Anime

Last episode the team was finally complete and they’re finally going to Antarctica. But of course you cannot just send a gaggle of high school girls there without preparation, which means this is the training camp episode.

With financing for the Antarctic expedition secured in episode three by having a high school idol join it and with Shirase and co joining as her companions, the time is now right to go on trainings camp. The episode starts with Mari marveling at the idea that they’re actually going no, no dream, no lie and she can’t help but gush about it to Shirase. When two passing girls giggle at this, she wants to say something but Shirase stops her. It’s not like they would believe them now anyway, but she fully plans to rub it in their faces when they are finally going. But first they need to ask for time off for the actual trainings camp. Which is a bit of a problem for Mari, as she hasn’t actually told her parents yet…

Mari enlists the moral support of her younger sister as she goes up to ask her mother for her approval, first trying to figure out what kind of mood she’s in. As you maybe can tell from the screenshot above, this is pretty much shot as a horror scene. One of those where the heroine is in the same room as the person she suspects to be the psychotic killer and she tries to confirm this without alerting him. The scene starts off with normal, warm lightning and no music as the two sisters deliberate whether this is the right moment to ask, but the second their mother asks Mari to take the bath salts out of the shopping bag to put them in the bathroom and they turn out to be Antarctica styled bath salts, the light gets darker and cue the horror music. Worse, you get those cut shots of perfectly normal things — mum chopping vegetables, a pot boiling on the fire — with sinister lightning and the mood goes full horror when mum asks Mari is something on her mind — Antarctica perhaps? Little sis immediately closes the kitchen door, Mari scrambles to appease her mother, but fails, she runs out of the kitchen into the hallway and smack into the front door. As her mother, slowly, menacingly, walks towards her she might be saved as her father shows up and opens the door. Salvation is short lived as he takes one look and closes the door again. It’s the perfect horror scene, miles above anything the actual horror series this season has produced. Some people disliked the scene because it felt like making comedy out of domestic abuse, but it never read this way to me, just Mari facing the (deserved) wrath of her mother.

Case in point, as she discusses it the next day with her rather unsympathetic friend, there’s no comedy bump on her head or anything that shows her mother hit her. It’s just Mari complaining that now she has to pass all her tests if she wants to go. Her friend asks her if she’s alright going on the training camp next week, what with the expedition still being unsure or so she heard. For Mari this isn’t something she can do anything about, so she just has to do her best. As she rushes off to her part time job her friend, Takahashi Megumi again pours cold water on her enthusiasm, telling her not to work too hard because she will regret it if it all falls through. It’s not the first time she’s done that; throughout the series so far she has been the dedicated skeptic, not entirely scoffing at going to Antarctica, but still continually telling Mari not to push herself too much. Whether she’s doing so out of genuine concern or something darker is unclear, as we never see her other than when she’s talking with Mari.

A few days later, the girls meet up to wait for Maekawa Kanae to pick them up and drive them to the training site. One failed attempt by Maki to recruit Shirase and Hinata in helping her study and Yuzuki getting shirty about her modeling image later, they’re picked up by Kanae, who is one of the two women they met in episode two. During the drive the conversation naturally turns to the financing problems the expedition has and Kanea is blunt in her disdain of such concerns. Note by the way that Mari’s recruitment effort is about the last time we hear of her having to pass all her tests. The series doesn’t waste any time in showing her actually doing so, which helps keep up the tempo. The entire sequence here is a good example of economic storytelling, no time wasted on regurgitating things we should already know, instead using the time & humour to further flesh out everybody’s character by how they interact with each other.

As the girls settle in for a day of lectures and presentations, they’re introduced to the expedition captain, Todo Gin. You can immediately tell she’s a no-nonsense hardass woman. Well, she has to be as expedition captain, especially as a woman. She wastes no time in laying down the ground rules for Shirase and co, telling them that she’s going to treat them like any other expedition member and are expected to do the same sort of jobs when needed.

It’s clear (but not spelled out) from Shirase’s reaction to captain Gin that she and her have a history together. Something that doesn’t go unnoticed by Mari, though she doesn’t say anything yet. Kanae meanwhile does ask Gin how it feels to see “that girl” again after so long, who answers that she won’t treat her any different from the other members. She also makes clear that she didn’t really want her on the expedition and wonders why Kanae got her on anyway. Kanea then explains it was her own efforts that got her on the expedition. This is somewhat of an exposition scene but it works because it does only the bare minimum of what needs to be explained, without characters telling each other what they already know and again fleshing out Gin and Kanae’s characters a bit more.

For all that this is the training camp episode, the actal training gets short shrift. We only get to see the girls go on one orienteering exercise. More isn’t needed, because the series trusts the viewer to get the point. In any case it’s a good way to see the girls’ teamwork and individual strengths in action. It’s also an excuse to put in some more exposition about the dangers of traveling in Antarctica.

Part of the training has the girls camping together in one tent. To nobody’s surprise Mari is that kind of person, restless in her sleep, eager to talk all night and in general thoroughly irritating the other three. But she was also sharp enough to see that Shirase must’ve known captain Gin already, so she asks her about it. Shirase’s explanation is simple: Gin and her mother were high school friends, then team mates on the same Antarctica expedition. Gin came back. Her mother didn’t. It’s a poignant moment, made better by being embedded in an otherwise mostly comedic sequence. Various small touches, like Hinata gently restraining Mari when she wants to comfort Shirase, or earlier Yuzuki mangling her words when wanting to blow off Mari and remain polite but ending up having Mari and Hinata giggle at her as a result, make this an almost perfect scene.

