Karen's Anime Blog

I’ll level with you guys: I am not enjoying this anime. Right now I’m liking Necronomico and the Cosmic Horror Show more than Turkey!, and Necronomico…is not a good anime. There is something uniquely tedious about Turkey! though, with how it’s managed to take a completely batshit insane premise and make it a stultifying bore. This episode featured a ton of people standing around talking, and while the romance shows I’m watching do a lot of that too, in those shows the conversations actually feel productive somehow; here, it just seems like the same points and character beats being rehashed over and over.

First, we have to talk about the time travel premise. They seem to be taking a Back To The Future spin on it where they– or at least Nanase, who appears to be the brains of the operation– are assuming that everything they do impacts the timeline, and if they do too much, they’ll cease to exist. The other girls seem to agree with this, yet they all constantly do stuff that both endangers the timeline and gives away to contemporary characters that they’re time travelers– even at one point saying, “Remember when we learned about this in Japanese history class?” At the end, it’s supposed to be a cliffhanger that Sugiri’s sister Sumomo has somehow figured out that the girls are from the future, but really, all she had to do was listen to their conversation for a minute or two. I’m sure there will be some more way plot-twistier reason revealed that she has that knowledge, but regardless, this kind of behavior just makes the girls seem super-dumb. There were hints in episode two that they weren’t the brightest crayons in the box, but this is going pretty far in that direction.

Sure, give the girl from the 1400s mass-produced candy from the twenty-first century, I’m sure that won’t do anything to give your status as time-travelers away.

Next, the main source of drama is Rina, and Rina is completely insufferable. She was rude in the first two episodes, but she usually at least had a point: now, she’s putting herself in danger because she has to make everything about her. She decides, based on the fact that one of Sugiri’s sisters hates traveling performers, that she doesn’t want to stay in a house where she’s hated. So despite being given the invitation to stay the night by Sugiri, the lord of the estate, she wants to go out on her own and find her own place to sleep, in an area with bandits and wild animals. I guess being very nearly raped and murdered in the last episode didn’t drum it into her head that Sengoku-era Japan is not all fun and games.

Mai: “What’s wrong? Do you want to get assaulted, and maybe eaten?”

Rina: “Actually I do, that’s my kink; don’t tell the others.”

And what’s so messed up about this is that Rina isn’t a traveling performer in any sense; that’s just the cover story the girls came up with to explain their strange clothing and bowling balls. So her argument is “Anzu hates traveling performers, for some unexplained reason. Even though I’m not a traveling performer, I don’t want to exist in her house while she erroneously thinks I’m this thing that I’m not, because I respect her preferences on house guests– it’s totally worth risking my life for this.” The other girls eventually talk her down, but it was a stupid thing to even waste screen time on.

This anime just isn’t any fun. Watching stupid people make stupid mistakes isn’t fun, unless the characters are so effortlessly charming that they can carry that off somehow, which is not the case here. Right now the only characters I like at all are Sayuri, for being the emotionally intelligent one, and Nozomi, because she called out Rina for being “passive-aggressive.” Actually, I think Rina is more aggressive-aggressive, but still, glad someone called her out. The rest of the characters are different shades of blah, with Rina just being a charisma black hole.

Nanase tells all the other girls to do absolutely nothing to draw attention to themselves, then whips out her smartphone to take a picture of her dinner. Sure, just use tech from 600 years in the future, what could be the harm? And why even take the picture? It’s not like she can upload it to Instagram!

As much as I’m not enjoying it, I hesitate to stop covering this show, because I still feel like it’s an important show to be discussing, even if “enjoyment” isn’t really part of the package. If it doesn’t do something more interesting in episode four though, I probably will just drop it.