March Comes In Like a Lion E1: “The Town Along The River”

This review was commissioned by @Drizztgeass

It was commissioned by them back in May. Almost six months before me writing this. I feel like I owe them an apology. Them, and so many other people, along with a thank you. The amount of attention I've gotten might have prevented Bunny and I from becoming homeless earlier this year, and I'm really ashamed at how long some of you have had to wait for me to give you what you paid for. I need to find a way of getting through these faster. Be it better time management skills or just finding a more efficient way of writing the reviews. For now, my heartfelt thanks to all of you once again for your patience.

Now, on to the first of five commissioned episodes of "March Comes In Like a Lion."


It's a circa 2017 slice of life anime. I don't know a lot about it besides that, though I think I've seen clips from it. So, no expectations positive or negative, though I know that Shaft studios has good production values (music especially) so I'm expecting a good show on that front if nothing else.

The pilot starts with some discordant, monochrome snatches of waves on a storm-stirred sea and the howling of wind. It's honestly pretty ominous and dread-building for what's supposed to be a high school slice of life thing. Then it's straight into the OP, which centers on a teenaged boy falling (or leaping?) off of a boat and being pulled down by the current. Then the camera rises up out of the sea to reveal a rough monochrome cityscape along the coast, and the melancholy vocals begin over the appearance of flying seagulls.

Well, given the title maybe this is a riverfront rather than a seacoast. Same imagery, though.

Then the music gets more upbeat and energetic, and the imagery gets increasingly surreal.

At least the kid isn't drowning anymore I guess.

The final shot of the OP is him curled up in bed, with his glasses laying beside him. The glasses being off seems to be important. Anime really loves its glasses symbolism, doesn't it? Anyway, fairly good OP, though I'm not going to be able to analyze it beyond "kid is motionless in a lonely, negative environment and then gets moving and fights his way out into something better but also stranger."

Start episode proper. Open on a creepy goff girl making fun of someone's name.

She says that it suits the person she's addressing though. No job. No family. No friends. No school. No ambitions. No life, really. He's nothing, and his name does a good job reflecting it. Cue some creepy photonegative black-and-white shots of the kid from the intro looking miserable, and then him waking up in his bedroom with a start.

Presumably having just suffered a terrible nightmare about being all monochrome while Death of the Endless makes fun of him.

Anyway, his room seems to have a nice view of the waterfront, but given the OP he has some complicated feelings about the ocean, so looking at it all the time might not be the best thing for him. Also, given how bare the room is, I'm thinking he either just moved into it or he's squatting in someone's forgotten loft.

The cardboard boxes may or may not contain stuff of his that he has yet to unpack.

He very, very slowly gets up, drinks some water, and gets dressed, all while wearing an absolutely miserable expression. As if every single movement is sending overcharged feedback to his brain's sadness center. He drags himself, head downcast and head hanging, out of his apartment building and into the sun. However depressed this "zero" kid is, the city he lives in looks pretty prosperous. Everything is bright and clean looking, even accounting for cartoon norms. There's also a lot of new construction going on, which is definitely a narrative rather than stylistic element, so yeah, this is a boomtown. He suffers his way to a train station, gets some drinks from a vending machine, and boards a train to wherever.

Also, for all his misery, it looks like Zero-kun here is famous. He's on all the posters hanging from the train's ceiling.

So he's either a celebrity, or those are actually screens and M. Night Shyamalan is about to jump out and tell him that he was the collective unconscious all along.

Zero-kun dismounts at another station and makes his miserable way to a....it looks like it could be a hipstery office building, or maybe some kind of medical or indoor sports center? Airy, inviting-looking nonresidential structure of some kind. On the second floor, some well dressed middle aged men are waiting, and one of them breaks off from the group to accompany Zero-kun into a loungelike room with some sort of board game set out.

The man asks Rei how he's doing. Rei is a better name than Zero, but it's also less funny. Rei doesn't answer, and just looks miserably down at the game board they're sitting across from each other over while the camera zooms in on - of all things - the energy drinks he just bought. The old man tries to start smalltalk about the weather and so forth, but it seems that Rei is just paralyzed by the tragedy of his own existence. Well, I guess if Neil Gaiman Death appeared to me in a dream and told me I was worthless, I'd feel pretty shitty too. Finally, the guy gives up on trying to talk to Rei and just starts the game.

There's a short flashback to a scene of a much younger Rei winning a children's "shogi" tournament. Let me look that word up, I'm getting the impression that it's a real game that the audience is expected to already know about...ah, it's a Japanese variation of chess! Okay, so our protagonist is a teenaged chess prodigy suffering from depression. Cool. That's a potentially interesting character.

