Month: October 2021

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [10/10/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture. Expect some degree of spoilers for the covered shows.

This week’s header image is from Sakugan.

A short and sweet report this week, friends. I’ve been busy out there!

The Heike Story

Shigemori passes unexpectedly and the fate of the Heike Clan is sealed, all while Biwa is powerless to do much but watch. Last week a red flower fell, this week a white one.

It’s easy to lay in to someone like Shigemori, an ultimately passive man complicit through inaction on the ruin that the Heike are about to cause. But it’s even easier to sympathize with him, there are more Shigemori in the world than many of us would like to admit. It’s hard not to see yourself in him, even if, speaking for at least myself, I think most of us would prefer a happier end than this.

The show’s actual narrative is a foregone conclusion–being based on an epic from the 14th century will do that–but The Heike Story‘s how’s and why’s remain incredibly compelling even in light of that.

Elsewhere on MPA

Hoo boy.

So, the good news about my recent series of First Impressions posts is that people seem to really like them, which is great! I’ll also be attempting to cover takt op.Destiny weekly going forward considering the overwhelming response about that series in particular.

I’m not going to link you to everything I’ve written in the past week because that would be, frankly, absurd. Instead I’m going to direct your attention to the Seasonal First Impressions archive, where you can see for yourself all of the posts I’ve written for the season so far. I’ve still got one more in the chamber, even, as I plan to write a post on Ancient Girl’s Frame tomorrow. (It technically premieres tonight but you’ll forgive me for not wanting to put up a post at 10PM local time.)

Image

If you’ve known me for more than ten minutes you know I want to cover this. Image appears courtesy of Funimation’s Twitter account.

I’ve also redesigned the Directory, and speaking very generally, it should be much easier to browse the archives by post category now. Hopefully y’all will enjoy that. In any case, I hope you can all forgive the somewhat lean report this week. I’ve been very busy, as you can see!

I don’t normally bring this up in the body of my posts themselves, but if you’ve liked anything I’ve written over the past week, please consider donating. This blog is my only source of income, so it really does help a lot. Alternately, consider sharing it around if you can’t / don’t want to spend the money. Getting the word out is a huge help too. And of course your comments and thoughts are deeply appreciated as well.

Alright, I think that’s enough of me being sappy. Until next week, anime fans!

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: BUILD DIVIDE: CODE BLACK Deals its First Hand Face-Down

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

You would have to be a very specific kind of person to prioritize watching Build Divide: Code Black over most of what’s airing this season.

The very first thing to know is this. Build Divide is based on a trading card game. The second thing to know is that said game appears to be paper-only. (I cursorily googled to try to find a digital client, official or otherwise, and had no luck.) The third thing to know is that this anime is produced by the famously spotty LIDEN FILMS, who seem to have picked up a weird habit of working on things with “Code Black” as a subtitle, following their excursion into Cells At Work: Code Black earlier this year.

So right off the top; you must ask yourself if you want to watch a decent but certainly not amazing-looking anime for a card game that you’re probably, just speaking statistically, never going to get to play. Oh, and it’s two cours. That’s a lot to ask upfront. There are a number of anime airing right now, both better and worse than this, that simply don’t demand you to care about quite this many things. To put it in video game critic journalist terms, I would not say that Build Divide: Code Black “respects your time.” Just from a practical point of view, no matter how good or bad the series up being, that is a pretty hefty disadvantage to have to overcome.

Normally I’d here segue into telling you what the show is actually is about, but the plot details we get here are hilariously sparse. Beating the local big kahuna at a card game lets you get a wish granted. Our female lead (Sakura Banka) has a wish she wants granted. Our male lead (Teruto Kurabe) doesn’t but is preternaturally good at TCGs. Also he has amnesia. There’s your plot beats, all of them, as laid out in the anime’s first 20-odd minutes. So we can safely toss this into the “ignore” pile, right?

Well, for many people, probably. The issue, at least for me, with writing Build Divide off is that while the first episode certainly didn’t wow me the way some have this season, it did leave an impression. Make no mistake; this is a very weird show, at least when measured against the general seasonal anime cycle.

With very few exceptions all the cards are represented by anime girls, by the way. If you were curious.

The obvious thing to try to do when your anime is based on a TCG is to have one character explain the basic rules concepts to another. If you don’t do that, you’re generally in subversive, dark-take-on-the-genre territory, and there aren’t a lot of anime that fit that bill. (I challenge anyone to name one that isn’t Wixoss.) So what do we make of what Build Divide does, where the rules are explained, but only very generally and briefly, to Teruto by Sakura? Halfway through their obligatory match in this episode, Teruto’s amnesia begins to crack and the entire thing turns into a long chain of complicated effect combos. Some of it is quite neat to look at, certainly, but there is no way that we, the audience, could possibly have any context for this.

