked. I enjoyed Masaru recruiting the Slaughter Team to his side, even if it meant bringing back that terribly convenient Exposition Journal, but I was disappointed in the way the show handled him turning the tables on his uncle. He storms the castle in an appropriately heroic fashion with Eiryo, but then Zenji almost immediately flips the script on him by capturing Shirogane and Narumi, though it only takes another moment for Eiryo to convince Masuru that Zenji is obviously lying, which results in an overdramatic villain laugh from Zenji, and all of this sees Masaru and Eiyro just leap off to rescue their friends directly anyway. Zenji doesn't even get any direct comeuppance from one of our heroes; his exit comes simply from staying in his control room when the castle explodes later. It's an unsatisfying payoff to an arc that was already a little weak in its foundation.

But as was the case last week, things pick up on Narumi and Shirogane's side of the story, with the two once again trapped (this time in Zenji's cage) and growing closer to one another. I found it clunky the way this scene executed the double-flashback combo of Shirogane remembering both her time imprisoned as a youth and the way Shoji Saiga treated her with the same kindness as Narumi, but I'm a sucker for sap, and I made some audible daws during Shirogane and Narumi's cuddle session, not to mention when Masuru was finally reunited with his true adoptive family.

The fight scenes that followed were easily the weakest of the series so far, unfortunately. Narumi's rage-fueled use of hard qigon to bust everyone out of the cage was pretty satisfying, but his actual fight with the Kidnap Team goons was barely animated and generally uninspired. Masaru and Shirogane's joint use of Arlequin was a bit better, though I don't know how I feel about Masaru being able to so easily take over for Shirogane; the script makes it clear that he's nowhere near as skilled, yet he's still able to destroy the other Karakuri in a single blow, which feels like the show is robbing Shirogane of some of her spark. It's also yet another example of a killer Karakuri design essentially being wasted on a battle that lasts lest than thirty seconds, which is a shame.

While the action in “Swirling Tiger” may have been forgettable, that final scene certainly wasn't. With Shirogane out of commission, Masaru and Narumi end up trapped in the burning rubble of Zenji's Karakuri Castle, with the boy being sheltered from the flames by his swiftly fading mentor. The entire sequence is framed as an emotional farewell to a self-sacrificing Narumi, which initially felt odd considering we're only a tenth of the way through the story, but then Narumi wakes after the fire to find himself clutching Narumi's severed arm, the rest of him seemingly consumed by the fire. The image is surreal and incredibly goofy, yet oddly affecting too. Granted, I don't believe for a minute that Narumi's actually dead, since shonen anime tend to follow the rule of “They're only dead if you see the body, and even then they're probably just going to come back after a brief pit-stop in the afterlife or something”.

Still, both Narrator Masaru and Tragic Little Masaru seem to believe that Narumi's gone for good, and the fact that Karakuri Circus can pull off a scene like this so early in its run is a testament to how well a messy story and weak aesthetics can be buoyed by a good cast. With Masaru having experienced such personal loss, and Shirogane being injured and also likely in mourning, the show seems poised for some manner of narrative shift or time-skip. Even though the series wasn't at its best for much of the week, I have become endeared to this world and these characters, and I'm looking forward to seeing where Karakuri Circus takes us over the next thirty-two weeks.

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Black Clover - Episode 56 [Review]

There's really just no winning when it comes to adapting this Black Clover novel. It's more significant than a one-off flashback—it's a story that runs concurrently with the anime's events thus far, so the audience is tasked with keeping up as Fanzell pops in and out of the Black Bulls' lives. This is mostly to explain why Noelle and Finral also know this man, but I think the show could do more to ease us between the present day story and the past. It makes me wonder what this subplot would have looked like if they had adapted everything chronologically, but that doesn't sound satisfying either.

And so, we enter Round Two of the Fanzell mini-saga. This time Fanzell's encountering the rest of the Black Bulls (with an off-handed mention that he and Yami have met in the past, due to Fanzell being a former Diamond Kingdom commander) and confronting his flip-flopping pupil Mariella once more. The plotting is very haphazard, with one of the main points of contention being that the Diamond Kingdom has kidnapped Fanzell's fiancée, the third of these novel-original characters and the creator of Noelle's magic wand. We're told that Dominante Code (the aforementioned fiancée) is in the Diamond Kingdom's possession, we get a big battle between the Diamonds and the Bulls, and then plot twist: the whole battle was a scheme to rescue Dominante off-screen! We hadn't even met this woman yet, and now she drops into the cast with extraordinarily little fanfare. If there's any situation where a story is allowed to take its time introducing characters, it's in a quasi-filler exposition flashback within a long-running shonen series.

