“Three days from now, we died.”
When I first wrote about the series just a month ago, I said I felt like Blue Reflection Ray had not entirely found its audience. Rather than doing so per se, several weeks later as it nears its halfway point, it almost seems to be growing more esoteric and hard to place by the episode. Blue Reflection Ray, in both its best and worst moments, feels like a show destined for cult fandom. It is still airing, and already has the aura of an anime forgotten by time.
How accurate that feeling will prove to be remains to be seen, we’re still in the first cour after all. But, BRR itself has taken no steps to make itself more accessible. It’s certainly not the best anime airing this season, but Blue Reflection Ray might be the anime airing right now that is the most its own thing. As it’s gone on, it’s drifted ever farther from the obvious touchpoints I and others previously named. Comparisons that may have done it more harm than good early on to begin with. But, that ambiguous approach may in fact be closer to familiar ground than many viewers (even myself) have realized.
At the time of this writing, the most recent episode of Blue Reflection Ray is its ninth. It’s a classic bombshell-style plot twist sort of episode. But even before then, there were signs that BRR was not content to just rotely copy anything, touchstone or no. Episode six gave us the emotionally scalding backstory of Nina Yamada, one of the “evil” red Reflectors. Most anime do not try to handle episodes juggling such topics as child abuse, the young girls of the world who are lost to sexual exploitation, and codependency. Blue Reflection Ray did. Was it entirely equipped to do so? Well, I suspect many would find the episode in question problematic, or at the very least in over its head. They may even be right to, but I myself cannot help but respect something with that level of self-confidence. A bat was swung, and it was for the fences.
And that self-belief is important, because no matter what else can be said about it, Blue Reflection Ray always scans as genuine, which allows it to succeed even when making surprisingly ambitious narrative plays like those, that well outstrip what something of its fairly limited production values “should” be able to accomplish.1 That brings us to episode nine.
Fundamentally, “What She Said”, as the episode is called, is two characters challenging each others’ worldviews. On one side is Mio Hirahara, the leader of the red Reflectors and main character Hiori’s sister. On the other side is Momo Tanabe, ex-delinquent and most senior of the blue Reflectors.
The moral differences here are stark, and while Momo’s red Reflectors’ actions are not excused, the series does paint them in a more sympathetic light than one might expect, even if they are still ultimately “the bad guys” in a narrative sense. It does this mostly by way of what is essentially an expository monologue on Mio’s part. As a sidenote; it’s to the credit of the show’s director (Risako Yoshida) that this somehow feels gripping and compelling instead of dry.
These revelations are, themselves, plot points. There is a lot to process here; time loops, monsters called Sephira (briefly shown without explanation way back in episode one), the mysterious “Door to the Common” that Mio and her Reflectors are working to open, the confirmation that Mio and Momo were partners–as we now know, quite literally in another life, in the previous timeline–the ominous fact that three days in the future is when Mio and Momo originally lost to the Sephirot. It’s all quite much.
What remains true regardless of the literal plot developments, is that Blue Reflection Ray is a portrait of emotional dysfunction gone horribly wrong. In this specific way, it actually is similar to many of its contemporaries, and it’s here that we can most understand what it’s trying to do. Only what every magical girl series does; prove the worth of human connectedness in a world that has forgotten it. Its route is just more circuitous than most.
Of course, the obvious caveats apply. Sure, the series could crash and burn in its second cour. It’s possible there really isn’t a plan and I am simply reading too much onto a production with low ambitions. But, with all respect to this hypothetical negative reader, that is true of almost any anime with truly few exceptions. I would, a million times over, make the mistake of giving something too much credit than the inverse.
Blue Reflection Ray‘s first cour is approaching its end, and I suspect we may finally have at least some answers soon. Until then? The Door to the Common remains closed, and all we can do is wait for it to be unlocked.
1: I like Blue Reflection Ray‘s visuals. I think its watercolor palette, the general shoujo aesthetic of the character designs, and the gaudy computer art mish-mash of the Leap Ranges are all strengths. However, if an anime eventually comes along that will rehabilitate J.C. Staff’s reputation for odd, spacey, and sometimes just straight-up bad animation, it will not be this one.
If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The Magic Planet 