Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Spy x Family returns to form this week after a rather poor showing last week. It helps that the show is here operating in one of its simplest and most effective modes; “Anya tries to galaxy brain a way into Damian’s good graces and fails spectacularly.”
The only real unfortunate thing is that this means that there isn’t terribly much to actually say about this episode. It’s funny, certainly, but there are only so many ways I can commend deft execution of simple jokes like “Anya makes a miscalculation in one of her little schemes and then makes a shocked face and says ‘Gong!’ out loud.” They are legitimately amusing, but at this point they’re fairly expected.
The more interesting material here comes from two specific characters; Damian himself, and Becky, Anya’s little friend whose parents are, if I remember properly, arms dealers? Something like that. In any case, Anya tries to pull this “oops, I dropped a cool picture” trick for the second time in as many cours, and instead what happens is that Becky sees the photo, and instead of being enamored with Bond, Anya’s big cool dog, she promptly falls head over tiny heels for Loid.
Becky reveals herself to have the same taste in men as about half of my Twitter mutuals.
The actual plot, about Anya trying to help Damian make a paper-mache griffin in an arts and crafts class so he can impress his dad, is basically just a vehicle for more gags and funny faces. It’s a decent vehicle, though, and on Damian’s part we get some further insight into just how detached his father actually is from his life. At one point, he fantasizes about his dad admiring the griffin and praising him for “honoring the family name.” Later, after school, he stands visibly apart from his classmates, talking to his butler Jeeves (really) on the phone. He asks his butler what his father thought of what went down during the initiation—you probably remember that episode—and Jeeves audibly struggles to come up with something. It doesn’t really work, because Damian knows full well that his father doesn’t think of him at all. It’s honestly pretty sad! It’s strange that Spy x Family handles this sort of “serious material” so much better than it does any other kind, but the series is pretty good at it, and I hope going back to this well several times means that some resolution is on the horizon somewhere.
After this plot runs its course, the episode again features a shorter B-segment. This is mostly about Sylvia Sherwood, Loid’s handler, and is mostly an exercise in some incredibly stone-faced humor. It’s a pretty fun one, so I’m glad it made it into the episode. The real punchline comes when Sylvia asks Loid for a report on his mission, and….she gets a different answer than what she probably expected.
There’s also an even shorter C-segment after the end credits, but it’s basically just a retread of last week’s Yor Food gags, and is thus not really worth discussing at any length. There’s a Yuri episode on the docket up next; we’ll see what the future holds then, anime fans.
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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.
This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Roko Da Silva. Thank you for your support.
Of ’00s shonen fandom’s “Big Three”, I have to confess that Naruto is probably the one I have the least investment in. I don’t dislike the franchise by any means—I did watch it, though not nearly as religiously as some of my friends when I was younger—but most of my memories of Naruto are hazy and nonspecific. Single cool scenes, general feelings, vague memories of liking one character or another.
For this reason, I was a little wary when I was commissioned to watch Clash in the Land of Snow, worried I wouldn’t entirely know enough to properly evaluate the film. Thankfully, Clash is a very straightforward movie, an unchallenging but fun piece of genre fare of a sort that’s never really gone away, even as it underlines a handful of very meta points about the act of acting itself.
No complicated schemes or lore drops here; our plot is simply that Naruto (Junko Takeuchi), Sasuke (Noriaki Sugiyama), Sakura (Chie Nakamura), and their mentor Kakashi (Kazuhiko Inoue) must escort an actress, Yukie Fujikaze (Yuuko Kaida), on a trip as preparations are made for her next film.
She is very hot and very disinterested. 10/10 character.
There are several little twists here; Fujikaze doesn’t really want to keep acting, and in fact one of her first scenes of note involves her getting drunk out of her mind while complaining that all she does is act out “lies.” There’s the fact that all three of our ninja buddies here are big fans of her most well-known role, Princess Gale (Yukie Fujikaze) in a series of films of the same name. Oh yeah, there’s also the detail that she’s secretly the exiled princess of the titular Land of Snow, and that her evil older brother is trying to hunt her down so he can retrieve a magic crystal she keeps around her neck that is the key to an ancestral treasure he really, really wants to get his hands on.
More than its plot, Clash in the Land of Snow is a series of exercises in unfettered shonen movie goodness. There are excellent fight scenes with characters who almost certainly never showed up again after this, metaphors of mixed effect about determination and duty, the protagonist gritting his teeth to pull through and save the day, a lot of quite pretty background art, and a few jokes of dubious actual humor. The version I watched also had slightly-busted subtitles, for that authentic 2006 fansub experience.
It’s no surprise that the real highlights here are things that aim to deliver a pure head-rush of fun and not much of anything else. Perhaps the movie’s most famous scene is one where Naruto, carrying Yukie (by now, revealed to be an alias, her real name is Koyuki Kazahana) has to outrun a train on-foot when they encounter one in a tunnel. Not just notable for the fandom trivium that it’s the only train in the entire original series (this leads to Naruto rather hilariously asking what a train is), but for the sheer action of the scene; as swift and powerful as the train itself. Naruto and Koyuki escape just fine, but when a band of loyalist swordsmen rally to Koyuki’s reluctant cause, the train’s cars open up, revealing a battery of kunai-launching flak cannons; a scaled up, ninjafied, and very messy take on the Korean hwach’a, perhaps. Of course, they promptly shred the loyalists to pieces. Shrapnel is shrapnel, after all.
It’s worth honing in on that scene for another reason. Koyuki, despite in many ways serving a damsel in distress role for chunks of the film, is actually quite the well-done character. Her reluctance to accept the responsibilities placed on her head feels realistic and sympathetic (enough so that I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the film’s presentation of her eventual yielding to those responsibilities as a good thing). The death of her loyal assistant in the aforementioned scene hits particularly hard; she’s burned out enough by a life of running away that she can’t even cry, prompting a brilliant callback to an earlier (there, comedic) scene where she’s an incredible actor but can’t cry without tearing drops. Other highlight scenes include a chakra-sealed Naruto busting out of prison by filing away at his handcuffs with a file between his teeth (a fun trope in almost anything), and him laying a rainbow-colored rasengan down on the bad guy in the finale, only for the Land of Snow’s actual snow to start melting away as it turns out that the “secret treasure” that he was pursuing all along was, essentially, a magic weather machine that can warm the local climate.
