March Comes In Like a Lion E3: “Beyond the Night Sky”

It looks like the previous episode did actually have a title, Netflix just didn't provide it. Odd. Anyway, I still like mine better, so no loss.

After the intro, we open on another hot, sunny morning. Rei grumbles about how he needs to get curtains. He um. He apparently just has this giant wall-sized window facing east, that he sleeps under, and he has no curtains for it. You'd think he could at least move his bed further away from it, in the meantime?

Not having an actual bed either should make this easy, right?

He opens his fridge, which contains nothing besides bread, milk, and a nearly-empty Tupperware containing the last little piece of fried chicken from the Obon dinner. He hasn't gotten any more food since then. He rolls a piece of bread around the last chicken nugget and eats it while musing on today's match.

Being depressed makes it hard to leave the house. That said, if he's doing it anyway for these shogi matches, you'd think he could grab some groceries on the way home?

Anyway, today he's up against Nikocado Avocado, which is bad because that means he'll have to be friends with him after one beats the other. As he gears himself up to deal with this eventuality, a huge crowd of balloons lifts off from the rooftops across then river.

Either a Japanese tradition of some kind, or else someone just really hates sea turtles.

As he watches the balloons, Rei is thinking back to the last time he played against Nikocado. It was at a youth tournament back in elementary school. Then, as now, it was a monstrously hot day. They were playing on a rooftop playground, and even as the heat continued to mount and the wind died down, nobody let them move indoors or called the game, because it's Japan. Babby Rei dealt with the heat okay-ish, but Babby Nikocado did not. He turned red with heat rash, going through bottle after bottle of water. Rei tried to beat him as quickly as possible, but Nikocado refused, pushing the game on and on and on even long after it was clear the outcome was assured.

Rei still feels like he should have let Nikocado win that round, for the sake of his health and safety. This is kind of a "The Hard Equations" style of fake culpability, though. The real blame here is on the adults running the youth tournament who didn't give the kids the option of moving indoors.

Also, Rei seems to feel guilty about beating people at shogi a lot. This is one of the more understandable instances.

Back in the presence, Rei rides the train to their long-awaited rematch. He muses to himself about how being a professional player is like leaping onto a speeding train that never stops, and you have to stay on it until you lose and are thrown off. Because apparently losing even a single game means the end of your career forever, right, I'm sure. Rei's never done wage work, has he? At his age, with his history, I'm guessing not. I'd love to see him have to man a checkout counter or stock a warehouse in a seller's job market and see how he feels after that.

I know, I know, depression forces you to catastrophize everything. You feel like you're suffering, so your mind invents justifications for that suffering, casting everything about your life in the most negative way possible in order to make your feelings make sense. I can't actually blame Rei for being like this, it's not his fault. But it's not any more interesting or insightful to hear about than the ramblings of a schizophrenic or the grandiose delusions of a manic. The specifics of how he's depression-izing everything really don't matter, so it's hard for me to not feel like this is a waste of screentime.

...

Granted, if you haven't been around clinically depressed people (or suffered from it yourself), then I suppose monologue scenes like this one might be helpful in understanding exactly where Rei is coming from. If (like me) you have, then it's just unnecessary and slow.

...

Eventually, Rei reaches the place. As soon as he enters, the two weirdos he played and kinda sorta drank with last time ambush him and excitedly declare that there's something he needs to see.

Apparently they're just making fun of the fat kid for doing a whole war ritual while waiting for his opponent. That's pretty rich coming from the guy who literally went to a shrine and prayed for brimstone and hellfire to rain down on his own opponent. Rich, but unsurprising from what we've seen of PCP and his American pal.

Rei shrugs them off and goes into the game room. Nikocado is trying to be all dramatic, telling him he's been waiting for him. Rei just looks at him quizzically and tells him that he must have been awfully early in that case.

The game begins. Nikocado has gotten a lot better since the last time they played. It's a long, slow, grueling game. At one point, in the early afternoon, Rei notices that Nikocado is sweating. Just like last time. He realizes that it's much hotter in the room than it should be, and asks the referee what's going on. Turns out that the AC has started having trouble these last couple of days. Oh dear.

Nikocado looks up, and says not to worry. Even with the so-so air conditioning, this is much better than the conditions last time they played.

Rei stares and swallows in fear, as if this were a capital offense indictment.

The game goes on and on. It's obviously shooting for emotional intensity, but aside from Rei feeling kinda guilty about the heat favoring him I don't really get it. This all seems pretty intense and extreme in its framing for just that.

Also, the heat becomes less of an issue as the game drags on, since, well:

I've done a little bit of reading, and apparently shogi offers quite a few more methods of bringing taken pieces back onto the board than any western flavor of chess. So, if you have two players who are good at "rescuing" their pieces, the games tend to last longer than most variants. So, these morning-till-dusk games happening as often as not for Rei isn't too incredible.

