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Rajdhani is probably the show’s best character, the most committed to solving the mystery angle and a fun presence in general; the dub version even has him voiced by someone with Indian heritage, but he still mainly exists as smart guy^tm
The point I’m trying to make is, given the inconsistent handling of the characters and loose definition of what constitutes character development, I think the target audience would find it difficult to connect to any of these characters in an impactful way after the show concludes.
The expected prompt from the shows’ most ardent supporters would be:
“You completely missed these tiny moments all adding up. It’s deep, actually, the characters don’t have obvious growth because they aren’t obvious archetypes! Look at all these metaphors you’re ignoring!”
Yes, this is a show where a lot of context is very blink or you’ll miss it. Every episode is more or less its own story with a distinct message. You never know what you’re gonna get and I don’t intend to spoil that here. It can be pretty fun trying to break the individual messages of episodes, but a lot of these focusing choices, which I know exist the way they are because of Sonny Boy’s anime-original status, are easy to be overshadowed by the influx of lore, as well as Natsume’s visual direction.
Sonny Boy’s at least a show that’s easy to appreciate on a stylistic level. Eguchi Hisashi, who hasn’t designed anime characters since the turn of the millennium, created a very distinctly designed cast in spite of their similarities from the head down. The way characters’ faces look avoids following the lazy expectation for modern anime art direction. Most episodes have some sort of impressive visual flex, like Episode 2 with the atmosphere established by the paper-looking blue fire, though particularly Episode 5 and Episode 8 for their specific style of animation and shading when distinguishing the mental realms. The mental twisting of many dimensions of pattered color is a particular animation highlight whenever it comes up, the bus flying through it in Episode 9 like it were The Magic School Bus’s serious YA adaptation.