I’ll be straight: when picking which shows I wanted to cover this season, I was drawn to Sonny Boy because of its animation. Ok, maybe its unique plot too. But definitely the animation! Initially I thought that Sonny Boy reminded me of the anime and manga series The Flowers of Evil, but upon watching the first episode, I realized that I think what it actually reminds me of is the anime movie Devilman Crybaby. One of the main characters from that ONA, Ryo Asuka, reminds me very much of Hoshi from Sonny Boy.
But enough about the weird things my brain strings together – welcome to Sonny Boy!
Before watching the first episode I thought we’d get some background into how the school came to be in a black void, and while we did eventually get that, I was anticipating it to be shown in the present as it’s happening and not as a flashback. Hopefully we’ll learn even more as the series progresses.
The first episode opens with the school in a black void. The students have no idea where they are or how they came to be there, and all they know is they’ve been there for a couple of days so far. One of the students, Rajidani, has isolated himself in a classroom to try to learn more about their present situation. He even tries writing on his hand with a black marker and sticking it out the window, only to see the marker gone when he pulls his hand back to his side. Is the school stuck in time? In a permanent limbo where nothing will ever change or grow? But the students still experience physical changes such as getting hungry, tired, or needing to use the bathroom. What could this mean?
It is mentioned almost immediately that many of the students have developed supernatural powers or abilities upon their school getting stuck in the void. Some students have not changed at all. A lot of psychology comes into play as some students with superpowers want the freedom to do whatever they want, even if it means damaging school property or acting superior to the other students.
A student named Hoshi decides that all of the students will have to abide by a list of rules, and the students will also choose their new leader. He sends a group chat invitation to all the students with a smartphone, and they choose an athletic student named Cap as their leader.
Not everyone is participating with these new rules though. Main cast members Nagara and Nozomi don’t initially join in – Nagara because he didn’t think the group chat invitation had anything to do with him, and Nozomi because she doesn’t have a smartphone.
Speaking of Nozomi, she’s… interesting. She kind of has a somewhat “unstable” vibe about her, for lack of a better term. She does whatever she wants regardless of whether it’s “right,” such as shredding a school notebook given to her by a teacher because she thinks it’s fun. She also breaks the smartphone given to her by Cap and Pony because she thinks their new rules are too “rigid,” although this show of defiance does result in her being given a penalty for disobeying the rules. I think I subconsciously find her a little unsettling because she doesn’t behave according to social norms and thus I find her to be rather unpredictable (as you’ll see near the end of the episode).
Meanwhile Nagara is almost completely and totally apathetic to the entire situation, an odd stance to take given what has happened to his school and his peers. He doesn’t seem to care that the school is lost (or drifting?) in another dimension and that they are cut off from the outside world. If the outside world even knows they’re gone, that is. Who’s to say that the real world can’t still see the school instead of, say, an impact crater where the school was scooped into the void?
By the end of the first episode, the situation has devolved to a fight between students with supernatural powers rebelling against their new leader Cap. Who will prevail? But what’s with this last minute location change??
Ughhhh there’s so many things to say and I’m having so many thoughts, but I want to wrap this up on these two observations:
- I feel that Hoshi knows way more than he is letting on to the other students, as evident by the vision he gives rebel student Asakaze.
- Maybe Hoshi is the person who created the storm that seemed to be the catalyst for the school being brought into the void. Maybe this entire situation is his deliberate doing, somehow. He certainly seems to know some of the rules behind how the void operates. And if he is the reason why the school is now in another dimension, why???
There was minimal CGI in this first episode, which is not a “good” nor a “bad” thing, just an observation. I could only see it being used when Asakaze was using his superpower, which causes reality to “fragment” into pieces, for lack of a better description. (If you’ve seen a battle sequence in the video game Final Fantasy 10, it looks a little like the beginning of the battle when the location screen “shatters” and the player is taken to the battlefield screen.) I thought it was a neat effect and it looked well done.
Anyways, this was a fantastic first episode and I’m super psyched to be covering Sonny Boy! There was just enough information given to tease the viewer and leave them wanting more, and boy do I want more! Can’t wait for the next episode! ^_^v
Possibility of Watching: Definitely!
Possibility of Blogging: Hell yeah!
