Caligula

Episode 4

While last week saw Caligula ditch its plot momentum to shine the spotlight on Mifue's character, episode 4 manages to find a much more even balance of character development and exposition, dividing the story roughly in half between the two efforts. Things move quickly on the exposition side, as Ritsu, Mifue, Shogo, and Kotaro get the lowdown from Aria about the history of Mobius and the need to gather heroes together to fight against μ's well-intentioned but dangerous hold on the virtual city. As far as character development goes, the other half of this episode belongs to Suzuna, who begins to form an emotional bond with an equally isolated library patron before discovering his darker nature hiding just beneath the surface.

Both halves of the plot do good work in stabilizing Caligula's shaky storytelling, though they aren't without their faults. The exposition scenes help to establish a clear conflict and finally unite our cast together under a common goal. Most of what Aria explains about her and μ's goals in creating Mobius rely on fairly standard sci fi tropes, most of which were already apparent after the first couple episodes, but the clarity of focus Aria provides in summing it all up is still welcome. It's unfortunate that the cast's group dynamic hasn't gelled together yet, nor have their individual personalities managed to rise above the generic JRPG clichés we met at the start of the show. Ritsu is essentially a cipher protagonist, Shogo is stoic, Naruko is quirky, and Kotaro is headstrong. Mifue fares a bit better in theory, since last week spent so much time with her, but we see none of those personality flaws or idiosyncrasies factor into her chemistry with the others this week, which makes episode 3 feel like even more of an outlier in retrospect. While Caligula definitely needed to take some time to get its team of heroes on the same page, it's worrisome that they still feel so half-baked as characters.

Suzuna follows Mifue in being slightly more interesting than her companions, but even that stems from grading on a heavy curve. I dug the slightly surreal and eerie atmosphere of the library she shared with Komori, but the actual dialogue they exchanged was underwhelming. I'll give Caligula points for using The Lord of the Rings as the episode's main reference point, but watching two moody teenagers spend half an episode psychoanalyzing Sméagol is not my definition of entertainment. The characterization of both parties felt far too self-serious for such an incredibly basic breakdown of the effects of isolation on the psyche; I'm happy that the show can focus on character interactions over empty spectacle when given the chance, but in order for that strategy to pay off, the dialogue has to actually be good. I was also not a fan of Suzuna using “the power of song” to defeat Komori in the end, which came across far too corny to be taken seriously.

Overall, Caligula seems to slowly be taking shape, though the show's pacing is still too erratic for my tastes. There are some strong aesthetic compositions on display in this episode as usual, but the mediocre animation negates Caligula's potential to get by purely on the graces of its good looks. Now that the exposition has been mostly taken care of, I'd like to see Caligula give its heroes some of those Catharsis Effect weapons so they can begin doing battle with the Digiheads and the Musicians. At this point, more dumb and empty spectacle might actually do the show a favor.

Rating: C+

Caligula is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is an English teacher who has loved anime his entire life, and he spends way too much time on Twitter and his blog.