Month: January 2022

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: POLICE IN A POD is Comedic Homicide

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.

There are many reasons that people are generally distrustful of the police. A lot of those reasons are fairly complex and rooted in longstanding authoritative structures, some of which have pretty nasty roots. In the US, there has been a concerted movement to, as consumers, move away from media that depicts police officers in an unambiguously positive light. The neologism “copaganda” was coined for this exact purpose, to make it clear to others that yes, depicting cops as superhuman arbiters of justice (as is the case in numerous cop shows) is kind of a problem. “Copaganda” generally is applied as a label to tonally serious fare, but comedies, such as say Brooklyn 99, aren’t immune either.

While distrust of police is a broader issue, the circumstances that lead to this willful withdrawal from certain kinds of television are fairly specifically American. Japan’s law enforcement has its own issues–ones I’m largely wildly unqualified to speak on–but as an American viewer even the goofiest show that revolves around the police is a hard sell. (This is one of the reasons I’ve never even tried to watch You’re Under Arrest!) I try to judge every anime I cover as fairly as I can, but if I seem unduly harsh on Police in a Pod, MADHOUSE‘s latest, do keep in mind there are reasons for that. Taking art on its own terms is important, as a critic, but it is pretty much impossible to step outside of your own head.

All of which would matter a lot more if Police in a Pod required any nuance to discuss. Here’s a secret about popular art in general; you can get away with a lot if what you make is actually good. Easily impressed eggheads like me will heap praise on things for being difficult or messy because they engage with problematic concepts while still being compelling. We do it all the time. Frankly, we probably do it too much. But you absolutely have to nail the qualitative aspect. Failing all else, you have to at least be interesting.

Police in a Pod is not good. Or interesting. Or for that matter, much of anything.

This series’ first episode is so utterly fucking unfunny, so lacking in charm or really any other merit, that it practically writes an article about itself. Where to start with this wretched little thing? Let’s be nice and start with one of the tiny handful of things it almost gets right. Our main character, Mai Kawai, is a box cop. She joined the force because of the pay and because she failed the exams for every other civil service job she tried, she wants to support herself and her dad and police work was the only way to do it. She honestly seems to have a bit of a self-loathing issue about it, going by some stuff she says in this episode! She also complains a lot about how police work is hard and no one respects her, which, gosh, I can’t imagine why.

‘One of the very, very few things that could redeem this conceptual wreck of a series is if it ended with Mai quitting police work entirely, something she actually considers (but sadly doesn’t follow through on) in the episode’s opening minutes. It’s a real shame, she could perhaps enter a more respectable and fulfilling field. Like gravedigging. Or insurance fraud. That won’t happen for reasons I will shortly make apparent, but hey, it’s fun to dream.

So, our main character is baseline sympathetic, that’s one thing done…we’ll say mostly right. What about her partner, Seiko Fuji, the series’ other main character?

Sigh.

Folks, I’m going to break a rule of criticism and go on a tangent about my upbringing here, please bear with me.

My uncle is a police chief. He was a big figure in my early life, and I hate the guy. He’s a miserable man who fights with his wife, gets drunk on Mike’s Hard Lemonade, complains about both other cops and the “civilians” he’s ostensibly sworn to protect, and says racist bullshit about minorities when he thinks he’s in comfortable company. He is a fucking loathsome human being and every single day I am grateful for the fact that, since I’ve moved out of state, I will likely never see him again.

I feel like Seiko and my uncle would get along great.

Seiko’s main personality trait seems to be that she is helpful to peoples’ faces and then bitches about them when she thinks no one is listening. Because this is a “comedy series,” people–usually Mai–often are listening, and their mechanically predictable “wow, how could you say that?!” reactions to her petulant, entitled nonsense are supposed to be funny. They are not. Seiko–and honestly, Police in a Pod itself–seems to think that interactions between police officers and the public should consist either of cops bullying criminals both petty and serious into pants-pissing terror, or innocent citizens fearfully cowering in submission as they, say, accept a $150 ticket without complaint. Seiko is openly disdainful of the idea that she should be a positive presence in her community, or even just be nice to people. She’s a deeply unpleasant character. If this is supposed to be satirical it doesn’t come across, it just seems like the show happens to be following a total asshole because it thinks she’s funny.