Is that incompetence? Is it on purpose? If so, why? The odd writing applies to the entire episode, but is most obvious here, where the cliché plot beats of this sort of episode are reduced to almost impressionistic abstraction despite the workaday visual style. There’s a lot of cool imagery, including a recurring casino motif, and the episode is visually-speaking oddly moody in spots, taking place as it does entirely at night. There’s also the random aside where we learn that the cards of the game can somehow be used “outside of battle” to….cast spells, essentially? But none of this seems to really convey anything. It’s very hard to know if Build Divide knows what it’s doing.

And what do we make of Teruto himself? It’s not rare for this kind of thing to feature a protagonist who is, sometimes literally supernaturally, Just That Good at card games. Putting him in an admittedly stylish but still very peculiar bunny hoodie is a less common step, to say the least. Maybe this is how the Build Divide franchise plans to challenge Yu-Gi-Oh! By swapping gaudy hairstyles for weird hoodies. Oh, and he has a strange obsession with bread. Which includes at one point praying for a bear-shaped pastry that fell on the floor because it’s “dead.”

Maybe this is the season where writers finally learn that the way to make your stock brown-haired lead interesting is to just make him a total weirdo.

If it sounds like I just have no idea what to make of this series so far, it’s because I don’t. Build Divide: Code Black just doesn’t give us enough to go on. It’s a question mark both within its genre–a genre that itself is generally more associated with children’s anime, which this solidly isn’t–and within the broader season at large. It’s certainly interesting, but whether or not it will live up to its potential is a question that it is far too early to answer.

Grade: 6♦
The Takeaway: Look, on this one specifically you probably shouldn’t listen to me. I don’t even know if I’m going to watch more of it or not.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: PLATINUM END Makes Moral Bankruptcy Fun!

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

Let’s get one thing clear straight away; suicide is not a funny topic. It’s a very serious mental health crisis that has been, and continues to be, a defining issue for the modern age. But that doesn’t mean that all fiction that deals with suicide necessarily treats it with due gravitas. Sometimes, the result is, if only in a deeply uncomfortable sort of way, unintentionally funny. Sometimes the result is Platinum End.

Toss any notions of a piece of art “earning it” or not out the window. Platinum End resoundingly does not. What we have here is a naked power / revenge fantasy about a suicidal, depressed teenager (that’d be Mirai, our lead) that goes in some truly weird directions in the meager 22 minutes of its opening episode. The very first thing that actually happens in the anime is that he tosses himself off a skyscraper. In a more serious story this would feel bad to watch. But Platinum End‘s opening minutes are so po-facedly stoic that they’re difficult to take seriously.

But those few minutes are not what we’re here to talk about. Because then, as Mirai falls, he is rescued by an angel, and everything goes topsy-turvy. Over the course of some amount of minutes, this angel, Nasse, quickly explains that she’s rescued Mirai in order to save him from depression by way of giving him superpowers; the ability to mind-control people and angel wings that let him fly super-quickly, respectively. Somewhere in here is an out of place but genuinely touching sequence where Mirai learns to fly. It is quickly brushed away by other things.

For example; Nasse is kind of incredibly evil.

Nonbinary people are presumably safe from its effects.

If Nasse were not part of this show, it would be unwatchable. If Mirai did everything he does in this episode–and trust me, we’ll get to that–of his own accord, he’d be an utterly wretched protagonist. But Nasse, an incarnation of a truly basic joke (“she looks all cute and such, but she’s actually horrible!”), makes Platinum End tick. At least on some level. Almost from the moment she and Mirai meet, she’s all bad suggestions all the time, like a reverse guilty conscience. She’s the devil on your shoulder disguised as an angel; and surprise, you don’t have an actual angel. She is, in the purest sense of the word, incredible.

Were the show solely Nasse encouraging Mirai to do awful things, it might be legitimately great. It’s unfortunately forced to settle for merely funny-bad because of what those awful things actually are, and because of Mirai’s motive for going along with them.

You see, Mirai’s backstory is that when he was seven years old, his entire family died because someone planted a bomb in their car. He was taken in by his aunt and uncle, who proceeded to abuse him all the time….And that’s basically all we get. This isn’t to say that there aren’t real people in situations this bad, because there certainly are, but it all feels so perfunctory that it’s hard to get any emotion out of it. Panic laughter, perhaps, but that’s all.

My life was Angel Beats! levels of sad so now I’m moping on a Mayan temple.

Nasse ends up informing Mirai that the bomb in said car was planted by his adoptive family. Understandably both suspicious and furious, he confronts his aunt, who he uses his “red arrow” of mind-control powers on. Things get out of hand; she tries to seduce him (ew), and when his uncle barges into the room, Mirai screams that the both of them should just die. Since his aunt is under his mind control spell, she promptly stabs herself in the neck and bleeds everywhere. It’s astoundingly tasteless and, in more than one sense, pretty gross!

