An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

First Impressions Can Be Deceiving – Girl in Twilight Spoiler Review

So, Girl in Twilight is a confusing little show that’s difficult to summarize, in part because it clearly wants to be a little bit of everything. It’s a bizarre dive into even stranger scenarios – half the time you’ll be questioning why we, as the audience, are going along with any of this… but the other half the time you won’t care because the show is good at taking something insane and making you believe if not the scenario than at least the emotions.

To start off, I almost feel sorry that I used a “Twilight Zone” parody for Haruhi, because it would also be exceptionally apt here, not just because of the title but because of a lot of the material in the premise of the individual arcs of the show.

And I say the premise of the individual arcs because, well, that’s basically what the first half of the show is: a set of individual arcs, each with a different premise. To start at the proper beginning, however, we have the Radio Research club, a group of five girls who mostly seem to mess around and have fun. One of them, Asuka, is actually passionate about the topic of the club and leads them in club activities. One of those activities involves messing with the Ritual of 4:44, where by tuning a radio at the right time in the right spot one is allegedly supposed to transport one to another world. Of course, this being an anime, it actually manages to work at the start of the show, transporting the four members of the club to a mysterious dimension bathed in golden light and sand. They encounter denizens of this place, little rabbit-blob monsters… which shortly turn hostile. And into a gigantic hydra. The kids are saved by some sort of trans-dimensional fighter, who also happens to be a copy of Asuka (Who quickly, due to being the serious version, gets the nickname Siriasuka. I will refer to the character as such from here on).

Siriasuka warns the characters against trying to travel worlds again, so of course the characters promptly gain the means, motive, and opportunity to once again travel to a new world, where we get the proper rules of the setting.

Alternate worlds in Girl in Twilight are, allegedly, “Might have been” scenarios. It’s the basic Many-Worlds Hypothesis, same as we see in Noein. In order to travel, one of the travelers has to act as the bridge, and merges with her other self. The other travelers are simply transported, even if they have alternates on the destination world.

In addition to all of that, there exists the Twilight – a force that consumes worlds, weakening them with monsters called Noise (The bunnies/hydras) and Clutter (which we see later) before finally adding the world to the Twilight. The Twilight is a force of stasis; worlds consumed by the Twilight can never change and thus can never spawn new worlds from their possible futures. Again, this is fairly similar to how Shangri’la works in Noein. Last comparison until final thoughts, I promise.

So, what are these worlds like?

Well, this is where the show promptly puts its absolute worst foot forward. Remember where I mentioned that the individual arcs are kind of reminiscent of “The Twilight Zone”? That’s because, like many Twilight Zone episodes, the alternate worlds we visit in the first half of Girl in Twilight are all based around a singular issue. For instance, in the first world visited, it’s exactly like the modern world except (at least in Japan) everybody has to get married before graduating High School. That… would probably not make it as a half-baked premise in Twilight Zone. Now, granted, it gives the bridge character of the arc some good opportunities to address the issues she has in life, but that doesn’t make it any easier to take seriously.

The second arc goes a little better. In this case, it’s a genre shift. The world we visit seems perpetually stuck in a Western, and the global mania is that legal disputes are typically resolved with lethal gun duels. Compared to the Bridal Fair World, Western World feels a little more like something that could maybe live and breathe, and would perhaps be able to stand on its own.

The story is a little better too. On the Bridal World, the conflict was whether or not the bridge character wants to go through with her arranged marriage to a handsome celebrity. The problems with him? One, he has a name that would result in her married name being embarrassing, and Two, he turns out to be a Clutter – a Twilight replacement for a real person that can hide in a world until they don their spiral-and-toothy-grin black and gold mask and take up their fighting superpowers. True, there are nice scenes where she learns to believe in herself, that her distant stepfather really cares about her, and otherwise grows as a person but… there’s not a lot really going on.

In the Western World, by contrast, the bridge (a meek girl as we know her who idealizes justice) finds that her counterpart is the sheriff’s deputy. But the sheriff and chief judge are corrupt (and Clutter) and the doubles of all her friends, who her regular friends fall in with, are outlaws of the Robin Hood variety. There’s some real conflict in this world, and the crazy and rotten way it handles things is actually interesting. It is still, however, quite a bit over the top and at least a little goofy.

The third world is more interesting still. They’re brought to that world by a dimension-traveling version of one of the other girls (The girl in question is Yuu and, due to an air of maturity and Yuri, her traveling alt is called Sexy Yuu) for a beach vacation day. The bridge, however, is the show’s asocial Rei clone who would just like to sit in her alternate’s house and read a book. However, as the luxuries of this world managed by an AI known as “White Goat” start to entrance the others, the bridge character discovers that her other self was investigating the possibly sinister ways, means, and aims of White Goat and ends up following the path to uncover the danger.

Unlike the other worlds, the world of White Goat seems like a “Realistic” dystopia. There’s still some suspension of disbelief, as there typically is with dystopic fiction but there are also elements that could be legit good commentary if they were developed.

Over these arcs, the show steadily improves its themes and presentations, but the one thing that started good and stays good is its handling of the characters. While most of the cast seems to start out as one-note characters, their growth and change is a huge part of the show in terms of both its content and its themes. Each arc takes one of the characters and gives her a chance to overcome her failings and spread her wings as a person, gaining magical-girl-esque fighting power (Becoming the world-travel-capable magic anti-Twilight warrior called an “Equalizer”) to take on the Clutter of the arc in the process. (As a side note, the design of the transformed costumes is essentially in reverse order of coolness with the arc they come from. The birdal outfit? Pretty awesome. The western gunslinger setup? A little much, but still awesome. The third girl’s personal submarine… the show really should have taken that one back to the drawing board, I’ve got to say).

However, for the second half we get towards the main plot the show was procrastinating, about the Twilight itself, and it’s all to do with Asuka (and Siriasuka). For one, years ago Asuka’s little brother vanished without a trace. It’s an event we keep coming back to, and one that seems to have taken place in every world, no matter how different it may be from the earth we begin in. On the other side, Siriasuka’s home world is under siege by the Twilight, a conflict that’s gone well beyond the appearance of Noise or infiltration by Clutter we’ve seen on other worlds – it’s been torn up and there’s not a lot left. Hope remains, though, if Siriasuka can fight down the enigmatic King of Twilight, an entity that supposedly directs the Twilight’s actions and deploys its forces. This is big, epic stuff… and our visit to Siriasuka’s world feels like it. Up to that point, Siriasuka has been a passable guide for the group, a good friend for her other self (Asuka) and occasionally the thief of a bento box worth of miso from her family. In this arc, we get to see her circumstances, what she’s fighting for, and why she is, compared to her baseline self, so very serious.

We also see the world fall. A Twilight Entity, a small robed figure, infiltrates the resistance base and makes its way to the sacred tree that also seems to exist as an important part of every world. The Twilight being, which some even suspect to be the King, tries to tear down the tree while Siriasuka fights them and their summoned hydra monster. At the last moment, Siriasuka recognizes who’s under the robes, and we leave her world with the main characters.

And no one is able to dial that world anymore. Siriasuka loses her fight, and the characters we spent a couple episodes empathizing with are all presumably swallowed by the Twilight.

Yeesh.

And if that wasn’t enough, the Twilight follows our main characters home, having been lead to their world thanks to all the traveling to and from. A particularly nasty Clutter overtakes one of the teachers of the girls, while the Twilight Figure from before confronts Asuka. The Clutter gets beaten properly, but the mysterious figure is revealed to a very different result.

It turns out that said figure is another (bodily much younger) Asuka, acting as a herald of the Twilight. Our Asuka goes with the Herald in hopes of finding some sort of new way forward, and what follows is the best, weirdest climax that could possibly capstone a show like this.

