×
  • remind me tomorrow
  • remind me next week
  • never remind me
Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week. read more

Concrete Revolutio
Episode 4

by Rose Bridges,

How would you rate episode 4 of
Concrete Revolutio ?
Community score: 3.8

What a surprise! This week's episode of Concrete Revolutio made sense and was very easy to follow. I never expected that so soon when I first started this show, but here we are! Despite this, it has the most timeline skips of any installment so far. This week's episode does the best job of clearly broadcasting its changes, with obvious setting and character shifts to go along with the text on top. Now that Concrete Revolutio has given us the tools for understanding its story, the story becomes clearer and clearer.

This week's theme is KAIJU. The episode is titled "Japan's Beast History," and I think the subtitles here might have complicated things by translating the word. Most anime fans know what a "kaiju" is and how it's different from a generic "beast." We start around the time of World War II, when a researcher discovers a kaiju on a remote island, and the U.S. government uses heavy weaponry to combat the monsters. The episode makes several stops in time along the way before getting us back to our "main" timeline in the mid-1960s, where the Superhuman Bureau is powerless to stop the "kaiju wave" that's washing over Tokyo. They must wait for other superhumans to save the day instead—which they do. (One of them is Grosse Augen from the first episode! But then, as we recall, he must go back to his home planet...) The Bureau begins to suspect that this is all a ploy to improve public opinion of superhumans behind their backs.

This episode is also all about Jiro, exploring his origin story and maybe a hint of why he ends up leaving the Superhuman Bureau later. Jiro is clearly distressed by the lack of concern his fellow superhumans have for humanity. They constantly remind him that the Superhuman Bureau's mission is to look out for superhumans and keep them in line, not to save people. When he wants to go up against the kaiju they observe, he's cautioned that because there are hundreds of civilian onlookers, it's not worth the risk to his identity. Other superhumans remind him that the kaiju don't even necessarily pose a threat to their species, only to regular humans, which only increases Jiro's discontent. For him, humans are worth protecting at the expense of their bureau's government protections, but no one else appears to feel this way. More importantly, seeing other superhumans fight kaiju does wonders for their public image, and it turns out that one of Jiro's older colleagues is encouraging kaiju creation for that end.

We find this out in a meeting between the mentor and two other superhuman old men, who are actually strange colorful alien spirits inhabiting human bodies. They get together because America has discovered a kaiju on Mars, named Master Ultima, which it plans to use as part of its military operations. This is concerning because the world is still in the middle of the Cold War, and the kaiju would upset the balance of power between America and the Soviets, escalating their arms race. The safety of the whole world is based in maintaining that balance, so this is important even for our luminescent alien council living far away from both nations in Japan. I think this group will become more important as the series goes on.

This is the first event we see that explicitly places the series in the early Cold War; previously, we only had vague cultural references and the names of eras that rang similar to the real-life Showa period. Kaiju have a history as metaphors for nuclear weapons and their fallout (literal and figurative), a topic of obvious concern in postwar Japan. We also find out later that these kaiju are made from "human anger," which could also be said of real-life nukes. I won't be surprised if the show goes further with these elements in future episodes. Either way, it's interesting to recall how much the initial Concrete Revolutio premise sounded like Watchmen. Watchmen explored how the presence of superheroes during the Cold War could have affected the arms race and changed the outcome of certain key conflicts. Concrete Revolutio is already playing with similar ideas.

There's also a parallel story about human-kaiju interaction with a little boy named Hiroyuki, who Fuurota discovers hiding a baby kaiju. The boy doesn't want to give him up, though. He found him seven years ago (1959) after a kaiju attack, and Hiroyuki had previously lost his brother to malnutrition at the time. The baby kaiju—named GaGon—serves as a second brother to him. This makes Jiro look like a real jerk when he continues to suspect and despise all kaiju, even as this monkey-like baby tries to hug and cuddle him. However, Jiro is right to be suspicious, because he finds out the place where Hiroyuki lives is making the kaiju out of samples from GaGon. When Jiro fights the kaiju in their research basement, we get another wrench thrown into the mix of Jiro's kaiju hatred. He's one himself, in human skin, and that fusion of beast and man comes apart when he detaches the giant screws in one of his arms. This enhances his destructive power, but it also makes him harder to control. He needs someone with the ability to cool him down to reattach his arm—that turns out to be Emi, revealed as both a kitsune and possibly Jiro's mother. We see a younger version of her hanging around when a scientist rescues a boy Jiro after a kaiju attack in 1954.

So Jiro's hatred of kaiju is personal. He knows all too well the unpredictable, destructive capabilities of these monsters. It's also a rejection of the side of himself he doesn't like so much. It makes me wonder how that aspect will operate in the future timeline, when he leaves the Superhuman Bureau to fight against them. Does he embrace or reject his kaiju side? Is Emi still able to control him—and does she? What does this mean for the future Superhuman Bureau and Jiro's crusade against it? We don't know, but in fleshing out Jiro's character and backstory, this episode dangles many interesting possibilities. He was a mysterious protagonist from the start, but now that we know a little bit about him, more questions have been raised than answered.

The biggest takeaway from all this is that Concrete Revolutio has figured out how to put an episode together. This one balances character reveals and exposition with thematic foreshadowing for future episodes. It's also nails how to handle the series' many flashbacks and flash-forwards, so they provide necessary information instead of just confusing the viewer. Now that Concrete Revolutio is assembling itself into something coherent, it's becoming a really strong show. It was always interesting; there was always the sense of cool ideas in the middle of a mess, and the unique and stylish aesthetics didn't hurt. It's getting more focused with each episode, building in strength and creative potential as it grows.

Rating: A-

Concrete Revolutio is currently streaming on Funimation.

Rose is a music Ph.D. student who loves overanalyzing anime soundtracks. Follow her on her media blog Rose's Turn.


discuss this in the forum (142 posts) |
bookmark/share with: short url

back to Concrete Revolutio
Episode Review homepage / archives