Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring ‒ Episodes 1-4

©Kana Akatsuki, Suoh/Straight Edge, KADOKAWA/Agency of the Four Seasons

There's nothing inherently wrong with a capital-M “Melodrama” in theory, and Japan's rich history of theatrical and poetic artwork lends itself naturally to this particular style. That said, there is a reason the word has become shorthand for stories that come across as a bit…hacky. If you read my Preview Guide coverage of the premiere, you'll know that the blatant melodrama of Agents of the Four Seasons didn't work for me, at first. There's a stark difference between an emotional story that makes you cry and a story that is determined to make you cry at any cost by weaving the most emotional story it can think of. It's a matter of intent, and whether the form of a thing is designed to facilitate its function, or the other way around. The beautifully animated but ultimately hollow first episode of Agents of the Four Seasons gave me plenty of pretty pictures to look at and sad music to listen to, but it never made me feel anything. This, I feared, did not bode well for the series at large.

Thankfully, having now seen the first four episodes of this season, I can allow myself at least a tiny sigh of relief, since the show is actually pretty good. It just takes its damned time getting to the point. I'm talking purely about the emotional core of the series finally taking shape. The actual plot of this anime is another thing entirely. I actually had to start this review over a couple of times because I spent far too long trying to unpack the frankly nonsensical fairy-tale worldbuilding that Agents of the Four Seasons is slowly doling out. While I have plenty of thoughts on the fundamental silliness of trying to fit such an abstract, mythological concept into a modern-day story of international espionage and high-flying action, I've decided to save most of my interrogations for later. The only major sticking point I have that is truly relevant to these first four episodes has to do with the so-called “Insurgents” who keep trying to plug the Agents full of bullet holes, but we'll get to that later.

For now, I want to unpack what works about Agents of the Four Seasons, which mainly comes down to its production values and (most) of its characters. Obviously, Studio Wit knows how to put together a good cartoon, and this here is no exception. The artwork and character animation are generally excellent all around, and the seasonal motifs of the different Agents give episodes great excuses to inject vibrant, otherworldly colors into backgrounds and action sequences. The gorgeous wall of ice flowers that the Agent of Winter produces in Episode two is a particular highlight. We also get music by the always capable kensuke ushio, and while I don't think this OST represents his best work, Ushio is probably happy that this show uses so many big, bombastic tracks that he won't be short of work for a good long time.

I also did find myself growing fond of the characters, though it took a lot longer than I would have liked. Sakura, specifically, becomes a much more likeable and textured heroine than that drab first episode gave her credit for, and you really end up feeling for her by the time she's bonding with the Hazakura sisters in Episodes three and four. By this point, we have come to better understand the strange and precarious positions that the Agents have found themselves in, with all four of these “Yamato” (aka Japanese) Agents being children who were thrust into the position of living gods by a cruel twist of fate. The Powers-That-Be are being portrayed as the usual cloak-and-daggers villains that fill so many anime board rooms, capitols, and castles. This leaves the Guardians seemingly the only people who can get close enough to the Agents to protect them from both the threats of external forces and the inevitable emotional turmoil that will plague a person whose entire identity and future have been stripped from them for life.

It's compelling stuff, once Agents of the Four Seasons gets through enough crying and tortured monologues for us to put the pieces together. I especially enjoyed the mini-arc we get that introduces us to the twin sisters who operate as the Agent and Guardian of Summer. While the show still indulges in plenty of histrionic crying and monologuing, we eventually learn that Ruri and Ayame have a much more naturalistic and likeable relationship than Agents first lets on. With Sakura becoming much more dimensional around this point, too, there's even a lot more to like about her whole dynamic with Hinagiku, the Agent of Spring.

Speaking of Hinagiku, I have to mention the two elephants in the room so far, as my appreciation of the cast is concerned. To be fair to Rousei, the Agent of Winter, his development feels like a matter of time. We're only just introduced to his whole tortured backstory and internal crisis before the show pivots to the Summer sisters. Hinagiku has had four straight weeks of opportunities to make her case, though, and I'm sorry, but she still sucks. Her painfully forced and overdone vocal affectations might have all of the narrative justification in the world. Still, we don't even get a real sense for why she's so traumatized until Episode four, and even then, it doesn't excuse how cringe-inducing her every belabored line of twee dialogue is. The English Dub is generally my preferred way of watching Agents of the Four Seasons for the sole reason of Celeste Perez sounding slightly less irritating in the role. In neither the English nor Japanese case is Hinagiku's failure the fault of her actress, obviously. They're just stuck with a script that has an understanding of human psychology that is occasionally on the same wavelength as a period romance movie from the black-and-white era. Somebody needs to get Hinagiku a fainting couch, at least.

My other main sticking point comes from how Agents of the Four Seasons is integrating the action and suspense into its narrative. Now, so far as spectacle goes, all of the fights with the insurgents and dramatic flashbacks to their previous assassination attempts are great. No notes. On a narrative level, though, I struggle to understand what they're even doing here. So far as we know, a dead Agent just results in a new agent immediately being chosen from the ranks of their respective Villages, so it's unclear how any group of people would benefit from killing these kids, other than to harm their own country's terroristic act. If it's about literally destroying the seasons to try and control the weather, though…I mean, that's just insane. We're already seeing the catastrophic effects of adding a mere couple of degrees to the global thermometer, and Agents has made it clear that living in years upon years of the same season is a terrible fate. Besides, these are military outfits, so the implication seems to be that there's some degree of political machinations at play, but I cannot for the life of me understand how all of that is supposed to fit into this story of traumatized teenagers and sibling rivalries.

The point is, for as fun as the action scenes are, watching them makes me feel like someone changed the proverbial channel on my proverbial television right in the middle of a scene. There's the anime about the often overwrought but sometimes moving plights of these magical season gods, and then there's the anime about badass anime girls who stab anonymous mercenaries and sic spirit wolves on them. They both are called Agents of the Four Seasons, but they don't feel like they are the same. It's emblematic of what I think is the most fundamental weakness of the anime, thus far. This show doesn't feel so much like one cohesive vision as it does a half-dozen different ideas for characters and stories that have all been jammed together into an unwieldy final product. It could be that Agents will sort all of this out in time and become a much more satisfying tale as a result. Only time will tell.

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Agents of the Four Seasons: Dance of Spring is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

James is a writer with many thoughts and feelings about anime and other pop-culture, which can also be found on BlueSky, his blog, and his podcast.