Ginban Kaleidoscope – episodes 5-8

April 10, 2006 on 7:18 pm | In Ginban Kaleidoscope | 2 Comments

Funny that I stopped watching this show just before it got interesting. I had stopped due to a lack of time and motivation, but also due to the fact that shows like Ginban Kaleidoscope and Karin were making me feel complacent. I can’t be a bystander in anime, who just sits back and watches something without really caring about what’s unfolding on the screen.
That said I’ve got a completist bug and there were positive ratings of later episodes of Ginban Kaleidoscope, so I’ve broken off of the ice and made a run for it. This is certainly no award winning anime, and it’s a damn sight from pretty. But it’s okay.

Spoilers within

At the insistence of Pete, who tells of his experience as an aerial acrobat, Tazusa agrees to change her program. With a new, flawlessly executed assault on the audience’s sensibilities, she wins the All Japan Cup and secures a place as Japan’s Olympic representative.
All she has to deal with after that is the fiends of the press.

Back in the early episodes, the static nature of any scene that involved Pete and Tazusa communicating made for a program that was extremely boring to look at. As the episodes have progressed, Pete has become more of a part of the world, and he walks around and interacts passively with Tazusa’s environment.
I think that they took this a little too far with the metaphorical representation of Tazusa’s “waitress skate” – at times ignoring the fact that she was skating altogether – but it makes for a much more dynamic show.

The fact that Tazusa no longer hates Pete is also a positive development as it means that there is less room for general bitchiness in this series, and another impediment is down. The press, however, were still a a major problem. I found it incredibly difficult to believe that such people are allowed free reign in their questions and can accuse others of rudeness without taking into account what they have said themselves. Episode 8 was the breaking of a scandal with the reporters and corruption within the Olympic Committee, and it could have been painful to deal with much more of that. Surprisingly, Tazusa handled the situation with aplomb (although the cultural divide between Japan and Australia leads me to believe Tazusa was never out of line with the press), and the episode actually resolved the situation rather than dragging it.

With four episodes left, there’s going to be a whole lot of skating going on. Making Pete a supporting character and having the Olympics as a focus was a wise decision for the progression of Ginban Kaleidoscope. Their relationship is much easier now and one does not feel as if he is intruding in his symbiotic relationship with Tazusa.

I don’t really recommend Ginban Kaleidoscope as an essential program. It doesn’t have any evils, and it has a few positives and still a bit of room for Pete and Tazusa development.

2 Comments

  1. The guy with the halo looks like Ken in “Kaleido Star”. Ken has a weak heart; this is not good.

    Comment by Steven Den Beste — April 11, 2006 #

  2. um excuse me, maybe you should try to watch the show first if you dont mind.

    Comment by Eloisa — August 31, 2007 #

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