They say that "third time's the charm", but is it?
As I said on my review of the first episode, Sakurako-san was a great surprise to me. It wasn't even on my watchlist, but I decided to give it a try and really enjoyed it. It showed a great potential of proving to me that it's possible to have a great mystery anime. But now I have my doubts.
Don't get me wrong, this episode was truly beautiful and fully enjoyable. I had a nice time watching it indeed. But it appears that every episode loses a little of the mystery, and this space is filled with coincidences and I-don't-know-what. I'll not delve deeply into the minor problems but, unfortunately, there're some major ones.
First: it's all about coincidences, again. Remember that on the last episode, Shoutarou's classmate, Yuriko, was the babysitter of the lost girl? So, now, the dead body they've found is Yuriko's grandma. Where they live? In a village with only 50 people? What are the chances?
Second: the mystery or, more precisely, the lack of it. They find the body and conclude that the old woman fell and died. They didn't discover who she was, it was Yuriko who tells Shoutarou that the body (or bones) belonged to her grandmother. And then, Sakurako-san tells the girl that it wasn't suicide, but an accident. That's it.
To be fair, the explanation of how the woman died was presented in a similar fashion to detective dramas. But there was no investigation at all, and for a mystery anime, it's supposed to be there. Also, the show failed to get me excited when they discovered the body. I mean, they discovered it, and I got to see the bone parade scene, but then it just ended there.
On the bright side, while lacking investigation and mystery, at least the episode still got great visuals and animation quality, and the story was beautiful. Furthermore, we got to know a little bit more about Sakurako's past, and we didn't have to watch 12 episodes to know who's Soutarou. So, despite all the negative sides I'll keep watching Sakurako-san, at least for a while.