The imagery and ideas in the final episode of Girl in Twilight are… really out there. Most of it is just Asuka and Herald Asuka talking about their various situations, their shared and individual traumas and triumphs, and each trying to convince the other to come around to her point of view, Herald trying to convince Asuka to stand still and join the Twilight while Asuka tries to convince Herald to abandon the Twilight and try to overcome the pain of living. Herald wants the Twilight to spread, Asuka wants it to return Siriasuka if possible, and it’s all done not through superpowered battling, but through conversation, catharsis, and understanding.

And trippy visuals. I can’t stress that enough. There is some good visual storytelling to some of the sequences, but more importantly it really does feel like we’ve been transported somewhere Else, that’s not just another world cut from the same cloth as all the others.

In any case, while Asuka has been our main character from the start, and while the show is all about the growth of the characters, they put off Asuka’s for last and wow does it ever pay off. Girl in Twilight had, up until the final arc, seemed a fairly obvious show. It looked obvious, trope-laden, and sometimes very goofy. What wasn’t realized was how it was setting up for the finale, putting all the pieces into place. Though Asuka doesn’t get a lot of focus on her growth until the end, she is developed as a character. We know what she likes, and something of her hopes, dreams, and aspirations. And even before the final arc, we do have something of a feeling as to why she is the way she is. In the final arc, she’s forced to confront how badly she’s coped with her little brother’s disappearance and find a way to move forward.

Because, in another case of concepts being set up without the viewer really realizing it, the core conflict of Girl in Twilight actually did stretch through the show from beginning to end. Not the technical conflict of the Equalizers against the Twilight as a monster, but the conflict of life and change against the stasis represented by the Twilight.

In a sense, the show is about moving forward and growing as a person. That’s how the girls become Equalizers, and it’s the good material from every arc, whether it’s minor (as in the first arc) or all-important. The Twilight, however, is the core concept of stasis, of never changing. This is true in the metaphysics of the setting: worlds consumed by the Twilight can never branch off any more possibilities. There is no choice and no change. And the intelligent Twilight forces, the Clutters (when they choose to talk as such) and most critically Herald Asuka, are beings that don’t want to move forward as people. The Clutter that fights the girls on their home world spends a good deal of time trying to break their will to resist by convincing them that they haven’t moved forward and can’t move forward, while Herald Asuka is in a sense the ultimate representation of Asuka’s own inability to accept loss and get on with her life. And it’s by doing just that, that Asuka is able to turn Herald Asuka away from the Twilight and possibly earn some kind of better world.

Because of that, the ending is actually kind of bittersweet and ambiguous. Asuka doesn’t magically find her lost brother, nor is it even explained what might have happened to disappear him across all realities. Instead, she has to accept it, what he meant to her and what he can or should still mean to her. Asuka who, out of guilt, took up her brother’s hopes and dreams realizes that she has to find her own. There’s no big battle or out of nowhere miracle. The Twilight is still out there, a force that has existed since before one version of Asuka became its herald and will continue to exist. However, it does seem like it’s receded for the time being, giving up at least some of its claims and declining to make new ones for the foreseeable future. Herald Asuka…. we aren’t exactly sure what becomes of her in the end. We have hope, because inspiring her to hope is what ended this nightmare in the end, but we’re not 100% of the facts because this is like the ending of Evangelion except way easier to parse and with good animation throughout. We see that Asuka gets her qualifications as an Equalizer, but she doesn’t have to transform and fight. She has to go to college, not other worlds. It’s well earned and satisfying even though the fighting in the show overall was very on point (even if done with copious amounts of CGI, the few battles, particularly Siriasuka v. Herald were well executed). Siriasuka is implied to be alive, well, and free again considering her trademark miso-stealing behavior is noticed in the end… but we don’t actually get to see her and say hello. The ending is amazingly positive… except where it’s just mundane life ensuing and the end of the adventure for these particular characters.

