Anime Review: Ruri Rocks

I’ve talked before on blog posts and on podcasts that I do the unspeakable act of watching anime with my parents. Now, I don’t watch everything – we get together a couple times a week, and I carefully pick the shows we watch, but sometimes we watch things that are fanservice adjacent. My Dress Up Darling was one of them. As my dad majored in Geology, I figured Ruri Rocks would be a good fit as well. I was correct.

Probably my biggest fear would be they would get some part of the science or methodology wrong, and it’d annoy my dad. Good news – that didn’t happen. My dad recognized techniques they were going to use, and in a few incidents was pleased to predict what they were about to discuss. If there was anything he really called out, it’s that some of the mineralogical deposits they find are rather spectacular, and felt somewhat unrealistic to have so many so close to this one town, even if Japan is a volcanically active country.

Still from Ruri Rocks showing characters looking at a very large gemstone deposit. — Screenshot

Speaking of which, this is a gorgeously animated show. I feel like I need to go through the animation staff person by person, to see if there are any Ghibli alumni here, because the scenery looks amazing, particularly the diffraction and reflection of light – through leaves, on water, and, yes, off of and through stones.

There is some fanservice in this, but it’s generally not risque – the two college students that main character Ruri goes on her journey into geology with are very busty, with a few moments of bounce, however, we don’t get any real leering moments, and the only nudity is in the hot springs episode, where it would make sense for there to be nudity (and also everything is covered with steam).

Would I show Ruri Rocks to a high school geology class where everyone wasn’t already into anime? Probably not. But I’d at least consider sharing it with high schoolers who were taking geology and were weebs? Absolutely!