Hanayamata – 08

“The variety of personality types is perfect!” —Sari-sensei

As this week’s episode crept closer to the girls’ first official public performance, they cross every T and dot every I, and a great deal of anticipation is built up. Finally, it’s happening, after so much hard work and such humble beginnings.

“Practice wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, whenever you can.” —Me

Haru and Tami take Sari-sensei too seriously and get self-consicous about their thighs, leading to last minute exercise. Yaya and Hana remark that they aren’t actually fat, but Yaya also remarks that they could use a little extra stamina.

SCANDAL!

They’re inspired to exercise more after Yaya proves how valuable a member not in name only she can be, by adding her drums to Tami’s piano music and making a hip little arrangement: the OP with a synth tone replacing the vocals.

Nice assortment of reactions to the department store shindig

Yaya also proves vital in both the planing and scheduling stages, as she insists they all arrive at the station by 8:00, even though the performance isn’t until 1:00. Sure enough, the other girls are late, but she planned for that, so it’s all good.

“I’ve got your back…literally and figuratively!”

Disaster strikes when they forget the music CD, but Sari’s sister (and Tami’s friend) Machi arrives with it in hand. As soon as this fact is made official, we get a glimpse of their strained relationship, stemming from their different personalities.

Lookin’ good…

Finally, it’s showtime, and everyone is nervous (even Yaya’s legs shake), but once they get up there to before a small but lively crowd, and the music starts, for a pretty decent amount of time the four are kicking ass. And then Naru makes a wrong move, bumps Hana, and falls, dropping her Naruko.

“No…not again….”

It mirrors her bad dream last night, which was actually a memory of falling while cheerleading in elementary school. In the present, we can only watch in horror as everything all of a sudden goes horribly wrong in excruciating slow-motion. Rats…so close!

“Maybe I should join? According to the OP, I DO join, after all…”

But hey, it’s not the end of the world. This is their first show, and it wasn’t meant to be some big unrealistic breakthrough. It was valuable practice for future public performances. We fall down so we can get back up again. I hope Naru remembers that and doesn’t dwell on her failure. Their dancing also seemed to momentarily impress Machi, though it looked like watching her sister watch and cheer them on made her jealous as well.

Music: Onimonogatari – “An Old Story”

Last week’s Space Dandy got me thinking about other phenomenal episodes of anime I’ve watched in the past few years, and I actually ended up re-watching the second episode of Onimonogatari, informally known as “The Demon’s Sililoquy” from the “Shinobu Time” arc of Monogatari Series Second Season (my original review, which didn’t really do it justice, is here). It’s as rule-breaking and polarizing as the Monogatari series itself; in a way, it’s a distillation of its essence: deep, rambling dialogue, occasional linguistic puns, gorgeous imagery…and little to no conventional action.

Visceral reactions aside, one of the practical reasons why I loved the episode so much was the music that accompanied that gorgeous imagery, so I finally did some very shallow digging and found out that the composer for the entire Monogatari Series thus far, as well as other favorites like Suzumiya Haruhi and Oreimo, is a fellow named Kosaki Sotaru. His MAL picture makes him look closer to fourteen than forty, but don’t let the babyface fool you: the dude knows what he’s doing.

Shinobu’s sprawling, epic, gorgeous, ultimately heartbreaking tale of how she came to Japan from Antarctica four centuries ago, became a god, met, made, and ultimately lost her first minion in the worst way, demanded a soundtrack to match its scope and gravitas. The kind of music you’d put to a vampire jumping from Antarctica to Japan in one leap, inadvertently forming Lake Biwa.

The piece that opens the episode is appropriately called “An Old Story,” is just what the vampire storyteller ordered. Apropos of nothing, I wonder if Kosaki-san ever listened to The Verve…