Review: Trapezium charts the giddy rise and ugly fall of an idol group

 I have a bit of a bone to pick with Crunchyroll. They are addicted to releasing movies in theaters for one night only, which then take forever to come to streaming, and honestly, I don't love that! Can we have at least a couple nights? Maybe a week? Please?

Last week, they released my favorite movie of the year, The Concierge, in theaters for a one-night-only event on September 11. I literally didn't hear a peep about it. I don't think I know anyone who saw it. It's so sad. But hopefully it'll find an audience whenever it makes it to Crunchyroll, or when people use a VPN to watch it on Japanese Netflix. It's worth the effort.

Maybe I'm extra bitter because these releases pretty much always fall on Wednesdays, when I have class, making it pretty hard for me to make it. But, I managed to last night for their extremely limited release of Trapezium, and I'm so glad I did!

I'll probably say this a lot on this blog, but I went into this movie knowing pretty much nothing. I'm a simple man: if an animated movie is in a theater near me, I will go see it. Even if the reviews are bad. Even if it looks bad. Even if it's only meant to be watched by actual children. I will be there. Real Field of Dreams shit here: If you animated it, Clayton will come.

All I knew ahead of time was that the movie was about an idol group. That was all. So I was delighted to discover the premise of an extremely determined student, Yuu Azuma, with a multi-step plan to form an idol group, including collecting members from various schools around the area (one for each cardinal direction -- the schools have North, East, South, and West in the names), volunteering, using social media, etc. etc. She's a little psycho, but giddily so. It feels like a fun spin on the "getting the band back together" plot, minus the "back" part.

The first half of the movie is pretty much just good, fun vibes. Things go well. The girls all have fun personalities and are ほんとうにかわいい. Yuu's machinations work well, but there are also plenty of glorious strokes of luck. The movie really sings with its inter-personal dynamics within the quartet, especially the slightly-more-fleshed-out story between Yuu and "Miss North."

Of course, it can't all be fine and dandy, and after the group's (spoiler alert) weirdly 3D-animated idol debut, things take a turn for the more dramatic, as the girls start to grapple with what the idol lifestyle actually looks like, and what they want their futures to be. It gets pretty brutal, and Yuu's character doesn't get off easily. There's one moment where her mask fully comes off that was so horrifying and ugly that I found myself thinking, "Damn, that's good acting." So kudos to the animators and her voice actor, Asaki Yuikawa, for that (all of the voice acting is great).

There aren't as many songs as one might expect from a movie about an idol group, but the ones that are there, are certified bops, and have been added to my running playlist. Really good stuff.

What really took me by surprise is how the film lands in such an emotional way. I had a thoroughly good time watching this. I laughed, hooted a bit, bopped along to the songs, but I didn't necessarily feel myself getting pulled in emotionally, even though I was very into the proceedings and loved the characters. It just didn't feel like the kind of story that would have me crying at the end. But the joke was on me. The last 10 minutes or so are so lovely, and find a satisfying emotional payoff for everything that came before. I was really impressed.

Whenever this ends up on Crunchyroll, it's definitely worth a look. Or just time travel back to September 18, 2024 so you can enjoy it during its brief, beautiful stint on the big screen (yes, I'm still bitter!).