Anime Spotlight #66: Rascal Does Not Dream Of Santa Claus
a.k.a. The Rascally Animeister.
Merry Christmas week, Ticketholders!
I promised in this Easter's review of the Bunny-Girl anime and first three Rascal movies that if things worked out in terms of release schedule, I would review Rascal Does Not Dream Of Santa Claus for Christmas, and here we are. I'd rather skip the usual credits copy that I start off these Anime Spotlight reviews with, but in the spirit of the series' quantum insanity (and because copy and paste exist, and I have some slightly different things to say), I've decided to repeat myself as a gift just to mess with you.
The music this season includes a decently catchy opener (not on "Kimi no Sei"'s level, but aspiring to its spirit and energy) in "Snowdrop" by Conton Candy
and the tense but melancholy ending theme, "Suiheisen wa Boku no Furukizu."The official music video for "Snowdrop" does more for me than the OP sequence because its energy rocks and it has subtitles, so I get a better sense from the lyrics of just how well the song's themes of communication, sense memory, future anxiety, and the fleeting nature of time and life fit the season's plot.As for the ending, the instrumentation is unsettlingly quick for a song of its type (an "insert sad/sleepy anime ending song here" kind of thing), hence the tension. You might notice that I forgot to mention an artist for the ED song (I didn't mention when they did the same thing for "Fukashigi no Karte" in the Bunny-Girl season, either, because I didn't pay attention to it and didn't know about the trick until I was almost done writing and went back through the Wikipedia article for credits information and link harvesting). That's because for each arc of the season (each adapted Volume of the print source), the ending vocals are sung by the Japanese voice actress for that arc's afflicted character, which is a really cool idea.
The Rascal Does Not Dream series defines Puberty Syndrome as "abnormal experiences during adolescence due to sensitivity and instability" (which is just as broad as it needs to be to account for the story's quantum-based interpretation, though, as I mentioned in my original review, the real-world version is more groundedly physical, psychological, and genetic, and would not account for time travel, body-swapping, radical age fluctuations, 12:01 PM Syndrome—a.k.a. Groundhog Day Syndrome—or invisibility-turned-non-existence, but would account for the possibility of personality changes or something as mundane as a change in tastes or preferences).
The Santa Claus season (titled after the thirteenth Volume of the light-novel) begins where the Knapsack Kid film left off, reminding us that Shoko-chan is a manipulative, multiversal pervert in desperate need of emergency heart-removal surgery (so she can fucking die already), and that pop idol Touko Kirishima is potentially unique to the series' main timeline. Which is weird because of a bombshell (yes, I doubly entendre'd that one) that I will get into shortly.
Also, my brain struggled with timeskip confusion because everyone who was in high school in the Bunny-Girl season and the movies is now in college, which means the supporting cast (particularly the tutor/firefighter couple of Futaba and Kunimi, who are the most drastically redesigned because of their new jobs) are either returning characters with aged and restyled designs or entirely new characters (of whom there are many).
