Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Milo isn’t actually dead. Are you surprised?
I, for one, wasn’t. Not that much, at least. As much as I mentioned last week that Sabikui Bisco actually killing off its lead would be a disaster, it bringing him back from the brink also feels more than a little hollow. Not the least of which is–you do heed the spoiler warnings at the tops of these articles, right?–that our other lead dies here, seemingly in a fashion that is a lot harder to write your way out of.
But we’ll get to all that. “I Love You” is actually, for the most part, a pretty good episode. Mostly because it plays to Sabikui Bisco‘s strengths–action sequences, weird worldbuilding, snappy dialogue, and colorful characters clashing with each other–but that central, ephemeral lack of a certain “something” is a problem. It’s been a minor one throughout the series, and although this is the best episode in a while, it’s also an episode that demonstrates why that’s so.
We open with Bisco nursing Milo back to health, in a scene that should be genuinely touching but mostly comes across as just sort of stupid. Here the two of you are, bonding over your blood brotherhood or your mutual homosexual tension or whatever this all is, and Milo says this.
It’s not an entirely serious offer and neither is the banter that follows, but the fact remains that this is a hilariously dumb thing to say in this situation. And look, I love Pawoo–I wouldn’t say she’s well-written, but that’s another matter–but why is the show pushing this as a thing? Even as an outside option? Pawoo and Bisco have negative chemistry. Unless I’m just forgetting something, they’ve interacted three times in the entire show. It’s only barely believable if it were simply that Bisco has a one-sided crush on Pawoo. It being mutual is just nuts.
And maybe it comes off like I’m nitpicking a minor exchange of dialogue that isn’t really supposed to be all that serious. Indeed, the show follows all that up with this exchange, which is genuinely very funny.
Ladies love a femboy with advanced medical knowledge.
But this problem of a tone that is simply fundamentally “off” remains an issue throughout the episode, even in its strongest moments.
It is worth giving those moments their due, though. Most of the episode revolves around Kurokawa revealing his insidious evil plan and being duly punished for it. Spoiler alert: he meets his end here, but not before getting in some very over-the-top villainous gloating. This is a space that Sabikui Bisco can work in.
His plan, as he explains to a captive Jabi, is both simple in concept and hilariously stupid in execution. The natural Rust Wind doesn’t make quite enough people sick to keep his profits up, you see. His solution? Harvest the reactor unit inside one of the giant superweapons that blew Japan up in the first place–a Tetsujin, they’re called–and stick it in a bioengineered pink elephant. Have the elephant–sorry, the Ganesha Cannon–fire it wherever he wants, and let nature take its course by blowing the Rust Wind fallout all over the Japanese countryside.
Jabi also gets some incredibly raw dialogue in this scene, most notably when Kurokawa orders one of his henchmen to cut off his fingers so he can’t draw a bow anymore.
He doesn’t get the chance to show any of this off in-episode, because Bisco–who has been masquerading as one of said bodyguards throughout this entire sequence–sets to take him down once and for all.
This, too, is a space Sabikui Bisco can comfortably work in. The fights here are pretty great; we’ve got Kurokawa and Bisco themselves, fighting with both their lives on the line as the former has a total mental breakdown at his plans coming undone. Outside the facility they’re all in, we also get a quick cameo from Pawoo as she helps Jabi pummel a giant cyborg gorilla (?!) into submission, in what is somewhat-inexplicably probably the best-animated scene in the entire series thusfar.
It’s dope as hell so I’m not really complaining, just, what?
And when Bisco finally does take down Kurokawa, it’s incredibly satisfying. He even throws Kurokawa’s whole “evil badass who loves vintage pop culture” shtick back in his face as he dies. Which, by the way, happens when Bisco tackles him into an open pit of lava.
The whole thing is viscerally satisfying…except for the fact that Bisco dies, too. Shot dead by Milo, at his own request, since he’d rather have had his closest friend take his life than drown in the sea of molten Rust.
This, really, feels like it should be very affecting, but it’s here that we run headlong into the series’ shortcomings again. No matter how hard it tries, Sabikui Bisco just can’t pull off these huge emotional beats. When Milo takes Bisco out by sniping him, and declares that he loves him1, this should be a massive, intense moment. For me at least, it felt completely flat. Maybe even a bit unintentionally comedic. The longwinded speeches Bisco and Milo trade about how Bisco will always be with Milo and so on just land with a thud. It doesn’t work.
Why doesn’t it work? Maybe it’s because of all the show’s undercutting of its own central relationship. I’ve never really been clear on what Bisco and Milo actually mean to each other. They’re clearly close, but there are many, many different kinds of “close.” Are they close friends? Blood brothers? Gay for each other? Does Bisco consider Milo a sort of surrogate son, as one line in this episode suggests? Maybe all of these things, to some degree? It’s never really clear. I think part of this may be an issue of the compression of pacing inherent to anime adaptions, but there must have been a way to handle this in a fashion that made more sense.
I did see a few people around various social media haunts suggest that perhaps Milo loves Bisco in a romantic way but thinks Bisco is straight. Thus, half-jokingly trying to set Bisco up with his sister is a coping mechanism / something of an attempt to keep Bisco in his life. If this is true, I would say that Sabikui Bisco is simply not the sort of series that can sustain a relationship dynamic that complex. None of the fine shades of character detailing that would require are apparent in the text of the series. As such, Milo and Bisco’s relationship is pleasant, and they’re fun together, but defining it in any more certain terms is difficult because none of these pieces really fit together.
As for the actual final plot beat here, are Kurokawa and Bisco themselves actually dead? Probably, but it’s hard to put a definitive “yes” there, given that the series has proven willing to pull characters back to life. Still, it’d be one hell of a writing challenge to come up with a way for one or both of those characters to escape burning alive in a lava pit. That’s pretty definitively fatal.
There is of course, only one way to find out. Until next week, anime fans.
1: It’s worth noting that I believe the specific word here (aishiteru) usually has romantic connotations, but I may be mistaken.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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.
The Magic Planet 