As an idol anime, I expected Trapezium to have some casual fun a few good songs, and a nice message about friendship. What I didn’t expect, however, was for one of the main characters to be the most manipulative I’ve seen in recent times and an underdeveloped critique to go along with it. The way the charming visuals of the movie clashed with the heartwarming story at its center storyline left me confused after watching the movie.
The movie begins with Yu Azuma who is a first year high school student and aspires to become an idol. This movie is based on the novel written by a former idol Kazumi Takayama, and is directed by Masahiro Shinohara and produced by Coloverworks. Originally planning to form a group with one girl from each of the four directions of the region she lives in, she eventually meets three girls. These include Ranko Katori, a wealthy student from the girl’s school, Kurumi Taiga, a shy robotics fan, and Mika Kamei who is an avid volleyball supporter. They together form a group that becomes famous but learns that the price of fame is high.
Azuma is an idol at heart. And this group, that about her. But it is here that I have a little grudge against her characterization. The heroes and heroines in trouble anime ultimately guilt trip the other girls and get them together under the pretense of friendship. Then they pretend that they are thrust into fame and fortune by chance. I don’t think the film depicts the time she manipulates and lies to others adequately. I think she would be phenomenal if she was faced with the opportunity to shed light on her own character’s development, but the film is not able to achieve that, making her feel shallow and unfinished.
There were areas where the film could have been improved, the character designs alongside the animations were top notch. Character design Rio assisted in animation direction and character design for the movie. One of the best things about this movie is how the design of each girl is done to show her personality without being dramatic. Since it is an animated movie, physical performance is delivered by the animators and the animators did a great job for all of them. Also, the animation itself wasn’t choppy for the most part and was well combined with appropriate color choices that stood in contrast to the sometimes uncomfortable narrative of the movie.
The movie targets the girls to gain popularity and become idols which makes things for the vision quite limited in terms of the end. Characters don’t have any endings, or better, roughly created ones, and less loader Bezu Inani’s Trapezium concerning cells. Their conversation held allusions, like civilization and Azuma’s and reunions, don’t tie into the last ‘output’.There is no moral there, nothing that justifies how Azuma uses all of her friends. From all that one might areas, how is the film such a strong fixation while there seem to be so many points that get dragged?
In the end, I would say the story was trying to touch on some dark areas involving the idol industry but, for the most part, it felt like a flipping romance novel. In that sense, the anime is saying something interesting with the animation. However, the character development and the story itself feel a bit on the shallow side even when compared to other idol animes. So while Trapezium isn’t awful, its uniqueness fails to make itself shine.
For more movies like Trapezium (2024) visit 123 movies