Sonny Boy is the most interesting anime of this year imo, regardless it being layer cake of arthouse that people need to dissect it multiple times to understand its meanings. The recent episode 8 even tackle the messiah & follower conundrum in a belief system.
I’m afraid this series gets too easily overlooked/forgotten for these huge analyses (which I love) to be a good investment of time for the RU-vid channel
One of the most unique anime ive ever seen like ever. This soundtrack is amazing. The opening music is the icing on the cake. It gives you a feeling of being so incomplete, so lost, so out of control. It makes you feel all these things at the same time while showing you how dull the real world is. After they escaped they didn't find everyone and save them, they didn't become friends again, they didn't do something special. They continued living their life without any changes, like nothing every happened, that's what makes this anime so beautiful. The expectation of growing up into colorful adulthood is shattered by the colorless reality of life. It shoves you into a feeling of acceptance and 0 acknowledgement. At the end, nagara didn't ask Nozomi out. He didn't ask to be her friend. They simply had a normal acquaintance conversation. Nothing special, nothing extraordinary. You may think he had so much potential for character development, but in the end he couldn't even ask his crush on a date like expected. You may think it was a failed anime, with no development for Nagara. But- He had the most development. The anime started out as a black void. It didn't show how they got there or what the real world was like. It jumped straight into the void. It put you, the viewer, in the exact same position as the students in the anime. You didn't meet their friends, their pets, their family, you didn't know any of their lives and there was 0 insight to it. At the end when they returned to the real world, its felt so abnormally normal. You have been shoved into this uneasy feeling of no escape throughout the crazy adventures with the characters that when you returned to the real world, it didn't feel right. The abnormal became the normal. The "uneasy" worlds became normal and the "normal" world became the "uneasy" one, flipping your entire perspective of their life, their actions, and their thought process. In the end, with such a boring ending, you were let down. But not the characters. It was so weird and so boring that you couldn't even guess what the ending would have been. Nobody knew they were gone, nobody missed them, everyone's memories were wiped and the real versions were forgotten about. And yet in the end, it is so very intriguing. It pulled you in and made you upset, made you livid "why didn't they do this?! why was the ending like that?!" hoping for another season, though the first season was concluded like a professionally made circus act. It ended with a great bang and then silence. Nagara improved so much, he didn't ask out Nozomi and he didn't try to talk to her and become friends. This wasn't a bad thing, this just shows how he's improved. In the end scene, rather than giving up on them, he went to go check on the birds. At the beginning, he said "What a shame." but this time, through ideal development, he checked on the birds. He helped them out. and though in the very end of it all, he ended up declining the offer of saving the birds, he still went out of his comfort and knowledge zone to check on the birds, even though it had 0 benefit to himself. He didn't do it for anyone else. He didn't live for anyone else, and that's the ending. He did everything for himself. This may be selfish, but before, he was so used to helping others, being a use to others, and being used by other people that he forgot about his own worth. He forgot what he needed to fight for. This story was a story about the real world, childish imagination, acceptance, and self love, that is what makes this show so incredibly unique. "With a train that travels through 2000 light years When he goes over his sorrow A boy meets a girl Beautiful loners With all of the good and bad A boy meets a girl"
I could honestly hear you talking for lots of time without losing interest. It's a very rich analysis to notice things so subtle that are difficult to catch in the first watch.
The guy with the fast pitch's analysis on the monkey league is that the umpire was jealous and that's why he called the pitch the way he did. Fast pitcher also says something like "who would want to live in a world we're the talented are held back by the mediocre". But the thing is Monkey Blue may have been the best baseball player in the league but he simply didn't pitch a perfect game. He missed. The umpire didn't hold him back at all. This says a lot about fast pitcher's own outlook and willingness to blame others for his own short comings. We also learn that fast pitcher was being scouted for college baseball. He has probably leaned on his talent to get by all his life and hasn't needed to grow as a person from failure.
Thanks a ton for the analysis! There were a bunch of things I missed the first time around and I always love watching your take on the shows I'm watching.
Wow such attention to details. Thanks for the video. Sonny Boy is one of the most David Lynchian anime I have watched. So many whimsical nonsense is going on (monkey baseball, for example), I don't know whether I should be depressed or excited watching it.
I'm loving the chance to talk about it myself. Can't wait for the upcoming videos where I can go a little more in-depth with a fewer number of subjects.
I believe feathers and birds are somewhat a symbol of change, hope and/or sympathy towards Nagara. Nozomi makes a remark that Nagara will abandon birds by saying "Just because you were abandoned doesn't mean you should abandon others." Inciting that she knows that Nagara probably feels abandoned by his mom. Later on, when Nagara finds a dead bird again, instead of walking past it, he grabs it places it somewhere with care. In episode 6 when they "make it" bad to their original world, Nagara is talking to a teacher and a feather falls on him. That is a continuous pattern, every time there's a feather, Nagara is nearby.
