Month: October 2020

Posted on in Manga, The Manga Shelf

The Manga Shelf: Something is Wrong in COCOON ENTWINED

The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. 

It’s something of a minor media blogger faux pas to admit that you picked something up because it was recommended to you. Nonetheless, without a friend showing me this list of yuri manga recommendations, I doubt I ever would’ve even heard of Cocoon Entwined, much less so quickly become enraptured with it.

Cocoon Entwined is a hard thing to even describe. On the surface, it’s a fairly straightforward schoolgirl love triangle manga with a bizarre wrinkle in its setting (more on that in a moment). There are dozens of those, good and bad, up and down some fifty years of history in the medium. But just beneath that, it’s darker, stranger, and with more on its mind than one may initially assume. The blogger in the list I linked above describes it with the word “eerie”, and I can think of no better one. Cocoon Entwined‘s all-girl high school setting has the preserved delicacy of a butterfly pinned to a board under glass. Almost from its opening pages, there is the palpable sense that something about this entire setup is off.

On a more concrete level; the story is set in Hoshimiya Girls’ Academy, which is fairly typical for this genre with one very odd exception. Each student is expected to grow her hair out from the time she enters the school until she graduates. When she does, her hair is cut, and becomes material for the Academy’s uniforms. This central detail of the setting is going to be everyone’s first indicator that something is strange about this entire thing, and it comes up constantly.

Hair, in general, is a visual motif to the point of fixation throughout the manga. Mangaka Hara Yuriko excels at finely detailed linework, and puts it to use throughout in the depiction of long, lustrous locks. What might in other contexts come across as longing or romantic is often here tinged with unease, and at times even an implied lust.

The manga’s other signature trick is its unusual structure. Rather than linearly following a single story it cuts repeatedly backward and forward in time. Often, a character will be introduced as an upperclassman and the next chapter will be about her experiences as a first-year. It’s disorienting and occasionally even downright confusing, but this all feels very intentional. Cocoon Entwined seems to want to tell a story as much about the systems that shape women as it does about those women themselves.

Even before the manga begins to tip its hand a bit, everything about Cocoon Entwined just feels wrong. In the two volumes that are currently available in English, I would not define a single event that happens as being concretely “bad” in the usual sense. Nonetheless, reading Cocoon one cannot help but get the impression that they’re watching something that is on some level messed up, like seeing the inner workings of a cult. I made the mistake of initially reading it in the middle of the night and found myself legitimately creeped out. This unease–which has a heaviness to it that sharply contrasts with the delicate look of the manga itself–is in fact Cocoon‘s biggest point of interest. Which makes it a touch frustrating that it’s so hard to articulate. There are not many manga whose greatest strength is their ambiguity, but Cocoon may just be one.

In fact, reading the series I initially wondered if my assessment was off, and that perhaps this fairly straightforward girls’ love series was just being colored by my preexisting perceptions combining with the somewhat gothic art. It was only when the manga began to, in fleeting glimpses, offer a look at the dark heart of the academy that I was assured that no, this is all intentional.

I point to a few things here. One of the leads expresses her idea that the uniforms are suffocating. Indeed; there is a running tension between the uniforms, and hair in general, as a signifier of pretense, of airs put on, and so on, and kisses, only shown rarely, at distance, or fleetingly, as a symbol of something real, immediate, and honest. Something you take care of and cultivate vs. something you really can’t plan for at all. This tension between affectation and honesty bleeds into the literal plot by way of the already-complicated love “triangle”. (I count four people involved in one case and a separate, currently unrelated, one-sided affection. What shape this makes is left as an exercise to the reader.) Some characters seem to be lovestruck because they see a side to the objects of their affection that others don’t. Others are in love with the masks.

Furthermore, what is currently the most recent chapter ends on this bombshell of a cliffhanger, making the desire to “remove the uniform” extremely literal. It’s a gripping and intense expression of desire for emotional honesty, a demand to see behind that mask. One can only guess how it will turn out for our protagonists.

But even before this, one need only compare the scenes that take place within the Academy to those few that take place outside it. The Academy is always bathed in a soft glow, and the girls within it are delicate. The city, on the outside, bursts with chiaroscuro and full figures. That Yuriko manages to convey this drastic contrast so subtly is nothing short of remarkable.