Actually...hold on, the man looks like an older version of someone from Rei's flashback, who is posed with him and a pair of little girls in what looks like fatherly body language. Is this his dad? I guess he could also just be a teacher or shogi instructor who Rei really bonded with or something, but I think he's his father. Their relationship seems to not be in the best place right now, if so, but I don't think any of Rei's relationships could be while he's in this emotional state.

They start their shogi game. As it proceeds, haunting images of a (presumably depressing) past flicker by. Other boys and men of various ages enter the room, start their own games, and finish them while Rei and his maybe-father continue their own.

Finally, after what must have been an hours-long match, Rei is the victor. His opponent congratulates him, and they bow politely to each other as they get up. Maybe-dad reminds Rei to eat properly, and tells him that Ayumu and Kyouko are worried about him after he left so suddenly the other day. The older man leaves, and Rei stares at the game table and expresses his disbelief in that last assertion.

If you say so, bro.

He miserably rides the train back to where he picked it up at, and sits on a bridge over a canal as if considering the plusses and minuses of drowning himself in it. It's nearly sundown already, which is very pretty with the sort of watercolor-like art style this show is drawn in, and also suggests that that shogi game took literally all day. Pretty intense match. I guess it's a good thing he brought those energy drinks.

He gets a text message from someone (I think the family members or whoever that maybe-dad mentioned at the end of the shogi scene?) asking him if he wants to come over for dinner, they're having curry. Rei starts to text back that he's not feeling well and won't be able to make it, but before he can finish typing he gets a followup text asking him to grab some ingredients they forgot on his way over. So, reluctantly getting over himself, Rei stands up and starts moving.

The camera focuses on a Shinto shrine he passes on his way over. I don't have the cultural background needed to get what that's about, but from all the other cues I'm thinking it has something to do with dead family members. He gets to the house (or his shogi opponent? Maybe?) a bit after dark, and is greeted with loving enthusiasm by the girls who he insisted don't care about him. Also, they have kitties.

Rei apparently went all out on buying the stuff they asked for, including multiple flavors of ice cream. His explanation is that they didn't tell him what kind they wanted, so he just got a big selection. Texting back to ask would apparently have been too emotionally exhausting. The mother says she'll pay him back, but he refuses.

Given that there appeared to be billboards of him up on the train, I think I'm meant to infer that Rei has made quite a living for himself being a chess prodigy. According to wiki, there are usually less than two hundred paid shogi players in existence at a time, and its only a side job for a good number of them, so Rei's either got to be among the best or else he's burning through savings.

One of the girls asked how Rei's match today went, and he comes close to smiling as he answers.

Well, at least he gets a little bit of satisfaction from his Shogi-ing, if nothing else in his life.

Also, the cats come in then and start begging for good, and they have actual, creepy high pitched Japanese voice acting as they beg, complete with subtitles. I don't think that these are supposed to be magical talking cats, or that the story takes place in some bizarre world where animals can talk. It's just a very "huh?" comedic style thing.

Hmm, the older woman isn't the mother, actually. Just the oldest sister. Or...maybe the older two are sisters, and the little girl is the older one's daughter? Or something. It doesn't seem like they're Rei's immediate family either way, but when they make a point of offering two cups of pork curry to their deceased mother and grandmother, the camera (and Rei) pay a lot of attention to it. So I think they might be his cousins or something, with the dead mother and grandmother having something to do with Rei's own living situation and depression?

Going by the ship and drowning imagery of the intro and the early nightmare sequence, maybe a big chunk of their family died on a sinking ship or something?

They also thank said deceased relatives - along with more distant ancestors - for the meal before digging in. This seems to be a pretty traditionally Shinto corner of Japan. My understanding is that overt day-to-day ancestor worship has been on the decline for a while in most of the country, and this plus the shrine we were shown earlier definitely call attention to themselves.

As they start eating, they also turn on the TV news. One of tonight's stories is about a college student who murdered his father, and the instant that Rei hears it it triggers some kind of PTSD flashback. Oh now? Is chessboi a self-made orphan himself? That's sort of an unexpected genre direction, if so. Cue a monochrome nightmare-psychedelic introspection bit from Rei, where he feels guilty about beating his father in a Shogi game. It's not entirely clear, still, if the man he played against today was the father in question, but I think not; it seems more like he beat his biodad in a game right before biodad's untimely death. And Rei feels as if he murdered him.

I am unable to follow Rei's train of thought leading to this, but that might be intentional. Grief can make people think and feel in really weird and nonsensical ways.

Also, there's a bit of uncertainty as to whether or not Rei's biodad was actually his biodad? Or...are they talking about the man he played against today after all, rather than a dead offscreen character? I'm not sure again.

