A Couple of Cuckoos

Episode 19

A Couple of Cuckoos continues its upswing from the previous week, and as I'm always one to give credit where it's due, the show pulled off a genuine surprise for me in this episode. As I alluded to in the previous review, I thought I had the situation with Erika's mysterious family photo all figured out, and this episode initially seems to confirm what my theory was: Nagi and Erika as childhood play-mates, him seemingly forgetting his status as Erika's 'destined' partner as kids and the one she was expanding her social media presence in order to find. It is contrived, it is expected, and it is a complete bullshit fake-out as the series shortly reveals just to screw with presumptuous audience members like me. Bravo, Cuckoos, I can admit when I played myself.

The actual story thus proves to be that much more interesting as Cuckoos really swings for the kind of scattered soap-opera swerves its premise should so well lend itself to. The guy in the photo turns out to be Erika's older brother Sosuke, having disappeared when she was a kid under currently-mysterious circumstances with her parents now pretending he never existed at all. As I did with the photo in the first place, it's the sort of odd situation where you immediately start theorizing about what's actually going on. Sure, the 'obvious' choice is that he tragically died young and the cover-up was some ill-conceived way to spare little Erika's feelings, but given how well this show got me with just this recent reveal, I can't afford to expect things to be that simple. I'll assuredly await some more complicated, novel twist. Or maybe Sosuke's dad just disowned him because he came out as gay, who knows.

What I do know is that this Sosuke revelation is one of those plot twists that actually does 'change everything' as the best ones do. It completely recontextualizes much of Erika's interactions and connections with our other characters, generally to more complex results. Her very first meeting with Nagi from the show's beginning is cast in a new light, per his resemblance to the brother she's been seeking, and those foundational sibling feelings don't go unnoticed by the likes of Nagi and Sachi. Turns out brother complexes run in the (swapped) families, sure, but it also provides a new, earnestly sweet framing for Erika latching on so hard to the idea of having a sibling in Sachi.

That's an element that wraps around to encompass some of the broader themes of the whole show, Erika's arranged cohabitation with Nagi and later Sachi representing her efforts at choosing some sort of found-family for herself. With the knowledge we're picking up now, that stands as a specific counter to her father's rigid efforts to define who does or doesn't count as a member of her family, regardless of what her memories of her own brother told her. That's in line with the idea in A Couple of Cuckoos of children breaking free from their parents' machinations, up to and including deciding who their family is, bound if not by official marriage, then by choosing to simply be with and support each other.

This episode is largely a sequence of contemplations following that one major revelation, and yet it still feels more momentous and eventful than so much of Cuckoos's previous efforts just because of the implications of a twist like this. It feels like the first time in ages we're earnestly getting inside the head of Erika as a character, understanding the kind of situation she's been butting up against her entire life, and finally providing context for her appreciation for Nagi beyond "He's nice and he cooks good". Erika getting attached to him as a potential replacement for her missing brother creates a more complicated, messy dynamic for the characters to navigate in their relationship, and that absolutely re-energizes a show like this. That can be felt just in the anime's enthusiasm for presenting the material, as scenes like that new-view flashback to Erika and Nagi's first meeting is probably the nicest this show has looked since that opening episode we saw that scene in originally!

This being A Couple of Cuckoos, it's not without some stumbles, particularly towards the end here. Initially the kid in the photo not being Nagi would seem to absolve Mr. Amano of the wilder implications of his involvement in this bizarre baby-switching-arranged-marriage scheme. But then you realize he is still leaving that photo out for people to find even as he maintains Sosuke never existed, and thinking about the situation as-presented just makes the whole plan that much creepier. It doesn't help that in Nagi's conversational face-off with his biological father at this episode's end, I just cannot seem to get a read on this old weirdo. He pointedly avoids answering all the burning questions both Nagi and we in the audience have, to instead swerve around to asking Nagi about Sachi's sister-crush on him, in time with Segawa similarly honing in on the subject because the episode thought she needed something to do this week, I guess.

It feels like an annoying stalling tactic more than anything after the series just made its most impressive plot advancement in months, and presents itself with the bizarre presumption that Nagi and Sachi going all Folgers-Christmas commercial might somehow 'solve' the overall issues connecting all these kids. It just comes off as more potential pairing drama for the sake of itself, and ends the episode feeling like it's headed for a dragged-out downer after everything else it had done built up so much good will. Granted, that's mostly a problem to be evaluated next week, as there was still clearly plenty else I dug about this episode. But that mess of a compulsory complication capping things off just served to remind me that Cuckoos is still Cuckoos, even at what seems to be its best.

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A Couple of Cuckoos is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.