Episode 4 – Ruri Rocks

Geology can’t entirely consist of traversing scenic vistas and stumbling over shimmering displays of improbably impressive rock formations. Time has to be spent in the lab, getting into the nitty-gritty of these grits, and that’s largely where Ruri finds herself with her rocks in this week’s episode. Nagi promised Ruri sapphires before, but it turns out that the process of finding those is a whole lot of poring over sand with a microscope. Ruri doesn’t like sand. It’s coarse, rough, irritating, and it gets everywhere.

I invoke the ol’ Anakin Skywalker quote not just because it’s funny, but because it does represent what minor character conflict there is in this episode. This is Ruri Rocks after all, it’s primarily meant to be enjoyable, easygoing edutainment, but there’s still a propulsive portrayal of Ruri’s struggles not to fall to the dark side. That is, the temptation to take shortcuts in service of supposedly quicker reward, or her moments of frustration when she feels Nagi is withholding easily earned sapphire samples from her. It’s not that ‘dark’ of course, since this is already in service of Ruri being engaged with geological methods and wanting to learn more about them, even as her attention span and energy levels fight against her. She just needs the guidance of her peers to learn to work smarter, not harder.

This episode balances illustrating how much work geologic research is with how far Ruri’s come in her enthusiasm for it. The parts that get out of Nagi’s room are entirely at the behest of Ruri, as it’s shown how she’s taking the initiative to go out and collect samples herself, has bought her own equipment, and is conducting her own research with the starting techniques Nagi showed her. This is the “fun” part to her, to the point that it’s leading her to flake out of hanging with her friends in favor of scooping sand out of the river. That’s another point of character conflict that’s brewing, but strategically saved for later via the polished-smooth writing style of Ruri Rocks.

Instead, the other 75% of this episode is spent on the characters hanging out in Nagi’s research room, staring at sand through that microscope. It merits an interesting challenge for this production: how can they zazz up this more mundane part of the process, presentation-wise? The disheveled backgrounds of the research materials and other junk are still an appreciable feature, bringing so much personality to Nagi’s space, no matter what angle a given shot is viewed from. And the simulated zoom-ins on the sand grains themselves are positively pornographic, portraying the different materials as the true tiny treasures they are. It communicates the point that Nagi makes about sand to Ruri, how each petri dish is a microscopic microcosm of all the rocks on the mountain the sand came from. The scale of the universe, as also reflected in the star symbology that briefly returns from last week’s episode, is vast and represented in the minuscule all at once.

That’s all well and good by the standards of Ruri Rocks on a more concentrated scale for its scenery this week, but the real star of this episode, to my eyes, is the character acting. If an entry is mostly characters hanging around talking at each other, a good team knows how to make that engaging, regardless. Character personalities come through in the basic ways they react to each other, like Nagi’s doubled-over laughing animation at Ruri, or how she always looks earnestly pleased with any discovery Ruri makes, no matter how mundane. Ruri herself indulges a habit of swiveling around, sitting backwards on her chair, showing her ready-to-launch energy any time the mere prospect of more engaging field work comes up. Also, I’m quite taken with Imari’s repeated habit of sitting up on the desks, as a fun, humanizing little quirk. It all speaks to the love this production continues to have for these characters, which informs them in crafting this anime so carefully. And yes, that continues to come with some of the more noticeable fan service indulgences (check out the close-up on Ruri’s wet feet in a scene) though that element is honestly a bit more subdued in this episode.

I like this episode of Ruri Rocks because it pulls back from the perhaps overglamorized outdoor adventure aspects of geology to show the “work” part of this research, while still doing so in an engaging way. Learning is a long process that takes patience, but it is also, by necessity, interesting. An episode like this can be sort of like sand: it seems simple and unremarkable at first, but given time to pore over the tiny details and see everything that went into it, the sights can yield a tiny universe of interesting, enlightening treasures.

Rating:

Ruri Rocks is currently streaming on
Crunchyroll.

Chris doesn’t know much about cool rocks, but he could talk your ear off about cool anime and cool Transformers. Catch him doing so over on his BlueSky, or see previous posts over on his blog.

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