When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace

Episode 8

At this point in the season, it's safe to say that trying to predict When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace is an exercise in futility. The show has a habit of doing whatever it wants from episode to episode, audience expectations be damned. It's an approach that has yielded surprisingly compelling results and allowed the series to address topics that are rarely dealt with in the anime world. Unfortunately, not every sudden change of direction is a good one. This latest episode produces one of the most frustrating about-faces I've seen in a long time.

Last week left the show in uncharted waters, with Hatoko going missing after an emotional confrontation with Jurai. It was a cliffhanger that promised some major soul-searching on the part of the main characters. Naturally, the obvious choice for this episode was to put that storyline completely on hold, introduce an entirely different group of characters, and start dropping revelations about how everyone acquired their powers. After all, who wants to see a major character arc come to a satisfying resolution when there's exposition to unload?

Whatever the motivation behind this decision may be, it feels like a shameless cop-out. The fight between Hatoko and Jurai offered a criticism of the exclusionary elements within otaku culture, a brave decision considering the show's target demographic. I'm all for asking an audience to take a hard look in the mirror, but it's also a move that demands commitment. If you're going to introduce a controversial viewpoint, you'd better be prepared to stand by it and see it through to the end. That's not what happens here by a long shot. For whatever reason, the conflict gets completely swept under the rug while a sideshow act tries to distract the audience with a deluge of genre tropes.

Part of what makes this move so frustrating is that the new characters and plot points aren't half bad. The truth behind everyone's powers feels like an entertaining jab at more serious titles like Fate/stay night. Rather than fighting a grim battle to the death, the characters are essentially competing for the amusement of an otherworldly audience. The new cast members have good chemistry with one another, even if some of them stick too close to stock archetypes. It should be easy to write this episode off as an exercise in bad plot development, but it's actually quite entertaining viewed standalone. We even get a legitimate supernatural battle for once.

The final minutes of the episode do attempt to wrap up last week's story, but it probably would've been better to put it off until next week. Rather than coming to a satisfying conclusion, the feud ends with an effortless rescue, a casual declaration of mutual responsibility, and the hasty introduction of a new conflict. Nobody learns anything, nothing changes between Jurai and Hatoko, and the audience is urged to forget that any of those scary ideas were ever put forward. If you're going to abandon a storyline, at least let it die with more dignity than this.

There's nothing wrong with an ambitious series tripping itself up from time to time, but this episode doesn't feel like a simple mistake. For whatever reason, the show turns and sprints away from a discussion that it chose to start. Call it fear of alienating the audience. Call it a lack of knowledge on how to resolve the conflict. Call it whatever you like, but it's still a disappointing end to what could have been a dramatic and insightful storyline. This series can and should do better.

Rating: C+

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Paul Jensen also covers anime and manga at SharkPuppet.com.