Ruri Rocks

a review

The thing about Ruri Rocks/Intro to Mineralogy is that it's an edutainment anime set in basically the real world. This means that its most technically demanding shots are just... people walking places. The girls holding pretty rocks. A drive by the beach. Add in the fact that a decent chunk of the runtime will involve cutaways to chibi versions of the main characters explaining a geologic process, and Ruri Rocks doesn't actually demand that much of a budget to make, compared to many of its contemporaries.

Which means that all the sakuga budget that normally goes to elaborate transformation sequences or ridiculous fight scenes lavish explosions can instead go to rendering the prettiest goddamn rocks you've ever seen. You get to spend that animation budget on making the characters move in creative character-defining ways instead of whatever's the cheapest way to make that scene happen so they still have budget for the dragon flight or whatever.

You also get to spend it on making Nagi hot enough that even an ace like me goes "okay I think I understand why people might want to have sex sometimes", true. ~@Swiftrunnerfelidae on Tumblr

I had a lot of fun with Ruri Rocks. It was a great pallate cleanser after spending, frankly, too much time absorbed in Umamusume, and this show is much easier to explain. The appeal is a lot easier to demonstrate, and there's not a puzzle box of cultural oddities wrapped around an enormous multimedia franchise to try and solve.

Do you like pretty rocks? Do you like slice-of-life anime? Have you ever felt alienated by your peers for having an interest that nobody else gets, and have you ever experienced the unbridled joy of finding people who love what you love? Are you up for learning a bit about minerals, groundwater, sea glass, and other geological concepts and subjects along the way? Then Ruri Rocks might be for you!

The show follows the titular Tanigawa Ruri, a high school girl with a surface-level interest in pretty gems, as she meets and befriends graduate geology student Arato Nagi and joins her on her field research. She meets Nagi's understudy Imari Youko, a college senior preparing for graduate studies, and later brings along a classmate on their adventures.

Ruri is such a cute kid. She's expressive and inquisitive, a little impatient and prone to acting without thinking, or acting with incomplete information. Throughout the season, she grows to become more careful and attentive as she learns from her new mentor. As she spends more time with them, Ruri's love for science deepens and starts to reshape her perspectives on the world.

Nagi was the first character I actually saw from the show when I stumbled across this gif:

She is bountiful and visibly strong. When she swings her big 'ole hammer, she looks like enough kinetic energy can flow from her muscular legs, up to her broad shoulders, through her arms and into the ground to break ore from its source. She looks like she makes her living hiking into the mountains and extracting minerals from the very earth. Like the block quote above, she's stunning.

Her understudy Imari Youko is also very cute. She's a perky, excitable spectacled tomboy, who is somewhere between leaning on the security of Nagi's leadership, and wanting to make her own mark. One of my favorite things about her is her tendency to tailspin into info-dumps, excitedly yapping about whatever gets brought up, since it's a thing she knows and loves. She's also an excellent foil to Nagi. While Nagi is cool, calm and collected, Youko is easily flustered, gets a little turned around, and is often uncertain of her own abilities. However, she is also whole-hearted in her enthusiasm for both earth sciences and the history and cultural impact of mining. Her discoveries revolve around a desire to see where mineral extraction fits into the region's past.

Each episode is nice and cozy. Usually, Ruri comes across some phenomena or wants to discover something, Nagi and Youko share a bit of background information about the thing in question, then they strike out to see if they can find it. Sometimes, they need to pour over writing, maps, or samples in the lab, where Ruri has to learn to be patient and thorough. When she works against the process, either trying to brute-force a solution or skip steps, her mentors let her learn from those mistakes and encourage her to try again, following the right steps to verify her findings.

Once they have the info they need and start their field research, the show does a solid job of depicting the ups and downs of their searches. Sometimes it's remarkably successful, while other trips run into unexpected snags. Regardless, they learn a great deal.

The show takes a slightly different tone once Ruri's classmate Seto Shouko finds her way into the group. Her story is touching and resonated a lot with me, and I was glad to see how she fits into the group. Her character arc is a pivotal part of the story, and one I won't spoil.

Personal growth is a key theme in the show. Each character's story revolves around growth; Ruri and Shouko grow a lot emotionally and personally through the show, learning about their personal ambitions and aspirations, their capabilities and why what they're learning matters to them. Youko, the college senior, spends much of the season in the process of finding her sense of agency as a young professional. She takes her first forays into individual research and leading expeditions, and she finds a great deal of confidence along the way. Nagi's growth is a bit more nebulous, since she's seen from Ruri's perspective. Still, the final episode suggests that, through a mix of her personal goals and experience with these girls, she finds clarity in the career path she aims to pursue.

Each of these young women are in different stages of their personal and academic development, and it's beautiful to see how both the mentees and mentors grow and learn from one another. It's good stuff.

The show is also beautifully illustrated and animated. The artists aimed for naturalism in both the environments and character movement, and they clearly put a ton of work into bringing that vision to life. It's one of the prettiest shows I have seen in a while, and I would drink the animation if I could.

So yeah, that's about it! It's a simple and lovingly crafted show centering around friendship and mentorship, forged by shared experiences and interests. It had me wanting to hike out into the wildland near me to see what I can find, and made me want to go on a little adventure with some friends too. I think this first season will be a cozy comfort watch for me, and I look forward to the possibility that a second season may follow.