FX Fighter Kurumi-chan ‒ Episodes 1-4
The likes of Kaiji and Yumeko, they're fake, they're fantastical, they're behind one more protective layer of outrageous artifice. When a story instead focuses on an extremely real financial institution that can cost people extremely real finances, the intensity of the relatable interactions is wont to get extremely real. So something like FX Fighter Kurumi-chan has to open with a full screen of direct warnings about the dangers of Forex trading. That makes it right, right? It signals to the audience that they can be in for a "fun" time. See, I put "fun" in quote marks to make clear the detachment, the sick, stressful emotional highs this anime is simulating for viewers that they can feel without taking on the actual risks themselves. It's why this show can have cute, marketable anime girls getting mixed up in this monetary mess, with the production wizards at Passione coming up with all sorts of visual flourishes to show off the line going up (or more often, down). See, it's deliberate, dissonant contrast—even the initially bubbly opening theme ends up being a calculated exercise in stressing the audience out.
Because despite all its flourishes, FX Fighter Kurumi-chan is depicting some very real devils, and those layers of presentation on all levels are what's most striking about it. Starting at the level of Forex trading that Kurumi does, there are few direct actions that can be taken. She's simply hitting "Buy" and then watching a screen while experiencing emotions. The viewers buy in, hitting play and watching her on the screen watching the screen while experiencing emotions. The audience is thus trapped in the box with her, and anyone who's engaged in this sort of trading knows this is the exact emotional roller-coaster being ridden as part of this "game." It's still addictive, like any vice, but it's almost entirely at the whims of watching, pleading, screaming, and, at one pathetic low point in Kurumi's case, praying. Similarly, the anime wants to get the audience pleading and screaming at Kurumi to stop, but that's the irony, right? If she didn't keep screwing up there wouldn't be any more. There wouldn't be any more dynamically defined emotional exhaustion to experience with her. There wouldn't be any wondrous direction turning this glorified exchange gambling into a closed-room horror story. There wouldn't be any more show. "A stable market is a trader's worst enemy."
Not that I'd go so far as to mark the audience as culpable in participating in Kurumi's vices. She's not real, after all. This is all fun. It's all for entertainment. This is not financial advice—see, they put a warning right up front. They open the series with Kurumi's mom failing miserably in the market before arriving inevitably at the suicidal conclusion that this kind of action leads so many to. That's the responsible thing for a show like this to do, right? Fire off an opening volley so destructive and miserable that audiences can be assured that this activity isn't cool or aspirational before showcasing the rest of the story where the characters find new, unique, plot-relevant, story-driving ways to endanger their livelihoods. Maybe it's not that the audience is enticed by this world of glorified gambling; they're just here to enjoy the spectacle of girls driving themselves to ruin via this financial meat-grinder. I can't be a prude about that, don't lump me in with those folks who dismiss the likes of Madoka Magica as "torture porn" made for girl-hating perverts. I can criticise more acutely than that—I use words like "artifice" for god's sake. FX Fighter Kurumi-chan is genuinely compelling, not just compulsion. I can quit watching it any time.
Kurumi herself makes the perfect poster-child for these blunt complexities. The surface framing, the Wikipedia summary, is that she's taking on the monster of Forex that killed her mother to avenge her. It's noble, it's sympathetic, and it's bullshit. The young Kurumi in the first episode is a just-gifted-enough child spurned by both her mother and the institution of trading itself that would dare tell her she can't play. She's got something to prove. She's Walter White in the first episode of Breaking Bad doing mental math at how much money cooking meth can make him before he even knows he's got cancer. Kurumi as a middle-schooler believes she has things figured out so clearly, but she's barely learned or moved past that confidence by the time she is old enough to start playing the money game. No wonder the devil on her shoulder compelling her to continue playing appears as her own middle-school self. She's foolish in a way the audience can see, can tell themselves they understand, and assure themselves they're better than. "I can see where she's going wrong," they say. "That wouldn't happen to me," they blame her for their failures. Yes, it's what the young Kurumi was saying about her own mother in the premiere, but it's different. We're different.
