Month: February 2023

Posted on in Manga

The Manga Shelf: Unexpected Queer Romance in the B-Plot of I BELONG TO THE BADDEST GIRL AT SCHOOL

The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.

I should not be writing this. I am, at the moment, ill, with something that is giving me an absolute monster of a headache, stuffing up my sinuses, and just generally making me feel like a wreck. I intended to fully take this week off, both to physically recover and to recuperate from a bout of burnout. Yet, here I am, because if there’s one thing that can bring me back to life, if only for the hour or so it’s taken me to pen this, it’s lesbians. Never accuse me of being an unbiased journalist.

I Belong to The Baddest Girl at School is a fairly straightforward romcom manga. It certainly has its edges, and we’ll come to them in a moment, but for the most part you—or at least I, as a non-connoisseur of the genre—could not distinguish this from any other manga of its type at a glance. The main character is Unoki, a meek, shy boy, who falls for Toromaru, a tiny, feisty powderkeg of a boss girl who embodies every possible distinction between that term and “girlboss.” They’re pretty great together, in a tropey but pleasant sort of way. If the manga were only about them, it’d probably still be just fine. There’s a nice core thesis about not changing yourself just because society tells you to, and about finding someone who loves you for who you truly are. The sorts of things that would ring a bit hollow if the manga were solely about a single straight couple.

But this article is not about a single straight couple, as you’ve probably guessed from its title.

Yuri is having a bit of a cultural moment again, as several titles are currently airing as anime or are about to be in the near future (to say nothing of the return of the likes of, say, Birdie Wing, or the largely self-contained fanbase that “Miyazawan Yuri” has accrued in recent years) but Baddest Girl isn’t yuri. Nothing here even really speaks the same language as yuri, which has rhythms and archetypes all its own. Instead, to my pleasant surprise, I feel like I’ve discovered an example of convergent evolution.

Baddest Girl‘s obligate backup characters, of the sort who tend to stand around and comment on the A-Couple’s relationship, are Yutaka and Matsuri, respectively a serious straight-man type (ironically enough) with a chilly disposition, and a lunkheaded ruffian with a fixation on Toromaru herself and a tendency to get the wrong idea about things. We learn pretty early on that, far from simply orbiting around Unoki and Toromaru’s relationship, they have one of their own. Matsuri thinks of herself and Yutaka as best friends while nursing her sorta-crush on her boss. Yutaka, meanwhile, is a very different story, and it’s clear that she holds romantic feelings for Matsuri. There isn’t any ambiguity here, and some of the manga’s fairly rare spots of true angst come from the fact that Yutaka simply assumes that she and Matsuri aren’t compatible; less because Matsuri is straight (she’s not) and more because of her whole deal with Toromaru.

Now again, Baddest Girl is mostly not about Yutaka and Matsuri, which means that A) their side of the story progresses fairly slowly until a certain specific point, and B) it’d be easy for the cynically minded to write off their presence (and any implied feelings between them) as, basically, bait for a male audience. Baddest Girl did, after all, serialize in Young Ace UP, a seinen web-magazine, during its 2017-2021 run, and it’s hard to argue that their designs aren’t at least slightly meant to get more eyes on the manga. But this would downplay the fact that despite not being omnipresent through the manga’s 77 chapters, Yutaka and Matsuri are some of its strongest characters.

When Baddest Girl cashes in that built-up emotional connection to make it clear that it’s taking Yutaka’s feelings very seriously, it completely works, because we’ve already been following these characters for a while at that point. We know that they’ve been close for years, we know that Yutaka changed her whole sense of style because Matsuri thinks she looks “cooler” if she dresses like an old-school delinquent. So, later in the manga, when Yutaka confesses in a sudden sputtering overflow of emotion after Matsuri brings up the possibility of leaving town after she graduates, it makes a perfect sort of emotional sense. She actually steals a kiss from Matsuri, the sort of thing that is not really ever OK in real life but has a long enough heritage in romantic fiction that I’m willing to let Baddest Girl off here.

