Month: May 2020

Posted on in anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes – Darling in the FranXX Episode 15: Jian

Twenty Perfect Minutes is an irregular column series where I take a look at single specific anime that shaped my experience with the medium, were important to me in some other way, or that I just really, really like.

“It has to be you.”

Whatever happened to Darling in The FranXX? Rarely are anime-originals as popular as it was, but in 2020, just two years after it aired, there is a vague sense of embarrassment associated with the series. I won’t pretend to hate DarliFra, myself: I enjoyed watching it at the time even if, with hindsight, I greatly overestimated its cleverness. It is though hard to argue that it’s particularly well-put-together. If you want an anime that’s easy to rag on, DarliFra lines up neatly, it’s almost a microcosm of everything wrong with the TV anime mainstream. Shaky writing that leans on cliche and borrows from better shows, loads of unnecessary cheesecake-style fanservice-centric pandering, and most infamously, a thematic “Get Yourself A Wife, Otaku-san” core so comically conservative, out-of-step with wider cultural trends, and patriarchal that it inspired an endless outpouring of memes and general ribbing even at the time, and even from people who enjoyed it. It’s often pegged as the single most divisive entry in Studio TRIGGER‘s filmography, a descriptor that only isn’t true by the arguable technicality of it being made by a purpose-built split committee called Code 000 (which effectively consisted of TRIGGER staff plus staff from a just-pre-CloverWorks A-1 Pictures, but DarliFra’s odd production history is too long of a tangent to go on here).

Yet, all of this said and meant, DarliFra is certainly a watchable show on a moment-to-moment level, and there are a few times when it almost actually realizes the vision it’s striving toward. I would argue however, that in terms of genuinely reaching that vision? That happened just once, almost exactly halfway through its run. Thus, on this Twenty Perfect Minutes column, we cover the one and only truly great episode of one of the most contentious hit anime of the 10’s.

This episode, centering around the grand mid-show plot point of storming the Gran Crevasse, is a winning one for two big reasons. One: it’s impeccably-directed. Much of the episode is action setpiece after action setpiece, and those were always DarliFra’s strongest moments. That said, the kinetic action is intercut with various other things. Most prominently, Hiro, our protagonist, who is emotionally reeling from the absence of Zero Two. There’s a neat little trick deployed here (and sparsely in other places in the series) where instead of having Hiro voice his feelings, either aloud or in voiceover, they’re actually written on-screen. These more tense, dramatic shots are arguably just as important as the fights. Throughout, this episode is the rare moment where DarliFra’s running subplot about the romance triangle between Hiro, Zero Two, and Ichigo actually seems to tick the way the series wants it to, and the direction does a lot to sell that.

The second reason: This is an (again, rare) episode where DarliFra knows to get out of its own way. The reductive, laughably conservative gender politics of the rest of the series are thankfully absent for the majority of “Jian”, and it’s the rare episode where the heavily genderqueer-coded Nines get almost as much shine as Squad 13.

I’m actually kind of cool in this episode!

Almost everyone gets at least a little bit of the limelight, in fact. Even the redshirt Squad 26, who reappear here for just the second time in the series only to have a wonderfully wrenching moment where they’re promptly forced to sacrifice themselves after watching a klaxosaur crush their home. Another thing this episode does right is really hammering home the flat-out cruelty of APE as an organization.

You’d sweat if you were assigned to “blow up your robot to hopefully inconvenience the kaiju” duty, too.

Zero Two is used to great effect here as well. Effectively “feral” from the events of the prior arc at the episode’s start, she gets the “inner thoughts written on-screen” treatment, too, arguably to even better effect. Aside from the fact that we get to see the Strelizia in its alt-mode here (which is always nice), the girl herself is drawn, in interior shots from the first half of the episode, in a way that really emphasizes her bloodlust. This is Zero Two off the deep end, at her worst, and at her most convinced that she’s irredeemable, inhuman, and fundamentally unlovable.

Then, halfway through the episode, Hiro hijacks a training pod and rushes out onto the battlefield to reunite with his beloved. Against orders and against all common sense. The scene that follows, in which Hiro and Ichigo co-pilot the Delphinium while the latter must directly reckon with the fact that Hiro loves Zero Two and not her, is both sincerely affecting and the closest that a shot framed inside one the mech’s cockpits comes to not looking fundamentally ridiculous.

