Well, with Twilight Out of Focus episode 5 we tip into new territory in the work. New main characters, new romance, and yes, even new staff. Pivoting to focus on the loud rivalry between film club president Jin Kikuchihara and up-and-coming second year Giichi Ichikawa, a breath of fresh air arrives to breathe new life into the work and pass viewers along to a new and budding romantic couple.
I think the most interesting part about it is how Janome is able to find a solid romantic archetype and very successfully relate it to the framework of Twilight Out of Focus as a whole. The butting of heads between senpai and kouhai isn’t necessarily anything new, nor is the younger top chasing the older bottom, but with having learned about Ichikawa previously, you’re able to get a lot more out of their outbursts, and the subsequent fervor that they reserve exclusively for the film club. Jin on the other hand is a bit of a black box. A new character, the unaffected and very by the book senior, he lacks a lot of the personality that Ichikawa already possesses, so I’m really glad to see them being tackled as the primary character of the pair. It’s likely that we’ll get into Ichikawa’s a mind a little bit as time goes on, but I honestly think that keeping them as a more outward character will work well against Jin’s inner monologues.
Speaking of the “Ichikawa process”, it’s interesting to learn how easily you can spot Janome’s narrative process after a trip around the block with Mao and Hisashi. Twilight Out of Focus episode 5 doesn’t “just” introduce Jin, of course. Alongside him we get a look at quite a few of the other third years in the film club, and most specifically the vice president of the club, Rei Inaba. While it’s far more of a relationship than what Mao and Ichikawa have in their year, the pair ultimately exist as a duo where Jin will “pass the torch” to Rei. Either way, Jin and Rei have a much tighter relationship as you’d expect from third years, and the episode makes good use of that, exposing a lot of Jin’s tendencies to the viewer prior to them happening, inducing sort of a train-wreck effect for Jin.
Really in general, Ichikawa feels like an expertly set up character for the entirety of this series. After all, it was them that landed on making a BL film for the club, it was them that got Jin interested in BL manga, and it was also them that gave Jin the catalyst to include Rei in the story and present them as a (probable) future protagonist. It’s a lot of forward thinking work from a narrative perspective, and a really great way to slow acclimate to the “meta” nature of some of the content. Adding on top their intense personality and solid humor, it feels like Ichikawa is the very understated lynchpin of Twilight Out of Focus episode 5, and the series at large.
Of course, though, it’s absolutely Jin that was the catalyst for a lot of the visual shifts- both from a narrative, and obviously a visual, perspective. I don’t mind the pixel pattern that Jin brings along- it does well to sort of illustrate the idea of an act and how it all feels like a presentation for someone else- but it can feel a little… intense, or in your face to say the least. It absolutely has its moments to help the viewer hone in on a specific focus, and the sort of genuine moments that Jin can find in the episode, but I feel that by almost abusing it, you can really cheapen the value of the effect. Something similar can be said about the amount of panels present in Twilight Out of Focus episode 5. In reality, I think that they actually work decently well here because of how distant the characters are compared to the previous episodes, but there’s times where it feels like they pop up every other second. Today’s storyboarder, Kiyotaka Oohata, certainly has a bit of an issue with the volume of visual effects they tend to use.
That said, I do really like the visual effects they apply for Jin’s little dream about Ichikawa. It works really well as something that’s very loose and poorly defined, successfully delivering on the “vague” sense that would accompany a dream of this sort. It’s also one of the few places that Koshiyama gets to properly play with composition in the episode. They’re certainly more present in the visual sense with depth of field, but their involvement for much of the episode was far more subdued from a creative perspective, so I’m glad to see them get to stretch their wings a little bit with the dream sequence.
With much of the above discussion, I think I can summarize Twilight Out of Focus episode 5 as a nice change, but one that is less consistent than its predecessors. Kikuchi’s character designs really don’t have much space to shine, and Azumi’s color design remains more subdued, but the visual freshness that can be expressed works really great against a new backdrop in Giichi and Jin. And so, while Kiyotaka certainly falls beneath Watanabe in overall quality, I feel like their work has more potential in it. They don’t shy away from boarding scenes that can properly move, and their opening sequence with the Giichi vs Jin spat was very fun. They just have a considerable edge of age to their work. But, we’re out of the woods now with Watanabe as a boarder, so it’s entirely possible we’ll see someone new appear for the next episode. Hopefully someone that can make the most of the sparks flying between our new romantic pair, as well as the great visual work provided by some of the staff I’ve mentioned above.
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