At the end of it all, the only thing Matsuri is actually at all mad about is that Yutaka didn’t tell her sooner. Yutaka pledged to always stay by Matsuri’s side several years before trying to actually date her. One can understand Matsuri’s (ultimately fairly mild) frustration at not being trusted a little more.

Even then, she gets over it pretty quick, and the two transition from friends to girlfriends with admirably little further drama; Matsuri even returns the kiss that Yutaka stole from her. Hilariously, this also means that by the manga’s end, Yutaka and Matsuri have actually gone farther, in terms of physical intimacy, than our leads. Unoki and Toramaru are still at the handholding stage as of the manga’s final chapter.

As much as I’m hyping this up as different or daring, the truth is, of course, that Baddest Girl isn’t unique in this regard at all. Even Kaguya-sama: Love is War!, probably the genre’s current gold standard in terms of intersecting popularity and quality, tosses in a bone to this effect very late in its run despite otherwise being straight as an arrow. (It’s one of that manga’s few flaws, I’d argue.) But what is rare is for the queer subtext to have that “sub” cut out entirely, and moreover, in a way that is both structurally elegant and actually reinforces the manga’s core points. Sure, you can, again, be a cynic about it and write all this off as pandering, or as the product of the author’s own interests. But that fails to account for the emotional weight it’s given (and, in fact, that the author is a woman). Plus, the very fact that these characters exist in this story, one that is not actually, really, about them, and feel so normal within it, is its own kind of victory. It’s true that we, as queer people, do need our own stories, but there’s a lot to be said about showing up in the backgrounds of others’ stories, too. In real life, few people have exclusively friends of their own sexual orientation, and it’s nice to see a manga that’s otherwise pretty heavy on tropes and archetypes reflect that. It even folds Yutaka and Matsuri’s relationship back into their usual dynamic, which takes on a flirtatious edge for the final few chapters of the manga, given that they’re now officially a couple.

As far as I can surmise, Baddest Girl was never crazy popular or anything, but mangaka Ui Kashima has kept working (currently, she’s penning the VTuber-themed romcom Liver Diver Lover, which has a beautiful tongue twister of an English title) and I hope she takes what fandom Baddest Girl did manage to pick up as a mandate to keep being herself.

As for me, well, I am going back to bed. See you next week, and hopefully no sooner. (Seriously, I need to rest.)

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, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblr 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) What Actually is The LOVE LIVE! SUNSHINE!! LIVE-ACTION FILM SPECIAL MOVIE?

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 @Yousorojisan. Thank you for your support.

“I guess if you have the full power of an anime studio behind you, you can shitpost as hard as you want.”

-Julian M., KeyFrames Forgotten cohost and personal friend.

What is it with short-form idol fiction, man? Last year, I briefly reviewed Idolmaster Spin-Off, which, like the subject of today’s review, is a completely incomprehensible piece of brain-zapping surrealism. Just yesterday I happened to read the deeply fucked up weird sci-fi high concept shock fiction body horror idol novella The Last & First Idol. Given the competition, the Love Live! Sunshine!! Special Movie is only the third or so craziest idol thing I’ve ever mentioned on this site, but it’s still pretty goddamn weird in a way that’s only really explicable by its origin as an April Fools’ prank.

What little premise there is goes like this; our sort-of protagonist Riko (Rikako Aida) falls asleep, and there, she dreams of herself and the rest of Love Live! Sunshine!! group Aquors as cute little puppets. They mime through a sequence of fairytales, beginning with The Three Little Pigs, the one among these that will be most recognizable to Anglophone audiences. The plot, such as it is, progresses in an economical but chaotic fashion. But of course, the actual narrative (itself fairly scant) is not the point here, this whole ordeal has more in common with [adult swim] shorts than it does anything else related to the Love Live! franchise, which is why we get things like a recurring antagonist in the form of a coelacanth puppet.

Things like this are, essentially, novelties. As such, it’s hard to grade them on a scale as is usually expected when writing some sort of review. I can tell you that the visuals are charmingly lo-fi even if the puppetry itself is rather amateurish, but that doesn’t really tell you much about the Special Movie itself, does it? Instead, I’d argue there are two angles to approach this short from.

The obvious tack is the aforementioned, where we view Special Movie as a piece of nonsense comedy. As far as such things go, it’s a solid execution of the idea, and you can find fellows for Special Movie among a particular strain of absurd, mostly half-length anime that have been a recurring fixture in TV anime for the better part of two decades (if you ever want to truly question your life I highly recommend the cranium-destroyingly insane Ai Mai Mi). It’s pretty fun in its own way, so full marks there.

The second and arguably more interesting angle, however, is to view this not as a primarily comedic endeavor but as one that performs a crucial function for an idol group. It conveys the personalities of its involved members extremely well; enough so that, despite not having seen the original Love Live! Sunshine!! (it wasn’t part of this commission, and as is often the case, I was assured I did not need to see it to understand this), I immediately clocked the personalities of all of this short’s major players. Granted, idol anime characters tend to be written in archetype, but this kind of thing, where characters get one or at most two short scenes to establish their personality before the plot moves on, are harder to pull off than one might think. With almost no prior knowledge of this particular part of the Love Live franchise, I nonetheless gleaned right away that Riko is the self-conscious straightman of the group, that Chika (Anju Inami) is the lovable goofball protagonist, and so on, and so forth. If we pretend for a moment that the Love Live characters are real people—and there is little reason not to when engaging in this sort of thought exercise—the short makes a lot of sense as an act of brand extension. You, if you’re reading this, presumably love these characters already. Why not watch them do something stupid for 15 minutes? What do you have to lose?

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, Mastodon, Anilist, or Tumblr 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 Manga, The Manga Shelf

The Manga Shelf: The Curious Case of SKELETON DOUBLE

The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.

If you’re looking to pick future stars from the current Shonen Jump lineup, Skeleton Double is probably not the smart money. (And not just because it’s running in Jump+ rather than Shonen Jump proper. Fine distinction, that.) Frankly, it just really isn’t good enough—at least not yet—to inspire that kind of confidence. It’s also pretty strange in a way totally different than that of the likes of, say, Chainsaw Man or the utterly bonkers Dandadan (which, really, I should get to writing about that at some point). Instead, it possesses an antiseptic half-surreality that places it totally perpendicular to most of what’s going on in the magazine, its direct affiliates, and, indeed, in the battle shonen genre in general right now. I wouldn’t call the manga great by any means, but it’s definitely compellingly weird. Enough so that if it can manage to hang on for a few more volumes beyond the brief 13 chapters that currently exist, we might be surprised.

The very short version of the premise is this; eight years ago, Yodomi Arakawa’s father was hoisted into the sky outside of Shinjuku Station and twisted to death. A violent and bizarre end for an ordinary businessman. Back in the present, Arakawa’s life is haunted by the tragedy, and the normalcy he’s worked hard to try to maintain regardless is shattered upon the appearance of a mysterious talking skull, Yamamoto. From here, Arakawa is sucked into a strange world of strange powers, skeletal beasts straight out of Gideon The Ninth, and a brewing war between a government agency that seeks to control both and the secret “Gyugess Society” that wants to use them to solve the world’s ills. Also, Yamamoto is responsible for Arakawa’s father’s death. Whoops!

On its surface, it’s a decent setup, but right from the jump, Skeleton Double runs into walls of clunky exposition, and much of the earliest stretch of the manga is let down by art that only sometimes rises above “functional.” This does a lot to obscure the manga’s genuine strengths, which are mostly writing-side; chiefly a very dry sense of humor and some interesting, briefly-floated ideas about class conflict. The characterization is strong, too, but only in a sidelong, obfuscated way. Arakawa himself seems almost comically devoid of any notable personality traits, but recent chapters imply that this is less his actual personality and more a façade adopted to cope with the loss of his father. Yoroibata, a member of the aforementioned government agency, is meanwhile utterly inscrutable, shuffling between weird antics like brewing coffee while teaching Arakawa how to fight in one chapter, and totally stomping the Gyugess Society folks in another. Toru Tatara, the closest thing the manga so far has to a main antagonist, is a broad-shouldered, spectacled fellow with braids with a hammy personality who is introduced doing a full bow. It’s an odd mix of total seriousness and outright camp, and Skeleton Double seems pretty happy to toggle between the two. Combine that with the aforementioned dry humor and the occasional sarcastic narration, and you have a manga that certainly has its own identity, even if it’s not a terribly flashy one.