Elsewhere, Norse Mythology makes an appearance as another thematic thread, but when The Norns–the three sisters who weave the Past, Present, and Future–are mentioned, the youngest of them is missing. The school, this seems to imply, is being kept in an eternal present that honors an endless past. The future is cut off and inaccessible to preserve a “perfect” now. It’s hard to say how literal any of this is, but when we’re introduced to thread catacombs full of spools of human hair, and mention is made that the most beautiful girl from every graduating class becomes “a part of the school forever”, it starts to feel pretty damn foreboding regardless.

It’s hard to know where any of this will ultimately end. Cocoon Entwined‘s mysterious nature makes it hard to predict much about its future direction with any certainty. But ultimately, that’s fine. Darkness this hauntingly heavy doesn’t come around very often.

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. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes: Searching For Setsuna in Episode 3 of LOVE LIVE NIJIGASAKI HIGH SCHOOL IDOL CLUB

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.

Disclaimer & Thanks: I am new to Love Live as a property and enlisted my good friend Heinzes to help me Love Live Fact Check this column. Thank you very much!

“There are school idols and they have their fans. Isn’t that more than enough?“

Let me let you in on a small secret. As a medium commentator of any sort: critic, blogger, video essayist, whatever. You tend to set little arbitrary rules for yourself. “I won’t review this until a week after I’ve watched it.” “I won’t score anything 10/10 unless I’ve seen it more than once.” Things like that. But sometimes you come across something that just hits you in such a way that’s so specifically your thing that these rules suddenly seem like they don’t matter, and that’s about when it’s time to break them. When I started Twenty Perfect Minutes my intent was to do it fairly infrequently and to showcase episodes of older anime. A few years old, at minimum.

Yet, here I am. Writing in late 2020 about an anime airing in late 2020. Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is the voluminously-titled most recent entry in the storied and frankly massive Love Live franchise. It is also not finished, and as such by writing this I very much risk making myself look like a fool come the end of the season. But if that is a risk, it’s one worth taking, because Nijigasaki‘s third episode is not just the best episode of the young season, it’s one of the strongest this year period.

It’s been a solid year for a lot of different kinds of anime, but very little has made me cry, and as someone who values high melodrama I do unashamedly check for that when mulling over how good I find a series overall. Nijigasaki arguably tossed its hat into the Anime of The Year conversation from the word “go”, but if there was any doubt, it should be cleared up by this episode; “Shouting Your Love”.

Before we can discuss “Shouting Your Love” though, we have to backtrack a bit, to that word “go”, and explain how we got here. First of all, let’s meet Yu.

No not You. Yu.

Yu is interesting. She feels simultaneously pretty typical for the genre but just enough to the left that it’s fresh. Yu begins the series as someone with a lot of passion searching for an outlet. She does not start as an idol (or even an idol fan). We get to see her fall in love with idol music in real time, as the opening half of the first episode is devoted almost entirely to this. And it’s back in that first episode where Nijigasaki pulls out its artistic ace in the hole.

Yu (and her friend Ayumu) happen to catch a public performance by a local idol, Setsuna. The song itself (“Chase!”) is a great slice of upbeat J-Pop if you’re into that sort of thing, but what really sells the scene is twofold. One is a number of close shots of Yu’s face, letting us see her reaction change moment to moment. The other is that we see Setsuna’s performance gradually shift from a simple depiction of what she is actually physically doing, to–at the exact moment that her music hits Yu in the heart–a music video-within-a-show. The stage erupts into fire; figurative passion transformed into literal flame. My understanding is that these inset MVs are not entirely new to Love Live as a franchise, but Nijigasaki‘s use of them feels deeply woven into the narrative. The show wouldn’t entirely work without them.

Yu’s journey starts here, her passion is ignited and it’s her drive that leads the plot forward from this point on. What is left largely unsaid in that first episode–and what brings us back to the third–is Setsuna‘s journey. The very short version is that Nijigasaki pulls off an elegant piece of narrative symmetry here: in the first episode Setsuna lights a fire in Yu’s heart, and Yu, in the third episode, rekindles the dying embers in Setsuna’s.

