Flower and Asura

Episode 7

I guess broadcast club does have some categories that feel, essentially, like competitive acting after all! How exciting! In any case, this is the first time in this series so far that something in the broadcast club looked substantially different from its competitive speech equivalent. And that is, of course, this TV drama. At least back when I was on a speech team, the categories that incorporated more acting didn't require so elaborate a set-up—it was just you and your script. No cameras, no editing, no props, and—well, if you were in duo (and those were separate categories) you could act alongside another person, but even then it would only be one person. At least anecdotally, these always seemed to me to be the more competitive categories—or at the very least, they're the ones that tended to attract the most people. I wonder if that's going to be true for this anime as well?

Well, hyper-competitive or not, the broadcast club definitely seems to have their work cut out for them working on this video. It can be all too easy to underestimate how difficult filming for projects like these can be, but between having to work around daylight and the band's practice times, this anime certainly seems to understand it. The part with the band, especially, got a laugh out of me—it felt so hilariously real.

But of course, like last week, this episode seems mostly focused on Akiyama and his sister—who, this week, we learned works alongside the immensely talented Shura. Something I noticed this week is that the further we've got in the series, the less time the characters who were initially being framed as our central protagonists, Hana and Mizuki, are spending in the spotlight. Mizuki, especially, is barely getting any screen time at all these days—which is a shame, I think she's a perfectly charming character. Now, to be clear: in the case of this anime, I don't necessarily see this as a negative. The character writing is very strong, and this anime obviously wants to give all the members of the broadcast club a moment to shine. And such is the strength of the character writing that this series seems to be making that work.

Circling back to Akiyama, though, he and his sister are obviously going to be the next major arc. The sister, in particular, will probably be promoted in the hierarchy of side characters, now that we know she works alongside Shura. For that matter, it seems likely that Shura herself might play a more direct role in the story as the anime goes on—more than the abstract rival she's been up until now. And I like the idea of Shura having a more involved role in the story moving forward. She's obviously a great motivator for the more competitive members of the broadcast club, and even for the others, it's not like she's not intimidating all the same. But of course, this is all still on the horizon; for the time being, she's just looming ominously as ever above the members of the broadcast club, who now know that they're collectively just one degree of separation from her—a detail I wonder if we'll hear them talk more about their thoughts on.

So this is all to say that it was another episode that was good but not great this week. It's easy to tell that it's setting up for something larger, but still, this episode felt a bit muted in comparison to the others we've had. Still, I don't want to make it sound like I don't think this anime's been smashing it out of the park so far—because it absolutely has been. And sometimes, a little bit of build up can pay off massively. The writing quality has been outstanding thus far, so I still have every hope and confidence that it's going to deliver something really show stopping in the weeks to come.

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