It’s hard to tell how intentional all that is, but one has to imagine that at least part of it is on purpose. There is after all, a particularly great moment in here—perhaps the manga’s single best scene so far—where, after several chapters of being introduced to urban fantasy proper nouns, one of the Gyugess’ soldiers shouts out that a “cypress” is attacking them. As you turn the page, and have the opportunity to wonder what a “cypress” could possibly be, you see this, a beautifully-rendered tree crashing into their base. It is an almost perfect punchline, and if Skeleton Double gets axed before it can truly get off the ground, I think Tokaku Kondou may well have a future in writing comedy manga. (Don’t laugh! It worked out just fine for Aka Akasaka.)

Visually-speaking, a friend of mine correctly pointed out that the casual wear of most of Gyugess’ members gives them a sort of reverse-Jojo character feel, and really does drive home the fact that these powers have been foisted onto utterly ordinary people. They are Just Guys. Guys with superpowers now, sure, but Just Guys nonetheless.

This is perhaps most obvious with the former cab driver Kunikumo, who is Arakawa’s first major opponent fought on equal footing in the manga. Kunikumo is an old man, using his skeleton powers partly to stave off the Alzheimer’s that’d otherwise prevent him from living an ordinary life with his granddaughter. But even this isn’t cut and dry; we soon learn that Kunikumo killed his granddaughter’s parents himself, using his “Quantum” power (which sinks things into solid surfaces) to condemn them to the absolutely hellish death of falling to the center of the Earth. (Yeah, like that one Batman Beyond episode that gave us all a minor phobia of the Earth’s core as kids. Or was that just me?) The obvious sympathy angle is undercut by his brutal methods, and even when Arakawa eventually defeats him and he has his obligate realization that he’s been the bad guy, that too is shadowed. Look at the narration here, its blunt declaration of “he discarded what he wanted to protect….” Is that intended to drive the point home? If so, why does it almost feel like it’s mocking him?

What is the point of all this, anyway? Skeleton Double‘s most interesting trait is also its greatest weakness; the fact that thirteen chapters in, it’s basically still a total cipher. Not that any mangaka—any artist period—is under any obligation to explain their work in excruciating detail to their audience, but it’s a little unusual for a Shonen Jump manga, which are generally pretty straightforward. (And given the entire chapter devoted to how skeleton powers work, I get the sense that if Kondou wanted to explain things in excruciating detail, they would.) You can, from a certain angle, also read elements of it as parodic, but that doesn’t square with the honest attempt at emotional rawness in its most recent chapters. (Reasonable people will also disagree on how well that attempt actually lands. Post-hoc villain backstories aren’t exactly rare in this genre.)

It is totally possible that all of this is nothing more than the result of Skeleton Double actively finding its footing as it serializes. Its mangaka is, after all, new to the medium, with only the surreal comedy oneshot “The God Who Can’t Clean Up” previously under their belt. If so, maybe the real value of Skeleton Double doesn’t come from the story itself, so much as having the opportunity to watch a shonen mangaka work out the format’s structures in real time, seeing how they can bend them to their will and how they’re forced to compromise, where the bones of it lie.

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, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblr 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 Manga

The Manga Shelf: Forget Everything Else About CHAINSAW MAN PART 2, Let’s Talk About How Cute Nayuta Is

The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad. These articles contain spoilers.