The movie never gets as subtle as Koyuki’s lack of crying over her assistant’s death again, but it probably doesn’t really need to. This is pure popcorn stuff, and to a point I almost think that trying to be more ambitious would’ve actually hurt the film. There are obvious snags in its premise—the friend I was watching the film with pointed out that the Hidden Leaf Village are, by returning Koyuki to her homeland mostly against her own will, basically engaging in a proxy war—that are, of course, never addressed. But if these are problems at all, they’re minor ones. (I’ve actually heard that much later in the series, long after I stopped watching as a kid, Naruto does try to delve into some more political overtones, apparently to mixed results. But that’s a secondhand opinion, so take it with even more salt than you normally do when reading my site!) The film succeeds admirably at its main aim; to be, basically, a long episode of Naruto, and to be a good one.
All told, if it doesn’t seem like there’s much to Clash in the Land of Snow, that’s only because it doesn’t need to be much. Two hours of pure action movie anime entertainment is more than enough to make a film worthwhile. Fun is its own reward.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
We don’t really use the term “antihero” too often anymore. I think perhaps, collectively, we were a bit burned out on it somewhere around the mid-2000s. But it describes Denji to a tee, so I hope you won’t mind if I pull it out here.
To wit; our boy’s primary motivation throughout this episode is, once again, to touch a boob. This time, Power’s, in exchange for helping her rescue her pet cat (a less easy task than it may sound, given that said cat is imprisoned by a powerful devil, but we’ll get back to that). It’s such an idiotically basic motive that the word “motive” itself almost seems too grandiose. But hey, after god knows how many years of anime protagonists who “want to be a hero” or other similarly abstract things, I at least appreciate a protagonist whose motives are understandable if not exactly noble.
The cat-hunting is more in the latter 2/3rds or so of the epsiode. Before that, the series goes some way toward establishing Denji and Power’s push-and-pull dynamic. Notably, right off the top, Power gets in trouble for killing the Sea Cucumber Devil at the tail end of last week’s episode, and her first instinct is to immediately—and badly—lie and try to pin the blame on Denji.
In general, Power is pretty interesting, and it’s worth pausing here to talk about why. One of the best ways to make a character distinct (South Park influence notwithstanding, go look that up if you’re curious), is to pile on enough small character tics that aren’t notable in isolation but add up to a peculiar whole. Power is rather slovenly, as conveyed by the hoodie that’s often half-hanging off of her shoulders. She’s incredibly violent and prone to lying. But she also intermittently speaks in a screwy, stilted dialect of Japanese that the sub track translates as spurts of weirdly archaic English. (Even in that screencap up there, note that she phrases it as “It was he who commanded me to kill” and not something like “He told me to do it” or what have you.) She also noticeably clams up around Makima, who she is comparatively deferential toward, and seems perhaps even afraid of. All of this sums up as a character who is really pretty unique in the current anime landscape, and, accordingly, she’s a lot of fun to just watch bounce around the screen.
She has one further quirk; a fondness toward cats. As mentioned, this episode’s main plot consists of Denji being convinced to help her rescue her pet cat Meowy. (Or Nyako. They mean basically the same thing.) Power, as a Fiend, is pretty broadly disdainful of humans and, really, most life in general. Cats though, she seems to have a fondness for. Later in the episode we get a flashback about her initially meeting Meowy and it’s genuinely very sweet despite the fact that Power spends the entirety of said sequence naked and covered in grime. (CSM is bizarrely good at putting emotional resonance into scenes that read as ridiculous on paper.)
Denji, ever the gentleman, is openly disdainful of this affection….until Power makes the aforementioned offer to let him touch her chest if he helps her recover Meowy. At which point, he’s suddenly fuming mad about “that fucking Devil” stealing poor little Meow-Meow. The soundtrack even revs up alongside him. It’s pretty funny.
Elsewhere, Makima gets a few spotlight scenes as well, which serve to add some further depth to her character. Also, they serve to sate my endless thirst for this show’s insanely good use of characters’ lines-of-sight as non-verbal tells about how they’re feeling. Aki, in his only real scene in this episode, questions Makima on the wisdom of having Denji in his squad. If you were only listening to the dialogue, you would take Makima’s response as fairly cool and natural. If you look, however, she visibly glares at him (from behind, so he can’t even see it) for a moment before replying. Somebody doesn’t like their authority questioned, is all I’m saying.
I think if someone who looked like this looked at me this way I’d die on the spot. But hey, I’d die happy.
Also of note; a meeting between Makima and her superiors is the first glimpse we get at the wider state of Chainsaw Man‘s world. This particular council of anonymous, vaguely military-types makes mention of “war hawks” over in America and The Soviet Union (!), and rumors of devils deployed for military purposes. How true any of this is, we don’t yet know. But it is worth making note of the fact that even this council refer to Makima’s underlings as “dogs,” in case you were wondering if the people she works for are any nicer than she is.
As for the whole cat rescue situation? Well, Power was lying. She had no actual intent to help Denji fight the Bat Devil or anything of the sort, instead offering him to the Bat Devil as a sacrifice, so that the larger devil might heal his wounds by drinking Denji’s blood. This ‘brilliant’ plan has several flaws.
Flaw 1: The Bat Devil is a dick.
As soon as Power shows up with a half-conscious Denji (who she’s whacked over the head with one of her bloodmallets), the Bat Devil collects his sacrifice and starts squeezing our boy dry in a decidedly unpleasant way. (Seriously, he vomits blood, and the Bat Devil drinks it. Chainsaw Man is not afraid to get nasty; remember this.)
Power demands Meowy back, but, surprise, the Bat Devil thinks Denji’s blood tastes terrible, and he takes out his frustration on Power by eating her cat in front of her. Then, while she’s having the flashback scene described above, he eats Power herself, too.
Flaw 2: There is no flaw 2. Flaw 1 got her eaten alive, what else do you want?
Anyway, this all makes Denji rather unhappy.
As far as battle cries go, it’s not exactly “you shall not pass,” but hey, whatever works.
