The World Is Dancing

Episode 10

I have a sneaking suspicion that this won't be my most popular of opinions, but I was honestly a bit let down by Oniyasha and Zojiro's performance of “The Brine Maidens.” The sequence is a well-animated and performed bit of classical folk theater, don't get me wrong, and I think I would also be plenty impressed if this were any other show about dancing and Japanese history. This isn't just any old history anime, though, or at least I don't think it is supposed to be. I feel like The World Is Dancing promised a more visceral and artistically dynamic experience in those early episodes that has been sorely missing as of late.

Then again, maybe that sense of something missing from the dance is exactly the point. After all, even after winning the uproarious approval of the crowd (and the shogun), Oniyasha's main takeaway is that “The Brine Maidens” is still unfinished. For just a moment, the colors drain away from the artwork and the show slips back into that gorgeous, expressionistic style that gives this story so much more emotional heft. Perhaps the show has been deliberately holding back on the more bombastic artistic flourishes to represent the still gestating nature of Oniyasha's artistic sensibilities. If so, I can understand the choice from a thematic perspective, but that doesn't change the fact that it has made for a much less interesting work of animation to sit down and enjoy every week.

As for the other story developments of this climactic episode, I found myself left similarly cold as a viewer. The attempted assassination of Yoshimitsu, the execution of Kogane the would-be shogun-killer, the way that Oniyasha and his friends all go their separate ways for now — these are all events that ought to be striking an emotional chord or two. All I can do is acknowledge their merit from a calculating distance, like some academic on a committee reviewing a perfectly well-reasoned thesis for which I have no vested personal interest. The pieces are all there, and they allow the story to flow naturally enough from one node to the next, but where is that sense of all-consuming artistic frenzy that ignited Oniyasha's creative fires to begin with?

This is where scores become such arbitrary tools in the grand scheme of discussing art, because if you asked me to point out anything that this episode of The World Is Dancing that was particularly wrong, I would be at something of a loss. Surely, your immediate follow-up to my awkward silence would be to question, “That must mean the episode was good, then, right?” To that, I can only say, “Um…well…it's more complicated than that…” Is that an erudite and unassailable explanation for the lack of an extra half-star down there in the little grade widget? No, but sometimes that's how art shakes out. The World Is Dancing is shaking out to be less than the sum of its pretty and polished parts, and that's a shame. We got a time-skip at the end of this episode, though, which is enough to give me hope for the remainder of the season. Sometimes a chronological rejiggering is just what a story needs to shuffle off the cobwebs and get back to what it does best.

Episode Rating:

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.

The World Is Dancing is currently streaming on HIDIVE.