Forum - View topicEP. REVIEW: Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring
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FireChick
 Subscriber Posts: 2760 Location: United States |
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I've only read the manga so far, not the light novels, but I can confirm that the anime not only cuts out scenes where Hinagiku is given more character and depth, but even Sakura as well. In the manga's first chapter, Sakura is much less overly antagonistic towards Nazuna, cutting out lines of dialogue where Sakura finds herself relating to Nazuna's struggles. One chapter has Hinagiku and Sakura talking about Rosei and Itecho, and Hinagiku spoiler[calls out Sakura not only for her continual antagonism of Rosei and Itecho, but for trying to get Hinagiku to partake in it as well.] It almost feels like the anime is stripping away the bits of personality and depth she has to make her more of a whiny ingenue than she really is, something Bibliophile Princess did to terrible results. Or maybe they're saving them for later episodes? I'm not sure.
Last edited by FireChick on Sun Apr 19, 2026 4:25 pm; edited 1 time in total |
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Key
Moderator
 Posts: 19132 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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While I like this series a lot, I'm every bit as befuddled as James about what the terrorists are trying to accomplish by kidnapping the Agents. I do hope the series delves into this more in the near future.
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Ryuseishun
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From what I've seen and heard, the light novels for this are EXTREMELY thick, which is kinda wild considering only 2 whole volumes will be adapted into these 14 episodes. With that in mind, I can understand the cutting but so far I don't find as much issue with it as the first comment here did, but I guess it's more personal so I can't judge much more than that. I've actually checked the first chapters of the manga out of curiosity and tbh I don't like how it structured compared to the anime so far. Too much content squeezed in, paneling is too tight, and as crazy as I'm sure I sound here....a bit excessive with dialogue.
There will always be some amount of compromises with anime adaptations no matter what, and sometimes even the source material is not necessarily better off. The story itself so far? So far so good, though I can kinda understand the impatience with people wanting as many things answered as soon as possible |
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IronWish
 Posts: 231 Location: Ukraine |
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My biggest problem with the show so far is that it that does pretty good job at "show, don't tell", but then goes "well, just in case, I should also tell". And then it "tells" a few more times. And then one more for the road, to the point of obnoxiousness. First episode was confusing in a very pleasant way, I expected it to be the kind of anime where we'll have to slowly piece the backstory together, but it seems to become one where every point it make will be hammered home one billion times. Same with Summer sisters, it chew through their predicament to the point it lost all the favour, and I just tiredly wanted to move away from them.
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 305 |
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Having read just the first volume of this story my feelings towards it are mixed bordering on negative and it's almost befuddling because melodrama and stuff made to make you cry is arguably My Jam™️ and I enjoyed VE a fair bit, but VE's framing of a letter writing business helped justify why people would be so willing to open up about their pasts while here people just trauma dump all the time borderline unprompted and it's even worse in the novels. There's also my issue of this story being Yuribait final boss where it spends an eternity having the girls go over and over about how much they love eachother and flirt but then add an obligatory mention about how they still have a crush on their assigned love interests (that said, I like team winter and summer infinitely more than team spring, if only because I actually do find Rosei endearing for the former and the latter's dynamic is amusing enough in the interplay of love and hate).
I don't think the issue with "oops, all insurgents" is necessarily just the mix of political intrigue with teenage melodrama since I've read a bunch of stories that do a stronger job tying them together. i think it's more that "season terrorists" is a flavouring that doesn't really enhance the vibes of the story in a way that say the toxic behaviour of the clans does if that makes sense. I also think there's some allowances that you can feel compelled to give a story in ye olden times/fantasy settings that's chaffing against the blatant modern day setting. That said I wouldn't be watching it if I outright hated the story, like I said I do like team summer and winter well enough, I'm actually particularly interested in Ayame's story since unlike Ruri she never gives any indication that she actually likes her fiancé, she just talks about how she can't wait to get her freedom and stop being restricted as her sister's retainer |
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Saeryen
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Calling Hinagiku’s speech impediment “cringe” and “irritating” kind of rubbed me the wrong way.
