Girlish Number

Episode 4

Chitose's new show premiered this week, following a prescreening event that foretold the disaster to come. We opened with a few moments dedicated to emphasizing once again what a fool Chitose was, from her silly fantasies of success to her pro costars outright declaring, “She's a fool, but also a big deal. A big fool.” Chitose wasn't the only fool on parade this week - there was also plenty of idiocy courtesy of the multimedia project's sound producer Kuzu-P, who once again waved away all rumors of production woes with useless positivity. Chitose and her new champion are gleefully riding an anime train off a fast-approaching cliff.

And yet, the failure of this particular anime project might not actually matter. Early on in this episode, I was wondering if the prescreening event would be a chance for Chitose to learn another hard truth of professional life - that even if you can accommodate for your own failings, you're often sunk by the decisions of collaborators you can't possibly control. Her first anime as a main character has been mishandled from the start, and I figured a failure of a prescreening event might give Chitose a moment to reflect and perhaps act a bit more humble going forward.

That didn't happen - in fact, the exact opposite happened. The fans were initially put off by the absence of new footage, but Chitose was surprisingly able to rally their energy, and the event ended up being a big success. Both Chitose and Kuzu-P were rewarded for their arrogance, which is ultimately an even more frustrating message.

It's clear that Kuzu-P doesn't actually care about the anime they're creating at all - he's just interested in using it as an advertising platform for his general media-mix idol project. Though I'd initially expected Girlish Number to be a show primarily about the anime industry specifically, it's looking more likely that we're going to be exploring a larger economic reality, where single artistic products are just cogs in an ecosystem that flows from light novel to anime to pop star and back, creating secondary releases and promotional materials along the way. This is actually how anime works now - products are generally greenlit because they'll be able to sell books and singles, and thus become able to gather capital from music labels and various other creators. Girlish Number is simply proposing a slightly more bald-faced version of that system, where portions of the platform are doomed from the start, but the overall advertising initiative is still a success.

I'm frankly not sure what to think of that focus or this show's take on it. Kuzu-P is an absurdly unprofessional jerk, but his system is a legitimately good idea, and while he's clearly a terrible person to work with in terms of actually creating meaningful work, he also seems like a natural-born promoter. Chitose is similar in that even though her personal attitudes are terrible, she's actually very good at her job - she learns quickly, can improvise, and is shamelessly dedicated to self-promotion over all else. These are the kind of people who often do succeed in promotion-heavy industries, and even though Girlish Number's generally farcical tone and clear emphasis on their personal failings makes me think they're going to end up the butt of jokes, the show has so far kept granting them the success they might actually achieve.

In the end, it seems easy enough to guess that another shoe will drop eventually, but it's hard to say where the show will turn then. The tonal cues of this episode's second half place the authorial perspective firmly against Chitose and Kuzu-P; Kazuha's reflection on the emptiness of their promotional event was given very respectful framing, and the shot of the original light novel author crouching alone in his apartment was legitimately depressing. We're in an interesting position where the two most active characters in this show are more or less both villains, and everyone else is along for the ride. I'm not sure where everything will end up, but there's still more than enough thoughtful material here to keep me eager to find out.

Overall: B

Girlish Number is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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