The Lost Singer arc begins things on a grounded but paranoia-fueled note, getting the audience acclimated to the new setting and characters, and focusing on the main characters' reactions to the ditzy member of Sweet Bullet (Uzuki) suddenly being able to "read the room" when tabloid news begins to circulate about the group "graduating" (to bigger careers, because idol groups are apparently a child star school/corporate factory system in Japan, though I can't speak to how realistic this is despite living through the American boy/girl band boom of the millennium cusp era and watching reality competition shows for decades of my life) and splitting up before they can achieve their dream of performing at Budokan (which just makes me want to see a showdown between Sweet Bullet and Franchouchou because that would be hilarious). Yep, it's not just character development like what's been shown with every other returning player; it's scary, it's dangerous to the future, it's harshing the group's mellow, it's Puberty Syndrome again! And it's not just Puberty Syndrome, it's Puberty Syndrome granted by an invisible, temporally unique pop idol with Santa Claus Pandora Monkey's Paw powers who gives no fux about the potential quantum implosion that could come of randomly granting Puberty Syndrome "gifts" to multiple millions of people at once (which, seeing as how Rascal Does Not Dream is finished, and also not One Piece, unfortunately means we have to expect a Head Vampire, hive mind solution a la Independence Day: Resurgence, rather than something epic and episodic by the end of this season). To be fair, all of the returning cast went through their major, Puberty Syndrome-related character development in the first season or the movies, and this is Uzuki's first significant focus in the series, plus, social awareness isn't where her Syndrome stops, as the rumors, self-doubt, susceptibility to peer pressure (whether quantum or not), and her individual fame from secretly going viral with one of Kirishima's old songs (which stirs short-lived suspicion in the audience's minds that Uzuki may be Kirishima as a double identity or the result of Puberty Syndrome dysmorphia) causes her singing voice to go all Bunny-Santa and vanish until the next Sweet Bullet show, where the electrical power and weather are seemingly affected by her Syndrome until the Girl Power Of Friendship and a blunt pep talk from Sakuta lead to one of the franchise's most tear-jerking, inspirational moments. Yeah, I don't like that Sakuta, Futaba, and the Sweet Bullet girls immediately jumped to "Uzuki's social maturity is Puberty Syndrome and must therefore be fixed to preserve the status quo" (especially since it narratively contradicts Sister Venturing Out's core message) rather than it being natural emotional growth. But the feels hit right, the resulting message of "it's okay to not choose, and do both things if you're willing to work for it" is appropriate, and this arc is a good way to ease viewers back into the story; that is, until the aforementioned Kirishima bombshell immediately takes the stakes of the series from 0 to Date A Live.
Now, it's Halloween. That's not a time travel joke on my part; the next arc literally takes place around Halloween and flows into November. Since the beginning of the season (the Santa Claus season of the anime, not the in- or out-of-Universe fall season, because I realized that might be confusing), there have been references to a social media hashtag, #dreaming, where people post weird dreams they had that came true. It's a global thing because internet and because Santa Kirishima unleashed her Pandora's Goodie Bag of quantum insanity, but because anime are usually set in fantasy worlds or versions of actual Japan, and because Sakuta is the main character, the Nightingale arc instead revolves around Ikumi, a girl from Sakuta's hazy middle school days, who attempts to prevent #dreaming incidents while sometimes dressed as a nurse (because Florence Nightingale, get it?), at increasingly great risk to her own safety. At least, that's how it starts. Her real Puberty Syndrome involves interacting and swapping realities with herself from the Knapsack Kid timeline because both of her have "go where the grass is greener" feelings about how Sakuta's life affected their own success and purpose. Also, it for some reason, somehow, has the added caveat that she orchestrated the #dreaming movement and organized their middle school reunion to get one over on their bullying classmates by showing them that Puberty Syndrome is real and tweens are assholes who grow up into taller assholes. But Sakuta of course derails Ikumi's poorly written and needlessly convoluted (and unoriginal, because it makes her disappear like Mai in Bunny-Girl and Sakuta in Knapsack Kid) plan by gloating about his celebrity girlfriend and playing off Ikumi's reappearance as a magic trick because it's okay for assholes to be assholes in 2025 and we must preserve the status quo, even if it means the people who made the world a terrible place for us get to keep pretending and distracting us from the fact that they, and the world they created, are terrible...because shifting the goalpost on normal is how my sarcasm works. Lost Singer had its problems that I could logic my way through to a solid ending, but Nightingale was straight-up (as straight as a plot this confusing can approximate, that is) bullshit. Don't stop #dreaming. Don't stop working toward better. Toward change. Toward helping others. Toward kindness. And don't make a beeline about it.
Now, if you'll excuse me, it's time to go beat up Santa.
Except, not. This isn't that kind of anime. But it is becoming the kind of anime with age gap implications (aside from the stuff with Shoko-chan and the young Mai from Dreaming Girl and Knapsack Kid respectively) because the next arc is based on the Rascal Does Not Dream Of His Student Volume of the light-novel. She won't tell him what her Puberty Syndrome is, but he suggests she give him a "reward" if he figures it out. And the title is a lie because he dreams about his student (Himeji) several times. Maybe because he cracked skulls with her one time?
Also, despite the #dreaming tag being previously stated as a creation of Ikumi as part of her plan to go public with Puberty Syndrome, it's still a thing now that she's cured, which makes her arc make even less sense than it did already.
