Caligula

Episode 8

Episode 8 of Caligula is a sister episode to last week's entry that takes place during the Go-Home Club's hot-pot “adventure”, only this time we get a peek into the lives of the Ostinato Musicians as they try to get by while μ remains sleeping. Sweet-P is doing her best to remain cutesy and fashionable, Mirei is living as luxurious a life as possible, and Ike-P is battling to maintain his status as Mobius' number one hottie. The problem is that μ's power is fading more and more the longer she remains in her comatose state, and all of the Musicians' lives are starting to crumble as the entirety of Mobius starts to shut down.

There's a kernel of an interesting idea in this episode. We're eight weeks into Caligula's short run, so it only makes sense that the show would take some time to finally develop its main cast of antagonists. There's even merit to the notion that these would-be villains are not so much motivated by a lust for power, but they're just scared and broken-down people who have found a life in Mobius that makes them happy. I like it when villains in these kinds of heady anime RPG stories feel as relatable as possible.

However, no matter how much screen time Caligula devotes to each of the Musicians' personal conflicts, none of them feel remotely interesting enough to justify more than a few minutes of narrative focus, let alone a whole episode. Sweet-P and Mirei don't even get much to do this week outside of freak out about their respective weight-gain and voided-credit-card issues, and they still end up overstaying their welcome by the time the credits roll. Their concerns are just too petty and selfish to take too seriously, and while I recognize that might be the point, the fact remains that these characters are so shallow that the extended time spent with them feels wasted.

Things aren't much better for the episode's central Musician Ike-P, whose problems are no less vain and simplistic, yet they inexplicably get three times as much of the episode's real estate. The entire plot of Ike-P's journey this week can be summed up as “Ike-P gets angry at Minezawa for stealing his followers, stews about it for a while, and then gets into a fight with Minezawa that leads to not much.” Sure, we get to see flashes of Ike-P's humanity and the life he led before Mobius, but none of it is enough to make him a truly interesting antagonist. Even Minezawa's fixation on cutting himself comes across like little more than a cheap way to mine some shock value out of a character who is otherwise a complete cipher. The bizarre conclusion to the boys' fight is the closest thing this episode has to a compelling scene, and it still feels undercooked and poorly executed.

While Caligula has yet to produce anything truly awful or outrageous, the past two episodes have committed one of the worst sins any anime can commit by being horribly boring. The characters on either side of the conflict are just dull as dirt, and the show's mediocre production values and haphazard storytelling just make it easier to check out of the proceedings completely. Now that the show has played out the same uneventful plot threads twice over, maybe something can finally happen on this show. I'll take anything at this point, so long as it isn't another two weeks of hot-pots and shopping montages.

Rating: D

Caligula is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.