I will admit that I have a hard time with characters like this in general, but when you put them in a position of authority and their abuse of that authority is the entire joke? That goes over a line from “artistically unpleasant” and crosses straight into “genuinely fucked up.” It boggles the mind that something this much of a non-entity artistically could muster up the gumption to actually be offensive, but Police in a Pod somehow manages it over the 20-odd minute runtime of its first episode.

None of this is to say that Police in a Pod actually seems to like Seiko. When jokes are made at her expense, they tend to look like this, and her total lack of reaction is notably weird.

But she’s never actually punished–even in a comedic way that would fit the show’s ostensible tone–for her arrogance or her bullying. That’s breaking a pretty basic comedic rule, a sort of “what goes up must come down” of character arrogance. In of itself, that’s not terribly surprising, because on top of everything else, Police in a Pod is a terribly staid production. Nothing has any real pop, there aren’t any interesting cuts or visual tricks. Even the soundtrack is boring. Were its premise not so gallingly tone-deaf, it would be hard to muster up much an opinion about this series at all.

Lest you think I’m being too hard on Police in a Pod, one of the vignettes here sees Mai–the more sympathetic of the two leads, mind you!–essentially explain and endorse a slight twist on Broken Windows theory to a bunch of school children. (Her explanation as to why it’s bad to ride doubles on a bike is that it will show criminals that they’re free to break rules in the area. This is provably stupid; the reason to not ride doubles on a bike is because it’s fucking dangerous. Just saying that never occurs to her, for some reason.)

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. If anything worse than this manages to come out this season, we are in for a truly dire time indeed. Don’t watch this show. It’s miserable.

Grade: F
The Takeaway: Irredeemably unfunny and lacking in any other merit, this series is to be avoided at all costs.

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 First Impressions: TOKYO 24TH WARD is Off The Rails, on a Crazy Train

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.

There’s gonna be a recurring narrative throughout some of these impression posts this season, possibly this year on the whole, and it’s not a particularly positive one. CloverWorks are doing a lot of anime in 2022. More than one studio can reasonably handle. I put the blame on CloverWorks’ corporate masters at Aniplex more than the studio themselves, but this fact is going to loom over every single anime they produce this year, including a number of highly anticipated adaptions. If any of those adaptions bottom out, the general public will not be kind.

Tokyo 24th Ward, however, is not one of those adaptions. It’s an original production, and comparisons to a thoroughly divisive anime CloverWorks made almost exactly a year ago–and my own favorite anime of 2021–are inevitable. These comparisons will do Tokyo 24th few favors. Tokyo 24th is not Wonder Egg Priority. It has weaknesses, even this early on, that WEP never did, and its strengths are completely different. They are whole worlds away from each other.

Consider this. The first half of the first episode features parkour and graffiti that digitally inserts itself into a city, signifiers of flash and style. But also, it opens with an arson attack and a solid five-minute run of the episode takes place at a funeral mass. It’s a bit inscrutable.

Here’s a question though: a single episode in, is that really a problem?

Set the question of whether this will be a good anime aside for a moment. It will absolutely be an interesting anime. Even the episode’s first (and worse) half is weird. It’s fairly slow, there’s a winding narrative voiceover about the alternate history the show takes place in (boring), and a lot of fucking annoying waffling on what it means “to be a hero.” Main character (and presumable cousin to Yomogi from SSSS.DYNAZENON) Shuuta Aoi failed to save someone–his friend / maybe love interest / other friend’s sister Asumi Suidou–in that arson attack, you see, during a time where he and his buddies (the other two main characters; reckless Ran Akagi and uptight political heir Kouki Suido) had a habit of playing hero and trying to solve others’ problems. They got in over their head.

Naturally, the incident at the arson fire puts a stop to all that, and by the time of the show’s present the three have drifted apart. Shuuta has become a NEET living above his mother’s bakery, Ran is a Twitch streamer / graffiti artist whose creations “hack” themselves into the city, and Kouki enjoys the privileged but miserable existence as the son of the titular 24th Ward’s mayor during a transitional period from self-rule toward integration into Tokyo proper.

