Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I’ll be continuing with my unexpectedly timely episode notes, as we explore the premiere of yet another airing show: Adachi and Shimamura.
At first glance, Adachi and Shimamura looks like precisely my sort of thing: a delicate, intimate character drama, elevated through precise character acting and a keen understanding of conversational nuance. You could with some accuracy call this the “Kyoto Animation Formula,” but KyoAni hardly have a monopoly on productions like this, and from Wandering Son to Bloom Into You to After the Rain to Just Because to Stars Align to… well, as you can see, I’m a fan of the genre.
Beyond its general genre space, Adachi and Shimamura’s key staff also seem reasonable enough. Director Satoshi Kuwabara doesn’t have any big hits to his name, but his history reveals enough storyboarding and art director credits to make it clear he understands the importance of staging and cinematography, rather than being a fully management-side leader. More promisingly, series composer and scriptwriter Keichiro Ochi has precisely the type of experience I’m looking forward: a massive number of scripts contributed to Oregairu, which is one of the best-written shows of the last ten years. Without further ado, let’s explore the first episode of Adachi and Shimamura!
Episode 1
Opening with some… nice fish? We’re in letterbox formatting, which generally implies memory, and now there’s an astronaut floating down the river, making her own space breath noises
The hazy filter over everything, and preeminent focus on the breath noises and bird sounds, does an excellent job of conveying the sense of a lazy summer day as a child
And now a neat match cut, from the moon reflected in the helmet to a ping pong ball
Seems like it’s not just the memories; we’re now in what’s presumably the present, but the letterbox formatting and soft filter remain
Ah, the letterbox is just for this girl’s intro. Her conversational tone seems like a pretty reasonable compromise between the “reflecting on our cherished days” ornamentation of classic shoujo, and an easy naturalism more like what actual people sound like. It’d be nice to see a drama like this that combines a modern sensibility with an interrogation of the subgenre’s more theatrical roots
This show has very good hair! An excellent sense of personality and volume to the loose strands, and some beautiful, complex shading that even emphasizes how threads get highlighted in the sunlight
All the grids surrounding their ping pong table offer some interesting geometry for layouts, while also emphasizing their intimacy in this space
I like that we’re starting with our two leads having already developed a rapport, rather than their destiny-tinged first meeting. Rather than being asked to invest in the potential of a relationship, we’re instead immediately coming to understand these characters through how they relate to each other, which enhances our understanding and investment in both them individually and them as a pair
“Wouldn’t we break our legs?” “I see you lack calcium in your diet.” A lot of personality in this script
Adachi suddenly notices her friend’s lips, and realizes she would die for her. “I guess I’ll drink some milk today, in case we have to jump”
The astronaut returns for the OP, which is also heavy on playful tricks of geometry breaking up the framing
Bits of this are reminiscent of Bloom Into You’s OP as well, though more far more upbeat
The tiny astronaut is now standing by a roadside shrine
“You and I always have different interpretations of what ‘next time’ means.” The dynamic seems clear so far – they’ve been friends for a while, but Adachi only recently developed romantic feelings for Shimamura, and so all of her friend’s playful jokes now parse as flirting that flusters the heck out of her
Shimamura also seems to understand the tension in their relationship, but is happy to leave it unresolved for now
Their first meeting is convincingly awkward; Adachi in particular seems like she gets flustered easily, and isn’t fully comfortable with social niceties
Oh man, their first encounter is so delightfully weird. It’s all centered on the blunt cruelty of a cicada’s life cycle, and conveys Shimamura as a figure of mystery, someone with both a pragmatic and romantic side to her. This is exactly the kind of odd specificity you want in a story like this – rather than archetypal feelings you could assign to any character, these characters’ feelings are built out of undeniably specific moments, which both help these characters feel like unique individuals, and also offers the audience a sense of conspiratorial intimacy, a kinship with these characters which can evolve into understanding and emotional investment. You could see it as a version of “show, don’t tell” – we’re not simply told Shimamura is strange and alluring, we experience the precise moment Adachi came to understand that