This article contains spoilers for all of Part 1 of Chainsaw Man—which extends very far past what the anime covered—as well as Part 2 up to the current chapter, Chapter 120. If you are not caught up with the manga, stop reading unless you want to be spoiled.

If you wanted to, there is a lot you could discuss with regard to the second part of Tatsuki Fujimoto‘s breakout hit Chainsaw Man. You could talk about its fairly drastic scaling-back of scope compared to Part 1. You could talk about the fun but tense dynamic between Asa and Yoru, Part 2’s main protagonists, and its possible implications going forward. You could talk about the manga’s many unresolved mysteries and how they might be wrapped up before Chainsaw Man one day ends, not the least of which is that of what role, precisely, the mysterious devil hunter Yoshida plays.

You could talk about all of that. But I don’t really want to.

I want to talk about how Nayuta, the new Devil of Control, the Horseman of Conquest herself, is absolutely freaking adorable.

To be fair, we did sort of already know this. When she was introduced in the final pages of Part 1, there was a decidedly creepy undertone to her presence. She was, after all, the Devil of Control. Denji, having just defeated Makima, was understandably not eager to be involved with her reincarnation. Nonetheless, her imitation of Denji’s mannerisms (which continues here) and demand for bread painted a picture of a far less menacing character. Things have changed since then, but it’s still clear that Nayuta is no Makima.

She was, however, absent from the manga for a pretty significant length of time (not as long as still-AWOL Part 1’ers like Kobeni or Kishibe, but still quite a while), and it became clear simply from the length of that absence that her eventual return would be a big event. It has been! She’s reintroduced to the manga by Denji calling her a “problem child with an extreme personality”, and then this happening, in her first on-panel appearance since Part 1.

There’s a lot we could talk about here, even! Yoru did basically force the kiss in the immediate prior panel on Denji, so you can make a pretty decent case that Nayuta is just being protective. And hey, listen, maybe she is! That’s basically what I think. Who wouldn’t react in a pretty extreme way upon seeing some random girl frenching their older brother apparently against his will? Nayuta’s strong reactions are just more noticeable than other peoples’ because she is, of course, still the Devil of Control.

But something that’s much more important than all this is that Nayuta is extremely adorable.

I realize this is unbelievable given that it’s me saying it, but I’m not really putting forward any grand thesis here. The most recent chapter—120, which went up two days ago, on February 14th—has made it very clear that she’s an absolute chucklegremlin. Look at this.

Are you really going to try to argue with that? She looks like she just convinced her parents to buy her an expensive scooter and is dead set on immediately running over the foot of every adult in a 5 mile radius with it. She looks like she was the baby that someone stole candy from and is gloating because she stole it back and kicked the thief in the nuts while doing so. She makes the sound “Gya ha ha ha ha!” when she laughs, apparently. She’s moe, alright? You need to accept this.

Point of clarification: in this panel, “this dog” refers not to any of the literal dogs, even the one that’s actually in-frame, but to Yoru. Confusing, I know.

(And because I know some people perpetually have their minds in the gutter, I do not mean she’s cute in a leery way. She’s like twelve; be normal.)

She also thinks of “wet dog” as a pleasant odor, which is super weird, but she and Denji do keep like 40,000 dogs in their apartment, so maybe it makes a kind of sense.

Again, no grand thesis or theory here. I could spin yarns about how even Nayuta’s worst behavior in these past two chapters is way less terrible than anything Makima ever did, the already-mentioned fact that trying to pry Denji and Asa apart—especially if Nayuta knows about Denji’s ‘love life’—is entirely reasonable, that there are several points in just the few pages here where she could use her powers but doesn’t, and so on and so forth. But really, I know better than to try to pin down where a Fujimoto story is going in advance by now. And really, who cares? Funny gremlin child – look at her.

You may be asking some further questions at this point, such as “is that really it?” and “are you only writing this to paper over the fact that you didn’t get to work on commissions this week” or “are you being mind-controlled by Nayuta herself into writing this flattering but ultimately pointless puff piece?” to which the answers are, in order “yes”, “maybe”, and “well, how would I know?” respectively.

