Ruri Rocks

Episode 5

It may be summer, but school is in session for Ruri and the rest. The accumulated geological knowledge that folks like Nagi and Imari work on has to come from somewhere, so digging into that process and imparting it to Ruri is a focus of this week's Ruri Rocks. It means things are even more honed in on scientific methods and the edutainment aspect of the anime than last week's lab-locale entry. It's not quite as characterful as I've come to expect from the series, as a result, but it's still interesting at what it does in this case, plus everything still looks very pretty.

It's funny because the inciting incident for the efforts of this episode is Ruri specifically trying to get Nagi and Imari out of the lab to have some fun. Of course, even a would-be relaxing beach trip in an anime like this is still a reason to hunt for research samples. It makes me think of my dad and his love for combing the beach for hours in search of cool, pretty rocks to identify, so it sort of is a combination of leisure and research. Ruri's learned to have fun with it, anyway, and here she does indeed get to learn about a new kind of pretty rock. Agates are attractive, especially as rendered in the Ruri Rocks anime. They're ones that Nagi is particularly excited to explain the origins of, even as it does ultimately come down to being other complex iterations of quartz.

Interestingly, the process of the research itself is the valuable part of geology for Nagi. This fits with what's been seen from her so far in the series, and the way she lights up virtually any time Ruri retrieves a new example or sample for her to check out, regardless of its specific rarity. It's confirmed here that Nagi doesn't even pocket all the cool rocks she finds. She is more focused on cataloging everything to understand the bigger picture of the formations that led the rocks here, and adding to the overall knowledge base. To that end, it's also shown that Nagi has a healthy respect for the parts of her findings she can't explain, as she discusses possible reasons for the deposit of agates that Ruri stumbles upon. It's curiosity as a motivator to continue researching, without being presumptuous about things she thinks she already knows—Nagi has precisely the attitude a scientist of any stripe should carry.

As this episode continues, it can be seen how Nagi is trying to impress that methodology onto Ruri. Ruri's the type to happily jump to the conclusion that she's stumbled onto some new placer gold, then silver, then hop at the notion that she might have discovered platinum after all. Nagi, reserved and knowledgeable as she is, knows that the only way to go about confirming any of this is to test, test, and test some more. I appreciate how the simple water-dropping gravity test she demonstrates is one that viewers could easily try for themselves at home (recreating experiments being an important point of any edutainment series), while acknowledging that there's still a lot more to it beyond that. It creates a neat parallel for the latter half of this episode, with Nagi spurring Ruri into another outdoor excursion, this time specifically as "work" to confirm their research.

It's one point that Ruri Rocks has returned to regularly: that the practice of geology is a science that inherently leads those engaging with it to enjoy the natural splendor of the outdoor world itself. There are a lot of technical explanations about magma formations and serpentinite that lead to deposits of platinum. It's all visualized effectively in an iceberg of rock facts that Nagi can barely scratch the surface of in covering for Ruri and the other kids playing along at home. It does well enough in having the audience come along at figuring this stuff out, as in recognizing the weird green rock Ruri spotted earlier. But it still feels just secondary enough to visually articulate how "grand and surreal" the world that forms these materials is. There are some absolute scenes this episode, as the landscapes and characters exploring them are bathed in the glows of different times of day, accentuating the time they've spent combing these vistas, alongside more wide shots emphasizing the scale of their world compared to them. And those characters are then seen zooming in on the tiny specks of elements they dwarf that they spent all this time and effort searching for. It's all very calculated and engaging for the educational material that might draw in viewers, even if they're a little lost by the sheer number of Cool Rock Facts whizzing by in this episode.

It's cool to see that Ruri Rocks can vary its makeup and density of episodes each week, while still keeping some scientific thematics at its core, to say nothing of looking good even when it's just talking technicalities. This episode had fewer moments evoking character growth or seeding future interactions than last week's entry did, but it still showcased both the rocks and the people looking for them well enough. It's nice to get insight into specifically what makes Nagi tick, and how her way of imparting that onto Ruri might be pushing both of them forward.

Rating:

Ruri Rocks is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris doesn't know much about cool rocks, but he could talk your ear off about cool anime and cool Transformers. Catch him doing so over on his BlueSky, or see previous posts over on his blog.