Of course, storytelling like that demands an author who understands life is made up of distinct individual moments, and that compelling human drama must follow suit. If you can’t capture one specific moment in a character’s life, how can you hope to tell the story of their life? Structure is important, but structure alone won’t bring characters to life. Narrative formulas rarely account for inspired, well-observed moments like this
“Hino is a classmate who’s sort of a plain jane.” Yeah, there’s a sharpness to Shimamura that I like. She seems to understand that she looks delicate and refined, and is willing to use that to disarm people’s impressions of her
“She’s never even shoplifted, either” already puts this show in a closer realm of reality than the majority of idealized high school dramas
Her other friend is Nagafuji, who’s introduced with some clumsy boob jokes, unfortunately. This exchange feels very “man writing women’s dialogue”
Unsurprisingly, Shimamura keeps a comfortable distance from her friends, avoiding the intimacy that might invite genuine conflict
Ah, I see. The lighting gets saturated again when Adachi appears, meaning it’s tethered to the strange, otherworldly space these two create together. An effective trick, and one with room for growth – it’d be interesting to see if this filter starts to dissolve, as the honeymoon of their private encounters fades into genuine mutual understanding
“I think relationships with others are like free diving.” And so Shimamura turns away, ignoring Adachi as they pass by. She clearly fears losing her emotional independence, and is also young and cynical enough to not really see much of a loss in avoiding genuine emotional connections
Some serious thigh-pans as they meet the next day. This show could do without its voyeuristic tone, but that’s frequently the price of watching an anime that’s about characters rather than swords
Shimamura can tell that if she wanted, this could be their final separation. And so she actually reaches out, and asks to see Adachi again
Lovely cut of them riding Adachi’s bike. I like the ambiguity in Shimamura’s position – even though we’ve heard more of Shimamura’s internal monologue, we’re stuck in Adachi’s position here, wondering if Shimamura is just spending time with her for the novelty of hanging out with a delinquent
And Adach actually probes her on this, asking a leading question regarding Shimamura’s other friends
“We were both pretty irresponsible, so we were instead dragging each other down deeper.” Shimamura seems to delight in destruction, to some extent. She’s bored and cynical, and even fucking up her own life is at least a change of pace. Plus, it feels so liberating to do bad things!
Aw shit, Shimamura’s friends discovered their secret spot. And of course, Adachi immediately retreats into self-conscious silence
Her body language clearly conveys her inability to relax, and sense of distance from the rest of the group. She remains standing aloofly against the ping pong table, while the others sit for lunch
The geometry of their secret spot also facilitates this visual separation, as we see Adachi divided from the group by the gym’s bars
The next day, it’s clear Shinamura’s friends have scared Adachi away – and what’s more, Shinamura realizes that she resents them for it, and would rather preserve her bond with Adachi. Shinamura’s friends embody the easy, standard path of high school, featuring superficial friendships you enjoy light conversations and fun activities with. Shinamura believed she wanted that, because it was a way of preserving her own emotional security – but after spending time with Adachi, she’s immediately tired of the pleasant superficiality of her chosen friend group
Wow, some wild character animation for Adachi almost knocking Shimamura over. A very ambitious storyboard too, as the camera pans to follow Shimamura from as close as possible
“This was all I could ask, and this was all Adachi was able to say right now.” What a succinct way to put the self-consciousness of high school relationships
And Done
Well shit, that was really good! Both Adachi and Shimamura already seem like fully realized people, and this episode wasted zero time establishing the unique tone of their initial rapport, as well as the circumstances that led to their bond. They’re both loners, but for very different reasons – Adachi seems genuinely separated from school life, a truant who’s become awkward and lonely in her isolation, while Shimamura is your classic social cynic, perfectly capable of managing her personal affairs, but bored to tears by the mundanity of high school. The show’s dialogue is quite sharp, and the storyboards are consistently used to illustrate nuances of the characters’ shifting dynamics. Pair all that with the episode’s solid character acting, and you end up with an altogether excellent premiere!
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