Reflecting Lights

It took awhile, but we finally finished watching Figure 17 a few days ago.  I’ve been taking my time, collecting my thoughts as well as getting away from any immediate emotional responses to it before posting my final thoughts on the anime.  Oh, and I’ve been busy (hence the lack of entries aside from a few choice series.)  Hopefully the storm outside won’t knock out my electricity until after I’ve finished this.

So, what was my response as the last chords of the ED finished and the series came to a close?  Disappointment.  Complete disappointment.

But wait, there’s a reason.  Awhile back, an acquaintance of my said this of Figure 17: “If it weren’t for Revolutionary Girl Utena, Figure 17 would be my favorite anime.”  Alas, I jumped to conclusions.  Surely, that signified a series that had to be full of depth, a unpredictable ending, etc.  After I told him I was disappointed, he added that he liked them in a ying and yang sort of way.  Figure 17 for its simplicity and lack of depth, and Utena for the opposite.

Wish I had known that coming in.  I was really waiting for something completely unexpected and powerful to happen, and it didn’t.

So, that was my initial response to it all.  However, that doesn’t mean I thought it was bad.  It wasn’t, it was a really sweet series that I recommend to anyone who enjoys slice of life.  The true-to-life moments are so spectacular in the simplicity and realness.  I know I said it before, but during the ranch episode (where the girls helped out), I could almost smell hay and manure, it was so vivid to me (a former farm girl.)  While I never particularly liked Tsubasa, and Hikaru didn’t grow on me until close to the end, the rest of the young characters were delightful.  Sho and Kenta were particularly great.  It still feels like there should have been more to everything with Kenta though.  Something felt a little lacking at the end with him, a little incomplete.

But the focus of the series was supposed to be Hikaru and Tsubasa, and really, I didn’t think too much of their pairing.  Throughout Tsubasa remained pretty much the same, occasionally progressing and then seriously regressing.  Her sudden ability to do everything at the end reminded me of the climax of Infinite Ryvius, just a little too cut and dry.  My husband mentioned that it felt like we missed out on a scene or conversation, because otherwise it was just flipping a switch for Tsubasa, and that’s a shame.  Yes, people will react different during an extreme situation, but they had a good opportunity to slowly build to this, show the character developing towards someone who could handle such a situation and at least in my opinion, they chose not to, and chose to just flip a switch at the climax to make things easier.

Then there was the sci-fi element of the series.  I still firmly believe that it was completely unnecessary and took away from the series in so many ways.  I think I would have even have been able to accept Tsubasa’s sudden change at the end if it weren’t for the sci-fi setting it was in.  Even my sci-fan husband felt the sci-fi portion was intrusive and took away from the overall quality of the series.  Granted, it wasn’t used quite as badly as the mecha in Kannazuki no Miko, but it was still out of place and made the show feel jerky and disconnected in points.  This was especially problematic because the girls almost never discuss what’s going on.  It’s so unimportant to them that it feels silly to even have it in the show at all.

But even with that, it’s still a very good series.  The side characters and setting really come forth as the heroes of the show, along with slice-of-life plot moments.  The leads were a bit too shallow for my taste (although Tsubasa did have one really good episode where it seemed she was finally going to have some depth–but alas she regressed immediately after), but even they were sweet enough to watch and they certainly weren’t unlikable.  They just didn’t have enough too them for my tastes, given what high praise their relationship had been given.

So what is my recommendation?  If you like slice-of-life, watch this anime.  It’s exactly what you want.  Just make sure you aren’t expecting the unexpected or something with a lot of depth.  It’s not that kind of series, but it’s fantastic for what it is, and really, can you ask anything more of an anime that is so good at what it is?  Perhaps I did, but I was under the wrong impression of what the series was.  Watching it again someday (which I will do), I’ll be better prepared to just sit back and enjoy the simplicity of it all, rather than waiting impatiently for something I couldn’t predict to happen.