As this early part of the series has gone on, it’s established that “Setsuna Yuki” isn’t a real person. She’s the alter ego of Nana Nagakawa, the student council president of the titular Nijigasaki High. The performance that Yu and Ayumu witnessed was, in fact, her last and only. Some attention is even paid to the fact that Yu can’t find any other songs by her. (And real life is rife with examples of low-output musicians, from The New Radicals to Mr. Fantastik, so it’s quite a relatable experience.)

What would otherwise be a very straightforward plot detour is spun into a miniature epic through “Shouting Your Love”‘s framing. Nana’s true identity was revealed an episode prior. Here, we get to see her most “normal” side first. Despite her own misgivings about her role in the former Idol Club, she has many traits of a good leader that shine through even here. She seems to know almost every student by both name and educational track, and isn’t above doing dirty work herself. After an introductory sequence where Nana mulls over her decision to quit before deciding it’s for the best, the first thing we see her do is chase down a stray cat. It’s charming and sets the rest of the episode up nicely.

But while this fleshes out her character a bit, the real revealing turn is her initial encounter with Yu, who is idly playing “Chase!” to herself on a piano. Yu initially mistakes Nana for a fellow Setsuna fan, but Nana quickly rebuffs her. But as she does so, it becomes clear before long that Nana is less talking to Yu and more trying to justify her decision post-hoc to herself.

In a vacuum this is a pretty simple development. In the context of the rest of “Shouting Your Love” it helps Nana feel like someone legitimately going through a serious crisis of the self. The actual argument that broke up the Idol Club–something about passion vs. cuteness–is perhaps a bit underexplored, but the conflict it represents feels real. It’s clear to us the audience that Nana doesn’t really want this to be where her time as an idol ends, and she’s trying to convince herself more than anyone else. At one point she even sits down to watch a Youtube upload of her own performance; only to scroll down and realize that all the comments are asking fundamentally the same question: why did Setsuna quit?

You can read a lot into her internal monologue in this episode. And there may be more than one answer. Personally, it seems to me that she’s someone with a tendency to put what others expect of her before what she wants herself. It would fit with her demanding position on the student council, an aside remark by her mother about “mock exams”, and her decision to disband the club once she felt like she was getting in everyone else’s way. She even seems to think that she was holding them back from competing in the Love Live, the school idol “tournament” after which the entire franchise is named. And indeed, her final comments in that very monologue seem to frame things that way, with her justifying her decision as a sacrifice for the benefit of her friends, the new members of the club, and so on.

In fact on my first viewing of this episode I actually thought it might end there, because I wasn’t paying particularly much attention to how far along the video was. In the best way possible; “Shouting Your Love” is the rare anime episode that feels twice its length. The second half of the episode sees the newly-reformed School Idol Club briefly hijack the school announcement system to call Nana and “Setsuna” to the roof. (After a heartfelt meeting where they decide they want to try to get Nana back in the club, of course.)

Here, she has another talk with Yu, who at this point in the series seems like someone whose wildfire passion may well be contagious. Yu asks Nana to rejoin the club. Nana replies that she’ll hold everyone back from being able to compete at the Love Live, to which Yu says this.

And the facade of Nana as the dutiful student council president who always puts others before herself promptly snaps like a twig.

It’s hard to not just post screencaps of the entire conversation, which is so heartfelt that in places it borders on a confession scene (not the first like this that Yu’s been responsible for in Nijigasaki and I doubt it’ll be the last).

Shippers eat your heart out.

The important thing is that Yu’s words reach Nana, much like Setsuna’s song first reached Yu. In a stylish hairflip, Nana’s braids come undone, and Setsuna is reborn in an instant. Because this is an idol series–because this is Love Live, perhaps–she of course bursts into song. “DIVE!”, the insert song here, is a fist-pumping rocker whose “music video” weds the earlier fire theme of “Chase!” to an underwater aesthetic, laying Nana/Setsuna’s personality out in symbolic language as she, in the MV, breaks through a reflective underwater wall of ice, perhaps a visual metaphor for this rediscovery of what is, in my estimation, her real self.

But we can talk about symbolism and other such concerns all we like. The biggest thing I can say in the favor of “Shouting Your Love!” is that I’ve now watched the ending scene three times. And while it’s true I cried the first time, I think it’s even more impressive that I couldn’t stop myself from grinning ear to ear every single time. “Yu” is kind of brilliant as a character name, because while she is a character in her own right, when you’re watching the idol performances, you’re seeing them, essentially, as Yu sees them. If you open yourself to it, the passion of the series–the same passion I’ve talked about at length, here–can easily light your heart on fire as well.