See you next Tuesday on MangaPlus, folks.

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, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblr 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, KeyFramesForgotten

Revisiting Darling in the FranXX 5 Years Later, Part 3 – Episodes 11-15

Revisiting Darling in the FranXX 5 Years Later is a podcast mini-series where I and Julian M. of THEM Anime Reviews discuss the rise and fall of the infamous TRIGGER/CloverWorks mecha series.

Due to the nature of this series, some of the material discussed is Not Safe For Work. Listen with discretion.

In the third part of our podcast mini-series, we cover Darling in the FranXX‘s strongest run of episodes yet. Hold on to that feeling, because it’s all downhill from here.

Listen below on Youtube.

Note: Due to persistent issues with Anchor, we are no longer offering an upload of the pure audio feed on their service, as of the time of this writing.

You can follow Jane on Twitter here and Julian on Twitter here.

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) Heavy Metal in Hot Pursuit in PATLABOR: THE MOVIE

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 Josh. Thank you for your support.

This one’s tough, folks.

Surveying Patlabor: The Movie, now that I’ve finished it—and doing so in isolation, watching the slightly older Patlabor OVAs was not part of this commission, and I’m assured that they’re not necessarily to properly appreciate this film—feels like taking in a kingdom divided. On the one hand; I really do get why people love this movie. It is absolutely gorgeous, and when a certain kind of anime fan talks about the unimpeachable visual panache of 80s anime, how nothing looks “like that” anymore, it is stuff like this that they’re referring to. Watercolor-and-smoke sunsets, gleaming white structures that look like bleached Rubik’s cubes, piles of twisted metal and gunsmoke. Tokyo itself a dreamlike industrial purgatory. It feels so real you can practically smell the asphalt of the roads.

On the other hand…well, the property is called Mobile Police Patlabor. There is a bit of an elephant in this particular room, isn’t there? I put this one into what’s now a small pile of classic anime movies next to Paprika and the like. I love the visuals, I wish the thematics were better. There is no polite way to say this; this film is pretty brazen police apologia. I will avoid the question of whether it qualifies for the neologism “copaganda”, as that term greatly postdates the film and some would argue it’s a uniquely American phenomenon. But there is no getting around that Patlabor: The Movie follows a sci-fi twist on a fairly conventional “rogue hero cop (or in this case, a few of them) busts open a coverup” plot. It is a genuinely interesting and even enjoyable take on that format, and I would not accuse it of completely uncritical lionization, but we need to call this what it is. We are dealing with a piece of media about cops, and future or no, and that comes with some baggage.

But, let’s set that aside for now. It is fair to argue that not every piece of media ever made is obliged to be didactic, so let’s at least attempt to take Patlabor on its own terms.

The plot is thus; it is the then-future, now an alternate present, and mecha called Labors permeate everyday life. They are used as tools of the workforce, the military, and of course, illegally by the criminal element. It follows logically—at least, given a society broadly similar to our own—that they are, then, employed by law enforcement as well. Excepting a mysterious, alluring hallucination that forms the pre-credits act of the film where a man leaps off of an iron girder into the sea, we open on a land reclamation plot. Tokyo Bay itself is being drained away and dotted with artificial islands. (Shockingly, stopping whoever’s responsible from draining Tokyo Bay is not the plot of the movie.) The largest of these, a facility called the Ark, is the aforementioned bleached Rubik’s cube, a latticework of metal and computerstuff that maintains, repairs, and upgrades Labors. It is also home to a branch of the Tokyo Police Department, who serve as our protagonists. Over the film’s opening act it becomes clear that someone has slipped something sinister into a recent operating system upgrade for the Labors—everybody’s, not just the Tokyo PD’s—and it becomes the job of these cops (SV2, as the division is called), mostly but not exclusively our main protagonist Asuma Shinohara (Toshio Furukawa), to figure out what, precisely, is going on, and how to stop it.

