How would you rate episode 7 of
FX Fighter Kurumi-chan ?
I can accuseof doing the same thing over and over again. At times it really does seem like it has the one weird trick to getting emotionally rich off the misery of these girls: give them hope, take it away, watch them despair. Rinse, repeat. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
But that's the predication. Mebuki finds herself in another part of the world. Metaphorically speaking, what with the foreign currencies being traded. But also spiritually, relying on luck and vibes and pure desperate delusion. She's genuinely worlds apart from Kurumi and Mochiko, who actually come off like they know what they're doing, and even Yasuko, who at least had so little to invest that she thus had less to lose. Mebuki has destroyed all of her potential income forwards and backwards and is reduced to subsisting on bread and water soup (it's a proper meal).
It's worse, it's an escalation, but it's also the same arc she screamed through last week. It's the same one the enthusiastic audience watched Kurumi panic through previously. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
Just like Mebuki tells herself this will be different, that there's a reason for sticking with this bet, the audience can tell themselves this will be different. There will be an upswing. There will be something new. That's what the show's doing, it's just bringing me in via metatext. It's letting me experience the gambler's folly via story investment. Mebuki stays stuck on the same bet over and over, expecting to win this time. I keep watching her do it, expecting a different result to shake things up. Did I ever tell you the definition of insanity?
That's the point, of course. We've been over this. FX Fighter Kurumi-chan exists at the intersection of cautionary tale and fascinating misery porn. Mebuki continues to fall into worse and worse places, pointedly contrasted with Kurumi's own rise on the opposite of her own position, because Mebuki is not the main character and so she can have these worse experiences. I say that as I know Kurumi committed theft from her own father only three episodes in. I couldn't miss that, this episode directly brings that point up. But Kurumi was never in danger of abject poverty. She never actually started skipping school. She never had to push her shame down and deny offering snacks to her visiting friends because she was so far into a hole. She never had to resort to home haircuts to save money.
This hole Mebuki is leaving herself in is so deep that she might never really be able to climb out of it. Even after a miraculous turnaround, the meager amount she makes back in surviving is enough to piss her off worse than everything she lost. It's addiction in the clearest form this animated addiction simulator has depicted, made even more vicious by Mebuki's barely rudimentary understanding of it. She read one (1) book and is so proud of herself. She's so deep in confirmation-bias beliefs that she seems primed to be the type of person who gets sucked into a cult. I continue to demonstrate the anime's approach by listing these blunt escalations of unfavorable behavior. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
My own coping mantras aside, this episode does have some other offers beyond Mebuki going into the blue again after the money's gone. Friends in funds are hard to come by, and inside of Mebuki's circle there are two wolves. My one successful stock buy-in continues to be in Yasuko, who having lost only like fifty bucks and then pulled out, stands to potentially succeed in a "Luigi wins by doing absolutely nothing" sort of way. Her own experiences have her clearly worried for her friend in a genuine way that's going to be rare enough in this capitalism-rubbernecking stretch of an anime series. It also might be the only genuine thing about Yasuko, who even picks up a hobby like drawing as a purely mercenary pursuit. Seeing her reference a book on how to draw viral manga is almost as funny, sad, and funny because it's sad as Mebuki's desperation. They all suck, but Yasuko sucks in that specific way that makes me like her because of the way she sucks. What did I say about rationalizing?
I contain multitudes. On the other end of that sucking (I don't need to rewrite that) is Mochiko. Mochiko was always bluntly in service of herself. It worked because even the then-naive Kurumi seemed aware of the personal responsibility divide. She reiterated it when she passed her efforts onto Mebuki, after all. But now her misanthropic mentor doubles back on that as Mochiko adopts a true villain role. She's not just using Mebuki's intuition as a bellwether as she has with others before, Mochiko is actively sabotaging her. She's speaking in language plainly evocative of a pig-butchering scam as she points Mebuki right at the blades that will bleed her dry. For what? This is in service of the "game" that Mebuki herself suggested, so it's only fair, right?
Or is Mochiko offering up one of her peers as a sacrifice, seemingly just for kicks, the sign of something darker within her? More rhetorical questions, more self-aware repeating of the fact that I'm asking rhetorical questions. Mochiko's tragic backstory is implied in flashbacks in this episode, her unloving-yet-moneyed home robbing her of the understanding of the value of both affection and affluence. It's not like that's going to swing opinions. Yes, it turns out she's as effectively idiotic as the rest of these girls, just in different contexts, but it also means that Mochiko's not in danger of starving to death the way Mebuki's failures set her up for. Sure, I'll buy that that's the further purpose of FX Fighter Kurumi-chan positioning Mochiko in this antagonistic way. Now I want her to fail as the others all have already. She really deserves it, that makes it okay to keep tuning in hoping for these upsets on people's livelihoods. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
I can couch this in all the ancient memetic pop-song references I want. I'm not trying to hide that FX Fighter Kurumi-chan is becoming an overbearing, exhausting time. I can still credit that as good though. I can still find myself reiterating on the purpose of it all, and the new facets it exposes in elements like Mebuki's starving desperation or Mochiko's true villainy. An anime that makes me experience any emotions is still preferable to one that inspires only apathy. There's still artistry here, even in the nothingness of its well-worn financial valleys—I like the raw silence of the screen as Mebuki watches damning lines go up and down. I'm impressed by the dedication and craft even as the characters' futility mirrors my own in wondering when my payoff for all this will be. Maybe basking in well-evoked desperate repetition is its own reward. Same as it ever was. Same as it ever was.
FX Fighter Kurumi-chan is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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