It’s impossible to know if we’ll still be talking about Nijigasaki in these same terms in a few weeks. A lot can change over the course of an anime’s run, after all. But it’s hard to imagine a world where this episode ever feels less wonderful. To tell the truth, as someone who recently set music as a creative outlet aside, I can’t help but relate to Nana. But even more, I can’t help but relate to Yu, who seems just as star-struck by the wonder of art that I am in moments like….well, like “Shouting Your Love”.

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. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

Weekly Writing Roundup – 10/17/20

Or “weekly livewatch writeup” as it might be more accurately titled. They’ve been taking up much of my writing time lately. Not a bad thing! But it has made doing other stuff a bit hard especially as I’ve been rather under the weather both physically and mentally for the past while. (This is why there was no roundup post last week and why my seasonal first impressions column did not materialize, for the record.)

To also clarify something else just to lay any possible suspicions to rest, I am still writing for The Geek Girl Authority. I’m just on a short hiatus and will likely resume work for them sometime around the middle of next month if everything goes according to plan. At worst, I will be picking my recap columns back up over there next season. Ironically, this season’s main problem has been that there is too much good stuff airing. It’s made knowing what to cover kind of impossible and as a result I have been….largely not covering anything at all. Not really a great approach, to be perfectly frank, but, well, see prior notes about being under the weather.

But enough beating around the bush (and beating myself up, that helps nobody), let’s get to what I have been doing recently.

Twitter “Live Watches”

This is where most of the Good Content ™ is this week.

ANOTHER (for #AniTwitWatches) [1, 2]: Something I am increasingly fond of is shows that I end up treating as kind of a puzzle while I watch them, trying to figure out what they’re going for, what they’re trying to say, and so on. ANOTHER (which may or may not actually be stylized that way, I’m not entirely clear) has been great in this regard. I’ve found myself turning over the series’ use of smalltown social dynamics to dive into the mechanics of “curses” really interesting. I’m still not entirely sure what point it’s trying to make with all this, but figuring that out is half the fun. Bonus: a genuinely freaky nightmare scene in episode 7.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha [1, 2]: Here’s my latest “watch a classic anime I haven’t seen yet” boondoggle following the completion of the Utena livewatch (see below). My thoughts on this show are a little mixed at the moment. I am really not fond of the vestiges of its origin as a spinoff of an eroge, there’s some inappropriate perviness in the camera and a few other things. Which I would perhaps mind less if the characters were not mostly children. Yuck. If you can get past that (and as always I don’t hold anything against people who can’t) there’s a solid–god forgive me for using this term–hype-driven magical girl anime in here. Lots of flashy lasers, fun henshin sequences, magical doodads, and snappy directing (which comes from a pre-SHAFT Akiyuki Shinbo. Something I am rather embarrassed to admit I didn’t actually pick up on until it was pointed out to me!)

I’m pretty confident the show will get better as it goes on and relies less on The Aforementioned Fanservice Stuff, and even in the couple episodes I’ve watched it’s already started to drop off (or at least refocus to Arf, who is an adult) as the storyline gets a bit more serious and the show introduces main antagonist Fate Testarossa*. My final “verdict” on it is a long way off yet, so we’ll see.

Revolutionary Girl Utena [1, 2, 3, 4]: I think Revolutionary Girl Utena might be one of my favorite anime ever. It’s a hard call to make. I only finished it recently and there’s so much going on in the show that I’ll probably be turning the symbolism over in my head for years. But it feels telling that despite the fact that I basically just finished it I already want to watch it again. That I have not reviewed it is indicative not of any deficiency on its part or a lack of anything to say on mine, but of my skills as a reviewer. I simply don’t know if I’m there yet. Although honestly it’s been consuming so much of my mental real estate that I’m tempted to try anyway.

But let me offer you this evidence: after several months of drawing the series out as long as I could, I banged out the rest (and the alternate take / sequel film The Adolescence of Utena) in just three days. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series that’s captivating in this specific way before, and I’m not sure I ever will again. I love this show to pieces.