There’s tons of great touches in the couple minutes that follow, aside from just the animation itself (which is gorgeous). Ichigo’s fury at Zero Two’s actions translating to a mech-on-mech dope slap is one, the Delphinium turning out to have “hair” under its helmet is another.

But more importantly, it lets Ichigo, one of the many characters the series at large is guilty of under-writing, express herself in an immediate, visceral way, even as she inarguably “loses” the love triangle. She’d never be this much of a firecracker again.

Of course, fundamentally, this is Hiro and Zero’s story. The two’s reunion here stands out against the rest of the episode. I’m of the opinion that Hiro and Zero Two’s chemistry is among the better things in the show, but this scene is one of the very few where it’s tied together in a way that’s truly emotionally resonant instead of merely cute. The imagery is mixed-up and messy, but the feeling remains. Through cutaways to elsewhere and flashbacks to the characters’ own convoluted intertwined history, through the offputting and arresting images of a young Zero Two being experimented on, and eating the fairy tale storybook DarliFra often attempted to use as thematic thread, it somehow all works. It’s immediate. It hits you in the heart.

The episode caps with the Strelizia transforming back into its humanoid form (in a visual homage to the henshin sequence from Kill la Kill, no less) with a new all-red look and a powerup, and ripping the remaining klaxosaur horde to shreds nearly single-handedly. All the while, Hiro and Zero Two shout out their love for each other at the top of their lungs, behind them blasts the show’s opening theme “Kiss of Death”. Gently teasing them for not cutting the comms are their squadmates. Watching from afar, scheming, is APE. It is the only moment in the entire series where the show’s attempted core thesis of first love as a delirious, rapturous high, depicted by the wonderfully camp visual metaphor of a mecha tearing through an army of monsters, completely makes sense. This is Darling in The FranXX‘s peak. If we are to remember art as it is at its best, this is how we should remember DarliFra.

Execution aside; this is all still pretty, to put it politely, “traditional”, as far as resolutions to a love triangle (and just general “romance problems” plots) go, a larger writing issue that would just a few episodes after this rapidly erode the show’s potential. But, this episode, watched in isolation, is almost good enough to make those criticisms seem irrelevant. It’s not an exaggeration to say that whatever flaws the rest of the series may have, this episode can go toe-to-toe with anime that live and breathe this kind of stuff. Symphogear, its own spiritual predecessors Kill La Kill, Gurren Lagann and Diebuster, you name it.

One of the reasons I love anime is that it has a nearly-infinite capacity, despite the medium’s limitations, to surprise and inspire wonder. Sometimes, that wonder and surprise just happen to occur only in fleeting bursts. Thus it is with Darling in The FranXX.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations.

Posted on in anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes – ReCREATORS Episode 1: The Wonderful Voyage

Twenty Perfect Minutes is an irregular column series where I take a look at single specific anime that shaped my experience with the medium, were important to me in some other way, or that I just really, really like.

“You made this crazy world. I’m stuck between the two….”

Re:CREATORS was a weird little blip in mainstream seasonal TV anime. I’m fond of the show–more than many other people are, from what I’ve gathered–but it’s definitely an odd and sideways take on the action anime genre. The “reverse isekai” is arguably more of a part with fellow ’10s genre subversion work like Rolling Girls and Anime-Gataris than it is other action series. It’s not a flawless series to be certain: the writing is an acquired taste to put it mildly and the pacing is downright bizarre. But it didn’t always seem that way, before 21 more episodes stretched out its hyper-meta story, its very first was one of the strongest action-anime debuts in recent memory. Even if Re:Creators itself never became the “story to surpass all stories” glibly dropped in Sota’s opening monologue here, it’s an incredible effort for other reasons.

The first two minutes of the episode are quite quiet and subdued for what follows. We get a context-free collage of shots of popular in-universe media which serve as foreshadowing for later in the series, but more important is the silent suicide of a character who, at this point in the story, we knew nothing about. A girl calmly walking in front of a train; that’s how Re:Creators begins. It’s perhaps the one and only sign in this episode of what the show would eventually become, because what follows is frankly nothing like it at all.

Instead, after his opening voiceover we see Sota sit down on his computer. Pop open ClipStudio Paint, get bored, look at Pixiv. Usual Nerd Stuff. It’s when he goes to watch anime on his tablet that he’s promptly–albeit only briefly–teleported to another world, and it is here where the episode promptly kicks into high gear. The fight scene that comprises the following three minutes might be the single most iconic thing about Re:Creators. It’s not hard to see why. You have Selesia’s Vision of Escaflowne-style fantasy-mech throwing down against one of the downright coolest villains of all time. Altair, though she was nameless at this point in the series.

Hell. Yes.

This scene is honestly amazing. It’s so burned into my mind that on the rewatch for this column I was astounded at how short it is (not even quite three minutes total). In that short time though, we get the Vogelchevalier thrashing about, the delightful digital CGI blue cubes that represent worlds crossing over and breaking apart, Altair tossing swords upon swords at Silesia, and of course, the first appearance of the infamous Holopsicon. A machine gun that she plays like a violin to activate its reality-bending powers. I maintain, and will until the day I die, that if you don’t find something ridiculously cool about that, then your sense of wonder needs a jumpstart.

This here? This rules.

Also great here? The soundtrack. Re:CREATORS developed a reputation for running this specific piece of music–called “Layers”–into the ground, as the show had few pieces of battle music, but having not heard it in its proper context in quite some time, I was immediately delighted to hear it again. It really is one of my favorite battle themes ever.

The following scene, which serves as something of a cooldown, has Selisia and Sota, shall we say, conversing.

Your waifu does not want to smash. She wants to stab.

Sota’s panicked half-rambling explanation to Silesia that she’s a fictional character from a light novel series is occasionally pointed out as a weak spot of this episode, and while it’s not as strong as what surrounds it I honestly think it’s pretty fun. It does strike me as something a panicking nerd would do in such a situation, even if Sota’s reassurance to Silesia that she’s, you know, super popular is not as comforting as he seems to think it is.

Altair follows them to the real world before much else can be hashed out. Selesia puts her sword through the window to sort of flick it open, in one of this episode’s best-remembered shots.

This really is not how any of these things work, but who cares?

She and Altair have a little back-and-forth here. With Altair making the classic “join me” offer as she cryptically monologues.

SHE’S. SO. COOL.

….and Selesia riposting with what is among my favorite instances of anime logic ever.

The escape that Selesia pulls off here–using her magic to jump off the balcony, Sota in tow, and land on and promptly carjack some poor sap’s brand-new wheels–is silly in a way I really appreciate. My favorite moment of the whole thing comes when Selesia, who really does an astonishingly good job of driving a car for someone who’s never seen one before, assumes she’s found the “weapon” button, and promptly pushes it, which turns on the windshield wipers. Quote me: Comedy. Gold.

Another battle scene follows, because Altair is not really the sort of villain you can outrun in a compact car.

Can your favorite villain stop a car by teleporting in front of it and shredding it to pieces with a barrier made of rotating sabers? No? I rest my case.

I might actually like this fight scene a little better than the already-great first. It’s a bit longer and is more dynamic, with a couple changes of scenery and some great up-close locked-blades action between Selesia and Altair while the latter continues to exposit (as much for our benefit as Selesia’s) about her plans and the nature of the world they now both inhabit.

I want you to know that it is taking every bone in my body to not just caption this picture with a row of capital A’s.

What breaks the tie is the mortar-fire-first introduction of Meteora, who appears here for the first time toting some artillery which we’ll learn in an episode or two that she stole from a nearby JSDF stockpile.

The episode winds down here. In his closing voiceover, Sota, among other things, says of these events that the beginning was “haphazard”. He (of course) is not actually talking about the episode, but were he, I’d actually argue the opposite. Anime that plunge you head-first into their stories and worlds as fast as this one does are pretty rare. He also says that it only takes “one minute” for the world to change.

There, I must also disagree. If we’re speaking of our own personal worlds, Re:CREATORS had a big hand in shaping my eventual desire to become an anime blogger. The show in general, and this episode in particular, were one of several that convinced me that there was value in following seasonal weeklies, as opposed to just cherrypicking things that were recommended to me by friends after they were over. This, in turn, lead me to where I am today. I would say, then, with all this in mind, and if you’ll pardon the title drop, that it takes about twenty.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Why Blog About Anime Anyway?

I see the question asked, sometimes, you know? And I’ve thought about the answer at great length. I have, at this point, stumbled ass-backwards into a kind of, sort of, if you squint, successful-ish career as a person who Writes About Japanese Cartoons For A Living. (It’s only able to be such because of additional support from my beloved girlfriend and our mutual flatmate, but, a living-of-sorts it remains.) So I’ve thought a fair bit about the question of, you know, why this?

The cast of Azumanga Daioh are here to break up the visual monotony of these opening paragraphs.

The practical answer is that I like doing it and am good at it, but that’s unsatisfactory. Not the least of which because it applies too specifically to just me. No, I think a better approach is to zoom out a bit. Why do I like anime anyway? No no, farther. Why does anyone like any art? Well, now we’ve got a big question on our hands. People have written about this subject at length, of course, and my response is just one part of what we must imagine is in truth a larger answer that we as a species are still figuring out.

but all that said

I think the simplest answer is that we like things that resonate with us somehow. And that’s kind of a funny word, resonate. But I think it’s apt. People don’t look to art for any one specific feeling or theme or aesthetic, what they look to it for in the broadest sense possible is something that speaks to them in some way. Things they can relate to, or they see themselves in, or things that inspire them. In some fashion, even if it’s not that straightforward a lot of the time.

And I think in my case, I have a tendency to hunt for resonance in places where many people in my position would not think to look for it. Let’s put anime aside for a second. My first love, as an artform, was actually hip-hop music. That’s kind of silly on the surface. A deeply closeted white transgirl from a rapidly-collapsing old-money Pennsylvania Dutch family has no business finding anything to relate to in, say, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).

….and yet I did. Not to the specifics of a rough upbringing in New York, of course, but to the broadest, most general sentiments. To again use 36 Chambers specifically as an example, to the deep melancholy of the Wendy Rene sample on “Tearz”, to the “put it on if you need to feel invincible” vibes of “Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit'”, the basics-of-capitalism breakdown of “C.R.E.A.M.” I was also entranced with the actual text of the record–the style, if you will. The wordplay, the way the rhymes were actually constructed, the timbre of each member’s voice, Rza’s dusty, gritty production. I risk spending too much time on an example, but you get the idea. Even in a piece of art that had, essentially, nothing at all to do with my life experience, I found something that connected with me.

I don’t know if the specific experience of listening to 36 Chambers had anything to do with it directly, but as I got older I found myself seeking that kind of experience out more and more. Being interested in the broadest, most universal and elemental building blocks of the human experience. I would never deign to call myself someone with truly eclectic tastes–I’ve well fallen in to personal habits by now–but I think a big part of why I connected with anime specifically is that despite the cultural differences and a very obvious language barrier, I still find that I get that very simple joy of knowing other people out there experience the same feelings I do even if our experiences, upbringings, and so on are vastly different.

I couldn’t put a name to the feeling at the time, but Serial Experiments Lain, one of my first anime where I really “knew” it was an anime, felt like it was speaking to me–a young girl who, like Lain, was largely growing up on the internet instead of in the physical world, with all the up- and downsides that that entails.

I can draw from dozens more specific examples. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya spoke to the adventure-filled high school life I wished I was having while Azumanga Daioh reminded me of my interactions with the real friends I did have. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was the first time I felt like I was on the same wavelength as older anime fans who loved pure, hot-blooded action. Code Geass and Death Note, well, had smart protagonists and made me feel smart for liking them. Listen, I never said all of these reasons I resonated with things were good reasons.