The girls worry over him. He reluctantly eats and stops looking traumatized for their benefit. Later that night, an old man who seems to be the grandfather of at least some of the characters present for the dinner scene arrives. Rei has passed out on the living room floor, which grandpa is annoyed about, but allows that today must have been exhausting given how long and challenging that match seems to have been.

Grandpa leaves again himself not long after, saying that he'll "sleep in the shop" tonight. These people have odd sleeping habits. They also discuss work plans for tomorrow; sounds like he runs a restaurant or food shop of some sort with his granddaughter(s?)' help.

One of the girls takes off the sleeping Rei's glasses as she spreads a blanket over him, and is surprised to see tears rather than mere exhaustion.

He's crying in his sleep? Or was able to fall asleep despite fresh tears having just leaked out without having wiped them away? Is this a thing that people can do? Well, it's not weirder than voice acted cats I guess.

As Rei drifts off, he tells us a little about himself. Seventeen years old. Pro shogi player, a progi if you will. And also fifth dan, which from what the internet tells me isn't actually that big a deal in the Progi scene, so yeah, he's either getting money from somewhere else, has someone else paying his living expenses, or is living partly on savings. He also, he tells us, lives in a town beside a river, which we kinda already picked up on.

He wakes up the next morning to see a really weird looking cat staring into his face. He thinks its an owl at first, and I almost don't blame him.

It isn't either of the two talking cats from last night, and you'd think Rei would already know if this family had a third one. Where did this unusual animal come from?

Rei is woken the rest of the way up and the weird cat is scared away by the highly kinetic arrival of the middle sister, who is in a frenzy because she overslept. She quickly throws a breakfast and a comically oversized lunch onigiri at Rei, and wishes him well until this evening.

She also gives him her key and tells him to lock the door when and if he leaves. She assures him that she'll "figure out how to get in on her own," so don't worry about getting it back to her before she comes home herself. Okay then. The weird cat is back as soon as she leaves, but I guess Rei is no longer curious about it.

Rei is silent for a moment, before thinking "I guess I'll try going to school." It's not clear how much he's been going or not going. Either way, Neil Gaiman Death was being pretty unfair, since he does go often enough for there to be a point in doing it today.

He sits through classes, and then has his soccerball-sized onigiri alone on the rooftop sportsball field that all Japanese high schools seem to have. Is that actually so common of a thing in Japan, or is it just a weird animeism? Anyway, he's approached by a school staff member who eats with him. Just ramen for this fellow, as he's broke until he gets his next paycheck. Wonder what the story there is? Anyway, Professor Broke asks Kirei how is own finances are doing, and some general questions about how payment works for professional gamers.

Professor Broke, who seems to have been enthusiastically following Rei's career, adds up all the pro games he knows him to have played in the last month, realizes Rei makes more than he himself does, screams at him incoherently, and eats half of his riceball out of his hands before getting up and angrily telling the kid that he's never eating lunch with him again and reminding him that he has no friends.

Then, after marching back into the building, Professor Broke looks back and comforts himself that for all his celebrity and wealth, it's reassuring to know that Rei is still a dumb teenager with dumb teenager issues.

What a lovely teacher.

After school, Rei goes to his adoptive-ish family-ish people's restaurant or bakery or whatever it is, where all three sisters greet him cheerily.

They're preparing a seventieth birthday gift for a friend of Grandpa's who also happens to have been the two younger sisters' calligraphy teacher, so they've made some homemade potato-peel print wrappings for the goodies as well.

Grandpa complains about the youngest sister hanging around the place and getting in the way all afternoon while they prepared the gift. But then she shows him an origami flower she made and he immediately goes starry-eyed.

He's very bad at being a grumpy old man, even though he tries.

After some more zany cuteness, Grandpa leaves to make the delivery, and the sisters invite Rei for dinner again. Rei declines, saying that he needs to prep for another game tomorrow. He stammers a bit in a way that makes it seem like he's lying, but he's also smiling this time, so maybe he actually does have good reason to say no this time. He heads back to the apartment building where he lives (apparently alone in his own, mostly-empty apartment) and stops to check his mailbox, seemingly expecting something. It's empty, and suddenly this weird fat guy jumps out from around a corner to wave a stolen letter around while laughing maniacally. End pilot.


Not much really happened here. I feel like I was supposed to be able to divine Rei's family status and the nature of his relationship with the curry-eating family and with his shogi opponent, but I couldn't. I don't know if that's due to Japanese symbolism that I'm blind to, or if it's just me being slow on the uptake. Regardless, aside from being slow paced and unfocused, this was entertaining enough to watch, and Rei's depression is convincing enough to both make me sympathize and to frustrate me (he does a bunch of the annoying things I used to do before I got put on the right meds).

So, okay intro. Several more coming, and maybe in them I'll be able to figure out what the deal with Rei's family (and father in particular) actually is.