I do feel like I need a graph to keep track of what powers do what and who has them. They're so many, they're established in a blink-and-you-miss-it kind of fashion, and they're not visually represented in traditional matters to make it easier to remember. Then you got all the other stuff going on with the character's subtle interiority and relationships and hierarchy... it's a lot to keep track of. So when you see the blond girl with electric powers: for her she's got so little dialogue and so little play in the story by the time she uses her power again you've completely forgotten there was a blond with lightning powers. Then multiply this by a magnitude of 10... I'm 5 episodes in but it feels like I've had a fever dream the length of 12.
I cut it out, but originally in the intro to this video I commented that this series feels like a two-cours work that they have heavily edited and pared down to fit in the space of just one cours. I totally agree that the amount of things which have happened or been communicated to us feel equivalent to a much-longer work. This is an instance where I gain a LOT of my understanding from the streams/discord discussions, as it forces me to go over the work repeatedly and hold more of it in my head at once. I will say that 'fever dream' is a pretty apt description, haha!
In episode 3 I think it’s dropped in a bit of throw away dialogue, but it seems like no one actually drew those squiggles in the pictures. They were an effect of the world they were trapped in.
OMG NearlyOnRed talking about Sonny Boy, the most underrated anime of the season! There's SO MUCH to dissect here, I can't wait to see what you have to say
i thought the box on the roof contained the bird that nagara abandoned at the school entrance. i assume nozomi picked it up and tried to nurture it back to life like she did with the seagull in the first "this world". she seems to spend a good bit of time on the school roof so it seems like a reasonable place for her to hide and take care of the bird.
also, thank you for the video! i definitely missed a lot the first time i watched these first 5 episodes so your video really helped a lot click for me!
The box of blankets in episode 1 tied into them knowing there was a bird and it flew away into the void to another world AND it’s the same seagull? that was saved in the next episode that main guy ( I don’t know names yet ) said there was nothing they could do for it.
Watching this now after the latest (ep 8) I wonder if the floral reeves are a ref to what happened in ep 8. SPOILERS but the graves have a similar thing going on. If not I'm going crazy thinking about background details lol
Idk if this is the wrong video or wrong time, but im still waiting on your long analysis of subaru. Perhaps with season 3 coming soon now is the perfect time to revisit?
This is wonderful. Glad to finally see some quality Sonny Boy analysis. I haven't checked out your Twitch yet, but do you have your episode stream and discussions saved? I'd love to watch them all.
Aye, it's a real set. Does double-duty for game streams where it's a different camera angle, too! It's the same place where the whiteboards used to be; now they are digital, basically, heh.
One my favorite details is actually how they don't explain the rules of the worlds until episode 2. We assume that Cap's power is being able to enact penalties, until the power is turned on him at the end of the first episode. This brings up questions about whether it was his power to begin with. When we learn about the cause of the blue fire in episode 2, we can infer that that the ability to enact penalties was the rules if the first world.
First off, as this is my first time seeing your channel, I feel it necessary to mention your resemblance to Ron Swanson. Secondly, Sonny Boy will definitely be the sleeper hit of this season, a la Odd Taxi, Eizouken and Olympia Kyklos. From just a glance at the poster, it leaves a longer lasting impression than everything surrounding it and it's the only anime this season I have bothered watching. I don't even necessarily have high hopes for its conclusion, I just can tell that regardless it will be a more interesting experience than its competition.
Not gonna lie, your Nyamazon broke me for a second. Also, I love your eye for detail. I had already forgotten most of the powers introduced during the first episode, which will not do for the sake of discussing this show going forward. And by the way, I think 4/5 of those extra details were brought up during episode 5, which makes me eager to hear what we may glipmse next.
I've never seen this channel before, but I'll be goddamned if a 50 minute video on the most criminally slept on series this summer doesn't earn a sub. Sonny Boy is so damn good, and deserves this level of analysis.
Thank you for doing this, people rarely make these type of content since it is very time consuming especially for anime like Sonny boy which are heavily indicates a lot of details. I like you not only explain the detail but also analyzing the metaphor behind it. It is very helpful for other people to understanding the anime much more, also helpful for other content creators. The box on the roof probably is to showcase it was copy from the real world through the feather around it, as a hint for Mizuhos cats power. In episode 6 we also see the same place but this time in real world and instead of the box, it was the book that Nozomi teared. Also content in the box looks like a uniform. The black board that Hoshi stared at, looks like a full covered sun, what I see is metaphorically for a higher existing, like god, or a different world as they are, it was between the sun and the earth like a different planet.
I couldn't ask for better, I was just looking for someone to analyse and ponder over this lil complex gem Madhouse delivered us this summer and boi are the next eps even more intriguing !
@@NearlyOnRed I just wish I could catch you live more often on your Twitch streams. The season 2 watch along of Re:Zero was so much fun, but sadly I've been juggling life and work so I miss out on the live streams. Thankfully videos like this and your Twitch archive are perfect for my early morning shifts. Nevertheless Th8a more of your content is always welcome and appreciated, so once again I'll say I'm glad to have you back.
