「共ニ語リシ光輝[めいゆう]ノ裏切リ」 (Tomo ni Katarishi Meiyuu no Uragiri)
“Our Friend Kouki’s Second Betrayal”

Animegataris‘ meta game is too strong! It appears that being tonally all over the place was all part of the plan, and the universe’s gravitational pull towards becoming anime created a scenario where the characters not only start to manifest their origins within anime itself, but are aware of their existence within the show Animegataris. I lost it when the cast was outright saying that it needed to figure out what genre it wanted to be after all this time attempting to blur reality with fantasy. In many circumstances, outright admitting your show has issues and making a joke about it does nothing to fix these issues, especially when they’ve only recently established how reality can possibly start becoming dangerously close to anime. But this episode was much too fun for me to be completely nitpicky about the fourth wall breaking, and the show gets very playful with how it brings awareness to Animegataris as a part of their universe, from calling out the person responsible for the anime’s series composition to commenting on how explosions work within the universe depending on what tone they decide to go with at that point.

The meta humor was hilarious in this episode, but the funniest gags were in how the show toys with aspects of anime that are pivotal to story-telling and visual representation. Minoa starts to feel a huge lag within the time shifts as she comments that she keeps missing parts of class thanks to narrative jumps, or how jumps from afternoon to sunset are messing with her perception of reality. They also play around with some fun visual gags like how the aspect ratio of older anime causes Minoa to stumble into the black bars on the side of the screen, or the art-shifts from 60’s to 90’s anime for character designs. The fact that Kouki’s second betrayal is capped off with Minoa putting on Geordi La Forge glasses that have her see her “reality” as storyboards was a perfect way to cap off the end of the episode alongside Neko-senpai wanting to see Yui’s scene in the opening sequence again. I also never realized that I’ve wanted to see what a female version of Sebas would look like.

Kouki’s betrayal, meanwhile, tries to conceptualize all the humor of Minoa experiencing anime meshing with reality as relevant to the show’s plot. We finally see the bystander who received the magical beret as the mastermind of all of this anime craziness. It is a little underwhelming to see that he wasn’t that noticeable in the story, given that Kouki is a lot more interesting as a mysterious, prolific character who we find out is an anime character that escaped into the real world back when the Principal was in high school. It’s easy to get heavily invested in knowing who Kouki is when the reveals about him for these past two episodes have been mind-blowing, and with the next one highlighting Minoa’s descent into the madhouse Kouki had always dreamed of, I’m looking forward to seeing how Kouki could’ve made his way into the real world as an anime character.

25 Comments

  1. You know…
    This could be all in Minoa’s head. Perhaps because of mental illness or injury, she has been living a daydream inside her mind. A replacement reality she conjured up so she wouldn’t have to face true reality and the latest episode shows how it is all breaking down. She is beginning to realise that none of it is real, hence why everyone is becoming more unreal than real.

    or…
    I need to get out more and stop thinking so much?

    Tepenga
    1. Where Minoa conked her head after stumbling across Neko-senpai, and the show since then has gotten absurd solely because her traumatic head injury is slowly seeping anime aesthetics into her real life.

      Choya
  2. “Fourth wall break insides a fourth wall break. That like… sixteen walls” – Wade Wilson, Deadpool

    https://randomc.net/image/Animegataris/Animegataris%20-%2011%20-%2020.jpg
    Yep, my prediction last week was correct. Animegataris just went “Truman Show” with 4th wall awareness like Show Spoiler ▼

    https://randomc.net/image/Animegataris/Animegataris%20-%2011%20-%20Large%2030.jpg
    I think it won’t be strange if next week they will go full psychological horror or reset everything like in End of Evangelion.

    One Pinch Man
    1. It’s gotten crazy enough where I am half-expecting the show to take a completely dark turn
      Show Spoiler ▼

      It was a great reversal to take all of the cartoonish things that have happened until now, and pointed fingers towards the anime production itself devolving into a hyperaware examination on anime that goes off the rails.

      Choya
    1. I love how much fun the staff seems to be having with making and writing for Animegataris, playing around with anime mechanics and spending this last arc laughing at themselves.

      The Flamenco dealer must’ve ripped them off,
      Show Spoiler ▼

      Choya
    1. The layers of anime are a little easier to process since Minoa (who we’re supposed to see as an actual person, but is drawn as modern-day anime characters) notices that herself and others are becoming anime through 90’s character designs. The wordplay is pretty fun with the new maid Sebas-chan

      Choya
  3. How to turn what seems at first sight to be a pretty mediocre anime into a good one – make it self-aware of how bad it is. Now even the tacky CGI ED dance sequence becomes a meta reference.

    My favourite bit though was Minoa bumping into the scene heading caption.

    Angelus
  4. Well, to be honest there where an real anime with Black and White lines in reality…

    Do you know Gunbuster?

    Do you also know the VHS Version of Gunbuster? because of “production problems” some last minutes of Gunbuster was released without coloring and such.. Just drawing lines like here the ending.. But if my memories plays right, after some remastering?.. they fixed that

    But i do not thing that this was an easter egg for that.. right? Perhaps the Director do not even know, what “Gunbuster” means 🙂 no not Gunbaster 2…

    Worldwidedepp
  5. At this point I think Minoa should get some R&R from constant media consumption. This is turning into her own Matrix and very soon Arisu and her butler ‘Sebastian’ (the sexy version) will offer Minoa the blue tea or red tea one will dive Minoa further into the Anime realm. Miko who will be Trinity will ask Minoa to follow the white rabbit, in this case the rabbit will be Neko-sempai.

    I think following what I just said I will consider Kouki as Agent Smith for the hell of it and the final Episode will be a face off,

    Kouki: Miss Asagaya!

    Minioa: Nakano…

    This being said, I do at somepoint see things the same way as minoa on this episode too. At times I would visualize everyone and everything I associate in Anime. And those awkward moments I would imagine a water droplet over my head or a vain depicting that I’m angry—maybe I need to lay off the Anime a bit?.

    RenaSayers
  6. Ep 12 End:

    Well, it was funny and need some LSD to understand a bit, to watch this anime.. But i fear that it will not stay long in my memories.. Because the drawer for this kind of Anime do not exist and i am now to old to create a new one…

    or they lost the story script on the way…

    also, this anime here is not made for “kids”. because there where many easter eggs and inside things that only mature or adults would known.. i got you there

    also yes

    “i watched many animes. i like Ghibli studio”.. this lines could be my profile. But i also mix all other animes + Games (story) + western Movies together that fuel my “Passion”

    i give it an 7/10 because the episodes reaching the final did fell like out of the loop…well it did not wanted to be put into an cliche drawer..

    This Anime are more on an rebellion state. Rejecting the expectations of the anime world.. but as i said.. They ended in the void between the drawers

    Worldwidedepp

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *