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Girlish Number
Episode 9

by Nick Creamer,

How would you rate episode 9 of
Girlish Number ?
Community score: 4.0

Girlish Number got back to the fundamentals this week. After a pair of episodes spent humanizing the show's very sympathetic secondary characters, the focus at last returned to Girlish Number's two huge idiots: our hero Chitose and our villain Kuzu-P.

Chitose has demonstrated a remarkable talent for not learning from her mistakes so far, but by the beginning of this episode, her expression work made it clear that she was suffering some genuine career anxiety. The episode opened with Chitose's agency congratulating a new voice acting talent, Nanami Sakuragoaka, who stood smiling under the spotlight as Chitose grumbled in the shadows. On-the-nose visual framing aside, that sequence set the tone for all of this episode's revelations. The industry keeps moving, but any individual's place within it is never certain.

On Kuzu's side, it's now clear his antics have gone beyond “goofy cartoon slapstick” to “man on the verge of a breakdown.” Towada and the other producers and managers have almost entirely given up on him at this point, and he's recently been spending his days drinking away his worries at a local hostess club. There was a fair amount of comedy in this episode's treatment of Kuzu, particularly in his very silly showdown with a former professional rival (I particularly liked how the show shifted its shading and linework to affect a more “manly” visual design), but there was also legitimate sadness there. Kuzu's bragging about former sales successes and the effect of piracy on the industry reflected a man who feels his career is already over.

His attitude as revealed here certainly didn't justify his unprofessional actions, or shift him from comic relief to tragic hero, but they felt grounded and meaningful all the same. It's easy to imagine that Kuzu-P was initially a dedicated professional for whom success came easily, and who was thus unprepared when he hit a string of failed productions. It's easy to try your best when you feel that effort is being rewarded - it's much more difficult to hunker down and do the work when you don't think that work is even meaningful.

Kuzu's anxieties were strongly paralleled in Chitose's journey, and in the concerns of the overall Kusure staff. As it turned out, Nanami was actually a huge fan of Kusure, and couldn't help gushing about her love for the work at a recording afterparty. With Kuzu nowhere in sight and the sales writing on the wall, the staff needed Nanami's enthusiasm. Her validation was ultimately the only thing someone like Kuzu can hope for: the knowledge that even if your work isn't a sales blockbuster or artistic wonder, it still matters very deeply to at least one person.

Unfortunately, Chitose has never been invested in Kusure as anything but a vehicle for her own success, and so she couldn't really share in her coworkers' excitement. Instead, Chitose was hampered by one setback after another, culminating in learning that Gojo would be switching to managing Nanami.

It's an awful feeling, thinking your career is stalling. Feeling your momentum has been used up, or that you're on a downward slope as others rise past you, can inspire the exact hopelessness that lead Kuzu-P to drink his worries away. From those shots of Nanami in the spotlight onwards, Chitose spent this whole episode wrestling with that feeling. With no meaningful outlet for her anxiety, Chitose ultimately lashed out at her brother, in a finale whose emotional ugliness actually made Chitose seem more human than ever before. Chitose and Kuzu-P aren't kind or likable people, but by focusing on the precise nature of their psychic pain, this episode went a long way towards making them sympathetic ones.

Overall: B

Girlish Number is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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


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