March comes in like a lion

Episode 13

I'll give March credit: it's not letting its flagging production cut into its ambition. This week's episode opened with an arresting two minute sequence of Misumi getting up and eating breakfast, framed almost like a continuous live-action shot. In theory, this sequence seemed intended to place us squarely in his headspace for the first half of the episode. In practice, the rough nature of this cut, where simple pose changes are made jerky by the lack of inbetweens, simply made it feel odd. It was a unique and striking segment, but not necessarily a successful one.

It was clear throughout this episode that March is struggling to maintain its schedule. Before we got to that continuous cut, the episode opened with a several minute flashback that basically just repeats the last few minutes of the previous episode. Not only does that feel gratuitous, but the events of last episode's finale don't even really lead into this episode's content - while that sequence focused on Rei's preparations for his match with Gotou, the first half of this episode is occupied with Misumi's match with Gotou. And that's only the first of this episode's flashbacks - we also get an overlong retread of last episode's halfway point right around this episode's midpoint. March seems to be doing whatever it can to drag itself up to that twenty-three minute marker.

This episode's problems didn't end with its recaps and animation woes. This also felt like the second half of one story and the first half of another, with Misumi's match and Rei's followup battle feeling linked only in a temporal sense. Sticking closely to the manga chapters has given March a reliable template, but it feels like a slightly looser adaptation might have allowed for more coherent flow at times.

That said, the match sequences were still relatively entertaining. Misumi's internal monologue did a good job of establishing a believable alternate view of the world, offering us a welcome escape from Rei's malaise. There was an inherent comedy to Misumi's internal voice that felt more natural than the show's outright gags - or perhaps his sense of humor just fits my preferences more, since he's a fatigued adult with a sarcastic but ultimately positive view of the world. The one element of his narrative that didn't really land for me was his ultimate defeat by Gotou, which I felt the show portrayed in too much of a metaphorical sense to really land.

March has set itself a difficult hurdle to jump in terms of consistently making the twists and turns of shogi understandable in a dramatic sense. Succeeding there always requires a balance between board position information and evocative interpretation. By switching from board position movements to “now I'm sinking” metaphors, I think the show lost its thread of dramatic consequence there. But ultimately, I did appreciate how this sequence established Gotou as a more complex man than Rei's vision of him as a pure antagonist.

Rei's match against Kei Shimada occupied the final third of this episode, but we didn't really get enough of that match to form a strong impression of his character. Overall, this episode felt hamstrung by both structural decisions and visual limitations. March's underlying material remains strong, but its ways of executing on that material can be pretty shaky.

Overall: C-

March comes in like a lion is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.