Shadows House (S1E1-5) (continued more)

"The Debut." This episode is an odd one, in terms of story progression. It simultaneously reveals a lot of information and enlarges the cast, and avoids answering any of the existing questions. It starts a major plot event, but only just starts it. It feels like an awkward point to end at, but considering that these episodes were comissioned piecemeal over a relatively long period of time, well, it might not actually be the intended end point regardless of whether or not it ends up being so.

The penal phantom-hunting mission may have been cut short, but it still lasted until just a day or two before the debut, so the conniving Shadow kid Patrick who had his doll bait them into it still got what he wanted out of it. On one hand, this guy is really, really insecure about his debut performance. On the other hand, considering the consequences for underperforming, well...I guess he and his doll Ricky are in equally desperate and frightened situations at the end of the day. On one hand, his sort-of-rival debutants aren't doing this. On the other...desperation, it's a fucked up thing even if some people handle it better than others. Anyway! It's debut time, and Kate and Emilico - as well as Shaun, Rum, and their own Shadows - are woefully underprepared.

Speaking of other Shadows, here's what I meant about the cast growing. There are five debutants in this batch. We've met all of their "faces" before, but some of them only very briefly (one girl, Lou, was pretty much just an extra body in the great hall scenes with Mia and Rosemary until now). Now they're all important, sharing screentime together, and have their Shadows masters along with them. And then there's also the adult watching and judging their performances.

Kate's whimsical name choice for Emilico was unusual, it turns out. The other Shadows tend to give the dolls assigned to be their faces names similar to their own. For instance, Patrick the schemer named his Ricky. Lou the minor character was named by a Shadow named Louise. Etc. Sara and Mia are as far from one another as they *typically* get, so Kate's choice was very much an odd one. Anyway, on the night before the debut:

Patrick is very pleased with Ricky's work, and looks forward to their symbiosis continuing long into the future as Patrick rises to a position of influence in the Lord Grandfather's court. Ricky says he's proud to have done so well for his master, but his eager smile looks strained at the corners and doesn't reach his eyes.

He's definitely not as happy about doing this shit as he wants his master to think.

Rum, the anxious girl from the night-patrol, apparently isn't even on speaking terms with her mistress, Shirley. It's implied that Rum actually named herself, because Shirley wouldn't even do that. This might be because of Rum's anxiety problems, or it might be the *cause* of her anxiety problems. Or, perhaps, Shirley has the same mental health issues that her slave does, and they've both been unable to initiate with one another because of it. In any case, she's not feeling very good about her or Shirley's odds of survival.

The worst part is that she's probably right.

Shaun, meanwhile, seems to have as good a relationship with his master John as a slave can possibly have with a master. Much closer to Emilico and Kate in this respect. It even turns out that Shaun *was* given glasses. He's just trying to learn how to get through his duties without them, because living dolls are supposed to keep their faces as plain as possible while serving as the "face" for their Shadow. John keeps trying to get him to agree to let himself wear a matching pair of glasses so it will just seem like his master's aesthetic choice, but Shaun deems this too risky; if someone finds out that John is letting himself change to match his "face" rather than the reverse, that could be bad news for both of them.

Literally the opposite of what a real life "shadow" does.

I'd think that the Shadows were literally these kids' shadows torn free of their bodies and given autonomous life by the Lord Grandfather's power, but then that leaves the question of what the soot/ash connection is. Hmm. Something to do with the Jungian "Shadow" concept, with the negative emotion thing? Don't know. Too weird of a setting element that I know too little about thus far to really make educated guesses.

Anyway, in letting Shaun shoot down his plan because it would make him seem too deferential to his face, John is proving to the audience that he is in fact pretty deferential to his face. If John ends up being a bigshot among the Shadow Clan, then Shaun might be the power behind the throne. Assuming they aren't expected to ritually eat their Faces on their twenty-fifth birthdays or something.

Lastly, Lou and Louise. Lou just does what Louise says, and Louise treats Lou like a fashion accessory without any kindnesses or cruelties that don't stem inevitably from that. On one hand, pretty miserable for Lou. On the other hand, it seems like Louise probably generates less soot than most Shadows do, so cleaning her room is likely a comparatively light workload.