The final act of the episode is a truly stunning fight scene; easily the best in the series so far. Denji and the Bat Devil tear a cityscape to pieces, ripping up chunks of concrete and twisted metal as they slug it out. And in what is arguably his first act of something vaguely like superheroics, Denji actually rescues a couple people. (He also throws a car at the Bat Devil with the driver still inside it, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.)
All told, this stands as probably the strongest single episode of CSM so far. It manages to keep a pretty noteworthy number of plates spinning, and it looks great while doing it. Here’s hoping to much more of that to come.
And now, making its grand debut, the Bonus Power Screencap, because I know what the fans like. This one is from this week’s ED. A simple Power, but strong, and bold.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I don’t like the term “mid.”
Not because things can’t be mediocre—they certainly can—but because I feel like it gets slapped down on the table as an all-purpose “I didn’t really like this and don’t feel like really explaining why” card. When most people say “mid” they can mean anything from “decent but not my thing” to “outright terrible.” Rarely will they bother to explain which they mean or why.
But, you know, I say all this, but sometimes the only adjective you can pull for something truly is “mid.” There were some good parts and some bad parts and the whole thing is kind of just not that great overall. It’s not terrible, certainly, but maybe it’s a sign of bad things to come. Or just an unusually weak spot in an otherwise fine show.
Thus, we have episode sixteen of Spy x Family, the first Yor-centric episode in quite a while and also, unfortunately, easily the least essential since the series came back from hiatus.
The episode’s basic plot is pretty simple, revolving around Yor secretly learning how to cook from her coworker Camille (remember her? She was first relevant way back in episode 2). What the episode wants to be about is the simple joy of home cooking, the knowledge that you’re preparing something for someone close to you and, in a very real way, putting your heart and soul into it.
This is all well and good, and when the episode hits its primary climax at about the 15 minute mark, it does hit well enough to feel roughly worth it. Yor ends up cooking a stew (topped with a fried egg!) of some kind for Anya and Loid, and it’s genuinely pretty cute.
But the problem is getting there. Between the start of the episode and this little story’s conclusion is a parade of iterations on what might be the most overdone joke in the entire shonen format; the classic “oh no, someone is bad at cooking and their food looks like unidentifiable purple gunk” gag.
“Twists” on the trope in this case include Yuri, Yor’s obnoxious younger brother, who of course co-stars in this episode, actually loving Yor’s terrible food because he grew up with it, and….well honestly that’s kind of it. There’s some other stuff where Yor has difficulty properly preparing ingredients because her assassin instincts kick in and she ends up essentially butchering them. It’s marginally more unique, but not really any funnier. A lot of this really just seems far too basic for something like Spy x Family, which has previously demonstrated both much stronger characterization than this and much stronger comedic chops. Why waste time on this?
Yor does, at least, get the jump on Loid in one important way here, in terms of character development. She is the first one to realize that her “fake” family now matters to her more than what it was originally a cover for, and her coming to terms with that is an easygoing kind of heartwarming that perhaps more of this episode should’ve aimed for.
So, we end up with a very weak series of gags leading up to an emotional beat that is nice but doesn’t entirely feel earned. Is that “worth” it? It’s hard to say.
But don’t worry, this is a double episode, because Yor isn’t allowed to be the protagonist of an entire 22-minute stretch of Spy x Family. That would be silly.
No, instead, the latter half of this episode is about Frankie.
Yeah.
Uncle Scruffy here spends his half of the episode trying to enlist Loid’s help in hooking up with a cigar shop employee with the mildly amusing name Monica McBride. Presumably her mother is named Molly McBride and she has two sisters named Matilda McBride and Mary McBride.
Loid’s help mostly consists of telling Frankie to be himself—he tries making a way-too-thorough conversational chart too, but, perhaps wisely, Frankie thinks using that would be weird. There are some decent gags here, like when the two are having a full-on shouting argument and a stage direction pops up onscreen to inform us that they’re actually whispering.
Also, Loid uses his disguise skills to turn into a spitting image of Monica herself. I have to say, holding this against the show is astoundingly unfair of me, but when I’m already a little cold on an episode, hitting me with the dysphoria pangs does not improve my assessment.
On the other hand, it proves that Loid Forger could have tgirl swag if he wanted to.
Naturally, Monica turns Frankie down. (Sidenote here; it would’ve been very funny for the joke instead to be that she likes little awkward fuzzballs, a sort of hairy version of an Android 18 / Krillin situation. But that would’ve put a win in Frankie’s column, which I suppose is unacceptable for some reason.) Loid then closes out the episode by making one of his little speeches about how “people like them” can’t afford to be emotionally attached to others. Sure, dude. Keep telling yourself that.
And that’s where we end for the week! Again, I don’t hate this episode or anything, but a lot of this is just not all that interesting. The more emotional moments are the highlights, but there aren’t really enough of them to bring it above mediocre. Thus, again we must turn to that dreaded descriptor; mid. This is a mid episode. If you put a gun to my head and made me score it out of ten, I’d give it an even 5.
But, hey, next week is an Anya episode, and it’s been a while since we’ve had any episodes taking place entirely at her school. Hopefully that will be fun.
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 Directoryto 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.
Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.
What we’ve basically got here, in BOCCHI THE ROCK!‘s third episode, is an adorable little tale about how mistakes are rarely as big in reality as we make them in our minds, and how even people who really seem like they’ve “got it together” only occasionally actually do. Along the way, BOCCHI THE ROCK! continues to casually be one of the best-looking anime in a season that is not lacking for visual style. Witness the series go all-in on one-off gags by shifting art styles, waving around paper cut-outs on popsicle sticks or even weaving in tiny snippets of live action footage for additional effect.
Really though, none of that would be half as impressive without the character work on display here. As with any comedy, dissecting why Bocchi is funny kills the humor somewhat, but it is again worth circling back around to this idea of Hitori as the Ultimate Introvert. A constantly-fretting ball of anxiety who frequently blows things up beyond all reason in her own head, only to be taken aback when it turns out that no one is actually out to get her. It is, as I mentioned back in my writeup for the premiere, an immensely relatable feeling.
This episode centers around Ikuyo Kita (Ikumi Hasegawa), who Hitori is trying to recruit into her band as a second guitarist and vocalist. Her initial attempts go so poorly that she spends a memorable scene hiding in shame under the stairs at her high school, and laments her lack of social skills the only way she knows how; playing the guitar and singing while an imaginary music video plays in her mind.
