“3-gastu no Lion”, or “When March Comes in Like a Lion” is a multi season anime adapted from a manga by studio Shaft, known for many shows, including the Monogatari series and Mahou Shoujo Madoka Magica. The first season of Lion aired in the fall of 2016, and since then it has received three seasons, and has been very well received globally.
The first episode of Lion stood out to me through its use of silence. For the first eight minutes, the main character Rei Kiriyama does not speak. Two characters speak to him briefly, however the first half of the shows beginning is filled with silence. This is taking the concept of “show don’t tell” to an extreme, however it is effective in both filling the audience in on key plot points.
Let’s break down what Lion shows its audience, despite a lack of dialogue. While the first scene of the episode is of a woman talking about Kiriyama, I am going to ignore this. It does a wonderful job of creating a general mood for the episode, but the information conveyed is more or less just what is said. So, beginning with the Kiriyama in his room. He wakes up from presumably the dream we just saw, slowly and silently. There is no background music, and his apartment room is both extremely empty, and yet still rather messy. He has tournament papers scattered next to his Shogi board, along with several empty cups of instant noodles. He has some unpacked boxes in a corner, his school bag, and that’s really about it in the room. He stares out at the river beside his apartment, before walking away to dress himself very slowly. The point of each of these moments is to show that Kiriyama lives an empty life and is surrounded by loneliness that he copes with by maintaining neutral.
Once he leaves his room, a somewhat cheery soundtrack begins to play. The purpose of this is to show the audience that this show doesn’t intend to drown their viewers in depression, and that Kiriyama doesn’t necessarily hate the world, he is simply empty. As he is going to his shogi match, there are plenty of interesting shots, such as him walking in the middle of the subway or in front of the train, but those feel to be only strengthening the feelings and concepts already being conveyed.
Kiriyama reaches the Shogi hall, and the music stops. The greens and blues of the background while he was walking are now gone, and we see Kiriyama looking down towards the ground as he moves. The cuts to water bubbles appear again for the third time. The first being during his dream, the second after waking up in his room, and the third being here in the Shogi hall. The interpretation of said water bubbles is up to the viewer, but it is clear that there is a connection between each of these three environments that is being made.
At this point, the show has created a very clear mood, allowing it to progress into the game between Kiriyama and his father. While not all of the flashbacks make sense to the viewer, the point of them isn’t to give a narrative about Kiriyama’s past, but to make the viewer understand the emotional weight of this match. This is what Lion does best, arguable better than any other anime that I at least have seen. In each scene and event that the show goes through, the emotional state of the characters is placed as the top priority. Having the viewer empathize and connect with the characters as well as what is going on makes Lion more about adolescence and growth than about actual shogi.