Overview:
Juri isn’t happy with her family, her unemployed father and brother and single parent sister. She’s also not happy about her own life as she tries to pass an interview for a job. Still, everything changes when she gets a phone call telling her that her brother and nephew have been kidnapped and her grandfather uses a strange stone to stop time.
Review:
This is one of those stories where I’m going to have to watch to find out the explanation but I’m not entirely certain I’ll end up happy with the explanation. I’m already annoyed two episodes in at the number of times the grandfather has explained something and then said he isn’t sure but it was something his grandfather told him. That’s all well and good but it means the audience has been told practically nothing that we can rely on being true.
Despite that concern, these first two episodes are kind of tense once the story kicks in and there’s a constant feeling that things are about to get worse. While the characters haven’t really had a chance to do much other by the end of the second episode we’re starting to get a feel for them.
There’s also the added intrigue of the strange power in the stone and the family’s connection to it. I love a good intrigue and I really do want an explanation that is satisfying.
While these first two episodes are interesting enough there’s also a lot of down time and there hasn’t really been much effort made to make you care about the characters. While the mystery itself is probably compelling enough it feels like they wasted some opportunities here. Still, I’m probably going to watch this through because I want to know what happens.
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Thanks,
Karandi James.
Interesting! I usually see people praising the narrative merit of non-reliable narrators. I haven’t seen the show myself, but I am curious as a writer: what would you have changed about the way the grandfather presents information? Would you have preferred it to simply be matter-of-fact so we can get a solid idea of how this world works?
I don’t mind unreliable narrators when they are unreliable about their motives or the motives of others. However, when we have a concept far outside of the audiences’ knowledge (such as stasis) we need some sort of orientation to the world and at least a few grounding facts even if some things are left uncertain. There was just too much left very vague in these first couple of episodes that make it hard to really engage with the story. We don’t know much about the characters, we know less than nothing about the antagonists, we don’t know how stasis works or what the rules are for sure, and we aren’t sure how to get out of stasis once they are done. It kind of leaves too much room for random things to happen later and be given half-hearted explanations.
Fortunately, the show hasn’t seemed to go that path so far and we’re now at episode 7. While we’re still in the dark about a lot of things, we’ve been given some information about some elements. Enough to ground the story at least.
The grandad almost turned this show into some Mahouka technobabble, which I am on the fence about.
Totally agree with you! The grandad’s explanations were kind of annoying because I’m intrigued by this world but there isn’t info as ot stands. Plus, it looks like the cult group have a book which has some details so maybe (fingers crossed) we can learn more from them soon! As it stands the premise is interesting but the characters definitely need more attention.
The characters didn’t do much in these first two episodes but fortunately the premise is interesting enough for me to want to give them some more time. Let’s all keep our fingers crossed that we do learn a bit more.