Hitori from Bocchi the Rock 🤝 Eve from Birdie Wing causing random music videos wherever they go.
Kita is, in theory, Hitori’s total opposite; an irrepressible little firecracker of pure energy who gets along with just about everybody. But, as it turns out, she and Hitori have more in common than may first be obvious.
Like, a lot more.
“Kita is the guitarist who previously bailed on the band Hitori is now in” more.
As we find out, Kita cannot actually play the guitar. She lied about being able to, and joined the band to get closer to Ryo. And I want to be clear here; when I say she “joined to get closer to Ryo,” I mean she has a big-ass gay crush on Ryo and wanted literally any reason to be near her. This is not subtext.
Wow, a preppy girl falling for the slightly butch bass player. Surely this is a unique circumstance in history, never to be repeated.
We also learn that another reason Kita flaked out on being in the band is that, incredibly, she does not even own a guitar. She thought she did, and much is made of Hitori’s correct deduction that she’s been practicing this entire time just by feeling the calluses on her hands, but in one of the series’ comparatively more low-key gags, it turns out that she actually bought a six-string bass. Thankfully, at episode’s end, Ryo buys it off of her and she gets an actual guitar instead.
Which, yes, of course things resolve themselves cleanly. (Why wouldn’t they? If you want emotional devastation there are other shows airing this season for that.) Hitori spends some time worrying that Kita might replace her at the club, since she seems to be better at most of the club work than Hitori herself is, but that quickly dissolves when the aforementioned callus plot point rears its head. Hitori ends the episode as Kita’s new guitar teacher, and the band grows into a proper quartet, where it will likely stay for the rest of the series.
The rest of the girls take Kita’s deception in stride, and Nijika reasons that if she hadn’t done all that, she and Ryo wouldn’t have met Hitori. Forgiveness comes easy because, well, none of this was ever a huge deal in the first place. It was just mildly inconvenient. Bocchi the Rock! is developing a running subtheme, almost, about how these things seem so much more important in our own heads than they ever are to the people around us.
But in a more general sense, the series continues to be warm, personable, and full of charm. Here’s to looking forward to the rest of the season.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I didn’t point it out at the time, but last week, Denji’s then-boss described our hero thus; “the good thing about Denji is that he does what he’s told.”
Today, in the first part of its second episode, that point orbits around several times. With Makima, Denji has effectively traded one master he must unconditionally obey for another. One could argue it’s a slight upgrade, since, as we’ll see, Makima treats him materially much better than the old yakuza boss who ordered him around before this point, but his life still isn’t really his own.
He knows this, on some level. A very early scene here sees Makima describe Denji as her dog. This little smidgen of animal symbolism is probably Chainsaw Man‘s single most well-known thematic motif. Dogs, after all, generally do what they’re told as long as you take care of their needs. Denji is briefly angry about being treated like one, but upon Makima promising him a hot meal of whatever he likes, and offering him her coat to wear so he’s not walking around shirtless, his disaffection mostly evaporates. A few scenes later, and he is almost literally eating out of the palm of Makima’s hand.
It’s important to remember that Denji isn’t unique here. Most people will put up with a lot as long as their material needs are being met. Even given the line of work he’s being asked to take up, it is hard to imagine that many people, in his situation, would not do the same. (Some of you will say something like “RIP to him but I’m different” to that statement. We’ll get back to you as the show goes on.)
Not just an everyman, it’s important to remember that Denji is, too, a hormonal teenager. In addition to the obvious food and clothing benefits, Denji goes along with what happens here in part because he thinks Makima is hot. (Hot tip for the younger people who read my blog; you will never get with your boss.) Of course, Makima isn’t even remotely above picking up on and playing to that desire anyway, and it’s pretty obvious that she’s doing so.
Chainsaw Man is very good at subtle facial expressions as silent conveyors of intent. If you’ve already seen this episode and want to look for something neat on a rewatch, I would recommend going back through those early scenes and keeping an eye on Makima’s face specifically. She’s actually quite expressive and there are multiple points where you can almost see the gears turning in her head over various things.
In any case, as much as this episode is about Makima and Denji’s newfound working relationship, Denji doesn’t actually work directly under her. Instead, he’s assigned to one of Public Safety’s many devil hunting units. Specifically, an “experimental” one, lead by a ponytailed chain-smoker named Aki (Shougo Sakata).
King of Spades
Aki’s real introduction is one of the early manga’s most memorably goofy scenes, and for perhaps the first time, Chainsaw Man the anime actually sharpens the bent for crass humor in the original, rather than backing away from it.
The result? Well, Aki takes Denji for a walk, briefly interrogating his motives. What he gets out of this conversation is that Denji is basically only in this line of work to get with Makima. That’s not good enough for Aki, so he takes Denji to an anonymous back alley and slugs him across the face, expecting the ass-kicking to teach the punk a lesson. To hear him tell it, this is his version of kindness; he’s seen people die from getting into the business for weak reasons, and as much as he doesn’t really seem to like Denji, he doesn’t want that to happen to him.
Denji responds to this particularly physical brand of thoughtful consideration by kneeing Aki in the nuts.
Repeatedly.
While a “ding!” sound effect plays every time it happens.
Immature as hell? Yes. Extremely funny? Also yes. Chainsaw Man is rarely afraid to get a little juvenile in order to take the edge off things. Probably a good call, all things considered.
Soon after this, Makima compliments Aki and Denji on “hitting it off” upon hearing what happened (a very dry sense of humor on that one), and then, in the same breath, makes it very clear to Denji that if he is ever no longer useful to Public Safety for any reason, he’ll be killed.
Your last first day.
Denji and Aki’s first mission together, to exterminate a Fiend—a devil possessing a corpse—goes awkwardly. Denji’s able to dispatch the thing very easily, with a single swing of a Public Safety-provided hatchet, but Aki is annoyed at Denji for not using his devil powers, thinking of it as evidence that the younger hunter isn’t taking things seriously. Aki, it’s established, lost his life to a devil attack. So it is pretty understandable that he’d be miffed by Denji seemingly treating the entire thing as a game.
None of that really gets through to Denji though, who begins instead thinking very hard about boobs again.