On the style side I was starting to feel myself out too: sci-fi, giant robots, “high school” settings where it feels like anything can happen, roguish protagonists who aren’t quite necessarily “good guys”, etc. Some of these tastes have changed over time and some have stayed the same, but I find the process of thinking about why I like these things to, itself, be incredibly interesting. I think many people enjoy, maybe even need, this kind of self-reflection even if they aren’t necessarily cognizant of it.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed expanding my horizons and finding when I have similar feelings as other anime fans and when I don’t. Straight-ahead mainstream action-shonen? Still kind of frosty on that most of the time (although Tower of God is perhaps changing that). Dark magical girl-adjacent fantasy stuff? Madoka Magica has rapidly become one of my favorite anime of all time both because of its aesthetics and its surges of deep, black emotions, and it’s taken me all of about three months to become a hardcore Rebellion apologist, so, yeah, I think there’s some real merit in that (now rapidly waning) subgenre.

Homura is the coolest character ever and none of you will ever take that from me.

But those are still all just examples. The point I am attempting to make is that I love seeing art, and, specifically, anime, push those emotional buttons. I’m not yet an experienced enough critic to say I have a concrete philosophy on what makes art “good or bad” (to be frank I sort of consider the question uninteresting), but I think what makes art important is what it reflects of us. Of who made it, of who engages with it, all of us.

Perhaps that’s a cheesy answer. Perhaps in ten years I will look back on this post and find myself wondering how I ever thought it was that simple. What I do not think will change is that when I make myself strip away the extraneous things people associate with critics: The idea of being a voice of authority, of having some kind of “sway” over public opinion, of having “the most” knowledge about your chosen medium, all things I think most critics on some level at least aspire to a little bit (it’s the inherent mild pretense required to even become a critic in the first place).

I find myself thinking that what I write for is ultimately for the joy of watching. Through all the possible barriers, any time I can imagine the sheer strength of feeling from every director, animator, storyboarder, voice actor, script-writer, et cetera, reaching certainly not just me, but any viewer, I remember that that, right there, is what I am writing for. That connection.

That is why I blog about anime.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

Posted on in Uncategorized

What’s Tre Listening To At Home? (5/14/2020)

Tre Lyerly's avatarMind the Weird

What’s Tre Listening To is a series of posts where our host shares highlights of his recent listening habits: old, new or anywhere in between.

via @Swardy on Twitter

Swardy – Palomino

Benjamin Swardlick’s music is tailor-made to make you smile. Perhaps known best as one–third of the M Machine, Swardy’s more recent work is lower-key and more down to earth than the arena-ready bass music he engineered alongside bandmates Eric Luttrell and Andy Coenen — you’re not going to find much in the vein of the drops on “Moon Song” or “Promise Me A Rose Garden” with his solo project.

Paring down the more aggressive elements isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the music, though, as long as the emotional center remains strong. Mechanized name be damned, The M Machine’s work always stood out among the lineup of early 2010s OWSLA signees because it displayed an impressive amount…

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Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

It’s Out of Touch Thursday – How A “Lucky Star” Edit is Keeping Us Sane

“But I’m out of my head when you’re not around….”

How oh how did we get here? If you had asked me a year ago, I’d have told you that Lucky Star seemed like one of those shows whose cultural footprint was not destined to outlive the 2010s. That’s not a knock, plenty of great shows aren’t widely remembered a year after they come out, much less thirteen in the case of the seminal school life comedy. It wouldn’t have been that weird either, a lot of Lucky Star‘s humor is reference-heavy and was deliberately “dated” even when it was new. I can tell you with certainty that the series is the only reason I or any other otaku of my general age knows what the hell Timotei shampoo is.

So it seemed like plenty of great shows from the late 2000s and early 2010s, that Lucky Star would be a victim of the changing tides of the English-speaking anime fandom.

Then, at the start of this deeply unlucky year, something weird happened.

This video, an absolutely inexplicable but oddly inspired remix of the show’s frantic opening sequence, started making the rounds on tumblr. The clip makes a few edits to the OP–the footage is slightly slowed down and a transition is doctored out, but other than that, it’s downright bizarre how well the song chosen–“Out of Touch” by Hall & Oates–fits. Especially given that it has almost the polar opposite energy of the show’s actual opening theme, a goofy ode to school uniforms called “Motekke! Sailor Fuku!”

I am not a music critic (thank God), but the particular song choice strikes me as interesting. “Out of Touch” dates from 1984, 23 years prior to the Lucky Star anime’s premiere. Yet, in what is part of a fascinating ongoing deliberate cultural back-collapse, nowadays 1984 and 2007 feel like they might as well be equally long ago in the present moment. This is the same spirit of deliberate anachronism that inspired the vaporwave movement at the start of the decade.

