The Rolling Girls

Episode 3

After the exciting but largely self-contained theatrics of the first two episodes, it was something of an open question as to what Rolling Girls would actually be about. This third episode seemed to partially answer that question, as our titular girls rolled on into the Tokyo sub-country of Comima, where the Best Thunderoad and her Knights of the Twin Towers maintain the peace. Thunderoad apparently isn't a big fan of her position, and is determined to sell her Moonlight Stone and retire to… being carried around in a very expensive rickshaw all the time, apparently. But when her stone disappears and our heroes show up with a moonlight stone of their own, things quickly go south for basically everyone.

Based on the small scale of this episode's conflict and the clues the show's ending animation provides, it's looking like Rolling Girls will be composed of a number of small vignettes, different characters and problems our main group run into as they learn more about the Moonlight Stones and travel the winding roads of this show's strange and beautiful world. That seems like a pretty intelligent use of the setting here - there's no point in creating a world of dozens of creative districts if you're not going to visit them, and starting off with a country that essentially posits “what if Comiket was an eternal festival-city with its own culture and law enforcement” is as good a place as any to begin. I was glad to see the return of the pastel, almost watercolor-style backgrounds from the first episode's introduction, which gave a very distinct visual personality to Comima, and little details like the apparently compulsory wizard outfits also helped give this place its own style. The backgrounds and neat details helped lessen the sting of this week's pronounced decrease in impressive animation - it'd be nice if Rolling Girls could always look pretty and fluid, but the strong base aesthetic does help make up for places where the animation flags. And even though Thunderoad's dilemma wasn't the most compelling narrative by itself, given this episode was also focused on further exploring the world and the main cast while also providing hints at a larger narrative, I'm willing to cut the Best-of-the-week's story some slack.

This episode's most important task was establishing the personalities and internal dynamics of The Rolling Girls themselves. Nozomi we've already gotten fairly familiar with, but her companions Yukina, Ai, and Chi all still have some ways to go in becoming inherently compelling characters. Ai definitely stole the show this week, likely due to her personality being the most immediate sell of the group - she's the brash, confident one, and her confrontational attitude was a welcome shift from the rest of the group's altogether far too pleasant conversations. Nozomi's somewhat subdued as far as leaders go (unsurprisingly - this is her journey of self-discovery after all, so her starting off insecure is only fitting), but Yukina has so far mainly defined herself as “clumsy and prone to getting lost,” and Chi's monosyllabic conversation style doesn't really lend itself to charming, character-highlighting witticisms. If Rolling Girls really is going to end up being a sort of stone-collecting roadtrip anthology, the main characters will have to start standing out a bit more to carry it to the end.

Aside from spending some bonding time with the main cast and covering the first half of Thunderoad's story, the last task for this week's episode was to offer some hints of the larger story. Based on what we saw here, Rolling Girls' overarching narrative is about as breezy as the rest of it - it seems that Chi's mother is one of the higher-ups responsible for distributing Moonlight Stones (which are clearly tied to the Bests' powers), and is now using her influence to gather more stones for some unknown purpose. Overall, this episode was a step down in energy and animation from the first two, and the core cast still haven't proven they can carry a show, but Rolling Girls' still has plenty of strengths and time to find its groove.

Rating: B

The Rolling Girls is currently streaming on Funimation.

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