Sailor Moon: And firmly on the other end of the quality spectrum, at least right now, are these two frankly pretty bad episodes of Sailor Moon. Isolated, they’re merely subpar. Together, they’re insufferable, especially the first, a bizarre bout of (internalized?) misogyny that feels wildly out of place in a children’s series, even one of this vintage. Certainly in a mahou shoujo series. Easily bottom 5’ers, the both of them. Thankfully I believe the show returns to more well-regarded ground this coming week, and you take the good with the bad, so I think I will have kinder things to say in this space next week.

Other Thoughts N Such

As I briefly mentioned up top, there is too much good stuff airing this season. Do you like battle girl shows? Check out Assault Lily Bouquet and Warlords of Sigrdrifa. Idols? Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is incredible and maybe the single best thing airing in an insanely strong season. Even Jun Maeda of all people is here, responsible for the script on The Day I Became A God, a show whose first episode showed off an incredible amount of promise.

In the realm of things I’m not watching (but have heard a lot of good about), there’s solid action shonen (Jujutsu Kaisen), iyashikei (Sleepy Princess In The Demon Castle), an isekai where the main character wears a Lain-style bear suit (Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear), a traveler story (Elaina The Witch), and even an anime about rap battling boy band idols (the ambiently baffling HYPNOSISMIC -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima). I feel like I’m basically advertising the season, but when there’s just this much stuff dropping it’s hard not to. Unless these somehow all manage to strongly disappoint I imagine people will be talking about this season for a long time.

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. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

Weekly Writing Roundup – 10/5/20

It’s been a busy week here at MPA. I haven’t had GGA work to worry about because the new season’s only just started, so I haven’t settled on my pickups yet. As such, I’ve been doing a lot of work for the blog, I hope some of it is of interest to you. Let’s begin!

Magic Planet Anime

(REVIEW) Shadows on The Sun: The Forgotten Flames of DAY BREAK ILLUSION: I’ve been on something of a magical girl kick for the last month or so. (I go through those sometimes). One result was checking out this particular anti-classic, blew through the whole thing in less than 24 hours. It’s a really interesting anime to me because despite its reputation as “the first Madoka Clone” it strikes me as not having a ton in common with that series. The long and short is that I liked it a lot, despite its poor reputation nowadays. Give this one a read! I’m proud of it.

(REVIEW) DRACULA, SOVEREIGN OF THE DAMNED Is A Graveyard….Something: I must thank commissioner Myrdradek for getting me to watch something I almost certainly wouldn’t have otherwise and for inadvertently getting my blog into the Halloween spirit. I didn’t totally know what to make of this one, honestly, beyond finding it rather goofy. It does have some nice art though! Also: yes this is where that .gif of Dracula eating a hamburger is from. Important internet history right there.

The Manga Shelf: The Morbid Optimism of SUICIDE GIRL: Here’s another “edgy magical girl” property, a subgenre I’ve increasingly come to think might be kind of misunderstood. That broader topic aside, if you can get past the content warnings (they’re at the top of the article, though you can probably deduce them from the name of the work, honestly) and the controversial subject matter, this is a surprisingly idealistic series. One that I think will get even better as it goes on, but I suppose time will tell.

The Problem With Balgo Parks in BURN THE WITCH: This certainly not my favorite kind of article to write, but it’s by far one of the easiest. I really wanted to like the Burn The Witch OVA. Honestly I kind of did! Except for its male lead, who is all over it in the worst way possible all the time. Why!

Twitter “Live Watches”

ANOTHER (For #AniTwitWatches): This is another spooky series, this time with the #AniTwitWatches gang. I uh….knew basically nothing about this series going in other than that it was a mystery anime. Frankly I still don’t know much about it, but it’s interesting, I’ll say that much. Lots of ominously-charged dialogue and some Final Destination-style murder-by-circumstance. Cannot wait to get to this week’s episodes later today!

Sailor Moon (For #FightingEvilByGroupwatch): I think most of my thoughts on this week’s Sailor Moon episodes are covered in that first tweet. Fun pair of episodes though! Enjoyed ’em.

Other Thoughts N Such

I hope you’ll forgive me for keeping the “other thoughts” section brief this time around, I’ve got some thoughts on the new anime season but that’ll probably make it to another post soon. One minor note: Utena will be back before next week! You have my word! Unless something goes horribly wrong, of course. Another minor note: watch Assault Lily Bouquet.