The thing is, the episode more or less just ends there, but not without dropping one more twist. There’s a cut to a few days afterward where Mirai is hiding out in a hotel. And here is where we learn–in a setup shamelessly nicked from The Future Diary and, honestly, probably many other stories too–that twelve other people in Mirai’s situation have been chosen as “God candidates.” One of them will eventually replace God. Who is quite strongly implied to be The Christian God, based on what we see of him. Now we don’t get the rules for this particular contest just yet, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is a death game setup, especially as Nasse cheerfully informs Mirai that he has “the White Arrow”, too. Essentially a beam of light that lets him kill anyone instantly.

Pshaw! Who’s ever heard of such a thing?

The very last thing we see is one of the other candidates, dressed up in an off-brand Kamen Rider outfit, scream that he’s a hero of justice while he impales a different candidate with his own white arrow. Perhaps this fellow (who has a full rainbow of the power-containing colored bands that Mirai has only three of) is our main antagonist. It’s too early to say for sure.

And with all of that finally out of the way, Platinum End‘s first episode, well, ends.

I don’t find myself at a genuine loss for words very often. What the hell do you say about this kind of thing? It certainly isn’t good, not in any traditional sense. And while the first episode is far better than, say, the 3D CG ten-car pileup of Tesla Note‘s, it really doesn’t mark this down as a must-watch.

But, I know myself, and I know the modern seasonal anime landscape. This is one of Those anime. Your Detectives, your High-Rise Invasions, your Gleipnirs and such. And here I go, marching right into Hell’s mouth yet again. I really, truly, do not know what’s good for me. Expect Platinum End to return on this blog, even though it probably doesn’t deserve to.

What a world!

Grade: D
The Takeaway: Unless you’re as fascinated with true schlock as I am, you should probably not watch this. But if you are, this is conversely almost a must-watch. Keep possible triggers in mind though, even this first episode has quite a bit of astoundingly insensitive material on self-harm, suicide, spousal and familial abuse, and depression. I understand the impulse to watch garbage better than most; but do so responsibly, friends!

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Going Way, Way Down in SAKUGAN

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

What happened to this season?! Several days of premieres of shows that were outright bad, questionable on a premise level, or mixed experiences at best might’ve lead anyone to conclude we were in for a weak season. But between takt op.Destiny, the still-airing The Heike Story, now, Sakugan, it may be lining up as the year’s strongest.

That’s a big call, and it’s not one I’m willing to make with total confidence. There are definitely ways Sakugan could “go wrong”, as we’ll get to, but it’s off to a hell of a start. The two are hard to compare, but while it’s less of a well-oiled machine than takt op, it’s looser and lets itself sprawl a bit more in its opening episode. That’s neither a strength nor a weakness, merely a difference, and time alone will tell which approach is more effective in the long term.

So what’s it about? Well, the very short version is we’ve got your sort of underground post-apocalypse-y setting here. It will garner comparisons to Made in Abyss and last year’s surprise near-masterpiece DECA-DENCE on setting alone and they’re not entirely inaccurate ones. Our protagonists live in an underground colony called Pinyin, connected to a network of others via a tunnel system, and with vast areas of uncharted land in-between. Those who explore those areas, and confront the dangers within them, namely the monstrous kaiju that infest them, are mech-piloting adventurers called Markers.

And about those Markers; our lead here is nine-year-old Memenpuu.

She is a child genius, has apparently graduated college(!) and has her own job(!!). She wants nothing more than to be a Marker. She is opposed here by her father, our other lead, Gagumber.

The two’s opposed but charming dynamic carries the bulk of the episode, and there’s some really great character animation sprinkled in here. Things get more serious as the episode marches on, with Memenpuu receiving a mysterious package in the mail that contains a photograph of an equally-mysterious white tower stretching into the sky that she’s had recurring dreams about. Even stranger, the package is signed as being from the mythical Marker Urorop, and contains what appears to be a map. Gagumber and Memenpuu’s relationship takes on more serious, strained shapes here, but things remain largely lighthearted for most of the episode.

Indeed, this all seems to be setting up a charming, fun-filled adventure. And Sakugan hammers that idea home enough times over the course of this episode that the astute might start to get suspicious. So it’s here that we have to talk about the elephant in the room, because as it turns out, those suspicions are very well-founded.

In the episode’s final third or so, Pinyin is attacked. A kaiju somehow breaks into the city and wreaks havoc, the local militia try futilely to fend it off. There’s a pretty excellently-animated sequence wherein Gagumber, Memenpuu, and secondary character Lynda all flee from the kaiju’s wrath. Any levity this might imply is immediately dashed when Lynda and her own father, Walsh, hop in a mecha to attempt to fend the creature off, and are almost immediately killed.