They live very different lives, and the funeral mass is the first time in ages they’ve all been in the same place. A subsequent and by chance meetup at a local restaurant serves to highlight how little they have in common anymore, and there is frankly way too much puffed-up talk about each characters’ worldview, especially Ran and Kouki’s, given their very different stances on authority. This indicates a solid underlying political sensibility, but the series does not handle it in a compelling fashion in this first episode. It feels surprisingly dry.

Then, just when things seem like they’re going to get boring, all three friends get a phone call apparently from the dead Asumi. The ensuing scene is a surreal headtrip wherein the camera literally dives into our characters’ brains, and Asumi’s ghost beats the three of them over the head with a lightly modified version of the Trolley Problem while a bunch of gaudy VFX fire off and make the whole thing look like a fever dream. It’s insane. It’s instantly memorable. It is by far the best moment in the whole episode.

But that’s not to say that what follows it is any slouch either. Suddenly dialed in to some supernatural force (Ran later speculates that it’s some kind of “brain hacking” which, hey, sure), the three realize that this is no mere thought experiment here. There is actually an out-of-control train that is going to run over an innocent person–their friend Mari, plus her dog–and if they stop it in the wrong way, the train will derail, killing everyone aboard. This extremely misses the point of the Trolley Problem, which is intended to be a theoretical ethical dilemma. I would also argue that since it gives the episode a sense of urgency and direction, that that does not matter in the slightest.

The three engage in some real superhero bullshit, and Tokyo 24th improbably backs up all that “what is a hero? 🤔” silliness from the first half of the premiere. Shuuta, in particular, is incredible here. He’s faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, although the sick-ass roof-running he pulls off here isn’t something Superman would ever do.

I won’t bore you by describing their methodology in detail, but with their powers combined, our heroes save the day. It’s cheesy in the way a lot of the best anime are. It rules.

The episode ends on a down note, though. With Shuuta assuming that the phantom phonecall means Asumi is still alive. Ran is skeptical, Kouki–Asumi’s brother–is downright insulted by the idea, and the two almost come to blows. Personally, I’m on Shuuta’s side here, since he seems to be the only one who actually understands what sort of show he’s in.

So that’s what actually happens in Tokyo 24th‘s first episode. How it happens is another matter. Production-wise, and despite the director’s own concerns, it looks pretty good so far. But it doesn’t really look conventional. There’s a real love of flashy scene transitions here, and there’s also a trick that recurs a number of times where cells are directly layered over each other to give the appearance of events “popping in” on top of each other. It takes some getting used to, and it makes shots look over-crowded in still form, but I’d grown more fond of it than not by episode’s end. It works best when deployed with more lighthearted or more action-oriented scenes. When used against a more serious, dramatic, backdrop, it just looks silly.

My hope is that Tokyo 24th Ward manages to hold things together against all odds. This is a weird anime, and that’s a good thing to be in a season that so far looks to mostly be rather conventional genre fare. (Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, either. But it helps Tokyo 24th stand out.) Who knows what we’ll be saying about this anime in six weeks, but I’d say it’s worth keeping an eye on.

Also: who the hell was this?

Grade: B
The Takeaway: Skepticism because of the whole CloverWorks situation is entirely warranted here. But, if you’re looking for something that’s just weird and fun to look at and aren’t too concerned about whether or not it ends up being a masterpiece, this is probably worth checking out.

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, Reviews

(REVIEW) There’s Nothing to be Proud of About PRIDE OF ORANGE

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 The Mugcord Discord Server.

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. But you really shouldn’t care in this case. Seriously, don’t watch this.

If you close your eyes, you can almost picture it.

The time is early 2020. The place? An opulent office space somewhere in Tokyo, the residence of a chief CEO. A real big shot. His suit and his coke habit mark him as a survivor of the ’80s entertainment biz. He’s been places. He’s seen things. He’s helped stars rise and he’s made them fall.