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. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

The Problem With Balgo Parks in BURN THE WITCH

This article contains spoilers for the covered material and assumes familiarity with it. This is your only warning.

I’m always hesitant to write this sort of thing. I don’t want to accrue a reputation as an Issue Critic or, indeed, as someone who thinks that Negativity = Good Important Critical Writing. Neither are true, and certainly there are plenty of people who work in the intersection of sociological study and arts study at a much higher level than I do and I think that work is very important. But it’s generally not what I aspire to do here on Magic Planet Anime.

So it is, truly, with a measure of reluctance that I am writing on Studio Colorido‘s adaption of Burn The Witch in this way. Not to praise the OVA’s many merits–its production, its soundtrack, the engaging fight scenes, the cool do-anything “Witch Kit” guns, or even its bevy of hilarious names*–but to talk about one of its problems. Even worse, Burn The Witch is an OVA that doesn’t actually have that many problems, but the few it does are notable, and one in particular is the worst of the lot by a good margin.

The problem with writing a bad character is that you practically hand dipshits like me ammo to make fun of him.

Balgo Parks.

Balgo Ywain Parks. Has there ever been a character who feels more interpolated from some other anime entirely? Probably, but the feeling definitely exists with Parks, who comes across as a character less deliberately written into the narrative and more one conjured up by some kind of noxious otaku sterotype and snuck in under author Tite Kubo‘s nose.

That of course is not what happened. Someone is responsible for this, but whether it was Kubo himself, a misguided editor, or a mischievous sprite is impossible to know and not worth guessing about. However he got here, Balgo exists, and we must reckon with him. God help us all.

Balgo feels in a way like a new take on an old concept that permeates a lot of shonen; the pervy slapstick character. This is a trope with roots that predate the medium, and to be completely fair it’s not like English-language media is devoid of gross lunkheads. The specific issue with Balgo and the sort of character he represents is not merely one of sexism–though that is certainly a part of it–it’s that he actively leeches both goodwill and narrative coherency from the series he’s a part of.

Burn The Witch makes a fairly big show of denouncing “fairy tales”. The example given is Cinderella, which, this entire spiel in of itself has its own problems, but let’s take it on the level the OVA clearly wants us to. Waiting around for someone to bring excitement into your life or to solve your problems is pointless, because if someone else does that for you they can easily take it away. You should strive to seize your goals yourself. In as much as an OVA based on the first half dozen chapters of a manga can have a core thesis, this is Burn The Witch‘s.

For most of the characters that we get to know in the OVA, this plays out pretty logically. Ninny is a popstar in London proper but seeks to build her reputation as a dragonhunter in Reverse London so she can one day join the Sabres, Wing Bind’s actual dragon-hunting division. Noel meanwhile is simply trying to earn a living. So far, so coherent.

Let us for the moment set aside the sexist aspects of Balgo’s character. (We will, rest assured, come back to them.) From a simple coherence point of view, the main issue with Balgo’s character is that he has absolutely no agency. None at all. Zero. It is established early on that Balgo became a Dragonclad–and thus attracts dragons–by accident. He is thus in the care of Wing Bind, and more specifically our leads, by accident. Late in the OVA, he summons a sword from the Witch Kit he’s been given, by accident. Balgo does not do things, he is a straw dummy whom things happen to.

I have never related to a villain more in my life.

Effectively, he’s a reverse-maiden in distress. But the way to solve a problem caused by patriarchal norms is rarely to simply invert them. Balgo gains all the problems of that character archetype; a lack of agency, and a lack of any real depth, but inherits the benefits of being a male protagonist in a frankly poorly-written shonen series; being a wish fulfillment proxy for the intended audience (and perhaps the author, though that’s harder to say with authority) and facing no consequences for the one thing he does do of his own free will; ogle and harass the female characters.

And we must tackle that part of things, too. Because it’s easy to simply say that Balgo is a wish-fulfillment character and that that is the problem, but it’s not, it’s only a small part of it. Wish-fulfillment in narrative fiction is fine, and every audience under the sun is entitled to some amount of stories that simply exist to let them watch someone similar to them succeed and triumph over adversity. The problem specifically with Balgo is that he is a wish-fulfillment character who faces no adversity. And indeed, makes no choices. By simply existing, he actively cuts against Burn The Witch‘s own central theme. He is put into danger and taken out of it through no action of his own. Even the aforementioned summoned sword simply exists, he doesn’t use it.

