Sarazanmai 8: "...But We'll Never Meet Again"
I’m writing this up a week after watching the episode (it’s been a busy week). Honestly, this one felt like Ikuhara checking boxes. We’ve got the main characters having met in the past but one of them doesn’t remember…
…a questionable influence on a kid (who really is acting kind of “Nice Guy” entitled and selfish, but, well, kid)…
…a surreal pun moment during the antagonists’ conversation… (Which I did appreciate, by the way.)
…and a penguin.
I found myself less interested in this episode—something about Toi’s arc not feeling particularly deep or surprising. Chikai meeting Enta was an interesting touch, but it’s also making me dislike Enta. Like, I get it, it stinks that your friend is now friends with someone else, but you are not handling it well, and someone other than Chikai should call you out on it.
But then the stakes are upped.
Turns out the Desire Extraction Gun is also a Regular Gun. Which…somehow makes things more real. Also, while the meaning of a gun is different in Japan (a country with very strict gun control laws), the “self-defense” line broke me out of the story for a moment because of all the fuckery with police violence against black people in the US. Fuck passing second-degree murder off as self-defense.
We get an interlude of Kappa Backstory in which the words “Dark Keppi” are uttered “on-screen” for the first time:
We’re inching closer to answers, but we haven’t quite gotten them yet. Instead, we get comedic hijinks with a freeze ray…that actually ends up being necessary to explain the Very Serious Ending. In the “that escalated quickly” sense.
This line is very Utena, or probably very Ikuhara. It sounds very metaphorical and also it would not surprise me if there were an actual door. But…surely the gun is going to be a Desire Extraction Gun while they’re in the Kappa Square, right?
Right?
…Oh.
(Side note: the particular depiction of blood spatters reminded me a lot of Umineko.)
I realized I skipped over Enta and Kazuki’s entire confrontation, and I think that’s because it was pretty much what I expected. Kazuki doesn’t forgive Enta, Enta doesn’t forgive Kazuki, but Enta still loves Kazuki, and Kazuki still cares about Enta. Meanwhile, Leo makes faces.
With Enta shot, I watched through the credits, wondering if they’d do something clever like Erased did, but as far as I could tell it was the same as always. I did catch this at the end, though:
That miçanga (a word I learned from this show, by the way) has passed from Toi to Kazuki to Enta (and then back to Kazuki). It’s a connection between them, and also literally something you tie onto yourself. And…as I said before, this seems very Ikuhara-ish, to have had past connections between these kids, and physical objects that carry through them, but I’m also thinking it undermines the original teaser-trailer concept of “I want to connect”. We’re no longer looking at three boys who could be anybody in Tokyo, pushing back against the general lack of connection people feel in the 2010s. These three boys already have a backstory, and we were just waiting for it to come into full force. Oh well.
Predictions:
- Toi is not gone forever (99% sure)
- Enta is not dead (88% sure)
- Dark Keppi is Normal Keppi’s fault (77% sure)
- Leo will do something heroic (66% sure)
- Haruka will somehow get healed (55% sure, i.e. “not very sure”)
- I will not end up recommending this show to people…
…right now I’m leaning towards “watch Madoka again, and then watch Utena instead”. Although I have been convinced to watch Mawaru Penguindrum once Sarazanmai is over.
Three episodes left, one of which is already out. We’ll see if I get to it during the week.