Catch the other episode reviews here

Last time was a weird one—Yup, weird, even by Sonny Boy’s standards. So when I say weird, I mean like at least three times as weird as you would normally think weird means. We had, um, monkeys that played baseball. Nagara can warp to different realities. He just can choose where. And a one-armed monkey also played baseball…Let’s just move on.

First Impressions

As is becoming usual for Sonny Boy, we begin in a strange world. This time instead of Satan’s toilet, we’re now in some kind of Pac-Man-esque world where these evil blue guys are chomping on mice. In order to solve the world’s problem, they draw lines on the floor to trap the blue guys and like kill em or something. Their reward is a computer mouse because the god of that world understands irony, I suppose.

For whatever reason, the mouse can unravel things. Shoelaces, clothes, computer code, whatever. Meaning it can probably unravel the world too, but there may be no going back after that. Still, time is limited because everyone’s on a “let’s hate Nagara” kick. Aki, the teacher who swam in last episode is still there, and she’s very adamant about the fact that they’ll never escape. Now that she told them people had their powers at school before, everyone places the blame on Nagara.

They think that he brought them here and is now faking the fact that he can’t use his powers to stay as long as possible. I don’t believe that, but I did say it seemed likely that he was the cause of it last time. I still do think that. I just don’t know how yet.

To break all that up, we had a sweet scene with Nagara and Nozomi. Both of them just fishing and diving to the bottom of the ocean. Normal teenager stuff, you know? Nagara’s actually starting to smile more, which is nice to see. There’s also a maybe sweet scene with Asakaze and Aki, but clearly, she’s just trying to turn everyone on each other. Never trust someone who claims to hear god’s voice. That’s just a general rule of thumb. Not a good idea.

All the students begin to think of Asakaze as some kind of savior because Aki says so, making them all hate Nagara even more. According to her, his power is the power to escape. He wanted to leave the old world, so he escaped to this one.  Nagara once again escapes, this time to what looks like the old island, the one that got burned to the ground. This is interesting because we assumed the world was restored, so the burned sections shouldn’t exist.

Rajdhani thinks his power isn’t to teleport or warp at all. He doesn’t move people to anything that exists. He, in fact, creates a new reality where they stand. This revelation was apparently a good thing because Nozomi says that the light that leads out of the world is getting closer, but we’ll have to wait until next time to see if that’s true.

My thoughts

You can just tell something big is about to happen, can’t you? This episode was pretty intense. It feels more than ever like sides are being chosen. Nozomi, Mizuho, and Rajdhani all care about and believe that Nagara can save them. They’re pro Nagara all the way.

But then you have Team Aki that’s putting all their faith in Asakaze and his powers. It seems like Hoshi is more on Nagara’s side but isn’t quite jumping the gun yet. He could go either way. What’s amazing to me is that all of this is happening, and it’s only episode 5. This feels like we’re coming up on the finale, not the halfway point. It makes me excited to see what will happen.

As much as I loved the absurdity of the last episode, times like this are when Sonny Boy is at its best. It’s trippy, it’s weird, but it’s still coherent and makes some kind of sense. It goes from being weird for the hell of it to an incredibly creative and imaginative anime. So for as much as I love monkey baseball, give me more of this character drama and weirdness.

What’s fun to me is that I thought I was a clever boy. I thought when I said that Nagara may have brought them to this world, I was ahead of the game. I thought I said a smart thing, but apparently, I was right where Sonny Boy wanted me. To be fair, I feel like trying to outsmart this series is a fruitless endeavor. There’s no way in hell I’ll be able to stay on the same wavelength as Sonny Boy. 

Sonny Boys often feels less like a story and more like a bunch of insane ideas glued together. That, combined with the fact that many of the characters are nameless and forgettable, and it can make you stop caring about the story in some ways. I imagine most people watch it not for the characters and the story but to see what will happen next.

That’s a very valid reason, and it’s also why I’m interested in Sonny Boy, but the series doesn’t have much draw other than that. That curiosity is it.  That’s why I loved the scene with Nagara and Nozomi. We got some good old character development. Sonny Boy actually followed conventional storytelling methods for once. Can you believe it?

We need more of that. I’m all for weird, but we need something to grab onto. We need a reason to care about the characters in this world, basically. Little by little, Sonny Boy has gotten better at doing that. It just started out really overwhelming with all the characters that I couldn’t tell apart. I actually know most of the main character’s names now. That’s how you know they’re doing something right.

I haven’t really talked about it much, but the art for the whole series is pretty good, but this episode, in particular, had a lot of neat stuff. When Nagara and Nozomi went down into the ocean, that was beautiful. Art has been fascinating ever since Nagara realized he could change the world in some way. Some of the worlds are beautiful, just in an abstract way. This is the first time we just got something nice to see.

Sonny Boy’s a lot of fun. It’s easy to write it off as just being weird, which it is, but I don’t know if people truly understand how hard it is to consistently create the feel Sonny Boy does. It feels like no other series I’ve ever watched, and it nails that vibe every single episode, almost every minute of each episode.

So regardless of how you feel about the series itself and the different aspects of it, you have to respect what Sonny Boy is. It’s one of the most imaginative things I’ve ever seen in my life, and I wish I had just an ounce of the creativity that this show bleeds. I would be so much better of a writer.

Thank you very much for reading

What’s the most imaginative series you’ve ever seen? I may have seen another one, but Sonny Boy’s a contender.