Of course, "miserable" is also contextualized by a look we get of one of the post-debut pairs. Sara the catty bitch is displeased with her face and Emilico's best friend Mia about something. Which means Mia is expected to bring Sara the rod and politely beg her to try to improve her behaviour with it. To the show's credit, it scrupulously avoids framing this brutal physical abuse between preteen characters as even remotely kinky or titillating despite the oft-fetishized aesthetics involved.

Unfortunate that I feel the need to praise the show for this, but well, I still haven't totally let my guard down again after Monogatari.

Anyway, this painful-to-watch scene cements Sara as a real villain, and adds more "suffering in silence" intensity to Mia's relentless forced positivity.

There's also the horrifying detail of this being the only look at a post-debut Shadow-face pair interacting that we've seen so far. The implication being that even the kinder masters we've seen in the montage might all eventually become like this after a few years of surviving in the snakepit of Shadow Clan politics. In which case, this might be the rest of every single living doll's life (at least until their masters turn twenty-five and eat them).

So, there's our dramatis personae, some of them debuting for the audience as well as for the Shadows patriarch. What happens with them? Well, in this episode on its own, not that much. More than you might expect, considering how much introduction everyone needed, but still not a ton.

The five Shadows and their respective dolls are met in the great hall by a man named Edward. He claims to be a "special" living doll who serves the Lord Grandfather and his inner circle. On one hand, he appears to be in his fifties or so, which bodes well for their life expectancies. On the other hand, he specifically isn't anyone's "face," so his fate might not be the one ahead of Emilico and the others.

Also, his movements are distinctly puppet-like, and his eyes have a blank stare to them regardless of what the rest of his face is doing. Maybe just symptomatic of a life of soul-crushing labor and mindless obedience, but maybe something (even) worse. One of the debutants even points out that it seems odd a living doll would be judging them rather than an actual Shadow, and Edward just deflects the question in a way that makes me suspect he might be remote-controlled.

And yeah, it turns out he's the only witness for their "debut." Or at least, of the first phase of their debut. I'm pretty sure now that this guy is under direct mind control, and it's really a senior Shadow (possibly the Lord Grandfather himself) seeing, hearing, and speaking through him.

So. The first test. He brings them to a little banquet hall all set out with food and drink, and tells the lot of them to just do what they want. He also takes out a little figuring representing each debutant and places them on a vertical stack of shelves, where he constantly adjusts their vertical positions based on their presence, etiquette, and propriety. No pressure or anything.

Debutants get moved down a level for weakness, visible uncertainty and nerves, and - most of all - inability to keep their faces on a short leash. At the very beginning, Edward asks all the faces if they can tell him why the hallway leading to this banquet room is so long, with the correct answer being "I don't know, living dolls are not to think about trivial things." The two pairs whose faces answer correctly (Patrick/Ricky and Louise/Lou) start with their figurines one tier above the rest.

Things go poorly for most of the debutant pairs, especially Shirley/Rum and Kate/Emilico. The other duos have apparently figured out the mental link trick that lets the doll mirror their Shadow's movements and (desired) expressions in realtime, even if they aren't all equally good at it. Shirley/Rum seem to be coming in dead last until Rum realizes, with some surreptitious encouragement from Shaun, that she can communicate with her mistress by speaking into her The Shining finger. And...Shirley seems generally inclined to follow Rum's lead. They do a decent-ish job at keeping this dynamic from Edward, which prevents them from coming in dead last.

...

Interestingly, Rum and Shirley are a case of a Shadow actually doing what shadows normally do. Again, I wonder if the Shadows are actually just that; people's shadows severed from the body that cast them, brought to life, and taught to lead instead of following.

God, this show is weird. Not Utena-weird, but close.

...

John/Shaun manage to keep themselves ahead by challenging the Patrick/Ricky duo on Patrick's slightly-too-undisguised arrogance and smugness, and being both witty and manly (in the classic Victorian aristocrat manner) in how they do it. Louise/Lou mostly keep to themselves, but perform well enough when they do interact. The worst showing of the lot ends up being Kate/Emilico. For reasons that I have a lot of trouble not holding against Emilico. I have ADHD myself, and I remember what being a preteen was like, but even so, I can't imagine myself ever paying that little attention when life and death are on the line.