On paper this doesn’t sound so bad, but Lynda and Walsh serve as a secondary duo throughout the entire episode, so it’s clearly intended to be a shot across the heart. It works, too. Even setting aside my own reaction, one can easily find folks all across social media already mourning the characters.

This ties back into Sakugan‘s already-evident main theme; what can the older generation do for their children? When they want to strike out on their own, as Memenpuu does here, even after seeing her friend and that friend’s father incinerated before her very eyes, what can their parents do to support them? Sakugan offers no simple answers, at least not yet, but it is worth knowing what kind of anime this is going to be. Because the answer seems to involve fewer fun-filled adventures and more painful coming-of-age than one might initially assume.

Which, to be clear, is fine! Sakugan does all of this quite well. It’s legitimately a very good first episode. But speaking only for myself, I know I tend to fall off of these sorts of anime rather quickly. Something about the darkness that tends to shade these sort of tales just bounces off my sensibilities. So how likely I, personally, am to stay on board will depend on what we get aside from the trauma and crushed dreams. The first episode is willing to display a lot of character, but the question of how much of that is a feint remains an open one until the second premieres.

All this said; what I think is not always what people in general will think. So while my own opinion of Sakugan has yet to fully take shape, this is absolutely going to be one to look out for in a more general sense. Keep digging, genius girl. You might just find gold.

Grade: A-
The Takeaway: If you’re not innately put off by the prospect of seeing a very young character put through the emotional wringer, this is worth following. If you highly value that kind of story, you should definitely be following it.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: TAKT OP.DESTINY is The Season’s First Must-Watch

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so. GIFs in this article appear courtesy of Sakugabooru.

It starts with a “once upon a time” and ends on a moonlit stretch of highway. In-between? Pleas for human connection scrawled on pianos, mask-wearing monsters that take the shape of apes and giant insects, switched-off jukeboxes that populate lonely diners, and the Great American West stretching into an endless horizon. Welcome to a world without music and the story of those trying to bring it back. This is takt op.Destiny.

Can I level with you, readers? I don’t get to write things like that paragraph up there often enough. In pop cultural criticism you’re generally expected to get to the point. I have no problem with getting to the point, but it’s a truly rare treat to be able to put the long and short of it in the title. You need to watch takt. op Destiny if you have even the slightest interest in following seasonal anime. The End.

But of course you probably want to hear why, and that’s fair enough. But it’s hard to know where to start when everything about a series’ first episode clicks into place this well. Do we start with the impactful, engaging animation? It defines not only the episode’s two bone-crackingly excellent fight scenes but also numerous little fun character moments too plentiful to count. The visuals in general are just gorgeous.

Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame.

Maybe the worldbuilding? The tantalizing glimpses of the backstory we get here are intriguing; built on the backs of typical tropes but presented with enough style that they feel fresh. One night long ago mystical stones rained from the sky and brought the humanoid weapons known as Musicarts to the world. Another night, long after that, another shower of stones brought a great evil. Somewhere in here there are the music-hating D2s, monsters that hunt down and snuff out music wherever they hear it. This world’s silence is the presumable wake of their actions.

In the sky, with diamonds.

What about the character writing? What initially seems like it might be the bud of a tedious harem setup quickly proves itself to be a fun dynamic I might compare to a trio of siblings who don’t quite get along. Takt, our eponymous lead, is no mere audience stand-in, he’s a music-obsessed weirdo. He’s mother-fucking funny.

I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend.

Cossette, his Musicart companion, is a wonderful little gremlinoid who treats the humans she’s supposed to protect (including Takt) with a vague disdain and cares more about stuffing her mouth with food and killing as many D2s as possible than she does anything else.

Sugar sugar, oh honey honey.

And finally there’s Anna, the put-upon responsible “oldest sister” of the three, in at least a figurative sense. She spends most of the episode either chest-puffingly exasperated with the other two’s antics, or driving her car to and fro to get them out of trouble.

The three just work together to a rare degree. On their own, any one of these would be an alright character. In concert, they’re a riot. It’s a wonderful thing to watch all this unfold.

Takt’s first action in the episode is to park himself at an abandoned piano. An object evidently so unfamiliar to the general populace of the town he’s in that the younger kids present don’t actually know what it is. As he begins playing, conjuring a wonderful, warm cloud of ivory tones, a D2 is summoned by the sound and comes running. We meet Cossette seconds later, who enters the series by drop-kicking the masked gorilla demon dead in the face. Takt then explodes his arm into rose petals, in one of the most wonderfully camp touches I’ve ever seen in anything, which somehow allows Cossette to assume a more powerful, magical girl-esque form. She tosses Takt a baton. He “conducts”, which, through whatever means, allows Cossette to produce a sword that also has a laser cannon in it, which she uses to shoot the D2 dead.

