The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window ep11- Unbreakable -

This is kind of a pretentious title for my weekly post on The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window. To be honest, I really could just have titles every single post “daddy issues” but I figured it would get boring. This is very much a daddy issues the anime sort of series.

But I figured I would give the week a sort of overblown, victorious feeling title to go along with the episode.

At the end of the day, I think I kind of liked this episode but I don’t know why. Like it wasn’t exactly the sort of thing that I enjoy and I can’t point to any part and say, that bit there, that was good… And yet, I ended the episode thinking, huh, I wonder what happens next. So basically I’m about to say a bunch of not very good things about this episode but you should somehow figure out that I liked it.

On a technical level, it almost seemed as if the production rn out of budget. There were A LOT of still frames his week. Most of the backgrounds were either repurposed or simple colour gradients. Even when they did animating things it was a bit jagged. And that green light effect just looked so cheap. I’m sorry, but it did.

The fact is, The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window was never a production powerhouse. And it doesn’t help that I watch this show on the same day I watch Demon Slayer which is almost unfailingly impressive in that department. But even with my considerably lowered expectations after having seen most of the season, I still think that episode 11 of The Night Beyond the Tricornered Window was particularly technically weak. I do enjoy Rihito’s kid design though.

As for the story. Well, a lot of it was exposition drama that didn’t really give us new information so it’s not like I can say it was good. And it’s not the sort of thing I like. I should have been bored. And Mikado’s dad just hasn’t been developed well enough to make his emotional last stand poignant. At least for me. He has been presented as a more or less one-dimensional bad guy. There were some scenes here and there that hint at more but in general, he was our big bad.

And we don,t really know what has happened to him in the years since he left his family or what his life was like before so that big bad image overshadows the rest. I can’t muster up empathy for the man in a few minutes. So I just wasn’t that emotionally involved in his fate. And I do believe this is a failure of the narrative.

However, I also liked that after all this, h still loved his wife above all. And that Mikado’s strength was presented as coming from a solid upbringing and a lifetime of support from his mom and not the recent abusive relationship. That would have been annoying. All in all, for a supernatural horror yaoi title, I’m impressed that there was a pretty solid and meaningful exploration of a mother and son dynamic. I have to congratulate the show for that.

I stand by the fact that Rihito is not a character I want to see redeemed. I don’t care for the character and I really am not interested in seeing him actually get into a relationship. But….

Well, the show has been sort of keeping him away from us and the scared little kid is a lot more endearing than his adult counterpart. And will, he should not be in any sort of romantic relationship with anyone before he fixes his issues but I still want him to be saved. There I said it. I hope everything works out next week…