Ultimately, Rei wins. It's a close match, but he wins. This is played like some kind of huge tragedy, but given that the heat was only an issue for a few hours out of their all-day game (and even then, Nikocado was only slightly inconvenienced by it this time rather than nearly passing out) I'm really not feeling this.

Nikocado looks crushed again. Rei even moreso.

They leave the room, and Nikocado is surprised to find that family butler who's supposed to be off on a three month vacation. Apparently, cruising didn't agree with him, and he gave up on it after a mere ten days and gave the rest of his tickets to a relative. Also, in addition to whatever other reasons he didn't want to keep cruising, apparently he was worried about Nikocado this whole time.

He gushes on about the state of Nikocado's kidneys, his sensitive biochemistry, how there's been no one around to make sure he eats right (apparently he needs adults to keep him from shoveling multiple pizzas into his mouth on a whim), etc. His parents are clearly not big on that whole "being parents" thing. Butler drives him home, but redirects to the hospital when Nikocado seems to be having some kind of attack.

Not sure if this is part of an actual condition, or if being overly pampered due to his medical issues has turned him into a hypochondriac on top of them. Could easily be either.

On the way there, Nikocado recovers enough to tell Butler that he lost the game, but that he's sure he'll win next one.

I guess this is supposed to be inspiring or heartwarming or something? I don't know, I feel like we haven't gotten to know this kid well enough for me to really care much about him yet. I pity him, sure, but his primary role in the story thus far was been "creepy stalker harrassing the MC," so it's not quite enough.

Rei heads home himself, waxing depressing-poetic about how this was exactly like their last game, and it will be so forever going forward. The two of them, trapped together in this eternal dance without hope of escape. Dude what the fuck. You didn't even THINK about Nikocado for years until a few days ago lmao. I'm starting to think Rei has something weirder going on than just depression. Anyway, it's the last night of Obon, and Akari invited him back for the final dinner tonight. A couple more days of leftover chicken for Rei, yay! It's late when he arrives, due to how long this game went, but there's still dinner to be had.

He comes in and eats with them. This time they've offered sushi to their dead mother and grandmother, and the cats are staring lustily at the altar and babbling about how much they want to steal that sushi. Because they can talk, remember. There's some talk about how they light the ritual fire as early as possible on the first night of Obon and as late as possible on the third, to try and get the spirits as much time with them as possible. Rei muses to himself about what a sad ritual this is, reminding the family purposefully of sad things. They don't look sad to me, bruh. After the ritual fire burns out and sends the spirits back to their afterlife, middle sister Hina suddenly declares that she needs to run to the convenience store and buy a new issue of some shojo manga right now at ten PM.

Yeah, that doesn't sound suspicious at all.

Grandpa instructs Rei to follow her and see what the hell is going on. Rei hesitates, but he can't exactly refuse these people given how much they do for him. He tiptoes after her as she leaves their well-lit residential neighborhood and enters an eerier, darker part of the town. As he quietly follows, the camera cuts up to...oh no...

If Rei ever comes back from this walk, it'll be as an email attachment. And I fear the sisters' milk consumption might increase alarmingly.

He follows the girl who is hopefully not yet another chanified collective unconscious as she moves in a direction that is not the convenience store's. He follows her to the river, where she clutches the railing along the edge and bursts into screaming, fitful tears.

Okay, I guess Rei was right and I was wrong about this one. Devoting multiple days to thinking about your dead family who you only recently lost might not be emotionally healthy at least for everyone. Especially if you're being expected to keep up a festive decorum while doing it.

He tries to call out to her, but the lump in his own throat prevents it. He only comes over once a couple of teenaged boys start to eye her unnervingly, and his approach is fortunately enough to discourage them.

She tries to apologize for daring to feel unsanctioned emotions for the occasion where someone she knows could have potentially followed her. He tells her its okay, don't worry. She keeps crying.

He thinks about how he reacted to the loss of his own family. How he just dissociated, and has been in a daze ever since that even meeting his new pseudo-family hasn't entirely pulled him out of. Maybe he's been doing the same thing that Hina was trying to do tonight over dinner, and with as little success.

They stare up at the moon over the river. Hina crying, Rei thinking. End episode.


The motif of all of Rei's shogi opponents all having strong reasons they want to win, which makes him feel guilty about beating them, is pretty clear at this point. Of course, his low self esteem is preventing him from acknowledging that the game is his coping mechanism, and since he's not able to apply himself in school in this state he's got to support himself somehow. Also, his problems don't drive him to be a jerk the way that the other players we've seen so far are.

The stuff with the family is good, but still feels like it's kind of a different story from the chess stuff.

I feel like I should have more to say at this point. Hmm. Well, I have two episodes of this show left in the queue, so hopefully I'll be able to do some proper retrospection when I get to them.