Oh man oh man. I sure didn't think I was going to be watching anime for a while. In fact I had pretty much given up on the idea that I would be watching any for a while, forever chained to my desk to study and make my parents proud and so on and so forth. But to my surprise, I found myself starting this quarter off with a bit of time on my hands. Throughout this time without anime I've been thinking about what exactly I should be watching. Lots of people had been recommending me Boku no Hero Academia and I'm sure it's wonderful. And lots of other anime and anime movies to watch. However, something just called me to watch this anime. It's sure been a while since I've watched a 22 episode anime. I mean sure it seems like I have with my blog post schedule, but in actuality it's been a minute. It felt really good to binge; it felt like I was going back to my roots as an avid anime enjoyer of sorts I guess. Haha, I don't want to say that it was honestly to fill a void in my heart at the moment...but it kinda was. I felt a little bit off-centered as I tend to feel at the beginning of most quarters or the start of something new in general. It's a little weird. But you came here for the Anime ATM not my rambling so:
{Spoilers, obviously}
Wow it's been so long since I've binged something and felt all of my feelings becoming an overwhelming barrage of thoughts and opinions that I documented throughout my time watching the anime. Perhaps I should journal it all down before starting my blog posts, but I kind of like how they're just a whirlwind of my thoughts as well.
A good place to start is always the "short" plot synopsis. So basically there's this boy named Kiriyama Rei and he's the fifth ever person to become a professional shogi player in middle school. On paper it seems like this amazing achievement until you unpack all the reasons why he became so great at this game. He actually has a lot of trauma from his parents dying at a young age, not having any relatives to take care of him, so he relies on his father's old shogi friend to take him in as his shogi apprentice and his foster son. His father's friend Kouda asked Kiriyama if he loved shogi more than anything, and to avoid getting put into an orphanage he lied and said yes. And all throughout the show you get glimpses of this little boy that's fighting for his life, doing anything he can to survive. And it's really sad when you think about this little boy that played shogi just to spend bonding time with his dad and ending up playing shogi as a way to survive. It doesn't make it any better that because of Kiriyama's intense shogi training that he surpasses Kouda's blood related children and makes their relationship even more strained. And it's not like Kiriyama doesn't feel bad about this. The real kicker is when he talks about how he broke that family. How he was the magpie's offspring that was born into the wrong nest and killed off the parents' real chicks. That was the real sinker right there. I can't even imagine how it would feel like to believe that you've ruined someone else's family for your own survival.
And it's this constant question to Kiriyama, at least for me, of if he actually really loves shogi or if this is the only way he can survive? Throughout the show he encounters so many different people who all have their lives impossibly entangled with shogi. All of these men are professional players that go through their troubles all linked to this strategic game. Some of them want to bring honor to the small towns they came from, others have dealt with physical ailments from the stress caused by the game, and others still are trying to keep their rankings to maintain face after all of these years of competition. It's hard to describe or encapsulate even in this limitless blog post that I'm writing, all of the stories that were told throughout these 22 episodes. Yes, most of it was focused around this lonely, broken boy Kiriyama, but it was also just beyond him. It was beyond shogi. It was honestly so many twists and turns and switch in tone from one of trauma and somber reality to happy and comedic times that I felt like I got whiplash from how fast it changed from one to the other. In fact, at times I felt like the transition between the two was too jarring, and I'm not sure if that was really the aim of the tone shifting so fast. However, it was definitely memorable.
I would compare this show to Your Lie in April in terms of how the trauma follows the main protagonist and weighs him down at times. This was definitely a lot more sad because Kiriyama was outcasted by his classmates in school and also had to deal with the eluded to trauma inflicted by his foster sister, but it was the same tone of pain caused by inescapable circumstances. It was also like Chihayafuru. There was of course the sports aspect of the show with the constant rounds of lots of jargon that I didn't understand. Don't expect to walk away from this show knowing how to be a professional shogi player (or maybe that's just me and you'll really walk away an expert) because they definitely don't give you step by step instructions on how everything works. They do give you lots of interesting strategies and even a cat illustrated book on all of the different pieces and shogi basics, but not a whole lot. Although maybe if you already know how to play chess it'd be easier to learn shogi? It was also like Chihayafuru in terms of the tournament style and sometimes how these competitions were portrayed with it not just being able the game, but also the training and camaraderie that surrounds the whole show, although perhaps less so in this show because there's no team aspect to it.
There is definitely something to be said about the motif of water throughout the show. I'm not really sure what to make of it. At times seeing the water appear during the rounds inside of Kiriyama's head it was almost suffocating. In fact, most of the time it was meant as a tool to convey how he couldn't breathe inside the round or how overwhelming it was. And they often did kind of random zoom ins of his beverages or of anyone's beverages really which was interesting. Not super sure why they did that. But I think these kinds of engaging scenes where it wasn't just shogi pieces on a board being moved around and losing me because I actually don't know anything about this game. Instead it was more of an atmospheric thing that allowed anyone to be enraptured by the tone of the show and what was going on. And this was much appreciated for someone with actually no idea how to play the game :')
As someone that is constantly found watching slice of life, I thought it was only fitting that I also talk about how I found the slice of life portion to be. Like I said above, sometimes the transition between the two sides of the show with the seriousness of shogi on the one hand and the domestic scenes of the Kawamoto household was too startling. There was no easy transition between the two, and maybe those sweet slice of life moments are meant as a chaser for the bitterness of Kiriyama's life. Like little splashes of sunlight to an otherwise gloomy day. And honestly some of these moments with Kiriyama at the Kawamoto's house were so heartwarming. Like when he was sick and they took him to their house to nurse back to health. And how he got to experience what it felt like to live in a really warm household just like a kotatsu. At the same time though, it wasn't completely unrealistic. The Kawamoto family welcomed him in, but it was definitely not a parasitic relationship with them just giving and giving without Kiriyama ever giving back. He gave them a welcome reprieve from some of the heavier stuff like dealing with the deaths in their family during Obon and someone to care for. And Kiriyama got to experience a warm family, although he was scared of breaking their family like he thought he did to his foster parents which is really sad. I wish I could go in there and talk some sense into that boy that what he was doing was perfectly fine and that he deserves to be loved too. I love all of their little moments together with the cats getting voiced as well hehe. And Momo is absolutely adorable with her child's innocence. Like when they were trying to come up with new product ideas for their traditional Japanese confectionery store and they really wanted to know what flavor she wanted as daifuku flavoring and she said gum. I couldn't stop laughing honestly.
Maybe I also felt like I resonated with the Kawamoto sisters because I have two younger sisters of my own. So it was kinda like a reflection of my own family? And seeing Akane's silent maturity and Hina's awkward moments as a middle school girl in love really reminds me of how my younger sister who's around the same age as Hina is going through that and how many parallels there are between the two of us.
Can you tell that I really enjoyed this anime? Haha while I did think that there were definitely some places where I felt like there was somewhat of a disconnect, overall it was an amazing experience. Hopefully I have time to watch the second season before I forget the characters and this story line. Ugh it's been a while since I've felt this way about an anime and it feels really good to be honest to watch something and feel on fire to review it. Yeah. So there's that. Obviously there's a lot to unpack from this anime like why it's called March Comes in Like a Lion (because it's a proverb apparently) or about his school life or his mental state or how wack his sister is. Yeah it's a lot. But that's all for now!
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