I'm also still having issues with how Mariella is characterized. There's such a game of "I'm betraying my master. BUT I still have respect for him. BUT maybe I'm actually betraying the Diamond Kingdom," with no clear logic behind any of these changes. She's stoic, but also extremely upfront and blunt about how she's feeling at any given time, so there isn't any actual character consistency to speak of in her turnarounds. It's not like she's an emotionally distant person who simply makes a mistake and feels guilty about it, nor is she a cunning mastermind who's setting the Diamonds up for betrayal—even when she's on the bad guys' side, she's still high-key bragging about how strong her master is. If the show was going for any sincerity in her arc, it would help if it could at least wait more than five minutes between each time she changes her mind.

This episode is another example of Black Clover just not keeping it together as a story. I don't care to find out what happens next for these new characters, and contradicting the already extraneous nature of these flashback episodes, we're also not offered enough breathing room. It's tiresome enough that we're jumping around through the series' timeline, filling in blanks we didn't need filled, and then we're ultimately left with means without an end. It's an uneventful flashback that derails the present day story so that we can get to know characters whose development is bafflingly undercooked. Blah.

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Banana Fish - Episode 17 [Review]

It's nice to have Ash and Eiji back together again, isn't it? I feel like I've been starved for affection between these two, and episode 17 delivers in spades. Luckily, that's not all that it has going for it, or else it wouldn't be that exciting of an episode. "The Killers" is a showcase for the series' current best villain, Yut-Lung, that also introduces a new challenger for that title.

After hovering around the shadows for the last few weeks, Yut Lung finally gets to exact his revenge on his horrible family. He strikes a deal with Golzine that basically involves them using their skills to go after each other's enemies, like the evil mafia don version of "I scratch your back, you scratch mine." Both succeed, but since Yut-Lung is a multidimensional character we care about more, his family's destruction gets more actual screen time and feels far more thrilling. My only complaint would be that this feels like it happens far too quickly. For all the build-up we've had over several episodes, it's a bit anti-climactic to see Wang-Lung dispensed with over the course of just one scene. Then again, Yut-Lung does have six brothers and hopes to wipe out each one's entire family, so I'm guessing this is only the beginning.

But ultimately, this isn't Yut-Lung's story, it's Ash's and Eiji's, even if episodes like this can make you sometimes wish that it was the other way around. It's obvious Yut-Lung's desire to wipe out the entire Lee clan would eventually means killing himself too, and we've seen more and more indication that this might be what he wants. While he's not doing anything to try to reverse course, he does seem to be aware on some level that he's a twisted person who's drowning in loneliness and despair. Whatever's leading him to want to end his existence, it makes him more sympathetic than I had ever expected when he was first introduced. So in some ways, it makes him a more interesting character than Ash, who for all his trauma and pain still feels unrealistically perfect at times. Yut-Lung also is super-smart and capable beyond his years, but that's eating him away inside at a much faster pace. Ash still has a survival instinct and basic goodness that's probably more due to his upbringing than any sort of "cursed" aspect of the Lee lineage.

At least in between all this dark stuff, we get some sweet scenes. I'm glad that Ash has finally realized how much he needs Eiji emotionally. It's frustrating that they needed to both be captured and separated from each other in order to see that, but I'm glad they finally got there. It felt like MAPPA was trying to make up for all that separation by really turning up the romantic ambiance, with that soft orange lighting during some of their scenes alone. While some things have improved, you don't have to read between the lines much to see that there's trouble in paradise. Eiji is reluctant to tell Ash about how he met Yut-Lung, and even when he does, he withholds details about how Yut-Lung will go after Eiji as long as he's the key to Ash. Eiji doesn't want Ash to worry too much, but he also knows that Ash will baby him and get overprotective, suggesting that the two still have some trust issues.

Adding to that is Ash's mounting paranoia this week, leading the boy who always trusts his own instincts to begin doubting them. He can't put his finger on why, but he just has an eerie sense of constantly being watched, making him even clingier about Eiji, which probably isn't helping these trust issues. Of course, Ash turns out to be right, introducing what I've heard from many manga fans is one of the series' best characters, Blanca.

Blanca is an assassin hired by Golzine to track down Ash, and he seems to have a history and a bond with his target that initially makes him reluctant to take the job. Spying on Ash makes him reconsider, because he's curious about what the boy has been up to and sees him as a worthy opponent. There are suggestions that Blanca might have taught Ash his own gun skills, complimenting him for following his methods. All this makes it puzzling that Blanca is willing to kill this boy he seemingly helped train and raise, but the "checking in on a former pupil" part makes sense. If only that "check-in" wasn't so deadly in nature…

Despite the title "The Killers" sounding like it could describe any Banana Fish episode, it's a reference to a 1920s short story by Ernest Hemingway about Prohibition-era mob violence and the inability of ordinary people to do anything to stop it. I don't think I have to explain how this relates to Banana Fish and this episode in particular, full of cascading mob hits. As the bodies stack up, the complexity of our cast of characters does too (except Golzine, who's as one-dimensionally evil as ever). I hope he dies soon. Ash has enough more interesting opponents to make up the difference, especially after this week.

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