Summary
Sparks of Tomorrow kicks off with a functional introduction, some surprising humour, and a striking visual identity.
After years of delays, Kyoto Animation’s Sparks of Tomorrow arrives on Netflix with a clear mission statement premiere, a steampunk coming-of-age premise driven by faith, connection, and ambition in a unique alt-history Meiji-era Kyoto. There isn’t a great deal of narrative meat on the bones of Episode 1, “The Electric Boy”, but that’s fine since it’s very much a table-setting instalment intended to give us the outline of the broader picture.
We have two main characters, for instance. One is Inako Momokawa, the teenage daughter of a sake-brewing family who lives in the Fushimi district of Kyoto. The second daughter of a stern, no-nonsense father, she’s deeply, reassuringly pious, almost to the extent of gullibility. This makes her a counterpoint to Kihachi Sakamoto, an inventor who rejects the gods and places his faith instead in a coming age of electricity, an idea thought unimaginable in this steam-powered historical setting.
Our primary theme, then, is bundled up in the relationship between these main characters. It’s the conformist and the maverick, the status quo and the march of progress, ideas housed in two youngsters who meet by chance but are destined to keep meeting, their fates obviously intertwined. It’s a nice way of communicating a show’s entire point in a way that also enhances its relationship dynamics.
Kihachi’s core backstory is revealed in flashback. This also introduces us to his brother, Seiroku, who, in turn, introduced Kihachi to the concept of electricity, filling his mind with grand ideas of how it could be utilised, most of which were contained in a notebook he dubbed the “Electrical Catalog”, which he subsequently took with him to war. Neither Seiroku nor the catalog ever returned to Kihachi, and the grief over his brother’s loss has hardened him and shaped his view of the world, certainly intensifying his obsession with electricity.
The catalog becomes an object of fascination for Yousuke Mizoe, the wealthy heir of a prestigious family that dominates the steam engine business. When Inaki’s father offers her hand in marriage to Mizoe, Kihachi convinces her to flee, and the catalog becomes a kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. There’s obviously a bit of a romantic undercurrent – electricity pun! – between the two leads, but the real dynamic is thematic, the battle between tamped-down ambition and impulsive free-thinking.
There’s also a mystery element, chiefly concerning what Seiroku has been up to over the intervening years, and how his storyline intersects with what’s going on in the present day. But that’s definitely for later in the season. For now, it’s all about first impressions and setup.
But Sparks of Tomorrow Episode 1 makes a really good first impression visually. Even putting the narrative aside, the conception of Steampunk Kyoto is striking. It’s a distinct visual identity that combines painterly backgrounds with clanking mechanical detail, and electricity is rendered in the way that, say, magic would be in another anime. This is a very characterful show right from the off, which I think affords it more time for the characters and storyline to bed in.
It’s also oddly funny. There’s at least one sight gag in the premiere that had me genuinely rolling, which I certainly wasn’t expecting. But it’s another feather in the cap of a show that clearly endeavours to do a lot at once. It’s the kind of thing that’ll hopefully help the show stand out in a jam-packed anime season, especially given it doesn’t have the kind of showy premise and characters that sometimes do a lot of marketing heavy lifting. But there’s a reason – beyond the obvious financial one – that Netflix chose to pick this up to slot in among the platform’s own rather limited seasonal anime that I think speaks to an underlying quality – or at least potential – that it should be satisfying to see develop over the coming weeks.