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 305 |
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I actually generally liked this episode minus a few complaints (Hinagiku's goodbye with her mum stretched out a bit), the lack of insurgents does allow the more clan based drama more room to stretch it's legs (I appreciate the narrative not making Hinagiku have to do the labour to make her awful dad care about her, I really hate to hate trope at this point) and I even felt something towards her and Sakura bonding enough that I could enjoy it as more than boring yuribait. That said, for as positive as I felt towards the episode, I couldn't really ignore that it feels weirdly like dejavu, and I finally realised why- the milestone of Hinagiku and Sakura's relationship consists of them meeting up, affirming how much the platonically™️ care about eachother, some crazy traumatizing as hell thing happens to Hingagiku, the spring people physically toss Sakura's tiny body out the door, then Hinagiku does some crazy thing that forces them to drag Sakura back with their tail between their legs. I'm baffled they had the audacity to do it again the 3rd time honestly.
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Aerdra
Posts: 551 |
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I think this episode does partially answer what terrorists "accomplish" by kidnapping or killing an agent. After Hinagiku inherited the power of spring, she had to undergo years of training. Killing an agent probably stops that season from returning for years. What their goals beyond that (if any) are unclear, however. The goal of kidnapping seems more straightforward: to exploit the agent's powers.
Hinagiku said something interesting about past memories: "Not Hinagiku's. Her memories." Then the scene cuts to young Hinagiku's past. Does this mean the current Hinagiku is not the same person, or just thinks of herself as different? I think she said something similar at the beginning of the first episode. |
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Exodus007
 Posts: 136 |
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Feel the same way. Beckett keeps complaining about that but it's literally from her trauma of being kidnapped and away for 10 years. Not there to be annoying or cute. |
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The Anime Binge-Watcher
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Honestly, it feels like James formed an impression of what kind of show this was in the first couple episodes and that's filtering a lot of his perspective. It's easy to look at something this blunt and melodramatic and assume "Oh, this is all shallow and obvious," which leads to assuming everything else it does is equally shallow and obvious. But when that leads you to be this dismissive of a character's disability because you assume it's some kind of audience pandering instead of an earnest portrayal of a person grappling with that kind of handicap, I can't help but feel something's gone pretty wrong. |
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Key
Moderator
Posts: 19132 Location: Indianapolis, IN (formerly Mimiho Valley) |
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I had the distinct impression that she sees herself before the kidnapping as a literal different person because of how much the kidnapping affected her. |
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IronWish
Posts: 231 Location: Ukraine |
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Ok, problem is, with the vibes I got from the anime, is that author first came up with Hinagiku’s quirky speech patterns, and only after that tried to reverse engineer justification for them into the story. Cause if his thought process was "I want to depict how traumatic experience can impede one's speech and personality", I highly doubt that its endpoint would be Hinagiku as we know her. And for the record, I'm not even particularly bothered with her, it's just that story havng in-usniverse explanation for the thing doesn't mean that this thing is well implemented into the story. |
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Mami-kouga
Posts: 305 |
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That's about where I personally landed on the issue. I've read a lot of stories with disabled leads, I've batted for a lot of protags who I've seen people drag through the coals for not being hyper competent and Hinagiku's halting speech itself isn't an issue but it's the combination of that with her standard Moe writing and how long she can tend to monologue (in the book at least) that ups it from something sympathetic to mostly grating. I think the anime does make it more bearable but only so much as pushing me into kinda neutral rather than negative |
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IronWish
Posts: 231 Location: Ukraine |
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I bursted out laughing when after two episodes of recollections about how Hinagiku is her entire world Sakura dead ass looked at the camera and said "No homo"
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Kelohmello
Posts: 19 |
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I'm finding this show really frustrating to watch. After a pretty solid first episode, it's found itself mired in redundancy, constantly doing long flashbacks to tell us things that the show was already able to efficiently express with subtle bits of dialogue, even in the first episode.
Particularly because it doesn't want to actually elucidate the mysteries at the core of it, 6 episodes in i'm baffled by the pacing of this. It's always one step back then one and a half steps forward. |
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