But you may notice that the video itself was actually made a full two years ago, in 2018. So why has it blown up and become a full-fledged meme now? Well, the answer is likely multifaceted. Youtube’s algorithms increasingly like to put oddball things in peoples’ recommendations, for one thing, but I think the real heart of the matter might speak to a particular zeitgeist. For one, that the term “Out of Touch Thursdays” can be taken (by total coincidence) as an entendre about social distancing has been lost on precisely no one. (Do give @sampapaste here a follow.)

In a more general sense, in an era of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, “timekeeping memes” have become a popular daily pastime. Both as a way to wring some humor out of the current situation and literally as a way to help keep the days of the week straight in a time when it can be kind of hard to do that. “Out of Touch Thursday” is probably the most popular of these, but there are many others.

Indeed, the meme’s popularity is such that it’s begun to take on something of a life of it’s own. There’s a dedicated twitter account, which has created something of a community unto itself around the meme.

Someone even went through the trouble of making an honest-to-god You’re The Man Now Dog page (which is a whole bygone phenomenon in of itself). Spinoffs include Out of Time Wednesday, featuring a pitched-up version of the song set to footage from elsewhere in the series.

And a personal favorite, this frankly inexplicable edit that features the core Generation 1 Decepticons from Transformers and is a full-on redraw. (Perhaps an attempt to get a cartoon that’s actually from the 80s involved? Who can say.)

I think what all this speaks to is that “Out of Touch Thursday” happens to hit a rare sweet spot. It’s an instant nostalgia (or fauxstalgia) hit, and it is completely innocuous–anyone who’s not a complete stick in the mud can enjoy the video at least occasionally. I mentioned vaporwave earlier, but the sort of forceful reclamation of “disposable” pop culture like synthpop and late aughts anime does really remind me of the subgenre. A declaration that the past belongs to us as much as the present that goes beyond just simple nostalgia. As we watch a lost spring tick on by, four anime girls doing a dance routine might be contributing more than we think to keeping us–funnily enough–in touch with each other, and ourselves.

Darlin’ darlin’ please!

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Seasonal Check-in: Spring 2020

Gleipnir

Let it be said that if nothing else, Gleipnir is far better than it has any right to be. To strip away all the extraneous guff (and my own biases at least for the moment) what Gleipnir essentially is, at least right now, is a battle shonen with a much darker outlook than most. I would also argue that because of said darker outlook it thinks it’s about a hundred times more clever and insightful than it actually is in a way that is sort of insufferable, but a lot of people like this kind of thing so it’s not a huge surprise that Gleipnir is proving to be one of the season’s bigger shows.

Now, to be frank, I think the show is flat-out ugly both in its thematic core and occasionally visually. PINE JAM largely do their damnedest to bring this material to life, and, god help them, make Shuichi’s ridiculous fursuit look seem intimidating, but it only intermittently works and occasionally the production values slip, depriving the show of its biggest asset. When the visuals don’t connect what you have is a fundamentally wrongheaded show that is constantly working against itself in an effort to wring some kind of pathos out of its setting and characters in a way that frankly gives me secondhand embarrassment. Yet, that said, the most frustrating thing about Gleipnir is actually that it’s occasionally kind of stupidly cool.

Much of episode 5 centers around Shunichi and Clair fighting a huge skeleton dude with blade arms who kinda looks like Summoned Skull from Yu-Gi-Oh! I love everything about this character design. He looks like he just walked off a DeviantArt page. And holy hooray, he actually survives to the end of the episode, so we’ll probably get to see him in action a bit more. (The show is swiftly approaching the point where I dropped the manga, so who knows, maybe it becomes Actually Good at some point going forward. Honestly my recollection of Skeleton Boy here is pretty fuzzy, which makes me wonder if he doesn’t die in short order or something. I guess we’ll find out).

