Flower and Asura

Episode 10

This week we got another comparatively uneventful episode, but admittedly, I liked this one more than the similar ones we've had in some of the previous weeks. Right off the bat, the advice Botanboko offered about being too over the top and literal, especially with gesticulation, is so real. There's definitely a time to floor it and a time to hold back. Especially if you're new to events that amount to competitive talking, it can sometimes be tricky to tell which is which because you're probably still learning what those look like through the lens of your speech. Slamming the metaphorical gas pedal at the wrong time because you're probably not even fully conscious of the fact that you're even doing that at all is a pitfall I've seen a lot of people fall into, both inside the world of competitive speech and adjacent activities and out. A clear and comical example of this that springs to mind is Ben Platt's performance in the Dear Evan Hansen movie—which was all I could think about while Botanboko explained all this to Hana.

Still, the main thing this episode was about was it dawning on Hana that even though broadcast club is a club, they don't compete as a collective club or a team—they compete as individuals. It may feel like an oxymoron to say that the broadcast club is competing as individuals on a team, but however weird that looks on paper, that's the nature of the beast. And this is true for competitive speech as well. Even though you're on your school's team, and there are awards to be given to teams who get the most members placing overall (it's called Sweeps), the fact is that there can only be one first place recipient in each category. Especially relative to typical team activities in schools, this omnipresent comrades-but-rivals dynamic you have with your teammates can be a really unusual one. And it's not hard to see why it's definitely not something that everyone's going to like or feel encouraged by.

As you've probably already realized, this stands in stark contrast to most sports anime. It's a lot easier for these anime to develop friendships and feelings of camaraderie amongst teammates because, even if it's not unusual for such anime to have a lone wolf character with a “I don't need my teammates, I can and will do everything myself” personality in the mix, the fact remains that they're still competing as a unit. If they make it to [insert big tournament here], the whole team makes it—not just, say, the one or two scoring-est players and nobody else.

I point this out because I want to appreciate how nice it is that the members of the broadcast club don't completely hate each other—and that one could argue that friendship is one of the central-most themes of this show. Especially if you weren't super familiar with how competitive speech and adjacent activities are, I think someone could plausibly learn about this specific aspect of it and it could single handedly lead them to misguidedly thinking, “Ah, so these activities are hyper-competitive and probably really backstab-y, since an inherent distrust, even amongst so-called teammates, is baked into the very format of it.” And obviously, as we've even seen in this very anime, there's so much more to it than that—and in fact, quite the opposite, it can be a great place for friendships to blossom.

But getting back on track, in hindsight, it was obvious that this was always going to be something that Hana struggled with coming to terms with—even if only for one episode. Not only have we been seeing Hana getting really close to other members of the broadcast club, but especially early on in the series we've seen her struggle with her confidence in ways that made it seem like she didn't care for the competitive aspects of broadcast club. And while we've seen Hana embrace broadcast club competitiveness and all, and we've also since come to learn that, again, it was more of an issue of her self-confidence than anything else, the fact remains that Hana hasn't not had complicated feelings about the competitive aspects of broadcast club. Still, it was nice to see Hana declare that she's going to find her resolve toward the end of the episode.

As we get closer and closer to the end, I can't help but already think about how much I'm going to miss watching this show every week. At this point, I think I can safely say this has been my favorite anime this season. It's been such a breath of fresh air, and I can't believe we're already at a point where we only have two episodes left.

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