He’s such a gentleman.
In fact, his entire sequence here plays as a stone-faced parody of the usual shonen-protagonist-hyping-themselves-up internal monologue, albeit an affectionate one. Indeed, in episode two of his series, Denji has truly found his noble calling, the righteous cause he must fight for.
This is, of course, supposed to be silly. But it’s worth again remembering that when you’re this age, one does think of trivial things like “scoring” with a girl (as CR’s subtitles so lovingly render it) as matters of life and death.
In any case, even with this particular goalpost set, Denji’s life gets more complicated one more time in the final few minutes of this episode, when a different girl walks into his life. Introduced by Makima as his “partner” within Aki’s unit.
You probably already know her, but if you don’t, I kind of envy you.
Because getting to meet Power for the first time is fun as hell.
Queen of Clubs
Yes, that wonderful idiot. A fiend, not unlike the man in the apartment that Denji just killed, but one who is—after a fashion—able to be reasoned with, but that doesn’t really make her rational. She’s introduced with a galumphing, ludicrous carnival music backdrop in the soundtrack, and there’s a reason for that.
Ai Farouz, her voice actor, stands out amongst Chainsaw Man’s cast by being a comparative veteran. She hasn’t been in the industry for terribly long—her first role of note was only in 2017—but she’s had a number of prominent roles. (Notable to me personally, she was Cure Summer in Tropical Rouge! Precure last year.) She plays Power perfectly, swinging from a low growl to a smug mid-range conversational tone, to a whooping screech when Power’s really excited. All of CSM’s VAs have been great so far, but Farouz might take first place. Perhaps it’s a case of limited reference pools here, but she really does play the character like a demonic Cure Summer. It works astoundingly well.
Certainly, Power herself steals what remains of the show from the second she appears. We get a small bit of exposition during her and Denji’s first patrol together (and also more of his leering thoughts about titties), but much more important is her catching the scent of devil blood on the wind and sprinting full-force towards the devil in question, fast enough that Denji can’t actually keep up. She literally hammers the target—the Sea Cucumber Devil—to pieces with a massive mallet made out of her own blood. The BGM erupts in an explosion of pulsating techno thump, and as she smashes the thing to smithereens, she positively howls in triumph. On that note, the episode ends.
And normally I’d cut the article here, but I do also want to take a moment to point out that one of my favorite bands, ZUTOMAYO, did the ED for this episode. It’s cool to see them finally getting exposure via an anime.
Until next time, anime fans.
(I haven’t said that in a while, have I? Well, there you go, a nice return to form.)
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
“Boof!”
I feel like I’ve been a bit unduly mean to Spy x Family since it came back. Not in a major or intentional way, but more just out of reflex. I made clear last week that I think Spy x Family’s most recent storyline has been hitting kind of an odd note. I more or less stand by that, but part of me feels that I just haven’t been giving the series the attention it deserves. Which is unfair, because while I’m maybe not as keen on Spy x Family as some are, it is still one of the year’s better action anime and one of its better comedy anime. That’s a solid showing twice over, and it deserves credit for that.
Either way, the whole terrorist bomb dog plot comes to its conclusion here with some amount of fanfare, but much to my own joy, this episode dials back in on the comedy that made Spy x Family so endearing in the first place. In the process, it rediscovers its inner warmth. I don’t think it’d be at all a stretch to say that this episode is the best since the show came back from its hiatus.
Let’s start with the basics. If you were worried about the cliffhanger from last week; don’t be. Loid does not shoot the dog, and in fact, he goes out of his way to make sure the dog who attacked him is fine, even managing to somehow get its bomb harness off and tossed into a nearby river, where it explodes harmlessly.
Yor also gets a brief bit of shine here. It’s perhaps not as much as I’d like, but a scene where she spin-kicks the terrorist Keith through a windshield and sends him careening into a lamppost is a pretty solid showing.
But of course, the main focus is about the dog. Not just any dog, the dog who is basically already Anya’s. With the crisis averted, Sylvia, Loid’s handler, tries to confiscate the psychic woofer while incognito as the state police.
And if you can forgive your blogger here for a moment; she looks damn good while doing it.
Anya, in a shrewd moment of using her psychic powers directly for her own benefit, throws a bit of a temper tantrum and threatens to stop going to school. Which is enough to get both Loid and Sylvia to change their tunes. There’s a touching scene in here where Sylvia remarks that Anya is a good kid, and offhandedly mentions that she had a daughter her age. The past tense isn’t remarked upon directly, but combined with her cold-blooded treatment of the terrorists in last week’s episode, this certainly implies some pretty heavy shit in Sylvia’s past. (Not that this is surprising, given her line of work.)
The rest of the episode, though, is concerned with the far more lighthearted but very important work of naming the dog, who Anya has up until this point just been calling “Mr. Dog.” (Inu-san.) Anya even assumes that the simple act of having a named dog might help her befriend Damien at school. Though, in her defense, Damien’s reaction when he asks for her dog’s name and she can’t give it to him is pretty amusing. This episode is actually a veritable harvest of Anya faces in general, which is great news for anyone who’s been missing those.
We have “Imitation Yor.”
“Thonkeng.”
“The Antihero”
“Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream'”, and many, many more!
She does settle on one eventually; late in the episode the Forgers take Anya and her new pet to a dog park. There, her dog retrieves a pair of gloves surreptitiously swiped from Anya by a different dog. Anya is reminded of an episode of Bondman, and this big pile of fur and love is given the most natural name possible; his name is Bond. Forger Bond.
He likes his martinis shaken, not furred.
And with that, the episode ends later that night, with a shot of the two having fallen asleep together. Yor remarks that Anya looks like a “little angel in [their] midst.” She is absolutely correct.
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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.
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 know when the Buddha initially like, lived in a life of decadence and luxury, closed off from the ailings of the world? And how once he saw the truth of things, that Suffering Exists, in the form of the sick man, the elderly man, and the dead man, he vowed himself to a life of ascetism and austerity? But even then, the extreme measures of such a life could not assist him? And it was only there, sitting under the bodhi tree, that he finally understood the true meaning of the Middle Path? Yeah, this anime is like that, sort of.”
-Imaginary Anodyne, a personal friend.
This is not a recommendation.