On another note entirely: I wish the show had the good sense to let Shuichi and Clair’s relationship breathe a little more. You can do a lot with the idea of two fundamentally broken people finding solace in each other, but the series’ approach to writing this is so clumsy that it actively gets in the way of the surprising amount of genuine chemistry they have. But, of course, if it had good sense it just wouldn’t be Gleipnir. Lastly, because I feel compelled to mention it somewhere. What is it with this show and a commitment to just being stepped-on-a-slug gross about once per episode? A few episodes ago we got some bafflingly grody empty visual metaphors. Last episode we were treated to the sight of the alien slurping down one of Clair’s hairs like a spaghetti noodle. This week we get This Fucking Thing.

Sigh, why did I pick this up instead of My Next Life As A Villainess again?

Sing “Yesterday” For Me

I have never been so purely flummoxed by enjoying an anime as I am with this one. You don’t really watch Yesterday it more just kind of….happens to you. It’s an odd show. Despite its very grounded premise (Serial Experiments Lain this is not), its portraits of lives gone sideways feels weird and surreal; like a Mountain Goats song or a Youtube video on a little-visited channel.

The most recent episode introduces a photographer character with a tendency to perhaps unwelcomely subject others to his strong opinions on the artform and a fondness for circular metaphors. Yet, I find Yesterday‘s literal plot to be kind of hazy and hard to recount, it’s almost the least interesting thing about the show. (It helps that the gist of it is simply a complicated love triangle.) Instead, I was struck by, how, when taking screencaps for this very column, I ended up (by pure happenstance) grabbing a picture of Haru in the exact same manner that said character photographed her at episode’s end, just facing the opposite direction. It is not often that an anime gets one’s head all a-tizzy about their role as a critic, but here I am.

Wave, Listen To Me!

Now this is a show with a few screws loose. Some four or five weeks ago I called it the most promising premiere of the entire season. That of course does not mean that it would actually live up to that promise. So far, of Wave‘s five episodes I’d say only the most recent (the fifth, at the time of this writing) really lives up to that first episode, which is a little disappointing but maybe a good sign that the show is finally starting to get somewhere.

The issue with Wave is that when it’s focusing on what it does best: being a vehicle for voice actress Riho Sugiyama‘s portrait of Minare, its protagonist, it’s great. This is a woman whose life is in shambles and maybe always has been, saved (well, “saved”. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves) from both existential despair and the setting-in realities of poverty by the magic of early-AM radio. Minare’s a very three-dimensional character, which is great, but does leave much of the rest of the cast feeling a mite flat by comparison and branches of the story that revolve around characters that aren’t Minare tend to feel kind of underdeveloped. In particular, the gaggle of men that exist as supporting characters (some of whom the show is trying to build as potential romance partners for Minare) are slight, and the chemistry between any of these pairings is pretty minimal.

By contrast, Mizuho, the other woman in the show with a large role, really seems to be hitting it off with our heroine. Especially given that the two are now rooming together. It’s probably too early to hope for a gay conclusion to this particular part of the story, but Minare’s cracks about the chef who owns the curry restaurant she works on and off at being gay do kind of come across as jokes from within the closet. Time will tell.

But the romance outlook being kind of dicey would be less of a problem if the show spent more time elsewhere. When Minare finally gets another chance to cut loose in episode 5 like she did in the premiere it instantly ratchets the show back up to a real contender. Sugiyama’s performance, giving Minare a convincing, blown-out, rambly bluster is something you just don’t see that often in anime, especially for women. This is without mentioning the bizarre radio drama she manages to adlib about half of on her own, involving a woman who murders her boyfriend and then gets abducted by aliens.

More of this, please.

Even here though the show tries to tie things back to relationships. The character of Matou, Minare’s greasy boss at the radio station, essentially openly fetishizes her voice, which makes Sugiyama’s performance a bit harder to appreciate, adding a totally unnecessary sleaze to the proceedings. The entire thing comes across as a bizarre attempt to make the audience complicit in a creeping “man vs. woman” streak within the show’s writing. One that it’s not difficult to interpret as simple misogyny if you’re feeling uncharitable. Of course, we do need to be open to the possibility that this is all being set up to be knocked down later, and indeed at the end of episode 5 Minare explicitly rejects romance at least for the time being.

On yet another hand, this episode introduces an actual murder subplot which, who knows if we’re ever going to actually follow up on that. This show is certainly going somewhere, but it’s still an open question as to where, exactly, that is.