Touka Gettan 15-20
All stories are about starting out in a situation we're only aware of the basics for, making us aware of them and providing a world for us to analyze. If the reveals hold more dramatic weight when they're told anachronic order, it becomes more about the emotional order of things than the strict chronological order. The story becomes something that depends just as much on how we react to it as to how the characters react to it, because we know how the characters are going to react, and that dissonance only increases our awareness.
What I'm saying is, while I was uncertain about the way this show was structured, as it's moved on, it's proving to be not the worst thing. There's a lot of stock anime plots here (like the Groundhog Day loop, a beach episode, catgirls), but because they're brought about by Yumiko unconsciously(?) rewriting reality, it adds a slight layer of meta to it. The humor is alright (oh, Shoko, you and your interest in Mako's peaches), but the most interesting episode so far was probably episode 18.
All the backstory explained in the form of a stage play, put on strictly for the audience at home as opposed to the audience in the show, since they were never seen. Given the nature of the backstory (
), perhaps having it performed only as a show, instead of seeing it for real, gave the audience some distance from how brutal that must've been, not that the effects haven't been felt throughout the series.
A critic must strike a point between seeing what they want out of the show and what the show is actually doing, and looking at it, the further in I go, it's actually managed to hold my interest beyond the reverse-order gimmick. There's some potentially interesting themes in here.