And to that, how to rate Girl in Twilight. I’ll be honest, when I first watched this show, I hated the beginning and loved it in the end. The first few episodes are a huge, glaring weakness but if you get through them and actually engage your brain watching, this show also offers a huge reward. Girl in Twilight was, and still remains, what is probably my big unpopular positive opinion. On MAL, this show is rated at around 6.5 – which, to put it in perspective, is a full point lower than Familiar of Zero Season 2, nearly a point lower than Kaze no Stigma, and on par with Hundred. A lot of shows, even ones that are in no way good, can hit a 7. And back then, I rated Girl in Twilight at a 9, which I didn’t hand out lightly.

In retrospect, though, I was perhaps a bit over enthusiastic. Girl in Twilight is good if you get all the way through it. Really good. It has some of the most emotional and thought-provoking material you could ask for, but… yeah, just about everything Girl in Twilight does, Noein does better. Girl in Twilight shows you the development of its characters through interfacing with their other selves. Noein does the same, but with more characters and a lot more subtelty. Girl in Twilight juggles multiple timelines and alternate earths to explore. Noein does the same thing, but Noein’s alternates feel either like legitimate forking paths or stick to the impressive ones, without the need for knockoff Twilight Zone fare. In its ending, Girl in Twilight shows us one really great episode of phantasmagorical wonder, displayed through beautiful animation that underscores a strong philosophical debate. Noein does that, perhaps not in such a concentrated and triumphant manner, but all throughout the run of the show. Girl in Twilight has a few fights that are really on point and some power-up transformations that run between goofy and actually kind of cool. Noein has loads of action with just plain cool transformations and it’s just as on point. The Twilight is really stylish and good to look at, but Shangri’la is stylish, good to look at, creepy, and creative. Asuka, Siriasuka, and Herald Asuka are good, but do seems somewhat like pale reflections of Yuu Goto, Karasu, and Noein (the character). The list really does go on.

There are two points where Girl in Twilight wins out over Noein, though. For the first, it does fix my biggest problem with Noein, the fact that the normal-world characters had little to no agency for most of the story. By going with a high school cast instead of a grade school cast, we expect Asuka and her friends to do things… and they do, even when they’re not busy being Equalizers like Asuka herself never is. Second, while the ideas behind the Twilight and Shangri’la are the same, a world in the quantum multiverse that’s a graveyard of possibilities and consumes other worlds, I think the ideas are better handled in Girl in Twilight. We’re told that Shangri’la represents a static eternity, an empty paradise created by Noein (the character), and we do see it some, but for the most part Shangri’la’s influence feels like invading aliens. The Twilight does have its share of invaders, but because the show has a much tighter focus on the conflict of Growth versus Stasis, the Twilight feels more real as the Stasis faction than Shangri’la does. Herald Asuka and Noein (the character) both, by implication, destroyed their worlds and dragged them into Stasis because they couldn’t deal with personal loss, but Herald Asuka does it passively, because she wants to be standing still, and just accepts the Twilight for what it is. Noein (the character) does it because he’s a nihilistic jerkoff, and he does it deliberately and with destructive spite. This makes him a better grand villain for a grand show, but it means Shangri’la carries less meaning than the Twilight.

That said, if you’re only going to watch one of the two shows… yeah, I have to recommend Noein over Girl in Twilight, especially considering just how terrible Girl in Twilight started out. I will, however, give Girl in Twilight the same letter grade, an A-. Noein is on the cusp of being a flat A (and I’ve even considered revising my rating as such). Girl in Twilight is behind in almost every aspect, but it is ahead in those couple, and where it’s behind it’s not behind by much, so I think it clings to the grade all the same. You wouldn’t be going wrong watching Girl in Twilight, especially considering it’s half the length of its venerable competitor, just… remember that it gets a lot better after the first arc, okay? I’ve warned you about the first arc, so don’t come crying to me when you’ve got to get through it.

All in all, Girl in Twilight holds on to my esteem and remains probably my most unpopular positive opinion of an anime. So it’s only fair, I suppose, that I share an unpopular negative opinion next week…