More than maybe anything I have ever written about; I must be very clear about one thing; do not watch LOVE FLOPS. Bare minimum; do not watch it yet. It has not earned it, and it probably won’t ever earn it. Indeed, this is one of the year’s crassest, unfunniest, and just downright most off-putting premieres. If this were a normal anime, I would not be writing about it at all.
Sadly, it is many things, few of them good, but one thing it definitely isn’t is normal.
The protagonist: Asashi Kashiwagi (Ryouta Oosaka), a walking lump of anti-charisma that makes his seasonal peer Ittoki from Shinobi no Ittoki—with whom he shares a voice actor—look like a movie star by comparison.
The setting: A near-future Japan, defined by nifty hologram cellphones, VTuber fortune tellers, and autonomous robots.
The plot: Perhaps the most obnoxious harem setup of the last decade. Asashi runs into a series of harem cliches-on-crack on his way to school, running through a solid five in less than ten minutes. Notably gross misadventures include one of the girls accidentally planting her ass on his face and then punching him between the legs for the trouble, and another being sexually assaulted by a dog. Yes. Really.
Its components are simultaneously so basic and so exaggerated that the series exists in a kind of hyperreality. This is what people who never watch these kinds of shows think all of them are like, and that impression then cranked to 11 and the knob ripped off. When something is this much, this loudly, in this in-your-face a fashion, the question naturally rises in the brains of a generation of anime fans raised on fakeout openings and genre-switch rug pulls; is there something else going on here? And if so, what?
Let me just say, I’m not sure I’m really convinced. The same friend quoted above semi-jokingly suggested this might be the protracted setup to a particularly gonzo strain of BL narrative. (Quote: “Also, its gonna be fuckin gay quote me on that shit.” They have a way with words.) That would certainly be something, and as someone unfamiliar with that area of that genre, which mostly to my understanding exists in VNs and the like, I can’t say this doesn’t look like that, since I wouldn’t know. But more to the point, I can see how some would get the impression that there must be something else happening here, even if what—or why it would need to open like this—isn’t yet clear. Let me lay it out of it’s not already obvious; this is less going to be a first impressions article in the traditional sense, and more me trying to galaxy brain myself into a convincing argument for why I didn’t just waste 30 minutes of my time (and then quite a bit more time writing all this). If you want a “should you pick this up?”-style takeaway, I will again say; no, you should not. There are too many good things airing this season for all but those most fascinated by bizarre garbage to waste their time with this.
And I do suspect I might well be wasting my time; I’ve gone broke assuming things like this of anime before. (See my Akebi’s Sailor Uniform writeup from earlier this year.) And eventually being Up To Something would not redeem how truly, truly awful the first episode is. (I really cannot stress enough how thoroughly and quickly it discards any kind of good taste.) But while it’s certainly not a sure thing, I do think there is definitely some credence to the idea that Love Flops is trying to pull something. Let’s take a look at the evidence.
First, the setting; as mentioned, Love Flops takes place in a near-future time period, with all the flashy technology that implies. On its own, that’s not really that weird for a harem anime. One of the genre’s foundational texts, Tenchi Muyo, mixes its setup with a bizarre space opera / fantasy saga, so from that point of view, just setting things in 2080 or whenever is pretty tame. But there’s a decidedly unreal vibe to the entire thing.
Asashi appears to live alone, has a notably strange breakfast consisting of toasted bananas, and watches an apparent VTuber on the television for his morning fortune. The VTuber thing comes up in a few places, usually subtly, but the fact that they’re animated differently from the rest of the show—in a noticeably shoujo-ish style, and seemingly with Live2D—makes them stand out in a way that feels intentional, and almost gives them the air of being a surveillance tool. In another spot—as part of a terribly unfunny gag about panties—a trashcan-shaped robot appears to be idly disposing of peoples’ clothing, marking them as “trash.” You could easily write that off as the ‘bot malfunctioning in-universe, for the sake of the joke, but in context it does make one wonder.
Later, when Asashi hops on a train, there is quite literally no one else in the entire car with him, other than a woman who turns out to be his teacher as part of one of the aforementioned harem cliches-on-speed. The presence of a specific sort of futuristic technology makes the series’ world feel decidedly digital, and one character outright brings up the idea of the world “secretly being a video game.” He references it offhandedly, as though discussing a cliche, but that particular setup isn’t terribly common and never has been. (You’re more likely to get a Sword Art Online situation of people being trapped in a game, or a more general “the world is a simulation” sort of thing. ‘Secretly in a video game’ is an oddly specific pull.)
Secondly, let’s talk about those cliche harem situations themselves. Love Flops runs through them with a truly stunning speed, exhausting five within its opening ten minutes, and its plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense even by this genre’s standards. Asashi’s homeroom teacher, for instance, is both a standard Sexy Teacher and also, for some reason, the show’s obligate Chinese character. (And this is not a genre that treats its non-Japanese characters particularly well, so one can imagine how that will go as the show wears on.)
Now, being annoyingly self-aware would not make Love Flops unique on its own, in this regard. There are plenty of ecchi anime that try and fail to do a very frustrating nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of thing. (A terrible cliche in of itself at this point, I would note.) But the sheer rapidity that Love Flops goes through these motions, and how hormone-destroyingly unsexy any of it is, could certainly give some credence to the idea that it’s all setup for some grand reveal. Once again, it would have to be one hell of a reveal to salvage the show after this opening episode, but it would be something.
Third, there’s Asashi’s friend, Yoshio Ijuuin (Jun Fukuyama). There is just something weird about this guy. Asashi can’t remember his name when they first meet, despite Yoshio claiming that they’re longtime friends. And later—and I’ll admit that this is probably the weakest bit of actual textual evidence on display here—this happens.
Hide.
Yeah, Asashi asks him what he’s looking at. While he’s staring directly into the ‘camera.’ In isolation I wouldn’t think anything of it at all, and there is a reasonable in-universe explanation (he was looking at some girls who were off-screen) but in the context of everything else, it just feels weird. Here is also a pertinent place to note that almost none of the camerawork is from Asashi’s perspective. So, it often feels more like we’re monitoring him than having some kind of adventure alongside him.
