Let’s continue our rambling journey through Simoun! Looking back on our recent history, it feels like the show’s last couple episodes have neatly demonstrated Simoun’s extremely variable dramatic range. At times, like in Floe’s focus episode, Simoun rises to become a simultaneously immediately thrilling and thematically rich war thriller, exploring the complexity of individual motivations within an oppressive social order, and smartly contrasting Class S yuri melodrama against a searingly appropriate dystopian background. At other times, like in Kaimu’s episode, the show can get lost in awkward digressions, center its emphasis on drama we’ve been given no reason to invest in, and essentially forego anything resembling a coherent dramatic structure. Simoun’s first act was deeply constrained by this messiness, and it’s only been in the last few episodes that things have pulled together into a propulsive story.
Series composer Sho Aikawa and script writer Mari Okada are both infamous for exactly that kind of narrative incoherence (well, at least they are to me, and I’m the one who gets to make all the damning declarations here), but each of them have also written true masterpieces, and are absolutely writers worthy of respect. I’m guessing Simoun will continue to bear both the messiness and the brilliance of its creators, and am excited to see it all unfold. Let’s jump right into one more episode of Simoun!
