The Rolling Girls

Episode 10

Rolling Girls got busy! This episode had around four simultaneous stories going, and though none of them have quite combined yet, they're all moving forward in their own entertaining ways. The main characters are even actually involved in some of them! We've got three cities, four gangs, and over a dozen characters all rolling, scrambling, tumbling their way towards adventure, and though this episode was more setup than payoff, it was still a fine recovery from last week's stumble.

The first thread this week followed up on the reveals about Chiaya's nature from last episode. Apparently, both Chiaya and her mother are aliens, who became trapped in this world during a celestial event known as a (sigh) “Extreme Double Super Moon,” and are now attempting to ride a repeat of the same event home. In order to do this, the President has been gathering moonstones to act as fuel, and thus it seems moonstones are tied in some in-world way to the merging of the moons. In order to get Chiaya and the stones back, the President commissions Masami and Kuniko to go fix everything, giving them some kind of special gift to assist them. The key line here was Kuniko asking if the President's gift will “really help them fight” - the President's response, that it “has more use than a lucky charm,” clearly points to Nozomi and the overall show's belief that raw strength is less important than conviction and self-knowledge.

Raw strength certainly would have helped Nozomi this week, though. Though she spent a little time searching for her missing friends, her biggest scene involved sitting by and watching as Shima Ishizukuri stole the old Hiroshima guardians' license. The fight between the Noyotake Moonlight Best Kaguya (who fights with a bamboo staff, a pretty cute reference) and Shima's thugs was this week's Big Animation setpiece, and it certainly impressed - there was a great flow to Kaguya's movements, a sense of weight to her collisions, and a clear beauty in the combination of human movement and sparkling Best pyrotechnics. Kaguya's fight ended in defeat, however, and she ultimately lashed out at Nozomi, whose already awful negotiation skills have likely never been less useful. Nozomi ended the episode pining for home, having lost her friends, her conviction, and the show's normally indomitable spirit of adventure.

Meanwhile, Yukina's story was basically just a series of great gags, as her unique sense of direction led her to somehow photocopy “have you seen this octopus-girl” fliers in the heart of the Stones' secret hideout. None of the jokes here were overplayed - we know Yukina's ridiculous, and so the show just let her sort of casually wander around the secret hideout, stapling up fliers and occasionally running into prisoners and eventually getting herself captured in turn. With all of the other girls in the middle of important character arcs, it was up to Yukina to maintain the show's “these girls are completely useless” quotient, and she made an admirably useless job of it.

While all this was going on, Ai spent the episode discovering an entirely separate narrative of her own. Somehow stranded in the town of Okayama, she spent time gathering peaches while witnessing the oppression of the townspeople through cruel taxes by the Okayama Demons and their Best leader Ura Kukino. Though Ai herself didn't really have much to offer this conflict (“You're strong, right? You should just beat her up!” Ai suggests to retired Best Haru Fujiwara in typical Ai fashion), the young girl Momo, along with her companion ostrich, sloth, and dog (another cute reference), decided to take matters into their own hands. The episode ended with Momo challenging Ura to a duel, leaving all sorts of conflicts hanging open for next week's episode.

So that's that! Very busy episode, but full of immediately parsable stories that actually made decent use of the show's protagonists. Many of the smaller arc conflicts here lacked the emotional weight to create much tension on their own, but there was generally enough momentum to keep things entertaining in between the failed grasps at solemnity. The episode just had a whole lot of energy, and great visuals to match - not only did we get a nice animation showcase in the Kaguya fight, but the overall background work felt particularly vivid this week, with Ura Kukino's demon castle in particular feeling almost Madoka-esque in the the way the multilayered cut paper backgrounds created a sense of off-kilter depth. Even Chiaya got a nice moment or two, with her surprisingly cute brush with octopus-dinner death and actually competent attempts to mend Ai and Nozomi's relationship adding some color and personality to an episode that was already pretty lively and colorful. I hope the show stays this strong through the end!

Rating: A-

The Rolling Girls is currently streaming on Funimation.

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