This is all, it should go without further saying, ridiculous, awesome, campy, silly, and wonderful. The entire sequence is the platonic ideal of action anime as a genre boiled down to sixty seconds of perfection.

I will avoid recapping the remainder of the episode in detail. The specifics we get are pretty minimal; our characters are headed to New York, there’s interesting little bits of backstory speckled throughout.

You say New York, New York is dangerous.

But the main focus remains on the spectacle, because as pure spectacle, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Will it ever transcend pure spectacle? That’s the natural question that some may pose as a follow-up. And I do think it’s a valid one, but, at the risk of sounding reductionist, when there is this much sheer, obvious joy in the art, I am not sure there is much to transcend. Beyond even that argument, though, there really is something to the presented idea of art as a necessary salve in a world that has lost its appreciation for it. Whether takt op.Destiny will ever explore that is another question, but I certainly hope it does. Perhaps I’m over-optimistic, but this feels like the start of something big.

Grade: A+
The Takeaway: If you have any interest in following action anime as a genre or seasonal anime as a format, you should be watching this.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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, Seasonal Impression Roundups

SEASONAL FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Amou Shiiba is Wanted Dead or Alive in AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDERLINE

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

Or: Teenage Boy is Accused of Terrorism, Becomes Actual Terrorist in Response.

AMAIM Warrior at The Borderline (known more succinctly as Kyoukai Senki in its native Japanese) is a bit of a tricky one, so let’s get the simple stuff out of the way first. Point one: this is a mecha anime and the mecha are traditionally animated instead of 3D. That alone is going to be enough for some to hop on board. Point two: it’s a production by Sunrise Beyond, a subsidiary of Sunrise proper whose work outside of this show consists almost entirely of various Gundam spinoffs. Point three: Hey! The show looks pretty good, at least so far. The mecha are the obvious highlights, but in general its vision of an occupied near-future Japan comes across pretty well, and that’s worth noting.

The complicated stuff comes from that last part. AMAIM takes place in the 2060s, after vaguely-described internal problems lead to Japan being divvied up, late Qin Dynasty-style, into a number of foreign-administered extraterritorial zones. And friends, let me just say, yours truly is not an expert on history, contemporary politics, or anything of the sort, so the fact that I even have to entertain this notion hurts me deeply. But, well, the setup does seem kind of….conservative fever dream-y?

Say, in the same way that something like Red Dawn was for us here in the US of A in the ’80s.

Haha. Oh boy.

Were it only established in the opening narration, it would be easy enough to write off as a stock setup. But this comes up over and over again throughout the first episode–indeed, the main antagonists are some of said foreign military occupiers. It is they who falsely accuse protagonist Amou Shiiba of conspiracy to commit terrorism and it is they who he eventually fights against. The regime–whoever they may be, their nationality is not explicitly identified here and the one time we see flags they’re all stand-ins–is unambiguously depicted as brutal, petty, and evil.

Now, all this said. Does that immediately discount AMAIM? I wouldn’t say so. Even if you’re not simply willing to write all this off, it’s not terribly hard to figure out why there might be some Japanese resentment about foreign military presence. And perhaps interpreting all of this so literally is a mistake anyway; there are (tragically) lots of places on Earth where this kind of thing happens. It is easy to imagine simply relocating this sort of incident at home to make it more immediately relatable for domestic audiences. So, while the overtone is there at first glance, I think it irresponsible of me to hold on to my knee-jerk reaction.

But admittedly! For as much as I do try to always hold myself to the standard of taking everything on its own terms. If AMAIM weren’t so tightly-plotted, I might’ve been less charitable. The story here is quite streamlined, and there are really only two important characters in the first episode; Amou himself, and GAI, an autonomous artificial intelligence that he, no joke, finds in a box in the woods.

Me when I run out of Arizona Tea.

Amou near-literally falls into the cockpit of his AMAIM (yes, that’s what the mecha are called here, hence the title of the show.) Something called out as rare in the present day, where most are apparently remote-controlled. A night scavenging mecha parts in the woods makes him a suspect for the local occupiers, and the plot thus kicks off when he ends up having to rescue his friends from them. He ends the episode a wanted man, leaving the whole thing on a cliffhanger.

Amou is easy to root for, as a vaguely-depressed seeming kid bummed out by the state of the world who finally has a purpose. It’s decent stuff. I just wish I less felt the need to couch it in so many caveats and disclaimers. But one should always be willing to turn the critical lens inward. Maybe all this says more about me than it does about the series.