Today is a day like any other, when a representative pitching a new series–an anime–strides into his office. The rep talks smooth as Crisco, and the boss doesn’t need much convincing. His pitch is simple; everyone’s got an idol show. Your company needs one too. The boss is hung up on only one point. He’s been around the block, he knows his stuff, and he knows that just blindly copying this hot new trend won’t cut it. They need a twist.

Idly, he taps a remote on his desk, and the jumbo flatscreen on the other wall lights up. It’s a sports channel, but they’re not broadcasting any of Japan’s typical national pastimes. Instead, he sees an ice rink, and a black puck zipping across it.

He smiles at the serendipity as the rep stands there confused. “Son.” The boss says, his tone cool and confident. “There’s our twist.”

This is probably not how Pride of Orange, a near-instantly forgotten entry in the “idol anime but also something else” subgenre from late last year, actually got greenlit. But it makes more sense to me than the alternative. Some washed-up suit OK’ing this is the only way it seems plausible that it was made at all. What’s the other explanation? That this was focus-tested? That multiple people sat down and assured themselves that yes, idols playing hockey is exactly what the youth of Japan want in their cartoons?

If the show had actually been good, it’s possible I’d be sitting here praising the ingenuity of conjoining these two things that absolutely do not go together at all. But we don’t live in a world where Pride of Orange is a good show, so that’s irrelevant. In the US, this is the kind of thing that gets mocked on VH1 by washed-up celebrities 20 years after it airs off the surreal premise alone. Some real Baywatch Nights shit. I don’t know if they have a similar pop culture backwash hall of shame practice in Japan, and if so, whether it includes anime, but Pride of Orange had better hope so on both counts, because there’s no way anyone’s remembering it otherwise.

You might take all this to mean Pride of Orange is bad. You’d be right to. It is bad! But every single bad anime I’ve ever covered on Magic Planet Anime before has had a saving grace that Puraore does not; they were bad in interesting ways. Pride of Orange is bad in the same way that Imagine Dragons, ugly logos, and direct-to-Netflix specials are bad. It is an obvious product of a pop cultural media machine completely failing to deliver the one thing that said machine should always be able to. In this case, a baseline watchable cartoon. Beyond its ridiculous premise, there just isn’t much to it. It’s audiovisual wallpaper. An active test of your patience that dares you, with its sheer brain-numbing mundanity, to blink first. This is anime-by-algorithm, a so-inoffensive-it’s-offensive patchwork of tropes, plotlines, and even character designs cribbed from other, better anime, kludged together by grey-suited executives without a single creative bone in their bodies. That’s before we get to its more serious flaws, mind you.

So, what is this horrible abomination unto mankind? Well, as mentioned, it’s theoretically an idol series where the idols are also a hockey team. In practice it’s more the other way around. The “idol” bit feels tacked-on enough (a grand total of two dance sequences, with almost no buildup, over its whole run) that I wonder if it wasn’t initially conceived as a straight sports series and then later altered. It does have the cast structure of an idol series, at least, and all characters present fall into broad archetypes that the genre popularized, but quite unlike some personal favorites in it (say, 2011’s The Idolmaster, 2018’s Zombie Land Saga, or 2020’s Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club),* none of them have much personality. Probably the best of the lot are Naomi and Riko, whose distinction mostly comes from the fact that they’re quite obviously dating each other. (Their brief arc, which culminates in episode 9, is unquestionably the highlight of the series.)

The remainder of the cast is fairly anonymous, including theoretical protagonist Manaka.

“My literal only personality trait is obnoxious cheerfulness.”

We should also talk about Youko, the team’s coach. Youko is an outlier here, because she’s not devoid of personality like most other characters. Instead, her combination of doofy catchphrases, manipulative, obnoxious personality, and general overbearing nature combine to make her come across as weirdly creepy.