The episode ends with the girls watching the sunset together, but not before Mari has a heart to heart with captain Gin. Mari asks her about Shirase, both agreeing she can be trouble, but trouble is the best. Or at least Mari thinks so, while Gin thinks that attitude will serve her well in Antarctica, asking Mari if she’s only going because Shirase is going. Way back in episode one we saw that Mari only latched on Shirase’s dream in the first place because she wanted a dream of her own and anything would do. Now however, she’s going to Antarctica not because she wants to be anywhere but where she lives, but because she really wants to go to the South Pole. It’s a sign how much she’s grown since the series started. It’s a measure of how well Yorimo picks its scenes and tells its story that this development feels completely natural in such a small span of time.

In episode one Tamaki Mari –our heroine– despairing of her eventless high school life met Kobuchizawa Shirase who wanted to go to Antarctica to find her missing mother. But since we have four school girls going to Antarctica, so episode two and three of Yorimoi are about getting the band together.

Episode two starts where episode one left off, with Kimari and Shirase in Hiroshima, going on a tour of the ship for the upcoming expedition to Antarctica, before discussing the financial realities of going to Antarctica, mainly needing to pay for a plane ticket to Fremantle Australia, where the expedition would leave from. So Kimari starts looking for a job and after some difficulties finds one at the local convience store near hear school. Meanwhile Kimari’s friend Megumi has done some research on the proposed expedition that shows it might actually not happen due to financial problems. When Kimari asks Shirase about it, it leads to a short falling out between them, which is luckily quickly resolved.

And it’s thanks to this argument that Miyake Hinata, Kimari’s coworker at the convience store, gets involved. Having overheard them earlier, she asks Kimari about their plans and decides to join them. She and Kimari hit it off immediately, sharing the same sort of humour and having the same sort of outgoing personality, as opposed to the much more serious seeming Shirase. Unlike Kimari though, who is a bit airheaded and inclined to go along with the flow, Hinata hides a much determined, adventurous personality behind her happy go lucky exterior. She deliberately dropped out of high school (mandatory education in Japan only covering up to middle school) and started working, but still planning to go to college, having already gotten her high school certificate. As such, she’s less inclined to just follow Shirase’s lead, more inclined to challenge her when her plans are …less than well thought out.

Such as Shirase’s plan to infiltrate the expedition’s meetup, draw the attraction of one of the male members and seduce him into smuggling them aboard. Hinata and Kimari go along with the idea, but their skepticism is quickly justified when Shirase is spotted by one of the female expedition members. One hilarious chase scene later and Shirase and co are explaining themselves to the two expedition members, with things turning serious as Shirase explains again how she wants to find her mother there. I like how well Yorimoi balances its general upbeat lightheartedness with that undertone of sorrow and grief Shirase is occassionally caught up in. It doesn’t dwell on it, but it’s there.

All in all this was a very strong episode, that managed to pack a lot into it, from Kimari getting serious about going to Antarctica with Shirase, Hinata joining and Shirase putting her seduction in motion, only to see it fail and Hirata and Kimari stripping her of her leadership as a result. When I first watched it I was a bit disappointed with this episode, finding the whole seduction thing a bit too anime for my liking, but rewatching a few times to write this, I got more and more impressed with it. The same also goes for episode three, which I also had mixed feelings about after first viewing, but which was much more impressive having seen it a second time.

Because episode three not only introduced Shiraishi Yuzuki, the final member of the team, but her introduction also served as the deus ex machina to get the girls onto the expedition. Yuzuki has already been induced into the expedition because Yuzuki is an idol and having her onboard is good publicity. She comes looking for Shirase to trade places with her, as Yuzuki actually doesn’t want to go to Antarctica, but rather wants to go to school like a normal girl. Unfortunately her mother & manager interferes before they can actually go ahead with the swap, but fortunately she is willing to recommend that Shirase and co go along with Yuzuki as her companions, if they can convice her to go.

Yuzuki turns out to be a bit of an anime cliché: the lonely high school idol who is too busy to be able to make friends. When Kimari and co meet up with her to try and convince her to go on the expedition, she ends up pouring out her heart to them about trying to make friends and how she always failed to do so. Which prompts Kimari to hug her, saying she understood how she feels. Yuzuki doesn’t believe her because clearly these three are best friends, right? In any case, she’s so impressed by them and especially Kimari that she dreams about them coming to rescue her. As indeed they do the next morning, or at least take her to Tokyo, to visit the polar exploration museum, before she has to go to her idol job. It’s enough to get her to agree to join the expedition.

On the one hand I didn’t like the idol ex machina used here to get Shirase and co a place on the expedition, but on the other it means that the rest of the series can concentrate on them getting ready for and then finally going on the expedition, rather than having to spent more episodes trying to be accepted. It helps that it’s a fairly realistic solution. One other thing that stuck with me from this episode was the scene with Shirase and Hinata going home on the train together, having a little heart to heart of their own, with Shirase admitting she’s a bit selfish and Hinata accepting that. It’s the first scene in which they’re together without Kimari there, showing they can be friends together without her too. That’s something which tends to be overlooked in anime sometimes, friendships between multiple people that don’t depend on one central figure.

Altogether these were two strong episodes that packed in a lot beyond just getting the band together, episode three especially. The quality and sense of humour of the first episode was kept and with the next episode promising to get into the nitty gritty of training for the expedition, I can’t wait.