Honestly, I’ve said all I’ve said, but it’s just fun to see traditionally-animated mecha in a mainstream TV anime in 2021. (Even if I was never really against CGI, myself. SSSS.DYNAZENON remains one of the year’s best anime, for my money.)

More than most anime I’ve covered on this column, what you get AMAIM is going to depend on what you put in. Does even the vaguest scent of possibly-conservative politics put you off? You’ll want to keep far away. Are you willing to power through almost anything as long as it’ll draw a robot in two dimensions instead of three? Well, I’ve got your anime of the season. For everyone else, I think simply giving the first episode a spin to try it out is the right call, assuming mecha anime appeal to you at all.

Grade: Wow! Cool Robot!
The Takeaway: If you’re into mecha, at least give the first episode a shot. If you’re put off by the possible undertones, I’m certainly not going to blame you, but I do think it’s at least worth giving a chance.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Spooky Season is Here, and So is MIERUKO-CHAN

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

Of the semi-common genre hybrids, the horror-comedy is one of the weirder ones. Horror relies on disquieting the viewer. Comedy relies on making them laugh. They’re not quite opposites, but they’re close, so striking the right balance is the key when trying to do both in alteration.

Well? Have you?

Mieruko-chan does a pretty good job of it. Although to tell the truth, I went into the anime skeptical. Mieruko-chan is an adaption of a pretty well-regarded manga, and said manga earns that regard. But simply by shuffling a few things around, the Mieruko-chan anime manages to keep things fresh even for those of us who’ve seen this particular story before. It’s an impressive trick, and it leads to one of the better premieres of the season so far, if not a flawless one. (We’ll get to the caveats in a minute.)

Mieruko-chan manages to hold out for an impressive 13 1/2 minutes before showing us anything indisputably out-of-the-ordinary. Before then, it’s all tension, cut with the occasional bit of comedy to keep the mood from becoming overtly oppressive; Mieruko-chan‘s goal is to keep you on your toes, not horrify you outright, and it’s very good at that.

A lot of the reprieve comes from Miko’s (left) interactions with her friend Hana (right). They have a very warm, believable friendship even here in the first episode.

Our main character is Miko (“Mieruko-chan” means something like “the girl who sees them”, it’s not her name). Miko sees dead people. Miko does not want to see dead people. Hence the conflict of the show. Or more thoroughly; as she goes about her daily life, Miko is often bothered by monstrous spirits. They ask her if she can see them and generally make her life miserable. The only saving grace she has here is that she’s in possession of an absolutely stone poker face, and the entities eventually leave her alone after she fails to react to them.

“Yo.”

To a point, the series (both in its original manga incarnation and here) is voyeuristic, a feeling certainly not diminished here by Studio Passione‘s “enhancements” to the material, which mostly consists of gratuitous T&A closeups. (Not that the manga was devoid of these, but the increase is noticeable.) What prevents any of this from feeling too gross is that Miko’s one weapon–her will–means she’s not totally defenseless. Admittedly, I’m going into this with some level of foreknowledge since I’ve read some of the manga. But Miko isn’t entirely a victim of circumstance, here, and she’s easy to root for because of that, even when her fear gets the better of her.

Visually, other than the aforementioned kinda-distasteful cheesecake, the series is pretty nice-looking. The entities themselves are what’s hit hardest by the transition to animation, as they don’t look quite as scary animated, but the sound work makes up for this. The synthesizer hums and throbs that make up the best horror soundtracks are well-represented here, along with judicious use of silence. It’s a nicely-produced affair, all around.

In general, if you can get past the aforementioned caveat, and you don’t feel so bad for Miko that you find the show hard to watch, give this a try. Mieruko-chan really seems like it’s going to be worth following.

Grade: B-
The Takeaway: Solidly-produced all around and with a novel premise, this one is worth picking up if you make a point of keeping up with seasonal anime. Its only real issue is the adaption’s insertion of some rather disruptive fanservice.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal Impressions: Romance and Rocket Ships in IRINA: THE VAMPIRE COSMONAUT

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

Let’s start with the obvious; what a title! In a time period where there are quite literally more anime being made per season than ever before, a series needs to do all it can to stand out. A novel premise is one way to do that, and Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut, which is about basically exactly what that title implies, certainly delivers on that front.

The short version; some amount of years after the end of not-quite WW2, two nations, not-quite The United States (“Arnack”) and not-quite The Soviet Union (“Zirnitra”) are competing in a space race. In lieu of sending an actual human aboard a rocket, Zirnitra’s space program opts to use a vampire. Which, in the world of Irina, basically means a normal human but nocturnal and with pointy teeth. (The series goes out of its way to assure us that all the traditional vampire clichés are just myths. Which, in of itself, is something of a cliché by this point. But the point is made; it’s not a garlic and crucifixes sort of story. Fair enough.)