Lastly, and perhaps most damningly, there’s the bizarre dream from the very beginning of the episode. There is a very brief scene that provides a cold open before the anime itself starts, and it is perhaps the strongest evidence of all that something is up, here. Asashi sees an unknown girl who might also be Aoi Izumisawa (Miku Itou), the first girl he runs into on his way to school and is the one who gets her panties stolen by a robot. (The episode closes with her confessing to Asashi, for whatever reason. While still not wearing any panties. Yeah.) The dream is vanishingly short; consisting of the girl mouthing something to Asashi, and then turning away, before vanishing into a yawning void as both she and the entire world dissolve into neon green bits of code.
Let’s turn away from the evidence pile for a moment and let me bring up another series. Have you heard of Rengoku no Toshi? I would guess not, as the series is obscure even by weird seinen manga standards. But! It’s a useful comparison here. That manga, known variously as Prison City of Love, City of Imprisoned Love, or similar in English (it never got an official release over here), is also an ecchi series that takes place in a constructed false reality. It too spends some opening time setting up a fake romcom situation, only to reveal not long later that, surprise, it’s actually a thriller manga. Now, Rengoku no Toshi A) never exactly got good, I would say, and B) did still have that ecchi element even after the genre pivot. But still, this is a thing that’s been done before. I never quite loved Rengoku no Toshi, and I didn’t finish it, but it did go to some truly strange places eventually.
If you want to imagine what this manga was like without having to read it; just imagine this scene, played out over and over again, but sometimes one of the characters is an anime gyaru and is naked.
Would a similar turn maybe redeem at least some part of the terrible, terrible things that have happened in this anime’s first episode?
….Maybe?
Certainly, the answer is not “yes.” That would be a ridiculous thing to say, it really is quite difficult to fully bounce back from “two different characters are sexually assaulted by a dog” (yeah, that happens twice) as a development in episode one, yeah? But it might at least make me not entirely regret having started this in the first place. To the friend who steered me away from this show “even if I was paid to watch it,” you know who you are, and I am sorry for not listening to you.
As for everyone else, if you never see Love Flops on this site again, you can safely assume that it spiraled off into a kind of insanity that did not interest me. But, if it makes a grim return, knocking on your window like a creature from a horror manga, just know that I am only the messenger of this particular dark god, not a devotee of it.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Depending on who you are, it may not be obvious just how big of a deal the Chainsaw Man anime is. More than simply a popular shonen manga, Chainsaw Man is that rarest of things; a mainstream work of popular fiction, widely liked, that completely earns every ounce of praise it receives. Chainsaw Man, the manga, has been running for years at this point, and is on its second “book” of sorts, after an utterly massive Part 1 that ran from 2018 to 2020. The still-early-on by comparison Part 2 picking up earlier this year. (You may remember me covering it. Suffice it to say; that article, but not this one, contains massive spoilers for the entire series. Probably don’t read it if you care about that kind of thing.)
It’s easy to paint Chainsaw Man as a total anomaly; an outpost of bleak, world-hardened cynicism against a sea of its blankly chipper Shonen Jump contemporaries. In truth, this isn’t entirely fair, and there are precedents for this sort of thing going all the way back to the dawn of the shonen format. Likewise, while there is certainly the usual din of manga ride-or-dies chomping at the bit to claim that “anime-onlys ain’t ready,” the truth of the matter is that Chainsaw Man is Chainsaw Man; this is an adaption that would have to fumble the ball in a truly astounding way to be anything less than excellent. And having watched it, I have to admit I’m actually a little jealous of people who get to start the series this way.
That’s not to say that CSM’s diehard fanbase isn’t well-earned, though. I took the plunge myself earlier this year, and I loved it almost immediately. Chainsaw Man is arresting like very little else is. To put it another way; this hype train hauls cargo, no smoke and mirrors here. It says a lot that in an anime season that includes the return of both Gundam and Bleach, this still might be the most-anticipated premiere of them all.
So, the obvious question. Does it live up to the hype?
Well, maybe we should hold off on that for a bit, but here’s what we can say.
The show’s opening minutes are metal rusting and wood rotting in the rain; a cold downpour drenches the first act of the first episode, and colors everything that takes place in a frigid shade of gray. Denji (Kikunosuke Toya), our hero, is an ordinary teenage boy in every meaningful sense, but his life is defined by a crushing, oppressive poverty. He’s in debt to the yakuza, you see, and works off what he can of the negative numbers hanging around his neck by plying the only trade he knows; devil-hunting. (Devils, of course, are demonic beings that rise as personifications of human fears. I’m sure you knew that part already, it’s just common sense.)
King of Diamonds
Denji devil-hunts with a devil of his own; the diminutive Chainsaw Devil, Pochita (Shiori Izawa), who is more or less a small dog-pig with a chainsaw blade on its face. For some number of years, beginning when his father kills himself to escape his own debt, and thus passes it on to his son. Only meeting Pochita offers him even the slightest bit of recourse, after he saves the tiny devil’s life from a fatal wound by offering it the only thing he has left; his own blood. In return, he becomes a devil hunter. This continues, until he is the teenager we see at the start of this episode.
This is Denji’s life; get up, kill a devil, give the boss his cut. After however many arbitrary fees, he is left with pitifully little money to work with for even basic necessities like food and water. The case we see in the episode’s opening minutes leaves him with only 1800 Yen—about $12—to his name, to last him a whole month. (In the manga, there was a smidgen of coal-black humor in the way this was presented. That’s not really the case here, the anime plays it a lot straighter.) Denji isn’t happy, certainly, but he’s accepted this grim lot to an extent. His only real luxury is sleep. Even then; the hunger in his stomach and the anxiety about repaying his debt often steal that much from him, too.
One night, when it doesn’t, his boss does that directly instead, rousing him from his slumber to go hunt a devil in the middle of the night and earn what one could charitably call his keep. To make matters worse; he pukes up a nasty slick of blood, wondering out loud if the same heart disease that evidently killed his mother is coming for him, too.
Our real plot starts here; because there is no devil. Or at least, not one that the yakuza boss intends Denji to hunt.
Instead, he’s lured into a trap. His boss has contracted with a devil, too. The Zombie Devil, because he’s envious of Denji’s power. Denji tries to fight the devil’s minions off, but he’s overwhelmed by the zombie horde before too long. And for a moment, if you’re not familiar with this story, it doesn’t seem unreasonable to think that our protagonist is going to end his journey here and now, rotting, chopped to pieces, in a dumpster.