Balgo, thus, does not seize anything. Violating the OVA’s whole thematic point. The closest idea of his we get to a goal is a desire to shack up with Noel. That, too, is simply handed to him, as the final few minutes of the OVA imply that Noel, for some reason, returns his feelings. (There’s a clear intended contrast between Noel as a “cold tsundere” and Ninny as a “hot tsundere” but it doesn’t really work. Noel and Baglo barely speak before this scene, contrast Ninny’s many heated interactions with Macy.) And then the whole thing ends on a panty shot, in what is presumably supposed to be a wink to the audience. Instead, it comes across, at least to yours truly, as a reminder to not be too generous when telling people about this thing’s flaws.

Yeah that’s about the face that I made, too.

Balgo does have one compatriot in Burn The Witch. Macy, who fulfills a similar role, is similarly lacking in any agency, and explicitly harbors feelings for Ninny. But despite both being problem characters, the difference in the magnitude of the problem is stark. Macy’s “clingy lesbian” characterization is certainly unflattering and would not be present in a better-written series, but her relationship with the dragon Elly gives her an extra dimension that Balgo–who mind you is billed as one of the protagonists–simply doesn’t have. And as mentioned, she gets far more interaction with Ninny than Balgo does with Noel.

Not that there isn’t improvement you could make here too of course, but at least they like, acknowledge each other.

And really, the biggest issue with Balgo is not any of this. It’s that he’s unignorable. These problems were and are all present in the manga. But in animated form, mugging all over the screen, with VA Shimba Tsuchiya turning in a performance that is perfect to the character by dint of being ludicrously obnoxious, he goes from an irritation to a defacement.

It is, of course, possible, technically, that the manga will rectify this at some point. It’s not like there aren’t ways out. One could give Balgo something to actually do. One could write him out of the series entirely. One could simply make his comedic relief revolve around anything else but talking about sexual harassment. But as long as he remains that way, he is an inescapable black mark on an otherwise solid series. It is cheap to say this, but a version of Burn The Witch that replaces Balgo with almost anyone or anything else is an infinitely better version of Burn The Witch.

And that sucks, because other than this one glaring problem, Burn The Witch is actually quite fun. But when that one glaring problem sucks all of that fun out of the room any time he’s on screen, it’s a serious issue. And Balgo, sadly, all on his own, is that issue.

*Seriously. Ninny Spangcole? Bruno Bangnyfe? Genuinely incredible.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or 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. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) DRACULA: SOVEREIGN OF THE DAMNED is A Graveyard….Something

This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Myrdradek. Many thanks, as always.

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

“Count Dracula fled to the United States of America, seeking to hide himself in the city of Boston.”

Happy Halloween.

You know what’s truly scary? Not ghosts, ghouls, goblins, monsters, demons, and certainly not vampires. It’s the inexorable march of time, and its effect on popular culture. Today’s big-budget blockbuster is tomorrow’s piece of trivia, and we have quite the piece of Did You Know? fodder today.

Everyone’s favorite sitcom family.

The result of a partnership between Marvel and Toei, Dracula: Sovereign of The Damned (Yami no Teiō: Kyūketsuki Dorakyura in Japan) is loosely based on Marvel’s own The Tomb of Dracula comics. The same that would give rise to the character Blade. (Who, incidentally, has a mostly-forgotten anime series of his own at this point.) Originally released in Japan, it was, as far as I can tell, dubbed into English by the infamous Harmony Gold a few years later, and enjoyed limited screenings on cable TV and possibly some sort of VHS release. A DVD remaster also exists, though information on any of this is rather sparse.

Sovereign of The Damned is not anyone’s idea of a lost classic. It’s campy, corny, and about five different kinds of a mess. I’m not allergic to any of those traits, as I’ve well established elsewhere on this blog, but Sovereign of The Damned is a special kind of Very 80s so-bad-it’s-good, that one has to be of a particular mindset to enjoy.

Do you like Sinister Pointing? Dracula: Sovereign of The Damned might just be the film for you!

