Active Raid

Episode 3

Well, that sure was… something. Active Raid continues to be a fairly strange mix of pieces and tones, gyrating wildly between scifi anime silliness and workplace drama, never quite sure exactly what show it wants to be. This episode wasn't as thematically rich as the second one, and was in fact one of the more ridiculous twenty minutes of anime I've seen in a while. But it seems like the show is having fun, and honestly, I'm having fun too. I laughed at this episode's ridiculous finale, and I do not regret laughing.

In the wake of Asami's not-so-triumphant debut last week, we opened this time with her forced to perform karaoke in costume for Rin's amusement. That silly opening led into some group conversations on this episode's major underlying conflict - the awkward working relationship between Kuroki and Sena, whose differing styles of policework mean they barely even communicate during missions. There was a fair amount of good inter-office drama and character-building throughout this episode, as the story moved towards an experimental Willwear invading an idol performance.

The conflict between Kuroki and Sena feels reasonable, and tiny moments like Asami wondering “who created the situation that forced my hand?” while investigating her prior failure naturally mix character-building and plot development. The team would obviously investigate the organization opposing them either way, but having Asami frame her dedication as trying to retroactively justify her own failure turns this search into not just a plot movement, but a character beat. And sequences like Sena getting angry about the stupid Clippy-esque moe app mascot felt like a more relatable vision of the future than most scifi dramas out there.

In contrast to the fairly grounded Unit 8 drama, the circumstances of their mysterious enemy “Logos” are about as ridiculous as can be. The cryptic mastermind from the first two episodes continued to be an over-the-top anime villain this week, as he made arrogant pronouncements about adults and bickered with his rival hackers and complained about his presumptuous servants. And the villainous plan here, to use the news media's violence-hungry instincts to prompt another public incident for Unit 8, felt about as “scheme of the week” as you could imagine. The cliche nature of these bad guys makes everything else in the story a lot harder to take seriously.

That said, the actual execution of the second half's battle was fun in a variety of ways. I liked the fact that this conflict somewhat turned the “crazy idol fan” cliche on its head - instead of being driven mad by fandom and attacking their idol, the unwitting stooge of this week's plan was actually moved by the words of their idol, and decided to call off their attack. Instead, it was the conflict-hungry newscaster who demanded more violence, and the remote-controlling Logos schemers who provided it. It was also nice that the Willwear the heroes were facing actually made sense as an opponent; we learned early on that this Willwear was designed to be an all-in-one stagehand, and so its attacks relied on manipulating lighting and sound waves to screw with Unit 8's mechs. And finally, that ridiculous finale, where Asami was actually forced to do an idol dance in a Willwear in order to tame the fan's roiling heart, was one of the silliest things I've seen.

It's hard to square a show that wants to portray understated office dynamics, make points about government politics, and also center its finales on dancing robots. I laughed pretty consistently throughout this episode, but that laughter was mixed with a fair amount of “what is this show even trying to be?” It's a messy combination of variables, but as long as I'm having fun, I guess I can't really complain.

Overall: B

Active Raid is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Nick writes about anime, storytelling, and the meaning of life at Wrong Every Time.