In one of the show’s “arcs” (the term seems generous), she attempts to recruit the star player of a rival team, Yu, who’s recently left the life of a hockey prodigy behind to experience a normal teenagerhood. (God knows we can’t have that in our sports anime.) In her efforts, Youko resorts to tactics such as repeatedly, incessantly calling her phone, standing outside of her house and yelling(!), and engineering a situation where she deliberately leaves a pen behind when invited into Yu’s house by her grandmother. This, of course, means that Yu has to return said pen (I’d argue she doesn’t, really, but neither Yu herself nor her grandmother object to the idea). When Yu does so, Youko ropes her into a bizarre bet, which she loses, and essentially forces her to join the team. This is glossed over with the non-explanation that Yu actually enjoys being on the new team, so it doesn’t matter. Youko is similarly unpleasant to her other players, and even engages in gaslight-y emotional manipulation a few times, giving her an almost predatory vibe.

None of this is ever addressed, because Pride of Orange has neither the writing chops necessary to address it nor the forethought to simply not make the coach a skeevy weirdo in the first place. I would also argue that Youko having to quite literally trick the cast into becoming an “idol group” on top of being a hockey team feels like it betrays a broad disdain both for the show’s audience and its own genre.

“The fact that I’m allowed to be an influence in children’s lives is, on a moral level, horrific.”

But really, while Youko’s situation is the worst of the series’ many writing flaws, it’s far from the only one. Frequent issues like conflicts springing up and then being almost immediately resolved, or flashbacks grinding action scenes to a dead stop to repeat to us information we either already know or could easily infer, recur repeatedly throughout. Pride of Orange often feels like the first draft of an anime that, even were all these issues fixed, would still be merely just below average. All these little problems add up, and they make Pride of Orange an altogether miserable watching experience.

One could try to chalk all this up to Puraore’s length, but two of the anime I previously mentioned were also single cour. It is very possible, with economical character building, stylish animation, sharp writing that builds a solid triumph narrative, etc., to make your audience care about even a quite large cast in that amount of time. Pride of Orange never swings that, because it has none of those things. It doesn’t even manage to instill much of a base level thrill off the novelty of its premise, the one thing that objectively distinguishes this series from any other. In October, right around when Pride of Orange started airing, a pilot short called “SHAREDOL” managed to do that much in less than three minutes. Length is no excuse.

In the broadest sense, the problem is this. The best anime can, in the moment, feel monumental. I’ll again draw a comparison to The Idolmaster (you’ll have to forgive my lack of experience with sports anime, which would honestly be more appropriate here, but the general structures still apply). One got the sense, during the series’ climactic concert, that those girls had done everything to earn their moment. They would’ve bled and died on that stage if that’s what it took. It feels, as it’s happening, huge. All-important.

Pride of Orange manages the almost impressive feat of going in the other direction. Of making not just its parent genres, but its entire medium feel small, trivial, and trifling. While watching it, I felt transmogrified into a disapproving stepmother, finger-wagging at myself for watching these silly cartoons. And you can accuse me of projection, and say that no anime, no matter how bad, should make me feel this way. But the fact of the matter is that taken together, as a whole, Pride of Orange‘s cheez-whiz take on the sports and idol anime genres improbably transforms simple boredom into existential dread. It is such a yawning void of mediocrity that it’s somehow one of the worst anime I’ve ever seen. At the risk of repeating myself, it is distinguished from past Magic Planet Anime worst-of candidates like Speed Grapher, Big Order, The Day I Became a God, and fellow idol trainwreck 22/7 by the fact that those anime were bad in a way that still made it clear that the people behind them cared about them. They may have had any number of very serious qualitative flaws. They may have been downright offensive at times. But a certain kind of terribleness can only come from misplaced passion, which at least implies that there is passion.

Let me be very clear; this is not true of Pride of Orange. I do not get the sense that anyone who worked on this series cared about it at all. Whether because they did not want to or because circumstances made it so they could not I do not know, but the few tiny pinpricks of light that poke through–Naomi and Riko’s relationship, the vanishingly brief pair of dance numbers that comprise the entirety of the show’s “idol” element, the surprisingly solid soundtrack–make it clear that for the vast majority of this show, nobody involved gave a shit. It has all the artistry of a McDonald’s order and ends with a limp, nondescript hand gesture too lazy to be a middle finger. Make no mistake, all of this is tragic.

