Autumn 2021 First Impressions – The Heike Story

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 11

Source: Novel

Episode Summary: Biwa witnesses the murder of her blind father at the hand of the powerful Heike clan, thus leaving her an orphan. Yet it’s a member of the Heike, the subdued, practical Shigemori, who apologizes for the crimes of his brethren and identifies a similarity between himself and Biwa. Both possess a heterochromic eye which has granted them psychic powers. Shigemori is cursed to see the spirits of the dead all around him, but Biwa’s eye allows her to see the future.

Shigemori chooses to adopt Biwa and raise her alongside his own sons; Biwa’s father had disguised her as a boy to help her survive, and she has no interest in living as a girl, so this arrangement is helpful. Yet, despite his kind overtures, Biwa refuses to tell Shigemori the one thing he’d truly love to know – what will finally bring downfall to the Heike clan, and can he help prevent it? As the clan begins to grow bloated with its overwhelming power and corruption creeps in, can either Shigemori or Biwa truly do anything to stop the Heike’s fall?

Impressions: I’m tempted to comment on the recent tendency for new anime seasons to begin earlier and earlier, but as much as I still marvel at how strange it feels to be getting new anime at unexpected times, I’d rather spend the bulk of this review marveling at this episode, which manages to say a lot while also revealing very little. For a very old story, there are bits and pieces of it that feel almost eerily timely.

I’m not quite sure if this will reflect poorly on me or seem a little bit tasteless, but I feel a very gut-wrenching kinship with Shigemori in this scenario. He’s accused multiple times of being boring by a family who’s riding high on its own expanding, ridiculous power, and yet it’s his level-headedness that allows him to remain sober and see through the façade. I’m not going to lie, there are members of my own family – distant relatives who I don’t interact with much, but who represent a large branch of my extended family – who absolutely frustrate me in the way that they thoughtlessly behave. They express racist, sexist sentiments online, buy into non-factual information for the sake of alignment with certain political positions, and then ask for prayers and sympathy when they *somehow* get extremely sick with a disease that they angrily decried for months.

I find myself stuck between being upset that their health is in danger, and angry about the harm they’ve spread through their actions. Ultimately I just feel sort of numb; even the “I told you so” that a more energetic and spiteful part of me would like to say, just feels empty of satisfaction. I’m simply left feeling as though I should apologize on their behalf for their actions that will never change. And yet, there’s still part of me that would jump at the chance to be able to talk them out of their delusions and stop all the bad from happening. The fact is that, I don’t know if there’s really even a way to stop that inertia from carrying them along on the path they’re on.

Shigemori is someone in the position of having to apologize for the thoughtlessness-by-association of his extended family, and there’s a sort of sadness in experiencing things through the eyes of a character who can sense something terrible on the horizon and who would love to change the progression of fate, but who doesn’t have the personality nor the tools to do so. I suspect that even psychic powers might not be enough to hold back the steadily rising tide of hubris.

And yet, despite this sort of melancholy state of affairs, I found this episode to have a definite hopeful streak. I feel that genuine apologies can be a rare find in some areas fiction. Anime is filled to the brim with “gomens” and prostrations, but I find that, contextually, they’re weighted more toward “please forgive me” than “I’m sorry for what I did.” And honestly, this is human nature; expressing humility for one’s actions and attempting to make amends with no guarantee of a good outcome is a scary prospect for most of us. Shigemori seems genuinely upset by the way in which his family’s agents dispatched Biwa’s father as though he were nothing. And yet… I can’t help but wonder if his motivations for adopting Biwa are actually so pure. She has something he could use – a vision of his family’s future and perhaps insight on how to save it – and all it may take is some kindness to massage it out of her. I don’t know if this is a reflection of the story itself, or a reflection on me, but I will say that trustworthiness is earned rather than taken.

In any case, this is a striking opening episode for a series that I’ve been looking forward to. I enjoy (at least in theory) whenever artists decide to provide a fresh interpretation and perspective on a classic story

Pros: This episode is artful in a way that most anime series don’t have the luxury to be. The glowing fireflies and torches, the delicate flowers (discussed at length by Emily with her usual insight), and the softly falling snow are all portrayed with a delicacy and visual flair that feels extremely intentional. To be honest, this collaboration between Naoko Yamada (Sound! Euphonium season 1, Liz and the Blue Bird) and animation studio Science Saru is sort of a dream for me, joining two artistic thought processes in their primes that I personally admire.

The character animation is similarly notable, with rough-hewn linework and unique designs. Aside from Ranking of Kings, which I’m also looking forward to this season, I feel like this series will at the very least distinguish itself from its seasonal brethren through its character designs.

Cons: This isn’t necessarily a personal critique, but like a lot of modern interpretations of older material I feel like this runs the risk of feeling somewhat impenetrable to folks who aren’t at least interested in classic Japanese literature. Its storytelling style combines (what I believe to be) actual poetic lines from the story, old-style linguistic dialog (I’d probably equate it to Shakespearean English in that it uses language forms that are understandable but which aren’t commonly used, though my knowledge of classical Japanese is only extremely basic), and scenes which often feel more like glimpses here and there rather than complete thoughts. Context is very minimal at some points. Parts of the plot revolve around military battles that won’t have a lot of inherent meaning to outsiders (that includes myself). So in spite of Funimation’s advertisement of the series and the early drop I kind of wonder who the intended audience for this is. This isn’t really to discourage anyone from watching it, because sometimes worthwhile art is worth a little bit of work, but it’s good to be aware of the potential challenge.

I’m also experiencing a broader uneasiness here related to the general anime production process and how it relates to this particular series. As much as I love Science Saru as a studio, it’s become clear that they’re not immune to the same sort of production crunch that’s plagued almost every anime studio for years and only gotten worse due to Covid-19. It’s difficult to wrangle with the fact that something you love is so problematic, and it’s gotten to the point where I’m unable to simply bury my head in the sand about it. It’s frustrating, I believe, because it’s a problem where there’s not a single course of action I can personally take to “solve” it. If I go for the nuclear option and decide to just stop watching all anime, well, I’m one person who’s barely going to register on anyone’s radar, let-alone anyone in the anime industry with any power to make changes. But if I continue watching without commenting, then I feel complicit. So this is me reminding myself and anyone else reading that this is still an issue that exists, and something which even some of the best-of-the-best are struggling with.

One other thing I wanted to make note of, and I’m sure the degree to which this is a negative issue will be very individualistic, is that Biwa’s gender is somewhat under question within the narrative. I’ve used “she/her” to refer to the character here, because that’s how Biwa is referred to by other characters and in the dialog. However, she’s spent her life disguised as a boy for safety and has come to identify as male and dresses as a male child after joining Shigemori’s family. In certain scenes which I believe to take place following the story, Biwa seems to take on a female presentation. So I will leave it to viewers to interpret the situation. I will be interested to see if this comes up more throughout the narrative.

Content Warnings: Violence (sword violence with blood splatters). Murder. Classism. Misgendering. Brief discussion of gender roles, including the limited options afforded women at the time in which the story takes place.

Would I Watch More? – The appearance of this series on the Autumn release calendar was a bit of a surprise, but in spite of that it’s jumped up pretty high on my list. I’m interested to see what this “golden combo” of Naoko Yamada and Science Saru can do, in spite of any misgivings I may have about the industry in general.