Last week might have been my favourite episode of The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window and I said as much. I figured it could be a good sign that the second half of the series would be a bit more to my taste. The tone and writing are pretty inconsistent which gets on my nerves but sometimes a show just takes a long time to find its footing.
I was wrong. I really did not like this week’s episode.
Honestly, this week was just boring. I feel like that’s the greatest sin an anime can commit. Especially one that doesn’t really have technical prowess or artful prose going for it. As such, I’ll spare you too much rambling on it. Because I like, you guys!
This week we got a glimpse into Ritsu’s past and surprise! He had a traumatic childhood that left him a bit unhinged. Damn, who would have seen that coming. I actually just wrote a whole post about how fiction doesn’t have to be unpredictable to be great so I feel like a bit of a fraud now. It’s just that the traumatic childhood trope is such an overused cliché, especially to excuse or explain negative character traits. Anyway, hurt people hurt people and all that.
Officer whathisname is a bi more interesting but he’s a proforma character. I think this was the episode that was supposed to flesh him out but there really isn’t that much depth there. Still, I like him well enough, he serves his role. However, the only thing I really got out of all this is that Ritsu was cuter as a kid.
The end credits cruelly faked me out. I was just thinking, well this was boring. I should rewatch it if I ever have trouble sleeping but then again, it went by pretty quickly. That’s good! And then I find out there’s like 5 minutes left and that bummed me out.
The after-credits scene is a bit more full of action but we’ve established that I couldn’t care less about Erika and I still don’t. I guess well learned that she hurts people when she’s cornered. That doesn’t do much for me but I hope the Erika fans were stoked.
For me, what I’m left with after watching episode 6 of The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window is that I personally prefer Mikado (and his mom) to anyone else in the show. Or rather, he’s the only character I even marginally care about (and mostly his mother) so when he’s not around it’s a bit of a chore for me to sit through. I liked the visual of the guy with the black twigs growing out of his back.
I actually liked this episode; blondy makes more sense, now. I did miss the post credit scene, and I’m not in a hurry to watch it (or is there any vital info in it that I need lest I be totally confused?). For me, this is a decent show; nothing too special, but I’m into it enough to finish it.
I go up and down on this one. I just find a lot of it boring.