Getting back to the Student arc, it's much more straightforward and doesn't go as far as the title suggests. While afflicted with Puberty Syndrome (which lets her see through the eyes of others, hear their thoughts, and feel their emotions), Himeji shows herself to be kind of a villain; the kind of 2D caricature of a manipulative loli harlot that incels impose upon the opposite gender at large to explain away their own insecurities and lack of charisma. Sakuta is her third tutor (after the previous two got #metoo'd when she hit on them and then flipped the narrative because they were too easy to woo) and she spends half of her arc trying to pit him and her two classmates (who are in a love triangle with her) against each other even though the one male student can't decide between Himeji, the other female student, or Futaba (who is already in a relationship with Kunimi). And I'm not entirely sure I got all of the supporting characters right! Why did I say this was straightforward again?
Oh, right; because Sakuta had a dream that he was supposed to go on a Christmas Eve date with Himeji, but her Puberty Syndrome gets cured when Mai tags along and the main power couple's love for each other proves too strong for Himeji to wrap her mind around. I guess it's a bit "it isn't healthy to compare yourself to others or to be who you think someone else wants in a relationship" as messaging goes, and Sakuta continues to be faithful to Mai even though his encounters with the supernatural often cause him to get blurry with boundaries (he even figures out how to use Himeji's connection the same way she does, but he never does anything with it that any other male harem lead would have done if given the opportunity, and that's a good thing). Plus, we get new information about "Touko Kirishima" (a.k.a. Mini-skirt Santa) going into the last three episodes, which adapt the light-novel Volume that this season is named after.
There have been hints all along about Nene Iwamizawa's (the Mini-skirt Santa's true identity) Puberty Syndrome, such as Futaba's quantum physics take on subconscious social conformity, repeated instances throughout the franchise of forgotten and inperceptible people, Kirishima being an out-of-focus idol, her statement that she somehow spread Puberty Syndrome globally, and her later revelation that she does so through song. The slow, intricate building of her mystery and character is what makes this season worth watching (even though the other arcs suffered by turns as a result). It's a cute, straightforward (and I mean it this time because there isn't a composite love polygon involved) forgotten romance story with a ticking clock that mirrors and inverts the dynamic of Sakuta and Mai's relationship without spoon-feeding the writing to us or making a cheesy, "passing the torch" moment out of it, because the story has more important things to do. Said ticking clock is also clever, incorporating the quantum hive-mind concept from earlier in the season, and addressing what the #dreaming tag would mean if someone didn't have a dream of the future. As a result, the "cure Nene, cure everyone" resolution didn't come off as badly as I expected, and like with the Bunny-Girl season, there are more than a few plot threads and mysteries left hanging for the final two Volumes (which will conclude in January and be adapted into the Rascal Does Not Dream Of A Dear Friend film sometime next year), including the alternate timeline, the true identity of Touko Kirishima, the literal last-minute return of the Knapsack Kid, and the events of everyone's dreams (or absence thereof), though I'd like to think that last one won't get addressed because Mai surviving the Cop For A Day ceremony (where a gathering of invisible Santas almost turned it into a Travis Scott concert and Sakuta took a subwoofer to the head instead of her) changed the timeline. Oh, and because I still can't escape H.P. Lovecraft, this possible tragedy happened because everyone had a dream that Mai was going to publicly announce herself as being Touko Kirishima at a concert...on April Fools' Day (known in Japan as April Sorrows Day, though the prankster traditions are the same as in the West).
For all of its flaws (some of which may be perception-based because I didn't entirely understand two of the arcs here), I like the Rascal series and appreciate it for the high-concept but grounded and tasteful story it aspires to tell (and mostly succeeds by not totally going where harem trash connoisseurs would expect). I intend to perceive this one all the way through so that it doesn't go forgotten.
Merry Christmas to come, and please remember to Become A Ticketholder if you haven't already, comment at the bottom of this post, help out my ad revenue as you read because all I want for Christmas is ten thousand views and your two cents (I mean that both ways), and follow me on BlueSky, Tumblr, Reddit, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and LinkedIn to like what you see and receive the latest news on my content. In this digital age, it's the surest way to prevent me from being forgotten and fading out of existence.
Animeister,
Still Dreams Of Being A Debt-Free Senpai
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