Surely there are no shady, immoral reasons for this.

Our actual lead is not Irina, the titular vampire, herself, but rather her caretaker, a training program flunky named Lev.

This is Lev. He’s pleasant enough.

It’s here I should point out; this thing is tagged with the Romance genre on every site I can find it listed on, and between Lev, Irina herself, and Lev’s assistant, Anna, there is absolutely the possibility for this to descend into mediocre harem hell. However, I prefer to assume an anime is going to become the best version of itself. What would that look like for Irina?

Well, the show’s strengths are evident even this early on. While none of the characters strike as super complex (at least not yet), the important ones feel well-thought-out. Lev is trying to reconcile having to give up on his own dream of cosmonauthood with his new responsibility taking care of Irina. Irina is all too happy to tell every human in earshot that she hates them, which is evidently a defense mechanism from being treated like an object her entire life. (That’s not me reading into the series; the latter is obvious from visual cues and the former is explicitly pointed out a number of times.)

There’s not a ton going on, so far, but the promise is there. The early scenes especially seem to hint at something deeper going on, with context-free flashes of Irina clutching a necklace, which she still has in the present, in the midst of a snowstorm. And in the political undertones of her involvement in the spaceflight program in the first place.

Really, for this sort of thing, “promise” is enough. It’s distinct enough that it can coast by on potential, at least for now. Irina is not going to be most peoples’ premiere of the season, but you could do far, far worse. And who knows? We might be talking about it in far grander terms six weeks from now.

Grade: C+
The Takeaway: Keep an eye on this one. Consider picking it up if you want an additional show and the novel combination of sci-fi and romance genres with a dash of horror appeals to you. Otherwise, maybe hold off until it gets some more positive word-of-mouth.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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 Uncategorized

Seasonal First Impressions: Gaze into The Void with TESLA NOTE

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

On a fundamental, very basic level, the absolute first thing a work of fiction ever has to do for you as the viewer, is convince you that the world that it exists in could be real. Not consciously, of course, but you have to accept the premise and the production–whatever they may be–on a subconscious level to even begin processing a story as such. That’s what the suspension of disbelief is. It is almost impossible to fail at this step when creating an even remotely professional work of art. And in anime, even very, very bad shows can convey a sense that the worlds they take place in exist in some sense. Even the worst things I’ve covered on this site, your Big Orders, hell, your Speed Graphers, can do that much.

Tesla Note, improbably, fails at this very first step. Even worse, it’s not even the first anime to do so this year, quickly establishing itself as a close cousin of the truly rancid Ex-Arm, which it makes some of the same mistakes as. Though in other ways, while Tesla Note is not quite as consistently awful, it is actually worse in the sheer number of ways it manages to be bad, as we’ll get to.

I’m not going to condescend to my readership by pretending any of you need to know about this thing’s plot. But if you are, for some reason, curious, here’s the official description, in its entirety.

Genius Nikola Tesla preserved records of all his inventions inside crystals known as Tesla Shards. After an inexplicable incident in Norway, Botan Negoro, a descendant of ninjas raised to be the ultimate agent, is recruited on a mission to recover the crystals. Her partner through this is self-proclaimed No. 1 agent, Kuruma. With the fate of the world at stake, the fight for the shards begins.

In practice this doesn’t matter. It’s a setup for garden variety super-spy BS that can absolutely be fun if it’s handled the right way. But folks? This is not the right way. Tesla Note is the first production from the brand-new studio Gambit, and I would not be surprised if it were their last. Surely no one enters the anime industry–hell, cartoons in general–and their desire is to make this? I’m not talking about the animators, who I have the deepest sympathy for. I’m referring to the higher-ups here. What led to this?

“This”, if you’re not picking it up just from the screencaps, is an absolutely eye-searing cornucopia of god-awful 3D CGI. And let me be very clear, I am something of a 3D CG apologist. There have been anime earlier this year that have made great use of 3D CG, one of which, Love Live Superstar!!, is airing this very season. I am not against the process on principle, and used well it can lead to wonderful things that are difficult or impossible to achieve with traditional 2D animation. In some sense, Tesla Note may also have been impossible to achieve if animated traditionally, but certainly not in any good sense.

Visually speaking, Tesla Note’s mix of stiff, under-rigged, poorly-lit, and generally bad-looking models for its main characters, its unconvincing backgrounds, the fever-dream editing style, its flat-out inexplicable decision to animate some but not all minor characters traditionally, and its profound failure to make any of this look like it exists on the same planet, much less in the same show, all combine into a symphony of incompetence. Tesla Note has all the visual panache of a teenager fucking around in GMod or a Virtual Youtuber working out the kinks in her rig before going live for the first time, which is funny, given that the main character is named Botan. It is the worst-looking anime of 2021, exceeding Ex-Arm, its only real competition, by lacking the one thing that show had, a unity of style.

