Common Name: Fumikiri Jikan
Alternative Name: Crossing Time
Score: 4/10, 2/5
Length: 12 Episodes
Genre: Slice of Life, Comedy, Romance, Short-Form
Summary: A lot can happen when we stop moving, either by choice or because something blocks our path. Emotional tensions can rise. A lack of conversation can make a quiet moment awkward. Perhaps, you could even run into someone else purely by chance. In these moments, a great many things can happen just because you took the time to stop and pass the time however you can.
Review: To put it as mildly as I can, Fumikiri Jikan is a strange little anime. It's one of those titles that are exclusively interested in expressing the various interactions and events that a person might undergo while stopped at a crosswalk. What this means, generally, is that it is focused on capturing people during a vulnerable point in their commute where anyone or anything could approach them. So, for the vast majority of this show's runtime, we are given episode after episode of uncomfortable conversations, sleazy interactions, and downright unnerving scenarios that a number of different school girls undergo on their way to or from school. Needless to say, I'm inclined to take a certain amount of issue with a show like this when it takes things a bit too far.
And boy does it take things a bit far just by existing.
To be perfectly clear, nothing bad ever actually happens in Fumikiri Jikan. What it does do, however, is regularly skirt the line of being offensive. More often than not, this show just comes across as thoughtless and ignorantly insensitive as it goes for the cheap and easy laughs that are almost guaranteed to stir up some shit. For example, from the very first episode we are greeted with two high school girls that are talking about wanting to live their youth to the fullest, i.e. get a boyfriend. More accurately, we have one girl discussing her desire to do so while the other just buries her face in a book and makes wordless affirmations that she's listening. As the train passes, they agree to shout out the name of their crush, which only results in awkwardness as the quiet girl clearly shouts the other girl's name. Rather than reasonably letting the joke roll and letting the two awkwardly sort out the nature of their feelings, though, we are forced to watch the quiet girl double down on her confession while the other girl insists that "girls can't date each other." Then the episode just ends with nothing resolved whatsoever. So, on top of having the show's "comedy" hinge on a blatantly offensive and outdated point of view, nothing ever comes of this situation, effectively making the entire episode meaningless.
As the show goes on, it becomes clear that irrelevance is kinda the main through line of the series.
Were the show's humor any good, I might have been willing to forgive it but, episode after episode, it's the same set-up told again and again. There are always two characters that can be generally defined as "the eccentric" and "the twisted straight man." There is an aggressor in ever situation and a victim that is either left floundering in the scenario, effectively creating a shadenfreudic kind of comedy, or runs with the gag, making the overextended aggressor start to flounder. Rarely does this show venture from that formula, even as it revisits some of its characters, yet, when it does, it still relies on the same out-dated and offensive jokes. The primary example of this change of formula is seen in the paired episode regarding an old man reminiscing about an unrequited love he confessed to at a crosswalk years ago and then suddenly encountering a girl who looks just like that love, still carrying his confession letter. While the first episode ends with the easy assumption that this encounter is supernatural in nature, the second follows up with him learning that the girl is his crush's daughter. As it turns out the girl is simply attempting to visualize that same memory the man was having since her now deceased mother wrote about it in a book. Again, rather than letting the situation end there, the skit concludes with the girl making a pass at the old man either to tease him or fulfill a romance her mother and this man never got. While this conclusion is clearly meant to mock the stereotype of fated romance as well as age-gap relationships, it just comes across as a cheap joke that, like every other skit, can be as inappropriate as it likes since it never gets addressed again.
Cause, y'know, implied incestuous feelings between two siblings who are
too awkward to actually talk to each other is hilarious.
I'd like to say that I'd also be willing to forgive this show if it actually had a message or meaningful story behind all this but I just can't accept that cop-out hope. Were that to actually happen, this would have been an entirely different show and one that I would have likely been less likely to forgive for its terrible and outright offensive humor. As it exists, though, this show is relatively harmless since it is both short and forgettable. The only thing that could really change my feelings or perception of this show is if the offensive humor served from purpose besides going for an easy laugh. Offensive humor, while disconcerting, can have a flow and purpose behind it that lives or dies based on the intention behind it all. So long as a deeper commentary is trying to be expressed, I'm more inclined to forgive even the most offensive drek its trespasses, assuming it expresses those ideas well. The fact of the matter is, though, that this show lacks that intention. It lacks purpose and meaning and consequence. Instead of creating something worthwhile, all we got was a brainless comedy that spent its time taking quick and easy potshots at anything in its sight. So, in short, just don't bother with this show. It's just not worth the time or aggravation.