“Everything’s Bright, Am I Aging?”
What They Say:
In near-future Japan with ultra-low birthrates, children are treasured but monitored. Santa is banned as dangerous. One snowy December 25th, middle-schooler Kazushige Sanda, descendant of Santa, is attacked by classmate Fuyumura who wants him to find her missing friend, Ono. “Santa, please find my friend.” To protect children from adults, Sanda decides to become Santa and fight the adults.
Review: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
This series is based on the manga of the same name by Paru Itagai, who is well-known for some creative properties out there like Beastars. The manga began in 2021 through Weekly Shonen Champion and wrapped up in 2024 with sixteen volumes, which are being released in English by Titan Comics. The anime adaptation is able to make a big splash by being produced by Science Saru, and has Tomohisa Shimoyama directing it from the scripts by Kimiko Ueno. Shimoyama has had two main directorial credits prior to this with Super Shiro and Yurei DEco, both of which basically make it clear that they’re ideal in bringing this particular story to life in this way.
The show is a very stylized one in a lot of ways, and there are setting moments within this that aren’t made clear but are part of the source material. Taking place about fifty to sixty years now, we get hints of how there’s a population decline issue going on in Japan, and there are a host of issues that come alongside this in how kids are treated. We also have a change in weather where winter has largely disappeared, though this episode has a rare moment of it being cold enough to snow and the kids outside are super excited to see that happen. One of the “stranger” parts of it is that the story of Santa Claus and Christmas has been kind of lost to a couple of generations now and isn’t all that well-known. In this setting, we’re introduced to classmates Sanda Kazushige and Shiori Fuyumura, where he’s definitely interested in her and tries to catch her eye in his own way, whereas Fuyumura has an eye on him for a very different reason.
She’s not really trying to kill him, you see. She’s convinced that his lineage is that of Santa Claus because of a whole host of clues she’s figured out, including him never wearing the red tracksuit of the school or anything else red. We see the kind of back-and-forth the two have, and her calling him out on connected to a curse about Santa Claus, only to have her finally make her big play by stabbing him in the chest so he bleeds out red, thereby unlocking the Claus factor. Well, it does happen, but not right away and seeing her panic over potentially actually killing a classmate is pretty fun because the character designs are just wildly excellent here. Each of the main cast have such unique designs and structure to them that I just love that for the two leads themselves, but also digging into the support and background characters. When we get those with just the “dot eyes” like the teacher at times, it reminds me so hard of some of the adult characters in comics strips like Calvin & Hobbes, which just made me love this all the more.
Now, Fuyumura has a reason for pushing this that isn’t that she wants Christmas back, or dislikes Sanda having this secret that he buried deep within him. It’s that she needs the power of Santa Claus that she believes he has in order to find another classmate that she seemingly has some level of feelings for who disappeared, named Ono. We get to see some of this in the flashbacks and it helps to establish Fuyumura’s motivations pretty well, to the point where she’ll consider herself a child in order to unlock Santa from Sanda. And boy does Santa come across well, with a big muscular body, a pretty tight looking beard, and awesome eyebrows that still largely has Sanda’s personality inside. A lot of it is just trying to get a handle on things, as Sanda as Santa struggles to adjust to the size, and then with Fuyumura trying to suss out more of what he can do with some dangerously creative tests that put the whole class at risk. It’s wildly over the top, but it works well with how both Sanda and Santa react to it all.
In Summary:
I had managed to go into this show knowing as little as possible, and the end result was something that absolutely delighted me once it reached the knife-point sequence. I was really taken by the character designs overall, far more than the odd framing and setup with Christmas and Santa Claus, but as it all comes together, it works far better than it should. The flashback sequences with Fuyumura and Ono delivered some of the best material, but I’m also fascinated by the dynamic of how both Sanda and Santa are operating in all of this, especially in having to deal with Fuyumura. There are a lot of good things potentially hiding in the background as well with the rest of the cast, but even if not, I’m here for the designs of it all to see what it can whip up and surprise me with. Definitely one of the most unexpected shows for me of the season.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Prime Video
