The Girl in Twilight

I kind of decided early in this episode I really don’t like Nana as a character. Despite her turning point this episode she just really rubbed me the wrong way early on in this episode and her inconsistencies and incredibly silly decision making just made me hope that somehow she’d be left behind in the parallel world.

Firstly we get the ridiculousness of her deciding to stay in the world because she’s getting married to a hot celebrity. That’s a really random decision to stay in a world that forces girls to get married at seventeen and you have no idea what else is changed in this new world, plus you are giving up your entire world and friends that you actually know. Then she changes her mind because she finds out his real last name when combined with her first name makes it sound like chocolate banana and she vowed she would never marry someone who made her name sound sillier than it was (how shallow is she).

However, if that wasn’t enough we then learn that the step-father is actually a pretty nice guy who saved Nana’s crystal radio from the rubbish when he first moved in with them and is actually trying to protect her. So her hissy fit last week is even less warranted. We also learn that Nana’s stubborn refusal to join the radio club is just more childish actions on her part.

Despite everything I just said about disliking Nana as a character, this episode was a decided step up from last week. It isn’t just that we got a cool fight sequence in which Nana, the girl of the hour, got a transformation sequence. It is just more intrigue into this whole idea of what twilight is and the ‘King of Twilight’ that not-Asuka is trying to find (though part of me wonders if there is a King of Twilight or if the Twilight world itself is sentient which would be a cool twist but hard to fight.

Anyway, I enjoyed this episode well enough but it seems this anime is going to be a rolling case of some moments that really work and others that make me want to bang my head into the key-board. Inconsistencies aside, there are some good ideas at play here.

Linked Reviews:

• Episode 1: If I Believe Enough, Weird Stuff Will Happen
• Episode 2: Parallel Worlds And Arranged Marriages

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Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

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The first episode of this set up an interesting enough premise and a cast of characters which might eventually develop into an interesting group. However, episode 2 of The Girl in Twilight doesn’t seem particularly interested in doing that as we plunge straight into another parallel world in a jump that seems to contradict the events of last week without any real explanation as to how and I’m stuck wondering if the only sci-fi element here is going to be the monotone explanation of world lines that looks like it got hacked out of literally any other show about parallel worlds.

What bugged me most about that exposition… Wait, there’s too many things so let’s just go through why this one section of the episode was enough to erode a lot of the curiosity that I had for what was going on. Firstly, the group of girls, minus Nana (and I’ll get to that) run into the alternate version of Asuka who they met last week while in a parallel world and essentially demand she explain what is going on. She complies in one of the most drawn out sequences ever giving her name and then the duh worthy statement that she’s from a parallel world (seriously, only Trigger’s sandwich crushing pause in SSSS.Gridman felt more unnecessarily drawn out than this).

Then we go to the eye catch before we transition, to the girls sitting in a neat row in a classroom in the school in this world at night while alternate Asuka beings a fairly incomplete and dull explanation of world lines. Other than just being poorly executed and boring to watch, why are they suddenly in the school? They say themselves later on that they had to dodge security, and that’s before the two Asuka’s get spotted by said security though that doesn’t seem to lead to anything of note because we just scene transition again.

More importantly, they specifically tell us the reason why Nana isn’t with the group. And all that made me wonder was then what happened last week. Surely Asuka, being the one who used the radio, should have had the same thing happen to her? Did it happen? Nope. Did any of the girls ask ‘Professor’ Asuka why not? Nope. Does the audience get any kind of hint that maybe the show plans to address this flaw in its own explanation? Nope.

I get we are only in episode two and any inconsistencies may later be explained by future reveals, but this was not a good scene.

Some spoilers ahead.

Alright, moving onto Nana, she’s now apparently merged with the Nana of this world and Nana of this world is getting married in two days, to some hot guy the girls were ogling on TV at the start of the episode (though he seems a little dodge to me). She goes through the usual issues of dealing with all her friends and her parents suddenly changing and she has some blow up at her parents… some daddy issues there that might have been more affective if I had any reason to care at all.

This episode does have two things going for it. One, I’m curious about evil fortune teller lady. And secondly, the yellow bunny from episode one shows up right at the end. Still, this one seems to be headed for a third episode drop unless there’s a noticeable improvement next week.

Linked Reviews:

Episode 1: If I Believe Enough, Weird Stuff Will Happen

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Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

Consider supporting the blog by:

Or use one of my affiliate product links:

School clubs, cute girls doing random things, strange supernatural rituals that somehow turn out to work with interesting results, these are all things we’ve seen before. Yet we know the formula works well enough provided it is linked to a decent story so I guess we’re all wondering now whether The Girl in Twilight is going to give us a decent story or not.

There’s no real surprises early in this episode. We have the girls doing what at first appears to be a serious ritual and then the main character, Asuka her name turns out to be, starts spouting some random nonsense and they crack a glow stick. It quickly diffuses any tension the scene may have been filled with the fizzled ritual draws to a close with the girls wandering down the temple stairs discussing what they could do next time. It is a mixed bag of an introduction because on the one hand the basic idea of opening a path to another world has been done to death but here it sounded like it had some weight, and on the other hand, five girls in a school club getting up to weird stuff is very much something I’ve seen enough of and isn’t exactly my favourite thing to watch in the first place.

Persevering and we get Asuka and friends getting in trouble after hijacking the school radio before another attempt at the ritual, this time using a frequency determined by some crystal the French speaking girl in the group found last time. And what do you know? Success. They end up in another world. However, I’m pretty sure the girls were as surprised as the audience that it worked and they certainly weren’t prepared for it.

I kind of expected them to have to try to get home but the anime has taken a different path with another Asuka showing up, fighting off the yellow snow bunnies, and then transporting them all home. There’s definitely some mystery here but it isn’t the usual how can we escape the world we travelled to.

And that is enough to make me kind of interested in where this is going. There’s plenty of room for exploration of characters and ideas and the sci-fi label MAL has on this is making me interested in what they might do with it in the future. That isn’t to say I won’t end up dropping the story later on but at least for now I’m curious.

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Thanks for reading.

Karandi James

Consider supporting the blog by:

Or use one of my affiliate product links: