Hello folks, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today the sun is shining on a crisp October day here in the city, the kind of day that invokes a natural yearning to get out there and savor the countless tiny stories of a community in motion. Well, I gotta finish this here article before I do that, but fortunately we are today visiting another of my favorite cities, as we return to the aptly named CITY the Animation.
The combination of Keiichi Arawi’s madcap storytelling and Kyoto Animation’s utterly breathtaking adaptation have so far made for one of this year’s greatest and most distinctive pleasures, a perpetual celebration of community, creativity, and the fundamental joy of motion. The clear enthusiasm this team has brought to this production is infectious, elevating every ridiculous pratfall and non-sequitur into a fond salute to life’s incidental, unexpected pleasures. Let’s see what new soft-hearted silliness they’ve got in store for us as we head back to the city!
Episode 4
There’s just something so inherently cozy and comforting about this show’s thick-lined, flat-colored aesthetic. They’ve translated the stark simplicity of Arawi’s comic designs into anime without losing either the clarity of the aesthetic or the new opportunities afforded by color design
And that aesthetic also facilitates shots like this semi-transparent scene-in-scene shot of Izumi’s dazzling smile. Precisely because the colors are all flat blocks, the shot is able to maintain clarity of both the foreground and background objects, with the partition between the two aided by both a touch of increasing transparency and a sort of quasi-cross-hatching effect involving erasing lines from Izumi’s portrait
Our lovestruck perspective character Tatewaku “accidentally” bumps into Izumi on her way home. One of the key qualities Nichijou and CITY share is that at any given moment, any character can suddenly take the stage and star as protagonist. These stories’ variability of perspective feels like a crucial reflection of their fundamental worldview, that everyone has a story worth sharing, that every resident of this city is valuable and possesses a unique voice
This nearly wordless sequence is driven by the tempo of the sound design, variations in color design, and abrupt transitions of the storyboarding. As Tatewaku gets further into his own head, color fades and his heartbeat rises; as he’s brought back to reality, we anticlimax with fully colored mid-distance shots, the brakes slamming on his feelings literally represented by traffic lights barring their process
We open the episode proper with Nagumo delivering food to the police box, where an officer is hanging up a wanted poster for the old man who visited the restaurant
Nope, it’s actually a poster to give him an award for being such a nice man. I love this city
And then a tsuchinoko! What a delightfully odd, harmless creature. I feel like my life here in America is significantly impoverished due to our lack of countless local yokai. I mean, we’ve got a few cryptids, but they’re generally Bigfoot-adjacent monsters, not the innumerable, often quite sociable creatures of Japan
We run into the nice man in question at the restaurant, who reveals he has actually been fleeing Ms. Tanabe’s intended award
“I am very glad she feels that way, so I am planning to give Ms. Tanabe an award when I see her.” Goddamnit people
Having thought nothing of any of these awards moments ago, Nagumo is now incensed to learn she’s the one person who won’t be receiving one. Love that her boss is acting just as petty about this – the two high schoolers exemplify it, but much of Arawii’s comedy comes from characters accepting an absurd premise and then yes-anding it to a point of total manic incoherence
Love this guy providing all his own sound effects for washing the dishes and paying for the meal
We jump to Tatewaku arriving back at his empty house. His feelings of being watched are emphasized through exaggerated fisheye perspectives, a much easier feat to accomplish with such clear, full-color geometric backgrounds
Seems like his dad is once again roasting him, this time pretending to be him from the future
Ooh, very much like this aerial shot leading us to the park. Like many of this show’s establishing shots, it’s another way to emphasize that core theme of interconnectivity, illustrating the various ongoing dramas across the park before honing in on our specific story
We’re now checking in on Ms. Tanabe herself, here with her butler Hotaka
Nagumo performs one of her reliable feats of absurd athleticism, leaping to catch Tanabe’s umbrella before it sails away. Yeah, that’s definitely award-worthy behavior!