That, of course, does not happen. Instead, Pochita, the little Chainsaw Devil, and Denji’s only real friend at this point, offers up its own life in order to restore Denji’s. A flashback inside of a drop of blood—a drop running down a stack of old money, it should be noted—transmogrifies into a dream sequence, and before long, Denji is reborn; sans Pochita, plus one ripcord embedded in his chest. All Pochita asks for in return for its sacrifice is that Denji “show [it] his dream.” His dream to live a normal life, as a normal teenager.
We’re a long way from that, as what follows illustrates nicely.
He may be grateful to be alive, but realizing what—who—he’s lost in the process makes our boy very angry, and as he challenges the zombie horde to a rematch, they try to pile on him. This does not work, and he arises; transformed.
He is reborn in a flurry of blood, with sawtooth limbs, LED eyes, and iron teeth. He absolutely wipes the floor with the Zombie Devil and its minions, in an action scene that is a frankly pretty stunning mix of 2D and 3D animation blended almost seamlessly. Denji fights like someone self-taught, with full-body commitment to wild swings of his arms, and, indeed, the chainsaw blade that now protrudes out the middle of his head. But really, when you’re a living tornado of whirling metal and death, do you really need finesse?
The Zombie Devil isn’t the only victim; while he’s at it, Denji takes out the zombies themselves, too, including his former boss. He cackles like a madman, gleeful that now he doesn’t owe them anything. It is cathartic as fuck to watch; I am sure no small amount of Chainsaw Man‘s audience—target or not—wishes they could hack their worst boss into tiny pieces. I may or may not be including myself there, I’ll leave that up to your imagination.
After the violence, he stands statue-still. Perhaps content to simply rust as time passes.
But, as one master dies, another is born. Into the scene of the massacre, out of a black car, walks a trio of devil hunters affiliated with the Public Safety Bureau, the branch of Japan’s government specializing in devil killin’. Two are nameless goons. The third—just to disclose my biases upfront, here—is one of my favorite characters in anything.
Ever.
Queen of Hearts
This is Makima (Tomori Kusunoki). She will become very important, in many ways, over the course of this anime’s run, and in its eventual subsequent seasons. We’ll get to that, but for now, she does one main thing, which is pretty important in of itself. She offers Denji a choice; she and her backup could kill him—he is part-devil, at this point, after all—or, he can come work for the Safety Bureau. He takes the obvious choice; actual employment, a real bed, hot meals, a warm embrace.
There’s a lot I haven’t gone into. Note the way the weather changes over the course of the episode, for example; rainy for most of it, a moonlit, partly-cloudy night when Denji is lured into the Zombie Devil’s trap, and finally, sunlight parting the clouds and illuminating the grisly bloodshed, and shining a light of truth on it.
There are the vocal performances, too; excellent across the board despite Denji’s VA being, here, in his first role of any note, and Makima’s being known mostly for minor roles until quite recently. (Speaking of Makima’s voice, it is genuinely incredible, and I cannot fathom how people were unhappy with Kusunoki being cast. Her voice has a subdued, vaporous quality that just makes Makima sound all the more commanding; a sort of ambiguous sweetness that could as easily mask real warmth or deadly poison in equal measure.)
There’s also the soundtrack, which can offer quietly contemplative ambience in more downtempo scenes, sinister drones in those where something is definitely off, and can equally-well explode into splintering breakcore when things need to ratchet up a few notches.
All in all; this is a truly top-shelf production adapting one of the best manga currently running. It is, in all senses, a dream scenario. Yes, this is absolutely, obviously, completely and totally, a worthy adaption of Chainsaw Man, the manga. Incredibly, it might actually elevate the material in some ways; not an easy thing to do when you’re working with such great source material. Whether you’re a new fan or you’ve been onboard since 2018; strap in. Things are only just getting started.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
War, and what people do while waging it, are terrible and depressing. This is known. Armed conflict remains a serious issue throughout the world, perhaps even moreso now than it was just a few months ago back during Spy x Family‘s first cour. Again; terrible, depressing.
The same isn’t true for Spy x Family itself. Even as we get into the meat of a pretty damn serious arc with this second episode of its second cour. Throughout this arc parts, of the story get pretty grim, but Spy x Family still cuts its most serious moments with ones that are more lighthearted. This prevents what is easily the most uncomfortably real arc of the entire anime so far from being outright suffocating, but, nonetheless, it does kind of hit a weird note, doesn’t it?
What actually happens here is pretty simple; the episode is split between a cat and mouse game between Loid’s agency and the terrorists (And eventually, just their leader, the mononymic Keith.) and, separately, Anya and the clairvoyant dog from last week trying to stop a bomb from going off.
That second part is ostensibly the “lighthearted” half of this week’s episode, but even this involves the dog having a grim vision of the near future where Loid dies in an explosion, which, obviously, Anya is desperate to avert. It says quite a bit that this is still the comparatively sillier part of the episode. Mostly due to Anya’s goofy reactions when things don’t go her way.
Loid’s half of the episode is much darker and is almost entirely devoid of humor. Perhaps the most indicative scene being one where his handler, Cynthia, interrogates Keith’s terrorist ring. Things get pretty intense!
And while that conversation is, I’m sure, written from a place of good intention, it does illustrate something of a problem with this episode.
At the end of the day, it’s excellently made, and it certainly deserves to exist in an abstract sense, but cutting so close to the gritty realities of war is dangerous for Spy x Family, which tends to work better when it’s in modes that are a little less reflective of things that actually go on in the world. (Deadly-serious dodgeball games, for example.)
More concretely, it’s a little annoying how yet again Yor is reduced to a bit player in a show she is supposed to be one of the protagonists of. It’s understandable that things here play into Loid’s specialties a little more, given the whole espionage angle of this arc, and I’m not asking Yor to start shanking people in front of her daughter, but surely, she could’ve been given a little more to do? Perhaps next week, it’s hard to say. All in all, this is a well-made but somewhat disappointing episode for me personally. If you feel differently, I’d be happy to hear why in the comments.
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 Directoryto 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.
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