There’s a lot of up and downs here, starting with the production. Visually, the film’s quality is a mixed bag. The realities of footage degradation over the years have rendered some parts of even the remaster rather hard to parse, as once-present color detail is smooshed into what is essentially different shades of black or dark blue. Even at the time, I imagine it was a bit of a struggle.

The animation quality is also spotty. While it’s hardly the worst thing this era of cartooning produced (not by a longshot) it rarely looks particularly fluid or pleasing, further hampered by the semi-realistic style that was the norm for this sort of thing at the time. In particularly bad moments, characters sometimes seem to more morph into new poses rather than move per se.

On the other hand, it does admittedly have its visual highlights, too. There’s a particularly nice cut in the film’s first half when we see Satan raise Dracula from the grave, the bizarre but visually striking “resurrection scene” of Dracula’s son Janus, the looming gothic air of its depiction of Dracula’s tenure as Vlad III of Wallachia, and some cool flame and beam effects elsewhere.

The backgrounds are quite good as well. Generally, they consist of nicely-painted pieces that set the mood effectively. The city backgrounds in particular have a peculiar unreality to them that was common to backgrounds depicting such settings at the time.

Broadly speaking, it’s the weirder and more abstract parts of the film that look the best. It’s hard to say if that’s simple circumstance or the result of the artists being given more room to experiment with the more out-there sequences. It’s a real treat though, and it saves Sovereign of The Damned from being visually boring.

On the audio end, the experience is similar. The soundtrack is weird and bloopy but it’s effective at mood-building when it’s actually present. But decently long stretches of Sovereign of the Damned simply do not have BGM, leading the generally poor FX work to struggle to pick up the slack. The voice acting is similarly lackluster. Other than the amusingly hammy performances of Tom Wyner in the lead as Dracula, and Richard Epcar as Satan, none of the voicework is particularly memorable. Even these performances seem to be more the result of actors simply realizing they may as well go all-in on a film this corny. They’re fun, but hardly genuinely serious or dramatic.

But of course if anyone knows Sovereign of The Damned it’s not for its production values. The film’s script has the unenviable task of trying to condense 70 issues of full-length comics into just 90 minutes. It’s untenable, and as a result Sovereign of The Damned blows through some six or seven only very loosely-related plotlines in its hour and a half runtime. Elements are brought up, used once or twice, and then dropped. Satan, for example, is set up as a major antagonist, but disappears two-thirds of the way through the film, swearing a revenge that he never comes to collect.

There’s also a notably bad “telling over showing” problem. Decent tracts of reel estate are eaten up by long spools of narration. Without fail they’re flat, dull, and serve only to shuttle the characters along from one plotline to another. The entire B-plot about the vampire hunter team seems superfluous until Sovereign‘s closing minutes, where bearded brains-of-the-operation Hans Harper* is unexpectedly able to overpower and impale a newly-re-vampirized Dracula on a silver wheel spoke before taking out both the vampire prince and himself with a self-destruct button in his wheelchair. It’s as silly as it sounds.

A stone-cold killer, apparently.

Which is honestly not a huge issue. Sovereign of The Damned is at its best when it’s silly, whether it’s the high school play melodrama of Dracula’s bride’s backstory, the comically bitchy essentially-a-cameo by Layla**, the random aside where Dracula must hide from a bunch of bats in a cabin with three small children near the film’s end, or even Dracula mugging a man to get money for a burger at one point. (And yes, it is this film that that particular piece of internet ephemera comes from, if you’ve been getting deja vu from the image embeds.)

There are a few moments that approach genuine pathos. Such as Dracula’s rage at the accidental murder of his infant son, but they’re rendered absurd by the voice acting. I can’t help but wonder if the film “works” a bit more as a serious piece in Japanese, but the English subtitled version of the film is not easily available, so a mystery it will remain for the foreseeable future.

In the end, Dracula: Sovereign of The Damned is not actually unusual in any of these regards. Most animation, and indeed, most media, falls in this same collective cultural memory hole. Too weird to be completely forgotten, but certainly not remarkable enough to have lingered in any serious capacity. So it is reduced down to a few clips, and passes into the great pop-cultural beyond, with all the elegance of Dr. Harper’s exploding wheelchair. So it goes.

*, **: In the comics, their names are Quincy Harper and Lilith respectively. Why they were changed here is a riddle for the ages.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or 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. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.