Occasionally, the odd traditionally-animated cut will pop in, just for a moment, almost as a taunt. None of the few examples in this first episode are really any good, but they at least stand out.

Worse; Tesla Note is not merely awful-looking, it is also horribly-written. For nearly the entire 22-minute runtime of the first episode, no one ever shuts up. Almost every single second is filled with the characters chattering away in some of the most uninspired, cliché-ridden character dialogue I have ever seen. I was not super keen on the last series I did for this column, but this makes Selection Project look like The End of Evangelion. It is terminally charmless.

So does this thing have any merit? Well, if you’re the sort who enjoys gazing into the dying dreams of popular media, its first episode has some value as a thing to inflict on the unsuspecting. When it’s over, I could see it being an interesting thing to get wasted and binge watch with a particularly susceptible group of friends. Even then, be wary of falling on the wrong side of the Star Wars Holiday Special graph.

Truly there is an xkcd for every situation.

Other than that? No. Avoid Tesla Note at all costs.

Grade: F-
The Takeaway: Don’t watch this. Seriously, love yourself. Even for those chasing a “so bad it’s good” “meme anime” or what-have-you, the novelty will wear off, and you will be left spiritually hollow by the experience. Self-care is important these days.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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

The Frontline Report [10/3/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture. Expect some degree of spoilers for the covered shows.

One season ends and another begins, the world turns here on Magic Planet Anime.

The Heike Story

Japan races toward war. The third episode of The Heike Story only reinforces what we’ve known from day one, but it’s the method that really sticks out here. We know the character of Lord Saiko, for instance, for mere minutes. But he is the first to speak truth to power in opposing Shigemori’s father, Lord Kiyomori. For his defiance, he is beheaded, in a brilliant cut–in every sense of that word–that flickers from the falling of the sword to a flower landing in water. Elsewhere, archers fire at warrior monks and pierce portable shrines in the process, telling us that even already, nothing is truly sacred in the power struggle that’s about to ensue.

Biwa sees the bloodshed ahead, as Shigemori prepares to attack his own father to stop his power-hungry madness, but seems powerless to stop it. Only time will tell if that’s truly so. There is little in the way of embellishment to say about Heike Story, it simply is a gripping period piece drama.

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S

In a meta sense, it’s not that strange that a show like this remains somewhat controversial. “Be yourself, ignore what society tells you” is about as close as Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid ever gets to a proper theme, and it certainly follows its own advice, for better or worse. But while it’s no philosophical treatise, the writing can be surprisingly characterful when it remembers to get out of its own way. Dragon Maid S actually ended a bit ago now, but I only watched the final two episodes this past week, and that’s definitely true of both of them, especially the actual finale with its festivals and faux wedding ceremony. It re-centers the focus on Kobayashi and Tohru themselves, making for the series’ strongest showing since, well, the last time I covered it on this column.

But Dragon Maid‘s thesis of ethical hedonism aside, the real story here in the long run remains the triumphant return of Kyoto Animation. I won’t drag the point out; all twelve episodes of the show look amazing, and while what they’ve been through will probably weigh heavy over the anime landscape for a long time, it’s just really good to have them back. See you all for 20th Century Electric Catalogue?

Elsewhere on MPA

I debuted my Seasonal First Impressions column this past week (which you’re going to be seeing more of literally today if everything goes as planned), but I’ve also put up a review, another episode of KeyFrames Forgotten I’m rather proud of, and just in general am keeping a decent clip of things. Remember to toss me some coins in the footer if you’ve liked anything I’ve written this week and are able to!

Seasonal First Impressions: SELECTION PROJECT – The season gets off to a truly “and the crowd goes mild”-style start with an idol anime that left me very, very nonplussed. It’s annoying to dislike something because it’s simply “not doing anything new”, and I wouldn’t even say I do dislike Selection Project per se, there’s just not much to it at the moment, which is unfortunate.

(REVIEW) The Far Side of Summer, SONNY BOY, and Me – Sonny Boy is one of those anime that’s going to be rolling around in my noggin for years. I don’t think I’m as huge as a fan as many of the show’s biggest defenders, but that’s splitting hairs. Immaculately produced, uncommonly nuanced, and contemplative to its core, Sonny Boy is a show we’re going to be hearing about for a long time.

KeyFrames Forgotten Episode 3 – WINDY TALES – Hey you, reading this right now, listen to our podcast about Windy Tales! The show is good and the podcast episode is also good! I don’t hear people discuss Windy Tales much anymore, and I’m not sure why? It’s a lovely little thing.

See you on the next, anime fans.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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.