Wish Upon the Pleiades

Episode 9

This was a very strange episode of Wish Upon the Pleiades. It doesn't follow the usual format of the series at all. There's no drive-shaft training—in fact, the gadgets don't even show up. There's no climactic battle. In fact, no one transforms at all, including Minato. It's the format-breaking moment I've wanted this whole series, but I'm not entirely sure that it works. Still, it does more than enough to shake up this story further.

That said, it doesn't answer any questions. It mostly poses new ones about the nature of Subaru and Minato's relationship and Minato's abilities and goals. That's the focus this week, as the two-person Astronomy Club takes a trip around the galaxy. It's the day of the school festival, and when Subaru sets up a paper planetarium, Minato uses his powers to show her what the stars really look like. He gives her a front-row seat as they zoom into space.

Of course, we don't get there right away. We have to wade through some real muck with the Cosplay Research Club before we get there. That's the weakest part of the episode, as Subaru's friends struggle to come up with what their "do-nothing" club should present for the festival. They can't use their room because of the barriers designed to keep the fragments inside. However, if they don't come up with something, they'll lose club status and the room with it, endangering their plans. It's a really silly dilemma, and the show doesn't even take it seriously. It quickly dissipates to make room for romantic shenanigans.

The members of the Cosplay Research Club have figured out that Subaru and Minato are tight, and they've all turned into shippers on deck. The girls spend the rest of the episode conspiring to capture pictures of the couple for a contest, and it's as pointless as you'd expect. We didn't really need this framing device for Subaru and Minato to hang out. They do plenty of that anyway. The rest of the group could've taken the week off, if Wish Upon the Pleiades couldn't give them something more interesting to do.

Thank goodness the Subaru and Minato stuff helps to make up for that. Minato uses his abilities to show Subaru different constellations. I thought it was strange that Subaru never questioned how he could do this, but then she starts to recall repressed memories from when she was little. There was a boy with magical star powers in the hospital where her mom was staying, and they bonded over constellations. She doesn't figure out it was Minato in the present, but Minato does, and he tells her. It's too bad that they can't remember what they saw swirling around space, because this adds a whole new fascinating dynamic to the Subaru-Minato relationship.

It also has important implications for Minato himself and his role in this whole shebang. Presumably, the space powers he used here are how his "evil" version keeps tracking down our heroines and the star fragments. So maybe Minato really does have no awareness of what he does in that form, if memory is the cost to get home. When the fragments trigger his transformation at the end of the episode, it certainly seems like a persona-switch. It's like a different character took over his body at the end.

I want to believe that Minato is ultimately good, because his relationship with Subaru is sweet. Whether they stay friends or the show pushes them toward something more, I'm eager to see where their strange little bond will go. Minato could also have a good reason for antagonizing the main characters, though I don't expect that kind of moral complexity from this show. I think it's more likely that the "evil" personality is some sort of alter ego or mind control.

Either way, the show was a step up this week during his sequences. The space animation also looked really nice. It's a shame that the other characters' behavior dragged so much of the episode down. Episode 9 of "Wish Upon the Pleiades" is a powerful testament in "less is more." The plot doesn't even move forward much to achieve transcendence, as what happens to Subaru and Minato's relationship this episode comes mostly through hints. Even those hints are better than a less ambiguous plot made up of a whole lot of nothing. This is Wish Upon the Pleiades at its best and its worst. Hopefully it can nail the balance next time.

Rating: C+

Wish Upon the Pleiades is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a musicologist who studies film music. She writes about anime and many other topics on Autostraddle.com, her blog and her Twitter.