Karen's Anime Blog

Sometimes, a show really just clicks with you, for no obvious reason. There are shows that I really don’t think are very good in any sort of objective sense that I enjoyed immensely, and I don’t know why. With Turkey!, I seem to have the opposite scenario going on; everything it does pisses me off, and I can’t even explain it.

…well, I can explain a little. I don’t like the tonal whiplash the show features: desperately silly one minute, serious the next. Like in this episode, Mai manages to get a functional bowling alley built in a matter of hours, during a time when they don’t even have any machines to help with the labor. Even in modern times, it would take you a lot longer to build a functional bowling alley with gutters and ball returns, and that’s assuming you actually knew the dimensions; Mai is just pulling the details out of her memory and somehow communicating this information to workers who have never seen a bowling alley before, without even using any sort of written plans. It’s ridiculous.

“How handy that you guys just had all this perfectly-straight lumber on hand! Go Sengoku-era forestry!”

Now this would be fine if the whole show was just a check-your-brain-at-the-door-and-have-fun sort of affair– I mean, when I’m watching Looney Tunes, it doesn’t bother me that characters can pull a mallet out of their back pocket, even when they’re not wearing pants. But Turkey! loves to get serious and then plays it’s overbaked character drama so completely straight– none of the whimsy the other elements rely on is on display for a solid two thirds of the show.

And the character drama is just so stale. I’ve complained about Rina’s attitude before, and in this episode we learn what makes Rina tick, and it’s the most cliche backstory imaginable: her parents got divorced and she’s afraid everybody is going to leave her. Yes, this is a real thing that happens, but it’s a really boring explanation for why Rina has been so insufferable for the first quarter of the show. Then of course, when the girls manage to trigger the conditions necessary for time travel (and the less said about how that works, the better), everything is set up perfectly to play into Rina’s abandonment issues. Some viewers might consider that good writing, but for me it’s too on the nose.

“We’re missing Rina!”

“You’re saying that like it’s a BAD thing!”

The episode ends with the girls refusing to go back to the future without Rina, so they’re all stuck in the Sengoku era for a while longer. But you know what would have been cool? If the other four girls had gone and just left Rina there. It would have been totally unexpected, and then we’d see Rina dealing with her abandonment issues in a more interesting way, because her feelings about everyone abandoning her would actually be justified. What if Mai and the others couldn’t get back to the Sengoku era until ten years had passed, and Rina had become a grown woman? Would she be able to reintegrate into modern society– and would she even want to anymore?

But alas, that is not the show we got. Next episode, it’s going to be back to the girls whipping out their smartphones every ten seconds while promising to keep a low profile, bickering all the while. If I keep on covering this show it’s probably just going to degenerate into hate-watching, so I think I’ll drop it now and leave it for the people who are actually enjoying it.