Even if they don't have a mental link (and at this point I'm not sure if *any* of them do. It might just be a matter of subtle gestures and other visual cues), Emilico isn't even watching to see where Kate is and what she's doing half the time. To be fair to Emilico, she's often distracted by concern for the other dolls. But, to be fair from the other direction, she also gets distracted by their makeup and the taste of the pastries. So yeah.

After the banquet, Edward starts playing music, and they're expected to dance. A test of Shadow-Face coordination, almost as pure of one as you can get. Some pairs seem to have the living doll discreetly leading their Shadows rather than the reverse. Rum has to whisper the choreography into her finger for Shirley to be on the same page as her. But Kate and Emilico, well, they're just fucked. Kate starts to have doubts about Emilico, with a whole mental monologue where she seems to be venting all of her fear and anxiety onto her slave. And then...hmm. This could be the first step toward some very, very bad things:

Well. On one hand, the soot particles attached to Emilico's skin let Kate save their performance and somewhat make up for the abysmal banquet showing.

On the other hand, Kate was just silently putting Emilico down (somewhat justifiably, but still), and then a second later she starts controlling her body using the physical manifestation of Kate's own fear and anger.

Yeaaaaah.

The episode ends with Shadows and Faces being separated for the next phase of the ceremony. Like I said, awkward place to leave off, but here we are at least for now.


I still really wonder how deliberately this show is playing into Hegel's master-slave dialectic. Kate's anger at Emilico being persistently (albeit stupidly, in these circumstances) freeminded translating directly into more power to control her which in turn only reinforces her dependence on her, well, yeah.

Mostly though, I really am just wondering what the shadows are. Particularly since they do seem to have human skin of their own under the layer of soot, which suggests that they can't be *just* literal shadows removed from the brainwashed children and brought to life. They might still be that, but there's another ingredient in there as well. In terms of behavior, well...some of them mirror their living doll counterparts like a literal shadow, and some of them do seem like they could *potentially* be darker aspects of their doll a la Jung, and there are maybe one or two who might be interpretable as the opposite/flipside of their dolls, but then others don't seem to follow any of those logics at all.

There IS a logic to this, I'm sure, but I just haven't been able to put my finger on it yet.

I'm actually surprised that the manga this is based on is still ongoing. This *seems* like it's setting up a story with very limited space to fill before it reaches the ending, but apparently it's been going for quite a while now. How much room does this house even have in it? Apparently more than I'd have thought, assuming the story stays good for that entire length.

And it IS good. Or at least, the anime version of it is. In fact, this is one of the very, very few pieces of media I've reviewed to date where I didn't find *anything at all* to complain about. The action scene with the scorches and phantom was sort of weirdly slow-paced and unkinetic, I guess, but that's a very minor issue and one limited to one scene in one episode. The ubiquitous, all-shrouding mystery that the series starts with only gets more tantalizing as it reveals greater intricacies and poses additional questions-behind-the-questions.

The production values are, if not exceptional, then at the very least up to the (generally high) standards of modern anime. The voice acting works for me. The backgrounds are pretty and haunting in equal measures. The music is low key, but it's fairly effective. Emilico's archetypal genki-moe schtick is a little bit boring if you've seen a bunch of characters like her before, but the way that this generic personality is clearly just what emerged to fill the empty space of a suppressed human identity makes it much more interesting. If this is who she became without her memories and with the Lord Grandfather's indoctrination, then who was she with the memories and without the programming? What we're seeing is a dumbed-down, out-of-context version of the person Kate decided to name "Emilico." The way the character is written, animated, and voice acted is informed by this; it shows itself in small ways through her otherwise bland archetype. It's subtle, but it's there.

This story is definitely going to keep getting darker before it gets finished, of that I'm certain. Hopefully, it will keep being as good throughout. I wouldn't say that these episodes of Shadows House ever reached greatness, per se, but they maintained an incredibly consistent and reliable level of goodness. That's easily enough to keep me wanting more.