Yes. Eye-cancer. The art is horrible. Well, let me qualify. The background is fine. It’s just the people that are awfully animated. I doubt this was accidental or simply a result of a studio’s inability to produce nice looking drawings. This feels more like it was intended to look bad.
Moving along, the show is about Kasuga Takao, your average high school boy who’s into literature. In fact, he’s seen reading Les Fleurs du mal, and if you’ve read about it, it will spell the theme of this show…
And as far as the pilot episode is concerned, that was pretty much it. But what’s interesting to note is the feel of this show. Watching it made me feel like I was watching an art film, which is kinda good in its own sense. When I thought about it, there were lots of random and useless scenes shown in the episode where Takao was just being himself. Like, say, waking up and staring blankly. Or say, walking down the stairs and scratching his butt.
Normally, for an anime that usually aims to entertain people, useless scenes that don’t move the plot, develop the characters, or explain something are bad. But for art films, I kind of get the feeling they are pretty normal because they simply portray something: often they portray the normality of the situation. And that’s the kind of feel I get from this. And the horrible art kind of fits if I take this show as a portrayal of art.
Ok, so I cheated a bit. I researched a bit on what the book Takao is reading is all about, and how that connects with the themes of this show. Simply put, the book he is reading is a collection of controversial poems written by Charles Baudelaire on themes relating to decadence and eroticism. And that’s precisely what this show is based on.
The episode ends with Takao seeing a pouch left in the classroom belonging to his crush. Now, research says that gym shorts are inside, and Takao is gonna steal it. Research also says that a girl will catch him, and will kind of blackmail him into, uhm, decadence and eroticism. So yeah, it’s romance and corruption. And sex.
Sex as a focal theme of an art film? Definitely.