Caligula - Episode 4 [Review]

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Caligula - Episode 4 [Review]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n5J2N4cPWaY

While last week saw Caligula ditch its plot momentum to shine the spotlight on Mifue's character, episode 4 manages to find a much more even balance of character development and exposition, dividing the story roughly in half between the two efforts. Things move quickly on the exposition side, as Ritsu, Mifue, Shogo, and Kotaro get the lowdown from Aria about the history of Mobius and the need to gather heroes together to fight against μ's well-intentioned but dangerous hold on the virtual city. As far as character development goes, the other half of this episode belongs to Suzuna, who begins to form an emotional bond with an equally isolated library patron before discovering his darker nature hiding just beneath the surface.

Both halves of the plot do good work in stabilizing Caligula's shaky storytelling, though they aren't without their faults. The exposition scenes help to establish a clear conflict and finally unite our cast together under a common goal. Most of what Aria explains about her and μ's goals in creating Mobius rely on fairly standard sci fi tropes, most of which were already apparent after the first couple episodes, but the clarity of focus Aria provides in summing it all up is still welcome. It's unfortunate that the cast's group dynamic hasn't gelled together yet, nor have their individual personalities managed to rise above the generic JRPG clichés we met at the start of the show. Ritsu is essentially a cipher protagonist, Shogo is stoic, Naruko is quirky, and Kotaro is headstrong. Mifue fares a bit better in theory, since last week spent so much time with her, but we see none of those personality flaws or idiosyncrasies factor into her chemistry with the others this week, which makes episode 3 feel like even more of an outlier in retrospect. While Caligula definitely needed to take some time to get its team of heroes on the same page, it's worrisome that they still feel so half-baked as characters.

Suzuna follows Mifue in being slightly more interesting than her companions, but even that stems from grading on a heavy curve. I dug the slightly surreal and eerie atmosphere of the library she shared with Komori, but the actual dialogue they exchanged was underwhelming. I'll give Caligula points for using The Lord of the Rings as the episode's main reference point, but watching two moody teenagers spend half an episode psychoanalyzing Sméagol is not my definition of entertainment. The characterization of both parties felt far too self-serious for such an incredibly basic breakdown of the effects of isolation on the psyche; I'm happy that the show can focus on character interactions over empty spectacle when given the chance, but in order for that strategy to pay off, the dialogue has to actually be good. I was also not a fan of Suzuna using “the power of song” to defeat Komori in the end, which came across far too corny to be taken seriously.

Overall, Caligula seems to slowly be taking shape, though the show's pacing is still too erratic for my tastes. There are some strong aesthetic compositions on display in this episode as usual, but the mediocre animation negates Caligula's potential to get by purely on the graces of its good looks. Now that the exposition has been mostly taken care of, I'd like to see Caligula give its heroes some of those Catharsis Effect weapons so they can begin doing battle with the Digiheads and the Musicians. At this point, more dumb and empty spectacle might actually do the show a favor.

Source

Caligula - Episode 3 [Review]

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Caligula - Episode 3 [Review]

Caligula's third episode takes an interesting approach following μ's revelation from last week, by choosing not to address it at all. In the end, maybe two or three minutes of this episode are devoted to Ritsu aimlessly wandering the city until he finally decides to meet up with Shogo and get an explanation out of him. The other twenty minutes eschew all that to hone in on Mifue, as her own search for answers about her missing mother places her smack dab in the middle of a rather twisted take on Alice's mad tea party. As a standalone story, Mifue's trip down the virtual rabbit hole has some merit, especially in how it takes advantage of Mobius' elastic and ominous properties as a setting. As a piece of Caligula's increasingly jumbled rising action though, episode 3 is a mess that leaves me with some pressing concerns about the direction this anime is headed.

The story starts off strong, as Mifue follows some conspicuous ads to join up with SweetP and her tea party from hell, where she's forced to wear cutesy clothing and put on saccharine affectations in order to communicate with the goth-lolita princess and her off-putting cronies. This lengthy sequence is well-directed, doing a good job of communicating Mobius' unease and SweetP's particular brand of maniacal charm. Also invited to the tea party is the obsessive blogger Naruko, and I appreciated finally seeing her get involved in the action. SweetP herself serves as a convenient introduction to the series' set of antagonistic fashionistas, the Ostinato Musicians. We still have no idea what their goals are, outside of working vaguely to oppose our protagonists, but the presence of more traditional villains helps provide Caligula with a stronger narrative foundation.

However, the episode takes a turn when SweetP and her cronies begin grotesquely indulging in mountains of food, with the underlings becoming more engorged and misshapen as they wolf down bowls of ramen and cakes. This leads to Mifue completely breaking down, as she angrily raves against not just the girls in front of her, but all fat people in general, as she finds them inherently disgusting. We also learn that she inadvertently wished her gaunt and sickly mother away, since she was sick of being unable to eat comfortably around her. It's still unclear whether or not the sickly mother was just as much of a fake as the replacement, but otherwise this jarring character turn does make sense on paper, despite being presented so poorly.

The Persona influences remain obvious here, as Mifue's story feels right at home with the introductory dungeons of games like Persona 4, which used the psychological nature of their dungeons to set up the main cast of characters. The main difference between Caligula's approach vs. Persona's has to do with economy of characterization. Mifue's story isn't given enough time to be properly established before we see the cracks in her personality show; outside of her issues with her mother's eating disorder, we've gotten to know almost nothing about her personality or life before this week. Because of this, her disdain for obese people makes her incredibly unlikable, where it might have played differently if we had seen how her relationship with her mother and anxieties over her own body image might have led to these issues. There's a line or two from SweetP that suggests Mifue might be overweight in the real world, but it just isn't clear enough to pay off emotionally yet.

The conclusion of the episode rings false too, as SweetP is herself revealed to be an overweight and unpopular male blogger, but only because Naruko conveniently remembers some of the real SweetP's tics and catchphrases. This makes SweetP's embarrassment and retreat feel both unearned and lacking in context. What did SweetP stand to gain from any of this? What have she and the other Musicians lost in their defeat? Mifue seems to have learned nothing of importance this week; she's already figured out that she lives in a digital construct of a world and that her mother has been taken from her due to μ's meddling. Everything beyond is lacking too much context to feel worthwhile yet.

By the time Ritsu makes his way to Shogo at the end of the episode, it feels like remarkably little has been accomplished. We know a little more about Mifue, but that knowledge doesn't shed light on anything meaningful just yet. Naruko has bumbled her way into the plot, but it's difficult to get excited about adding new members to the cast when the ones we've already met still haven't had the chance to do anything important. There's still time for Caligula to pull its disparate pieces together into something more cohesive, but this kind of haphazard plotting is never a good sign.

Source

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5_VNI2ENlQM