This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
“We’ve already decided on our destination. The farthest end of Japan our Cub can take us.”
It’s about three minutes into Super Cub‘s first episode before anyone says anything. It’s nearly twelve before any kind of background music kicks in. That alone, and the show’s locale–rural Japan, somewhere along the Chuo Line–will clue you in that Super Cub is not merely your average slice of life series. This is an iyashikei, a tone genre that focuses on producing a healing, meditative effect. Any iyashikei is a thing of note; it’s not a particularly saturated genre. A genuinely good one is a precious treasure.
I must confess though, I went into Super Cub skeptical. I’m not afraid to admit I’m something of a snob about the genre, and not always in a good way. In my defense, the very first thing I learned about Super Cub was that it was sponsored by Honda. A “Super Cub”, as both we and protagonist Koguma quickly learn, is a sort of motorbike. Models have been consistently produced for 50-some years, and as more than one character goes over, they’re widely liked and appreciated even outside of Japan itself. Super Cub riding is a hobby in its own right, and if you’re already part of the Cult of the Cub you probably won’t need more convincing to watch this anime.
But, just speaking personally, it’s Koguma herself who won me over. Super Cub has a fascinating little trick that it uses to indirectly convey her mood; the show’s color saturation is directly tied to it. When we meet her at the start of the first episode, she is visibly extremely depressed. She lives alone, apparently abandoned by her parents. With, as she puts it, no hobbies, and very little money. The colors are, for most of the episode, muted and grayed. When a generous old shop proprietor sells her the titular used scooter, the simple feeling of sitting on it literally lights her world up, and the colors bloom into full saturation. It’s a wonderful technique, and it’s one the show uses enough times to fairly call it a signature. For the still-young Studio KAI, it’s a promising visual showing.
Super Cub, like any good story about vehicles, knows that it’s not really about the vehicles. They’re about the freedom and liberation that comes with being able to go where you want with very few limits. Koguma’s story is one of a girl breaking out of her shell with the help of her new hobby, it’s a tale as old as the medium itself. And its best episodes and moments tend to reflect this. Things as mundane as trips to an unfamiliar grocery store, or, later on, an unplanned highway trip, can be magical in the right context. This understanding bleeds into the series’ very aesthetic. Both its soundtrack, which is excellent, and its tour of Japan’s vistas, most exemplified by the road trip in the final episode. It is in this context, with this understanding of its appeal, that Super Cub truly shines.
But it doesn’t always shine, unfortunately. In less impressive moments, it does have the misfortune of feeling like an ad. Which, in its defense, it sort of is. There is fun hobby talk; the sort that tells us as much about the characters as it does about what they’re discussing, and there is dull hobby talk. For Super Cub, this manifests as occasionally becoming dangerously close to replicating the feeling of loitering around an AutoZone. The line between the two is razor thin and Super Cub sometimes crosses it and back again multiple times within the span of a single conversation. It’s believable that a teenager might want to squeeze more power out of their motorbike. A teenager complaining about “environmental regulations” that lead to less powerful engines, as Reiko does at one point, is less so.
It doesn’t cut Super Cub‘s engine, thankfully, but it does occasionally make it feel more corporate than cozy, which is unfortunate. It is the show’s only real weakness, but it’s a notable one.
But, conversely, even at its comparative lowest, Super Cub is simply too odd and too thoughtful to really write off. Weird asides like the character Shii’s family of europhiles, Reiko’s attempts to conquer Mt. Fuji, and so on, prevent the shop talk from ever overtaking the core narrative. Koguma herself, too, develops into something of a snarky, playful type, at least in the presence of friends, over the course of the series. A notable progression from her status as a near-silent protagonist in the opening episodes of the show.
It also picks up something of a dramatic streak in its final few episodes. If the more serious turns here don’t entirely fit the series like a glove, they do reinvigorate it through its final stretch. Koguma’s broadly philosophical musings on her relationship with Shii, the series’ own use of different vehicles as metaphors for moving through life at different “speeds”, and the eventual use of Spring as both a literal coming change and a proverbial “light at the end of the tunnel” all tie together wonderfully. Flaws and all, Super Cub cannot be said to have its heart anywhere but the right place.
So if it’s a rocky journey, it’s still a worthwhile one. It seems doubtful that Super Cub will ever rock anyone’s world, but it’s not trying to and doesn’t need to. All it’s trying to do is offer a small comfort in the harsh times we live in. Koguma closes the series by musing that a Cub is not some kind of magical do-it-all machine. The desire to turn an unfamiliar corner must come from within. All told, that is a pretty satisfying note for such an unassuming series to end on. And hey, if it can sell you a bike too, all the better.
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