As a combination near-future story of computer technology gone awry / police procedural, Patlabor: The Movie is pretty damn compelling. Asuma doesn’t have to carry the entire thing himself, as he’s backed up by a phalanx of strong supporting characters, my favorite of whom is the division captain Kiichi Gotou (Ryuusuke Oobayashi), who gets invested enough in the investigation that he threatens to lose himself in it. (One gets the sense that he appreciates the challenge. The disappointment is nearly audible in his voice when it turns out that Hoba E’ichi, the mastermind behind the entire plot, is already dead.)

The actual plotting is solid throughout as well. Hoba is a mysterious villain, largely absent from the actual narrative who nonetheless provides a compelling and sinister foil for our protagonists. Even earlier on, before the Hoba narrative entirely forms, there are interesting moments and setpieces, and the film never drags by any means. There are a number of large and small details throughout which provide a bit of extra gristle to chew on, as well. For example: the man in charge of Labor repairs aboard the Ark is a well-meaning but compromised sort who began his career as a truck repairman for the occupying Allied forces in the wake of WWII. We should also mention the detectives who hunt Hoba throughout the film, often engaging dialogue that stacks up into a dense membrane of allusions and concepts, including heaps of Biblical allusion, as these portions of Patlabor provide an almost dreamlike thread that weaves some of the otherwise disparate parts of the film together.

By the film’s climactic act, where Asuma and co. have heroically figured out the exact mechanism for Hoba’s nefarious system upgrade scheme, we move into a full-on assault for the action-packed finale. SV2 defeat the Labors, which go autonomously rogue as part of Hoba’s plans, and the already-dead programmer’s evil plot is foiled. It’s entertaining stuff.

Enough so that I feel like a bit of a killjoy that I can’t get over the fact that this thing is about cops heroically triumphing against all odds in the face of a coverup, plus general incompetence from other civil agencies.

In fact, Patlabor seems to say that cops don’t have enough leeway. In spite of an early scene where pigheaded bumbler Isao Oota (Michihiro Ikemizu) causes a ton of collateral damage by recklessly shooting off a freeze ray, there’s really not much in the way of even token criticism of the methods here, implicit or explicit. (And, it should be said, the fact that here-minor character Kanuka Clancy [You Inoue] is on loan from the NYPD feels weirdly prescient.) I have heard Patlabor previously described as a satire, and maybe that is true for the TV series or some other incarnation of the franchise, but it’s certainly not the case here. SV2 are presented in a fairly straightforward manner as, perhaps, flawed human beings, but still ones with the public’s best interests at heart.

Now, one might argue that the film really has no obligation to examine problems in policing. Maybe that is, in some abstract sense, true, and I cannot claim to have the full social context surrounding the film’s original release in late-80s Japan. But I do know that today, in 2023, it mostly just leaves me mildly disappointed. Even at the original time and place, it is difficult to imagine a different way to read what Patlabor puts down here. Maybe that is a failure of imagination on my part, but sitting here several days after I’ve finished the film and make some final touches on this review, I can’t come up with a more charitable read on the film, sans maybe as a goldmine for some truly haunting screencaps.

So don’t get me wrong, the Patlabor movie is not a bad film by any means, especially when taken as a film. But its thematic core leaves a lot to be desired, and while its craftsmanship and technical artistic value are undeniable, sometimes one does expect a little more than that.

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, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: The Wild Blue Yonder of SOARING SKY! PRETTY CURE

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.

Sometimes, my job is a bit hard. Not because writing about anime is physically difficult or anything, but because sometimes it’s hard to articulate when something manages to tap into a pure, raw, and very basic emotion. I can hardly contain my kiddish giddiness. On the one hand, what is there to say? New year, new Precure season. This makes Jane happy; we’ve been here before. On the other, this is possibly the strongest Pretty Cure premiere I’ve ever personally been here for. 24 minutes of high-flying, rollicking action, a white-hot streak cut through the blazing blue sky.

