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Seiren
Episode 12

by Nick Creamer,

How would you rate episode 12 of
Seiren ?
Community score: 4.0

Seiren finished up its third arc this week, in an episode entirely dedicated to the school's Christmas Eve festival. Venison was skewered, santa costumes were judged, and the romance of Kyoko and Shoichi came to a peak on the school's rooftop. This may not have been the best episode, but it had plenty of all the things I've come to expect from Seiren.

First off, if you're in this show for the strange and strangely sexual one-liners, this finale did not disappoint. The episode opened with Tsuneki charming all the boys with her deer costume while promoting the venison stand, which led to the crowd celebrating charm points as unlikely as her “erect doe tail.” That was probably the episode's weird sexuality peak, but there were also a number of innovative lines related to the multitudinous functions of underwear, and also a nice moment where Shoichi got hot and bothered about Kyoko's hair whorl. Seiren either has no grasp of human sexuality at all, or a far more precise understanding of it than us mere mortals in the audience can fathom.

Seiren's aimless un-storytelling was also fully on display here. While you might have expected this episode's festival setting to result in more narrative focus, it felt like the opposite was true. With basically every past and future heroine and side character here, copious minutes were dedicated to characters with no actual relevance to this arc's plot. We got a strong picture of Tsuneki's night, checked in on the younger boys from last arc's arcade, and even spent some time with Miu, a girl who hasn't ever talked to Shoichi or Kyoko.

At times, Seiren's unfocused approach to plotting can actually result in some evocatively realistic scenes, but a style like Seiren's demands more care than the show seems to exhibit. Writing a story in an unusual way isn't a crime, but if you let your narrative wander like this, you generally have to be doing that with some specific goal in mind. Perhaps you're trying to evoke the specific tone of a certain event, or maybe the wandering of your narrative is meant to reflect an important character's current headspace. The fact that Seiren ignores so many general guidelines about how scenes and lines of dialogue should contribute to an overall dramatic effect makes it interesting, but it doesn't make it good. “You have to know the rules before you can break them” is a truism for a reason - Seiren often seems unfocused just because it can't focus, and its lengthy deviations from purposeful storytelling rarely result in any meaningful payoff.

Fortunately, this episode's climactic scene demonstrated the show's positive qualities at their best. Finally meeting on the rooftop, Shoichi was at last able to confess his full feelings to Kyoko. Demonstrating some welcome honesty and conviction, he admitted that he wasn't actually fine with things staying the same as always, and that he wanted to go out with Kyoko. For her part, Kyoko's actions here sold her feelings without betraying the fundamental nature of her character. Both of these characters are extremely shy and awkward, and their mutual confession was a series of fumbling moves towards each other that read true to both them specifically and these first-love situations in general.

In scenes like this, Seiren's wandering conversation style is actually a great boon. Articulating the precise and often misguided ramblings of these characters helps them feel more real, letting the show occasionally move beyond romcom boilerplate and into something legitimately personal. By applying that style to two insecure characters who both seem naturally prone to that sort of wandering, and centering on an arc with a very grounded and believable core conflict (childhood friends navigating their shifting feelings for each other), this arc was able to end on the strongest confession scene of the show to date. This still isn't great anime, but it was solid Seiren.

Overall: B+

Seiren is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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


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