Basically me.

Summary: Sasami reminisces about her past withe her family and how she became who she is now. When she grows a third arm from her chest, Kamiomi leaves to set things straight with the ones responsible. Sasami wants to bring him back, but she cannot go outside.

Or something.

So… Now what, Sasami? What exactly are you going to do now? Sasami has gotten over her agoraphobia and happily goes to school now; the true identities of Tsurugi and her two sisters have been revealed; the evil temple that ruined Sasami’s childhood has been destroyed and Kamiomi is safely back home with the power of Amaterasu safely within his grasp. Now what? Did you just decide to abandon this whole “plot” thing you set up for yourself? Did you suddenly get tired of being all “symbolic” and integrating classic Japanese mythology into your already unstable narrative frame? Were you even too lazy to treat the few plot threads you actually hinted at with the respect they deserve?

I cannot believe this. What were they thinking? This episode resolved the entire plot of Sasami@Unmotivated. All characters’ true natures and backstories have been revealed, the “bad guys” — who don’t even show up — get their behinds handed to them and Sasami even gets rid of her curse and gets to go to school. Why should I keep watching, then? Remember when this show was about a shut-in observing the world through the eyes of her brother? This episode seemingly wrapped up the entire plot of Sasami@Unmotivated in the laziest way possible. An entire season’s worth of plot revelations got all substance squeezed out of them in order to fit into these 22 grating minutes. My mind just can’t grasp how they managed to get away with this. Didn’t anyone at SHAFT have the brilliant idea to dedicate entire episodes to, for example …

• … how the mighty Amaterasu decided to abandon her powers and become mortal? Hell no, let’s just have her randomly pop up and say she got bored of being a god!
• … how Sasami grew sick of her family’s devout lifestyle and decided to run off? Boring! How about more incest?
• … how Tsurugi created two sisters, one of which apparently got abducted and turned into a cyborg? Yeah, really. As if anyone actually cares about how Kagami got her cool robot powers.
• … how about Sasami got possessed by a random evil god which caused her to be sick whenever she went outside — instead of, you know, social anxiety? Wait, didn’t we mention this before? We can just have her narrate one line explaining that, right…?

Basically the writers.

In writing, there is a rule you might have heard about. Famous Russian playwright Anton Chekhov once wrote that “One must not put a loaded rifle on the stage if no one is thinking of firing it.” Basic buildup, in other words. Every element given attention to in a story, needs to be relevant. With that one, stupid, yet oh so important line about the evil God, Sasami does the exact opposite. It randomly fires the gun without properly introducing it first. It reveals the truth behind plot elements we didn’t even know were there. Was it ever even remotely implied that Sasami’s shut-in behaviour was the result of anything but her own laziness? Was it even hinted at that Sasami is suffering from some sort of trauma, or is under pressure to fulfil a certain duty? No, but good thing she’s been relieved of it now, right? … Right?

None of this wouldn’t be so bad if the blatant violation of the “show don’t tell” rule from last week’s episode didn’t return in full swing. All of these revelations and resolutions are simply explained by people talking, rather than by showing actual flashbacks. What makes it even worse is that Shinbo, as always, does a great job at keeping all the babble interesting with his directing.  The problem is that the babble should not have been there in the first place. All that beauty simply goes to waste. What should have been there? Flashbacks. Implications. Foreshadowing. You know, literary devices!

Of course, the term “literary devices” would imply that Sasami@Unmotivated is literature of any kind. It’s not. It’s just another crappy light novel with a pretty façade. Sure, it tries when it wants to, sometimes. There was something resembling character development in Sasami feeling guilty over her abusive treatment of her brother. The action sequences are really cool. The ending is by far the most entertaining bit of the episode. Nevertheless, this is just a show that uses pretty visuals and wackiness to cover up an almost chaotic lack of inspiration and especially, writing prowess. It truly shows who really is the unmotivated one around here.

Random observations

• Sasami mentions that in order to keep the power of Amaterasu within the family, they had to resort to incest. Local Glorio biology expert Marlin informed me that inbreeding would indeed be a great way to ensure some traits remain constant in a population. Limiting the gene pool in this way would easily allow for certain traits to be selected and eventually be the only ones present. Nevertheless, how the heck are Sasami and Kamiomi perfectly healthy despite hailing from a long line of close inbreeding? Due to this same limiting of the gene pool, many bad traits would become more likely to occur due as well. This only once again proves that your average anime writer has no clue about what incest is even supposed to be.
• And no, it doesn’t justify the siblings’ respective brother and sister complexes either, writers. You should be ashamed.
• How many times do we have to go over this, anime? People getting punched and called perverts is not funny.
• I just found out the writer of this drivel also wrote the infamous Boku no Pico. Yeah.