Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Ginban Kaleidoscope – episode 3

December 12, 2005 on 2:37 pm | In Ginban Kaleidoscope | Comments Off on Ginban Kaleidoscope – episode 3

“Triple Trouble”

This anime is fun to watch when I don’t want to think much. Sadly it’s also a good comedy to watch when I don’t want to laugh much, but what can you do?

Tazusa is facing the classic triple threat that I think we’ve all faced in our time: the pressure of exams, the pressure of competing for a place in the Olympics, and the pressure of being haunted by the ghost of a Canadian teenager. Yep.

Although this show is probably best described as “just less than vanilla”, I liked some of the ideas present in this episode. One of the things that is easy to note about Ginban Kaleidoscope is that Tazusa generally isn’t very nice. She’s a talented skater, but she has trouble manifesting that talent on the ice rink. This is because she rejects the assistance of other people: her manager is absolutely terrified by her, for instance.

It’s an incredibly clichéd path to take, but Pete’s presence is going to open her up and boost her confidence to something more human. As I sometimes say, cliché are frequently cliché because they work: although character improvement does not normally occur through Canadian ghosts, pocket monsters or sentient dolls (see: Rozen Maiden), one cannot deny that a lot of the time another person is needed to affect a change. That’s real life, and good anime can reflect real life in some very roundabout ways.

Just less than vanilla, just more than innocuous: I’m not going to pretend that I’m going to avidly pursue Ginban Kaleidoscope, but it’s the perfect show when I’m feeling too challenged by my mighty backlog.