And perhaps the worst part is that I don’t think Puraore is unique in this way. Things like Pride of Orange are what you get when a zeitgeist is about to die. Most of my time as an active anime enthusiast has been spent in the midst of the idol anime boom. I have liked a decent amount of those shows, but I wouldn’t quite call myself an “idol anime fan.” Those who would should be wary; things like Puraore are not a good sign. The same is broadly true of the “all-female cast does stuff” supergenre in general, and for that matter, anime on the whole.

What else is there to say? Pride of Orange is symptomatic of an industry that is simply producing way, way too much content by sheer volume. Few people watched it. Fewer of those who did will remember it–fondly or otherwise–in a few years’ time. It is hypergeneric but endlessly replaceable, a combination ice skate / high heel stomping on all our faces forever. In this light, the name of the protagonists’ team sounds less like a quirky sports team name and more like a sneered command. Dream, monkeys. Dream hard. Because there has to be something better than this.

* I should make a note here to apologize to all involved with Selection Project, a different idol anime from the Fall 2021 season that I derided as unimpressive in my impressions post for the first episode. I foolishly assumed that because Pride of Orange has a stupid premise it might be more interesting than SelePro. I have heard through the grapevine that Selection Project apparently eventually got quite good, something Puraore cannot say. (And really it’s hard to imagine how it could possibly be worse.) If one of these two anime ever picks up a cult following, it will not be the one I reviewed for you today.

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 [1/3/22]

Hello, anime fans! Happy New Year and welcome to the first Frontline Report of 2022! As I mentioned in my plans for 2022 post, this column is going to remain mostly unchanged entering the new year. Once the seasonal schedule settles, I may move it to publishing on a different day (and we may skip a week at some point in the process), but beyond that, the Report is going to remain familiar, at least for now.

But before we can truly venture into 2022 and the season ahead, I have two anime I’d previously left unfinished from last season. Let’s talk about those, shall we?

Weekly Anime

Mieruko-chan

The first of our cleanups from the tail end of last year; Mieruko-chan was, as far as straightforward manga adaptions go, pretty typical. That is to say, it inherits most of its source material’s weaknesses and only some of its strengths. The good news is that while the more ambitious work that separates a good manga adaption from a merely OK one is largely absent from the series’ first half, it does begin to pick some of that up as it nears its conclusion. This is a series that, far from falling off after its first episode, more or less linearly gets better. Its last few episodes are its strongest, and that brings us to the “Zen arc” that closes it out.

Zen, as brought up when we last visited him, is the substitute teacher for Miko and Hana’s class. He is, in a general sense, weird. Much of the tension of the arc is predicated toward building on the assumption we already have (from his prior appearances in the series) that he’s a serial animal killer. The pieces seem to add up; a rash of missing cats in the neighborhood, his own cold and detached demeanor from other people (including his students), generally suspicious behavior, etc. But one of Mieruko-chan‘s central themes is that looks can be deceiving.

The arc’s climax, in which Zen is almost hit by a car while trying to rescue a cat, and we learn of his past with his abusive mother, is the series’ best handling of anything with real gravitas. Aided by the fact that she literally still haunts him, a situation Miko fixes for him in what is certainly her most proactive move in the whole series. This entire sequence of scenes (which takes up the bulk of the penultimate episode), is the show’s overall highlight.

So, what to make of Mieruko-chan overall? I’ve been rather critical of it in this column in the past (including at the top of this very section), but I maintain my initial impression that what it does right outweighs what it does wrong. I still might point anyone interested in the series to the manga first and foremost, but the visual snap (and consequently, additional narrative weight) added to these last few episodes definitely makes the anime worth watching as well.

Then there’s the characters. Any series that has both serious and comparatively lighthearted components will end up judged on the former over the latter, but Mieruko-chan‘s comedic chops really solidify in this last arc as Miko, Hana, and Julia’s dynamic clicks into its final shape. My main hope for a second season is not as much because I am interested in the resolution of the story arc (although I am), but more because I just want to see these three delightful dummies palling around town more.

(Also, if the subtext between these two isn’t intentional, I’ll eat my hat.)

