^{Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing cartoon’s first episode or so.}

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Back in 2018, when “Crunchyroll Originals” had not yet become a deeply toxic pair of words, the streaming service announced its first slate of original programming. On that slate was High Guardian Spice. This article is only slightly even about High Guardian Spice, because to talk about HGS is to talk about its bizarre circumstances of creation and how Crunchyroll has handled it, a horrible boondoggle that I would wish on nobody. As for the show itself, full disclosure, I am basing all that I am about to say off of High Guardian Spice‘s first episode, to give it parity with, you know, every other show I’ve done a writeup on this season. I feel it’s only fair.¹

So about that initial 2018 announcement. We didn’t know much about HGS; the show had a soft, rounded art style, early press materials boasted of it being written by “100% female writers”, and….honestly that was sort of it. Cultural currents conspired against the series; the Gamergate-derived reactionary movement within anime fandom descended on it like vultures to fresh carrion. It was decried as an assault by whatever word-scramble the alt-righters had managed to smash together that particular week. An assault not on anime alone but on you too, specifically, dear otaku, who were being replaced by legions of evil feminist SJWs with dyed hair. It was all very awful, hateful, melodramatic, and pointless.

Even at the time, this all seemed astonishingly ridiculous to anyone with two braincells to rub together. Crunchyroll had no qualms about airing things that demonstrably aren’t anime before, and it would have no qualms after. The idea that this show specifically was somehow going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back is absurd, even as someone who really does think that the ongoing pan-corporate attempt to rebrand any non-comedy cartoon not aimed at children as “anime” is somewhere between stupid and insidious. But, companies listen to internet outrage, no matter how contrived it is and no matter how much they might like to pretend they don’t. Spice was, thus, shelved for a time. Despite being finished sometime in 2019, it’s only “premiered”–read: was unceremoniously kerplunked down in a single, twelve-episode data dump–today. Its promotion amounting to a banner across the site’s top that will, I imagine, mostly serve to rekindle that tedious, performative, reactionary flareup, until it is eventually replaced by a banner advertising a new episode of a mediocre isekai.

And all that for this.

Even with just 20 minutes of footage to judge on, this is not a series that merits all that guff. High Guardian Spice is a very simple show, and its only real problem is not even a problem with the show itself; it’s where it is. It’s an issue so astoundingly unfair to the series itself that I feel bad bringing it up. But, that’s the fact of the matter. The show is a Crunchyroll exclusive, sitefellows with Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer and The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated. It is probably, as a result, totally doomed. I can imagine a smidgen of demographic crossover with the same section of Crunchyroll’s audience that leads to things like ancient newspaper comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D. namechecking Kira Kira Precure A La Mode. Beyond that? I really don’t see it.

It’s a shame, too, because the show is pretty good! As an anime critic (in as much as any person is one), I consider myself used to the tropes, structures, and rhythms of Japanese animation moreso than other sorts. And yeah, as everyone correctly predicted from day one, High Guardian Spice is a very American show, which makes it a bit of an odd watch if you’re expecting something built like an anime, but that’s not a bad thing in of itself.

Our premise here is very simple; village girls (and I am pretty sure, girlfriends) Rosemary and Sage are off to join a magical school, where they will be trained as Guardians. What’s a Guardian? Presumably they protect the world from evil of various sorts. It’s not gone into too deeply in the first episode. We mostly learn that Rosemary (she’s the rowdy pink one) wants to be a warrior, Sage (she’s the quiet blue one) wants to be a healer, and that Rosemary’s also-pink mom was also a Guardian. (She seems to be somehow missing rather than outright dead, lest anyone accuse HGS of riffing on Steven Universe too directly.) Rose and Sage do not actually attend the magical school–High Guardian Academy–in this first episode. Instead, they move to the city of Lyngarth and in with Sage’s cousins (also a very obvious lesbian couple), and get the lay of the land.

This gives the first episode a rather slice of life-y feel. The memorable stuff here is the character details; bits like Rosemary excitedly postulating that a striped, ferret-like creature “might have rabies”, a pair of interactions with an aloof elf, even simple things like her habit of loudly “AHH!”-ing when startled, these are all good, solid character-building. It’s cute, and it’s charming. Rosemary and Sage’s relationship deserves special mention here, as it’s clear even this early on that they care for each other a lot. This, perhaps, is the main thing from that silly “100% women” quote that actually shines through, here. They do have a genuinely very sweet relationship and I’d be interested to see how it develops over the course of the show.

As for the more serious, plot-heavy stuff? It’s there, but if it ever does develop into something more compelling, it must take some time. It’s very barebones this early on, mostly consisting of “Rosemary’s mom is missing” and something very vague about “old magic” and “new magic” being two things that don’t necessarily mix. To be fair; leading with something lighter and only building up to the actual meat of things later on is pretty standard for this kind of thing, so it’s hard to hold this against the series.

And honestly? That’s High Guardian Spice‘s premiere in a nutshell. It’s solid, if perhaps not entirely my thing. (I think being involved in the Steven Universe fandom during the show’s height of popularity may, sadly, have killed my interest in this genre, whatever you’d call it, for good.) I think that given a better home HGS could find the audience it truly deserves. It’s hard to argue it’s not a victim of Crunchyroll’s ramshackle, neglectful IP handling. I committed myself to checking out the series because I wanted to see what the actual cartoon was like. What was hidden behind all those layers of corporate brandspeak and performative reactionary rage. What I’ve found? A perfectly good little cartoon that didn’t get a fair shot. I can only hope that I’m wrong and actually does attract an audience that truly appreciates it, despite all odds. It deserves better than this, we all do.

Grade: B
The Takeaway: If you’re a fan of latter-day Cartoon Network and Disney’s TV fare, or of Little Witch Academia, you should give this a look.

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^{1: I will note that the show opens with a hilariously incongruous warning that the program contains “strong language, violence, and sexual content.” I am pretty sure this is an error of some sort, although if the show does have some kind of weird mid-season shift into being edgy as hell, that would be….interesting, to say the least.}

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