To Be Heroine: Finding Inner Strength

I swear this post wasn’t planned to come after yesterday’s collab post. I’m just the master of serendipity like that one time I posted about All Might on the Fourth of July. That’s how my life works. It’s a series of serendipitious events that line up somehow to look like plans. On that note though:

Where can I go out and buy my “Irina Is Always Right” t-shirt? I would even look for one online. She keeps recommending thing that are off the wall for me in some ways. First it was Anilist website that I enjoy using a lot to track my anime watching stuff, then Natsume’s Book of Friends which she had a collab with Karandi that was highly influencing for me, and finally this show. I’m sure there are plenty of others that I’ve completely forgotten about, but these are what come to mind right now. Thank you for suggesting series to watch, Irina. If you have more recommendations of series for me to watch, I’m always open to hear your suggestions. To Be Heroine was a lot of fun and very unique piece of anime that need some love.

I’m not sure if anyone has noticed, but I haven’t been choosing anime series that I’m waiting as much out of random as I usually do for this blog. It’s not just all mecha all the time on this blog. There have been some focuses that I’ve been trying to push. Anno August is an example of this and this concept only starting because I’ve also been going through Shinichiro Watanabe anime that I haven’t seen before as well as some of the other work from the director of G Gundam. Another thing that I wanted to do is watch anime series that are somewhat off the wall and unusual. It all started with my Kaiba review because I was hungry for more series similar or as off the wall as that one is. Why? Because I like exploring these sorts of anime that are hard to explain. The first reason is because it’s fun. The second reason is that it helps me look at my own writing and push past my limitations quite a bit. I’m always scared when I schedule those posts because I always doubt that those are the best I could write those posts, so I try to see how I could push something further. Whether or not I succeed, I don’t know.

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That all brings me to To Be Heroine finally. (Sorry that I ramble on a little too much with these introductions recently.) This anime (can you call it an anime) is a cooperative production between animators in China and Japan to bring us this story. A simple story about a lonely high school girl named Futuba trying to find her own strength of will in a world that rejects her and her friends. The opening minutes where Futuba was caught in a shrinking frame displays to the audience how lonely she thinks she is away from the world. At the same time, it’s also sort of an isekai anime/thing in a way. From my reading of this series, Futuba is thrown into a prison of her own mind for the first four episodes of this seven episode series. Why? Because the main underwear babies she finds in that unknown world are named after her friends. And some other things that only teenage girls would probably come up with in their own minds, maybe.

The alternate world is something that a strange teenage girl like Futuba would come up with. Let’s think about the singular major concept of this world, clothing turning into hot bishonen men that can fight. In this strange world one of the rules are the more clothing you wear, the more powerful you are because the more Spicloth summons you have. The summons can be damaged or killed, which is reflected to when the clothing gets rewarn by the wearer or not. Clothing can be lost to the insanity of combat. Another rule is that the only people that summon SpiCloth wear underwear, summons don’t. Think about that for a second or don’t. Up to you. In that world Futuba is the hero that joins forces with the beacon of light in this world, the baby wearing the unwieldy golden underwear named Hikaru. Not subtle at all considering what the main point of this series is.

Futuba’s explorations and combative situations in this world are connected to a little bit of Futuba’s life. Backstory with her childhood friends with her little love trio between her, a boy with a carefree personality named Hikaru who she has a crush on, and the third wheel/intelligent boy named Super Old Guy. What is happening in my mind is Futuba is reliving her memories again after something traumatic happened to her in the real world and she’s finding her way through it again to center herself. That world with the underwear babies and bishonen that fight in awesomely animated battles is her escape. I’m not sure about this second one completely, but I think that her losing some clothes every episode in that alternate world is because she is slowly opening herself to her feelings. I mean, sometimes her clothing falls in love with other people’s clothing and they just run away, so who knows? That could be another thing in Futuba’s fantasy.

While episode 5 to 7 where more straight forward because the fantasy world disappeared, but I can’t say that everything in question was boring. Why? Because we already know these characters and their relationships by this point and they are in dire straights. The tension fills it. I also feel that the return to the normal world after Futuba explored the world of her own mind was supposed to be jarring. The world is whatever Futuba wants to imagine it with her worldly passions and hot bishnonen fighting each other to be and then suddenly, she is back to the world she can’t control. It’s very ordinary, besides some plot juice, and she has no control over it besides what she can do. The plot thread of Futuba not finding the confidence she wanted in her own world exponentially jumped when she was in a situation completely beyond her control, which is the point. Futuba is too physically normal to be a heroine, but her finally discovering her inner strength and sticking up for herself finally after everyone except her friends looked down upon her is how Futuba is a heroine. It’s also incredibly normal thing, like the last three episodes of this anime. That must be the reason why that transition happened.

So in short I like it. Highly recommend if you are looking for something different, a little off the wall, and meaningful. It’s also my first time watching a cooperative production between China and Japan, so maybe I should look at more of them to watch. What was produced was strongly visually and thematically, so I honestly can’t complain about a thing here.

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