A shout out has to also be given to the translators here, whose quirky script really helps Mieruko-chan‘s comedy come across in English. Far too many comedy manga and anime end up falling flat when translated “literally,” and it’s for the best they didn’t go with that approach here.

So that’s the long and short of it. Will Mieruko-chan change anyone’s life? No, but it’s solid genre fare in an under-represented genre, and that is more than enough. I think the best thing I can say about Mieruko-chan on a personal level is that despite any criticisms I may have, if they made a second season, I would absolutely watch it. And really, isn’t that the only metric of quality you really need?

Rumble Garanndoll

I think if you wanted to, it wouldn’t be that hard to make a case against Rumble Garanndoll. The series does the stock irresponsible anime-about-anime thing of conflating all human passion (a very broad thing) with passion specifically for this medium (a very narrow thing). You could point to other missteps it’s made along the way (most of which I’ve covered in previous editions of this very column), you could single out how, in the end, its big fascistic villain is revealed as little more than the cosplaying puppet of an even bigger, offscreen fascistic villain who we don’t really get to meaningfully meet at any point.

But the thing is this; I am an anime critic. Emphasis on the first word, not the second. If an anime is mostly about how fucking awesome anime is, I’m going to at least kinda like it unless it’s truly terrible. And Rumble Garanndoll has the appropriate amount of audacity to, say, cap its final arc with the villains attempting to drop the Comiket Center onto Akihabara like a bomb. Even if I didn’t like the series, I’d respect its punch.

But I do like it! Flaws and all, it’s hard to find major fault with something this damn fun. Our main arc here concludes with Hosomichi finding that even if he can’t feel as strongly for the art itself as other people do, he can feel for those people. That’s a surprisingly mature conclusion for something like this to reach! And that’s not all; we get a lot of good small moments over these last three episodes. Stuff like Hosomichi’s ringtone turning out to be a crucial plot element, and a small arc between Commander Balzac and Mimi (the scientist lady). There’s even a few oddly poignant moments. Like here where she assures Balzac that their own sacrifices–and the mistakes they made during them–weren’t for nothing.

Or here, at the very end of the series, where Akatsuki is astonished to learn that many of the resistance members weren’t even Japanese. Implicitly, a gesture of Garanndoll reaching out to its overseas audience as Akatsuki visibly begins to question the ideas he’s been fighting for this entire time. (In the process, supporting character Ukai is revealed to be American.)

It’s all just very good-natured and fun. There are criticisms one could make of this last arc, especially on the production side (there are a few downright sloppy action sequences here mixed in with the better ones), but why? Rumble Garanndoll set out not to imitate the great anime of the past, but to become one itself. I’m not sure if it quite hit “great,” but it’s certainly a worthy show, and I hope it picks up a following. It deserves one.

And yeah, for the record, I’d watch a second season of this, too. (Especially since the last episode raises as many questions as it answers!) I’m glad this was the last anime from 2021 I finished; I think Rumble Garanndoll‘s attitude is a good one to bring into the new year.

Elsewhere on MPA

The Five Most Magical Anime of 2021

This is outside my usual window for mentioning an article on the subsequent Frontline Report, but I worked really hard on this, and I want as many people to read it as possible. So please give it a look if you haven’t!

Seasonal Impressions: What is THE MISSING 8?

If you want to get very picky, you could argue that the season’s already begun. The Missing 8‘s first two episodes dropped just after Christmas, and I honestly am still just in awe that the show exists. It’s not a TV series, it’s a semi-independent web short thing that is only actually animated some of the time, but it’s worth checking out just for how odd it is.

And that’s about all for our first week of 2022. If you’re finding the year’s start a little thin, I wouldn’t worry. We’ve got quite the week ahead of us with a good number of premieres piled up already. (I’ll probably be covering about one per day, once they start dropping.) I should also quickly mention Ousama Ranking; yes, it will be returning to this column, probably before too long. It’s a great series and I intend to follow it ’til its end. I’m only not counting it as a leftover from 2021 because, well, I tend to categorize anime by the year they end in rather than the year they begin in. A personal preference, I suppose.

What was your last anime of 2021? Do you have any plans for your first of 2022? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter, I always look forward to hearing from you, anime fans!

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