The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
This week’s header image is from Mieruko-chan
Just going to keep it honest with you folks. I have been enduring some pretty awful insomnia and some related mental health issues over the past several days. I have a little bit written about Mieruko-chan down below and that’s ALL I’m writing for this weekend other than the very brief “around MPA” stuff. Sometimes life is just like that. Hopefully you enjoy what I have written, and hopefully I’ll be in a bit better shape this time next week.
Seasonals
Mieruko-chan
An interesting thing about Mieruko-chan is that it can insert Miko, its lead, into ordinary ghost stories, where she serves as an observer and occasionally as a wry commentator. The most recent episode, for example, sees her accidentally lock eyes with a prettyboy at a Starbucks, to the great displeasure of the grotesque phantom of his presumable-departed following him around. She has to bluff her way out by convincing the ghost that he’s not her type while simultaneously not actually acknowledging its presence. But in a case of classic ghost tale morality, when his living date eventually shows up, she’s unknowingly escorted by a throng of her own departed lovers. The obvious implication being that they’re both murderers.
Beyond these interesting little situations, the show’s actual underlying narrative is pushed along a bit here, too. Poor Miko tries getting her hands on some juzu beads only for them to repeatedly pop apart in the presence of the stronger spirits she attracts. There’s even a pretty funny sequence near the end of the episode when a con-woman / actual practicing medium of some kind busts out her proverbial big guns; a shining, sparkling, glowing bracelet. She hands it over to Miko and it, too, promptly flies apart in the face of one of the ghosts following her around.
While the series is not exactly an earth-shatterer, I’ve always said (and I maintain) that the best solid seasonals tend to be good executions on genres that don’t get a ton of play, and Mieruko-chan proves itself a pretty good little horror-comedy here.
Elsewhere on MPA
Let’s Watch takt op.Destiny Episode 3 – We meet some new faces this week, isn’t that exciting?
Magic Planet Monthly Movies: Alice in Deadly School – I didn’t know what to expect from this OVA, but I am glad I watched it.
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