This show is dragging its metaphorical balls through miles of broken glass across a sandy desert.
Impression
Is it over yet? If one thing’s stayed consistent, it’s that I still have no idea what’s going on – god knows why Touko spent the entire night like a hobo in the art room with stalker!Kakeru and best chicken. She says she has some connection to it, and that they’ll learn something – but we don’t learn anything! It’s all vague and abstract – if it’s even there at all. Even innocent scenes like Hiro going mountain climbing with Sachi suddenly turned strange when she just disappeared into the forest of trees, and snow started appearing. I was like: “Holy shit! Sacchan is a wizard, too?”
Touko x Kakeru feels like it’s as messy as Glasslip itself. It’s hard enough as it is to salvage writing the rest of their relationship, and Kakeru has to fuck it up even more by essentially going: “Touko. Do I really like you? Or am I making myself think I like you?” Touko isn’t helping either. She looks at him with supposedly adoring eyes, and clearly doesn’t want him to leave, right? But for the first half of the episode she told him that they don’t understand anything about each other. Well, of course they don’t. We don’t, ourselves. This romance is based around the fact that they both had powers in the first place, and things are getting even more confusing on that front. Even when their families gathered together to get to know one another and introduce themselves, Touko is sitting outside going: “Our experiment is about to begin!” Seriously? Our experiment?
It’s all so clunky and unrefined, which is such a shame because it felt like P.A. Works went all out with the artwork this week. Not the animation unfortunately – they gave up on making all the characters speak for a while and decided to stick in the OP and a montage of scenes. They’ve also gone back to reusing episode titles… as if “Piano”, “Jonathan”, “Punch” and “Snow” weren’t already a product of five seconds’ work. With no better way to end the show, they’ve decided to make the group drift apart again, perhaps to provoke some sort of emotional response – and maybe they might have gotten one if the relationships were more substantial to begin with.
The only one I really want to see a conclusion to is Yuki x Yanagi, and that’s only because it feels sort of sweet. The text messages from last time were as confusing as fuck, but I suppose they were romantic in a long-distance, melancholic sort of way. Sacchan x Hiro feels like it’s been awkwardly taped back together with food.
I think the real loser of the episode was Hina. Not content with producing a crappy show, P.A. Works decided to make the one entertaining and likeable character suffer all night from eating too much, because her sister decided to be a hobo for a night. I felt so sorry for her… fuck you Touko!
On that note, here are the chicken pictures.
And here are the Hina pictures.
Oh, and some scenery!
Finally, look at this cute sea slug! Part of me wants to go back through the series and look for more NagiAsu references or cameos, but sitting through the show again would be as exciting as watching paint dry.
Well after watching this episode I think I FINALLY came to understand ONE THING about this show. Kakeru likes/prefers sleeping in his tent because that’s the only place that will never change regardless of where he goes with it.
I feel like there’s this deep meaning that we’re supposed to understand at this point, (besides the fact of change is happening) but the execution of it is just… sloppy. It would be a pure miracle if they can somehow make everything oh so crystal clear by the final episode.
Maybe so, but to me it looks like Kakeru and his two buddies just taking the piss. Even when he’s touring the world with his mother, surely he stays in hotel rooms instead of camping out?
I remember reading a thread on the deep meaning and symbolism that may or may not be behind Glasslip, and someone raised the real-life example of Ern Malley, which in turn is similar to what a guy named Alan Sokal did. In both cases, people sent in work which was literally a piece of utter crap – poetic gibberish and a flimsy scientific argument. Publishers oohed and aahed over it because it sounded deep and fancy, and were humiliated when it was revealed as a hoax work that was actually shit. With Glasslip, we almost expect P.A. Works to produce something of quality – certainly it looks and sounds nice, with lots of imagery and stuff. But I think those searching for deep meaning behind it are grasping for straws that aren’t even there. It almost seems self-mocking that they make references to Nagi no Asukara within a show like this.
At any rate, even if a lot of our understanding is supposed to be gathered through interpretation, the folks at P.A. Works have gone trigger-happy with it – I don’t think it’s supposed to be a guessing game. Stuff like that is supposed to complement instead of dominate a work – there’s a lot of symbolism and in-depth analysis that can be done with the tarot cards and number references in Tokyo Ghoul for example, but it’s still a perfectly coherent story without it.
It would definitely be a miracle if it works out – we still don’t know about evil Yanagi, people falling from high places and the exploding glass workshop, and it seems like they’re concentrating on the saltflake snow and shafting aside everything else. Sadly, miracles are often called as such because they don’t happen :S
/no longer watches the anime
/still reads these reviews and laughs out loud
Thank you for the Jonathan pictures. Would not be able to go without those.
You’re welcome. Jonathan is like this show’s saving grace! One of his best moments this episode was when Touko was being a hobo, and Jonathan starts pecking at the closed door of the room. The suspense was thrilling.
I actually had dropped the show a few episodes back. Considering I had really been excited for it (I mean come on it looked so pretty) I was really disappointed as I realised that this anime just wasn’t doing anything for me. Your reviews definately make it more entertaining though. XD
Good call. You lucky person, you!
I was really excited too, so I think I know how you feel. These days I find more fun in bashing it and collecting chicken pictures.
I always enjoy reading the reviews on Glasslip even though I don’t always agree with them. Sure, I can understand where you guys are coming from regarding the annoyance of the show, but I guess for me, I kind enjoy it despite its faults. It’s pretty to look at, and regardless of what happened, I enjoy watching it.
Nothing wrong at all with enjoying it! Entertainment is the whole point behind watching anime after all. It’s just that, for a lot of us our expectations were wholly let down – perhaps to some extent, it’s precisely because it’s pretty to look at that we expect something more from it.
That being said, after watching Episode 12 I feel like crying.
I see where you’re coming from. While I haven’t caught up with the recent episodes, I kind of learned to take what you can get. For me, it’s enjoyable, though it really can’t compare to NagiAsu. And, yeah, I also did kind of expect something more, but this turned out somewhat better than how I imagined it. Though that’s not saying much. At least it looks pretty.