Tsurune - Episode 1 [Review]

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Tsurune - Episode 1 [Review]

What if Free! was about an archery club? With Tsurune, we no longer have to wonder. Kyoto Animation is sticking with what works for them, a concoction of harmless slice-of-life tropes mixed with heavy sports trauma that is so far underwhelming in every aspect but its visuals. Tsurune promises to be a beautiful show, but not a groundbreaking story. We've seen these character beats before in shows like Free! among many others. It might be fun to watch these predictably gorgeous Kyoto Animation characters run through the same angst-driven storylines as always, but I'm already concerned that this plot isn't going to offer up anything new.

Minato has a scar on his stomach and a chip on his shoulder. More specifically, he's struggling with a real mental illness that affects archers called Target Panic. The real illness creates symptoms similar to what happens in the show—afflicted archers tend to release the arrow too early. To use archery terminology, the show has a draw: what happened to Minato to give him this condition? Everything in his life is surely hurtling him toward a rediscovery of the sport he has abandoned (but not forgotten, as he still carries his archery glove in his schoolbag). Still, Minato's story is nothing new. He's a relatable everyman trying to overcome an injury that has both physical and mental impact on him in order to achieve excellence in his chosen sport. (We saw this last season in Hanebado!, for example.) Amidst a cast of predictable characters (the jokester, the delinquent, the class rep), it's difficult to predict the potential for anything beyond the same slice-of-life high school sports story we usually see. Keep in mind that the director here is Takuya Yamamura, the pupil of Free! director Eisaku Kawanami. It makes sense that he has taken a lot of storytelling cues from his mentor.

What does stand out are the music and visuals. The title “Tsurune” itself comes from a word we don't have in English—the taut sound of a bow at the moment of release. Needless to say, sound is deeply significant to the story. Delicate piano and (aptly) string melodies frame Minato's painfully typical struggles with more heart than the dialogue does. The biggest visual treat comes at the end of the episode when a defeated Minato emotionally bikes up a hill at sunset to encounter a mountain shrine at the top. There, a stranger in a hakama hits a moonlit target amidst a swirl of cherry blossoms. This fateful encounter, which somehow also involves a snowy owl, is the most memorable visual moment of an episode full of beautiful scenes. A muted color palette and a focus on light give the show its warmth, while an understated musical background that emphasizes the sound of a drawn bow and an arrow slicing the air underline the poetic appeal of this timeless sport. The soundtrack creator, Harumi Fuuki, is new to anime with just a few credits to her name (Forest of Piano among them), and I can predict that Tsurune will showcase her as a promising new composer.

This show's story isn't special, but it still comes with all of the quality visual and audio trappings we've come to expect from Kyoto Animation titles. This is only the first episode, so it's certainly too soon to write it off. I'm not wowed by the typical slice-of-life sports plot and the exact same characters and problems we've seen a dozen times already, but there's still time to see if it can hit the target a little more squarely in episode two.

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