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There’s this Discord server I’m in where I said that Akane-banashi was a show without much to tell but a lot to write about. Afterwards I proceeded to write 7 word pages about it in the course of three days. Awajima Hyakkei is kinda the opposite, on paper I should have lots of things to talk about it but it doesn’t leave me much to write about. So hopefully this should be one of the short ones. But why does this review even exist then? Well because I already reviewed both previous adaptations of its author so I might as well cover this one too.
This anime wasn’t even under my radar initially and judging from its quantity of viewers it is safe to assume that that was the case for the vast majority of people, which is kinda funny considering how it could appeal to certain niches. It’s the same for everything this woman does and although the previous two have managed to gain some kind of cult niche classics between LGBT themed fiction audiences, this one is just too recent and short to have had the same luck, maybe in the future but not for now.
Anyways, when it comes to Takako Shimura works, I didn’t like Aoi Hana, so that wasn’t an incentive to watch this anime, but I did like Hourou Musuko, so that was an incentive. So the tides were tied for me to watch this title, it was like tossing a coin. Then I have seen and read people comparing it to Kageki Shoujo, which was one of the few 2021 anime that I liked and that were good, so yeah, I had to watch Awajima Hyakkei at that point.
Like that third aforementioned show, Awajima Hyakkei certainly is also about a girls school specified in theatre, stage plays, dancing, singing and everything that comes along with it, but it’s more about the drama of lots of girls attending there, even across many generations. Thus, when it comes to flesh out its characters, it sort of gives everyone a backdrop and a resolution I guess, even if it never manages to give them a strong presence nor personality. At the very least, those personalities are well founded because of those pasts each one carries. In Shimura’s trademark, this work is a lot more toned down compared to anything akin. Despite being about the toxicity of the theatrical world, much like Glass no Kamen or Revue Starlight (both of which I did not watch) or Kageki Shoujo, but it follows the approach of the latter and its author of toning down the characters and make them easier to empathize with at least to a point, even the pettiest and ill intended characters and actions are nothing compared to what you can get on plenty of other anime and fiction in general.
The constant switches in time to show a girl from a different generation and some facial resemblance across some of them makes it somewhat complicated and challenging to follow up to a point, but on the site I was watching the anime, someone shared a Japanese chart which detailed every generation and relation amongst the characters. Not that it helped me one bit but it was a nice detail.
The themes are about people not always getting what they want, in fact that’s the norm in this anime, it’s as if nobody could get exactly what they want, which I guess it’s valuable in itself to talk about how more often than not life takes you to different places or through different ways than the ones you expected. Also, about how a person, any person, is more layered and different with and from the perspective of different people, basically that no one is as simple as you can see and that everyone is a different person than you might think. Also, that you might walk different paths than a close person to you from one moment to another. There’s also a lot of focus in upbringing, even the shittiest character in the show might be the result of the life and family they had or that they left behind for reasons and tried to get away with it. There’s also lots of unrequited love as usual, another trademark of this woman. Unrequited lesbian love at that, so yeah this anime is closer to Aoi Hana in that regard.
As can be noticed, the themes extends to the characters, but again there are no outstanding personalities here and because of the constant switches in narrative from one to another in a segment or anthology-like manner, there’s no real development nor catharsis, especially not because almost no one achieves what they want. On top of that there’s no real closure, or rather, a clear path to a closure, for any character, in the same episode or some following one you get to know what happened to them, but nothing in between. Say what you will about the previous adaptations of this woman, but they had smaller and more focused casts.
And despite there being themes, there’s clearly no plot whatsoever, the narrative moves from a character to another with no clear end goal until the last two episodes and…like, 5 minutes of another one? And it’s the publication of a book and a certain play starring several girls seen throughout the show. One would probably think: well that was the slowly prepared end goal that would tie everything together, but spoilers, not all of the highlighted characters are important for it, and it is never shown in the anime. Unlike its older sister series, this show has an ending, but it doesn’t feel like one, so you might as well consider that it is as unfinished as those other two.
In fact, as far as a theatrical show goes, Awajima Hyakkei is also lacking in that regard, as there’s almost no stage play being played in the series. Imagine making an anime about arts and not showing the arts, and yes, the medium suffers quite usually from that. Even aesthetically Awajima Hyakkei is not all that. It clearly tries to mimic the visual style of Aoi Hana and Hourou Musuko, and although it has a more polished artwork and completed backgrounds with no overdone lighting, it is also quite lacking in the artistic sense compared to those. The special effects are quite lacking for what they intend to do, the blushing one in particular is laughably dated, which is an issue in anime since at least the last decade, and the character figures are as usual simple and with facial repetitions to the point of confusing you, even with the characters chart at disposal. At the very least they have realistic figures especially for their career, and they visually age as they get older throughout the years.
As for the voice acting, it isn’t as realistic and natural sounding as in its older sister series, it’s more typical, and for a show that’s supposed to be about acting, Kageki Shoujo has it beat in that regard. The sound effects are good but the best audio part is the music, which is still quite absent and forgettable after you finished the show. Despite that, even the lowest and slowest theme fits the anime very well. What I said does not apply to the opening and ending sequences, which although helped by the visuals, are the best ones I have seen and heard so far from this year, especially the outro.
In conclusion, I can’t really say that this anime was worth watching nor is it worth recommending, but at the very least it helped pass some time. Managing to handle as many characters as it did and with that type of narrative is worth mentioning, but the sheer amount of the cast didn’t leave it to flesh them out as well as needed and there’s no real sense of plot progression nor closure whatsoever. Is a competently made big whole, but at the same time a big hole of nothing. Both previous works from its author pulled off better results exactly because they had smaller and more focused casts of characters, Kageki Shoujo beats it in theatricals and fleshing out a sympathetic cast, and even in this year, Akane-banashi and Ikoku Nikki are better female led shows. But if you have watched those, or feel like watching something mature with an ensemble cast, this might work for you as a time passer.
5/10