“Hotaka Capture Chain!” I love when these animators show off absurd action chops for entirely ludicrous sequences like this – it very much reminds me of Chuunibyou, which had similarly extravagant action animation for things like its heroine being bonked by a ladle
Oh no, the chain captures soccer team all-star Sasago instead! Extremely good reaction to this unexpected turn of events, just a sort of befuddled “aaaarrreeeee” as he’s dragged across the field
God, this show is so stupidly generous with its ambitious layouts. Hotaka walking away is afforded a fresh long shot aiming from behind the whole soccer team down towards the end of the park, all seemingly to again emphasize this park’s continuity with the town above
We then jump to Tatewaku’s father, who was apparently scouting his restaurant competition ten days ago
They are going wild with his reaction shots here, ranging from a sea of stewed noodles cooking his brain to a broken mosaic shattering his expectations
It seems his goal here is a truly relatable one: making himself a regular, such that he can order “the usual” and be immediately understood. We all want a place we can belong
Tragically, after three days he’s already tired of the weird dish the chef recommended. The trials of being known!
Gorgeous sunset colors as Mr. Makabe flees from the restaurant, his heart heavy with the tragedy that it closed before he ever became a regular. This show is very good at cluttering the composition with background objects without the scene ever feeling either busy or unclear; it feels rather a bit like live-action cinema, where the mise-en-scene tends to incorporate more incidental objects reflective of the discordant sprawl of everyday life
Fortunately, he has a collection of Mr. Bummer comics to remind him he’s not alone. Another way of demonstrating the interconnectivity of these characters, how all their trials brush against each other’s lives in unexpected, often rewarding ways
Back in the present, he passes his son the treasured comic volume, only for Tatewaku to set it down and walk away. Sadly, we cannot pass our epiphanies of interconnectivity on quite so easily
And in our main apartment, Niikura has discovered Nagumo’s collection of thirty identical hoodies, a character design gag that’s been reaping solid dividends for decades
Izumi descends on a rope via a hole in the ceiling, clad in a full-body penguin suit as she photographs the battle between Niikura and Nagumo. Again confirming she is the absurd Mai-analog of this trio
Ah, of course – Niikura’s clothes didn’t shrink in the wash, Izumi just sewed miniature versions of them while she slept. Mystery solved?
Niikura’s precious Nagumo locket is almost discovered, a gag calling back to Mio’s manga from Nichijou
And Niikura’s flight leads us to the high schoolers, for… hell yeah, it’s the cheeseburger scene. I tried to avoid as much CITY content as possible while waiting to watch it for myself, but it was simply impossible to miss the massive and entirely warranted preponderance of CHEESEBOIGA clips on social media. A perfect gag that really emphasizes how we are ultimately simple animals that like funny noises
“Are you the real Ecchan? Or are you the real deal?” I wonder if even Arawii had any idea of what these girls are actually talking about
The sound design cuts and layout isolates Ecchan as she tries to break the news that she’s moving, making her seem terribly alone. But she can’t drop that on her hopeful, expectant friend
They then join the chase for the pendant, leading us to Makabe’s glorious first (unintended) soccer goal, and then onwards to basically the whole community. A bravura celebration of this production’s fundamental pursuit, celebrating the city in continuous collaborative motion
Lots of wonderful character animation for Niikura specifically, as she scrambles to maintain her secret
Plus a strong callback punchline as Nagumo is snagged by the chain grab. I like the extra jolt of absurdity in Tanaka leaving in a limousine that could not possibly fit within these streets
And Done
Goddamn, this team was really flexing with that last sequence! CITY is always brimming with clever visual tricks designed to celebrate the interconnectivity of all these characters, but Niikura’s chase was easily the most energetic and ostentatious so far, gathering practically every character we’ve met into a glorious montage of interwoven personal trials. A fitting conclusion to an episode that generally felt like one of CITY’s strongest so far, marrying charming personal vignettes like the tale of Mr. Makabe to top-notch absurdism like our high schoolers’ celebration of terrible English. This production has been a marvel from the very start, yet seems determined to continuously top itself.
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