Lostorage incited WIXOSS

Episode 6

About five minutes into this week's episode of WIXOSS, I knew this writeup was going to be a challenge to write. Really good episodes give me a lot to dissect and analyze, and bad episodes have loads of things to discuss too, even if they're of the “What Not to Do” variety. Mediocre episodes are an entirely different animal though: they're boring.

The worst part is that this should have been a real gut-wrencher on paper. This is where Suzuko and Chinatsu finally hash it out on the Battlefield, where years of Chinatsu's pent-up anger clash with Suzuko's confusion and earnest love for her friend. The original Selector Infected Wixoss had a whole mess of problems, but one thing it was good at was easy melodrama. This should have been a slam dunk.

Instead, we get an anticlimax of a fight that's preceded by several scenes where almost nothing of importance occurs. We see Chinatsu seducing clueless Selectors into battle, and we also see her recruiting Rio into the Bookkeeper's schemes, but they're throwaway scenes at best. Rio gets a little bit of character development, but she's probably the least interesting Selector we've met that wasn't obvious cannon fodder, and I can't say anything we learned about her was particularly surprising or endearing. The scenes with the Bookkeeper had a certain level of charm, but his cryptic dialogue did nothing to clarify the nature of the Selector game or what his ultimate goals are. It felt like wheel-spinning in its purest form; a story going through the motions without moving an inch, in an effort to stall until we get to the big battle of the week.

But this battle was surprisingly toothless, again padded with way too much filler. The flashbacks concerning Chinatsu and Suzuko's friendship were nice in those first few episodes, but my patience with them is running a little thin. They aren't revealing anything we don't already know about Chinatsu's current state of mind, nor are they doing a good job at explaining what led her to this point in the first place. If anything, my understanding of Chinatsu's motivations is even more confused this week.

As some other viewers have also realized, Chinatsu's plan involves changing her entire life situation simply by erasing her memories of her former BFF, which doesn't make much sense. While I can sort of understand how Chinatsu feels that her attachment to Suzuko is holding her back emotionally, it's unclear how any of that will affect the very tangible issues of her family's encroaching poverty. Maybe that's the point, and Chinatsu is just being shortsighted, but the show isn't really exploring that idea yet, so Chinatsu is coming across as both desperate and a little delusional. Again, maybe that's the point, but it doesn't make for the most compelling conflict when the viewer doesn't fully understand the stakes. By the time the battle is ended by a nosy construction worker of all things, it doesn't feel like either of the two girls have gotten much of anywhere with each other.

Thankfully, we do end with Suzuko deciding to be somewhat proactive and fight as a Selector on her own terms. I liked this scene well enough, though I'm frustrated that the show whiffed so hard on the buildup to it. At the end of the day. this episode isn't bad, just forgettable. Time will tell if any of this episode's setup will amount to anything, but for now I'm just hoping this is a minor speedbump on the way to a more engaging and thoughtfully paced episode next week.

Rating: C

Lostorage incited WIXOSS is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.