Autumn 2018 First Impressions – IRODUKU: The World in Colors

Set in the city of Nagasaki, the story takes place in a world where a miniscule amount of magic remains in everyday life. Hitomi Tsukishiro is a 17-year-old descendant of a witch family who grew up with stale emotions, as she lost her sense of color at a very young age. Feeling sorry for her granddaughter’s future, Kohaku, a great witch, sends Hitomi to past, the year 2018. Through exchanges with her 17-year-old grandmother and her club members, the story follows Hitomi’s growth as a person. – MAL

Streaming: Amazon Prime

Episodes: TBA

Source: Original

Episode Summary: At some point in her life, Hitomi lost her ability to see color. As a member of a family of mages, this seems to have dulled her magical abilities and has left her feeling depressed and disconnected from the world. Even the festival fireworks, something she loved to watch as a child, don’t reveal their true beauty when Hitomi is watching them. Hitomi’s grandmother, a powerful mage, surprises her the evening of the fireworks with a time-turning device that she’s been bathing in the light of the moon for 60 years. She’s decided to send Hitomi 60 years in the past to 2018, and Hitomi has no time to resist before her grandmother wishes her goodbye and completes the spell.

Hitomi arrives in an unfamiliar room that clearly belongs to a young man – he arrives to change his clothes as she hides underneath the bed. As she crawls out the window, several students her age bear witness to the escape and start the rumor mill running – who’s the mysterious (and beautiful) girl that Aoi was keeping in his bedroom? When the members of the photography club discover that Hitomi is well and truly lost, they take her under their wing and bring her to her family’s magic shop, atop the hill as it always has been. Though her grandmother (her age in this time period) is off studying magic in England, once the rest of the proprietors realize that Hitomi is family, they invite her to stay in their spare room. The next day, as Hitomi searches for a lost item, she encounters Aoi who’s spending his free time drawing. Amazingly enough, the drawing appears to Hitomi in vivid color. Could there be some way to restore color to her world, and bring her magic back?

Impressions: It’s no secret that I’m a sucker for stories about witches and magic-users, especially when the magical effects are more benign and practical rather than flashy and weaponized. If you’re not sure what I mean by that, go watch Flying Witch – it’s one of the best examples and one of my favorite recent anime series. It makes me happy whenever there’s another anime series to add to this very specific sub-genre, not only because it scratches a very specific itch for me, but because these series so often include the kind of fulfilling relationships that I hunger to see portrayed – positive and nurturing ones between women. Though this series wasn’t really on my radar going into the season, I’m feeling optimistic that it might be a worthwhile pickup.

Considering that I spent quite a few paragraphs criticizing Bunny Girl Senpai for it’s bad-attitude protagonist, I feel like I may get some flack for turning around and praising this series for featuring a character with some similar emotional issues, but try to hear me out. I think one of the things people tend to misunderstand about depression is how it manifests. Even now, depictions of it seem to focus on the overbearing sadness of the illness – its rock-bottom moments. Watching characters fall to the ground and weep, or goodness-forbid, attempt suicide, probably makes for more exciting TV drama (especially for people who aren’t as intimately affected by the issue). Speaking as someone whose life is impacted by depression, its manifestation is rarely the kind of melodrama that people expect it to be. Often it’s better described as the absence of joy, a lack of motivation, or a simple inability to be interested in doing anything. Unfortunately, that inability to participate in life often gets misinterpreted as laziness, just due to the fact that it’s a legitimate but highly misunderstood expression of something that’s already stigmatized.

I think that Hitomi’s inability to see color is a very good metaphor for the way that I’ve experienced depression. It’s not as if the world itself is somehow fundamentally different between people, but Hitomi’s perception of it clearly is; it’s as if she’s become separated from the very things that other people seem to take such easy joy in doing. The show does a very good job of demonstrating this by making the scenes that are in color mesmerizing in their beauty and vividness. The sugary glisten of the candied apples at the festival, the sparkling fireworks, and the jars upon jars of magical powders and potions at the magic shop are both beautiful and cruelly taunting, because we realize early on that our protagonist is unable to experience them in this same way. I like to think that this is something that even those whose lives aren’t directly affected by mental illness can understand and appreciate.

It also makes the scene during which Hitomi sees the color in Aoi’s drawing all the more poignant, because, however briefly, she gets the opportunity to experience pure joy. I love how the visuals represent this; it’s as if the world transforms into a digital painting. While many of the scenes to this point were depicted realistically with an extra bump of color, this scene in particular is entirely different, depicted with stippled brush strokes and rich, painterly hues. I love the effect and it makes me happy that we live in an age where TV animation can look like this.

The little bit of apprehension I have revolves around the potential interrelationship between Hitomi’s eventual happiness and Aoi’s presence and art. It would be disappointing to me if Hitomi’s evolution and her ability to cope with her depression were predicated on her interactions with a boy, especially if the boy is depicted as some naturally-talented prodigy with an innate magical ability. I feel that this cheapens Hitomi’s story, because it positions her to be “rescued” rather than allowing her to develop on her own and into her own power as a mage and as a person.

There’s one line that Hitomi says early on in the episode that really stuck with me. I’m paraphrasing, but she mentions as part of her inner monologue that she’s sometimes thought that continuing to insist to herself that she’s “okay” and saying it repeatedly inside her own mind, might someday make it become reality. That it’s become like a sort of modest protective magic. I think this is a sentiment with which many of us can sympathize, and I know I’ve used it as a tool these last couple of weeks as the world has done its best to convince me that I’m both not okay and that my experiences don’t matter. But it’s also a stop-gap measure that does little to address the source of one’s pain – like a band-aid, it might stop the bleeding, but it won’t heal the wound. I truly hope that Hitomi’s story is one of self-discovery and healing; that in itself is a magic potion that would be worth its weight in gold.

Pros: The use of color (and its absence) do a great job of representing what depression can feel like. Hitomi’s reverie at the end of the episode is beautifully-imagined. There are several women and their relationships seem likely to be important to the story.

Cons: I worry that the heroine’s story will be to dependent on the actions of a boy.

Grade: B+