Kurumi is surrounded by enabling elements to keep that story going even apart from the audience's desires. Her "friend" Mochiko is the most obvious case, a pragmatic collaborator whose advice is clearly inapplicable to Kurumi, who doesn't have a pool of generational wealth to pull from and play with like Mochiko does. And Mochiko herself treats Kurumi as but one more plaything, using her as a bellwether for her own investing prospects and manipulating her moves to her own ends. It's another case prompting audience interaction, wanting to yell at Kurumi, "Girl you are getting groomed!" But that's another part of the appeal, isn't it? I like toxic yuri. I can enjoy watching Mochiko do this to Kurumi as one more knife-twist—and even get twisted herself at times. Look at the way Mochiko claims she doesn't care for a cat she's keeping around even as she provides it a scratching tree and has a whole poster declaring her love for cats! God, she's so full of shit, obviously I can analyze this as meaning she's secretly fond of Kurumi despite her dismissive treatment of her. It makes it okay. I'm okay with this.
Does the behavior of characters in vice-focused series mean their suffering is deserved? Can the audience cheer in catharsis when Kurumi's investments miraculously pull her out of a hole, when viewers just know it's going to provide her more funds to screw up again? Watching, I can simply sympathize with her father as his daughter rationalizes partaking in the same dangerous game that killed her mother. He's a good father just trying to save what's left of his family, I believe that—and then he slaps Kurumi across the face for her troubles. That abuse isn't warranted, there had to be a better way, right? But then is it at least understandable as a human, flawed response? Never mind that through all her self-assured rambling at him, before the slap, there's the audience's own devil on the shoulder chanting, "Oh, he is going to smack some sense into her for this." It's drama, it's what's craved in this kind of show. That's the buy-in.
It's why it's "okay" to see Mochiko, and then Kurumi, go down the chain as enablers for new girl, Mebuki, a walking call-out post who is even less equipped to be engaging with this activity than these other addicts. She's staking her own student aid money on this mess, banking on the easy assurance that she won't have to work again after making it big. Were that anyone would take such a chance if they knew it was real, but any sensible person knows it's not, right? Kurumi just retired from Forex, she's one of those sensible people, it's not like she's staring straight into a mirror as this naive blonde puppygirl takes all of her not-financial-advice under the auspices of "personal responsibility." The sick irony of course is that Mebuki is so impulsive and short-sighted that she's able to make decisions and short a drop right before it happens—the exact maneuver that Kurumi previously hesitated on and missed. After her own improbable success so frustrated Mochiko, it's only fair that she inflict Mebuki on her protege as revenge. They're all being awful to each other. That makes it okay.
Unsurprisingly, the only barely glimpsed Affi-chan is my unironic favorite so far. She sucks at investing in a much more typical way. She's also a blog writer who sucks down chu-hais. She's my type. I can like her. It's safe for me to like her.
It must be understood, this discordant exercise in desperate rationalization is exactly what the experience is like being locked in the room with FX Fighter Kurumi-chan—and thus what it's like being locked into watching investments rise and fall with no direct control over them. It's intentional, from the stylization and direction to the impressive, unglamorous wailing that Aina Suzuki puts on as Kurumi. It's a particular kind of entertainment that might appeal to only sickos. Many watching will want to tear their skin off doing so, but so many others crave that feeling. Is it a cautionary tale explicitly warning about the dangers of exchange trading, or is it pulpy indulgence producing entertainment at the expense of its cast's anxieties? Por que no los fucking dos. The creators of this story created what they wanted to, what the audience enjoys doesn't make them culpable for endorsing these afflictions on these characters, right? They aren't even real. I'm only watching FX Fighter Kurumi-chan because I was assigned to. I'm only appraising it positively because that's my genuine, technical, critical assessment. I'm not betting on any particular direction for the show, it's a calculated investment. I can stop any time. I can stop any time.
Rating:
FX Fighter Kurumi-chan is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.
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