Soaring Sky! Pretty Cure, the first entry in the series to use the full “Pretty Cure” title instead of the shorter “Precure” in English since the original Pretty Cure, opens with our heroine, Sora Harewataaru (Akira Sekine) atop a giant, talking bird, arriving in a floating sky city for some reason or another just as—wouldn’t you know it?—an evil pig man shows up to kidnap the local king’s daughter.

Sora, as we very quickly find out, is not the sort of person to simply sit idly by and let that happen without comment. She rushes headlong into trouble, pulling off a pretty damn impressive little bit of parkour a full 15 show-minutes before she ever gets her powers.

She tries to part this villain from his ill-gotten gain and, whoops, falls into the portals he uses to teleport around. Soon, she finds herself falling out of the sky over a strange city that is wholly unfamiliar to her, the infant princess Ellee (Aoi Koga, yes, they got Kaguya to voice the baby) in hand, a literal bolt from the blue.

That city would be pretty familiar to anyone reading this. Because where she ends up is Earth. Yes, the latest Pretty Cure series is a reverse isekai. And it slaps.

You know the drill if you’re even passingly familiar with this franchise, but how this all goes down might surprise some. Sora joins the rarefied tier of Pretty Cure protagonists who have done a fair bit of heroism even before getting their magic, and the sheer determination on display here, even through Sora’s obvious jitters at facing down an opponent who is, with her not yet powered, way above her level. When she actually gets those powers, via Ellee (the baby princess is this season’s fairy, you see), she stomps the monster that our pig friend summons flat in only a few minutes. To top it off, her transformation sequence is one of the most elaborate that the franchise has ever produced, complete with an image stage—an imaginary ‘platform’ on which the transformation takes place—that itself shifts and changes as she does.

All of this serves to make Sora seem incredibly cool, on a very elemental, hard-to-quantify level. Her personality has layers even this early on, and the little pocket diary she keeps on her, and the motivational doodles within, imply a level of deliberate building of her own confidence. This is someone who is earning her reputation as a hero, from episode 1, minute 1. She has a cape. What else could I possibly tell you? Of course this character is the first blue lead Pretty Cure. How could she not be? There’s no way someone with this big of a personality was ever going to settle for second banana.

Per the end of the episode, Sora, now Cure Sky, is trapped on Earth with no way to return herself or Ellee home, providing an obvious (and promising!) driver for the series’ first main storyline. Time will tell precisely how co-lead Mashiro Nijigaoka (Ai Kakuma) factors in, although even this early on she’s already an effective foil for Sora. The future is bright for this one, there’s nothing more to say.

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, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblr 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, Anime Orbit Weekly

Anime Orbit Seasonal Check-in: The Fancy Footwork of IPPON! AGAIN

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.

In general, this season has been full of quiet surprises. Ippon! Again, a series about a girls’ judo team, is among the quietest. Aside from the trivium that it is the first TV anime from relatively new studio Bakken Record, almost no one seems to be talking about this thing. Which is a shame, because I think it’s quite good overall, and it’s powering through the woes of being produced by a minor studio in the midst of possibly the worst phase yet of the production bubble very well. That is to say; it looks good most of the time, too.

But I wanted to zone in on just one aspect of that for this small article, because it’s not something I’ve seen discussed much, and I think it really helps establish Ippon‘s visual identity; the judo itself.

It seems obvious enough that an anime even vaguely adjacent to real-world sport would try to depict that sport in the best light possible, but while Ippon! Again mostly looks good, it is very much a production with limits. In the most recent episode, there are several places where those limits are visibly being hit; somewhat wonky character art being the most obvious giveaway. One would thus perhaps think that the actual judo matches themselves would be only passable, but they’d be wrong. Instead, these are easily the strongest moments of the series.

Ippon is, it should be said, more grounded than is usual for an anime production in the 2020s. There are occasional embellishments, such as chibi heads and whatnot, but for the most part this is a series that is decidedly trying to remain in the realm of the plausible. Something that could happen in reality, even if it hasn’t exactly. Working in this mode—where most of the traditional action anime tricks present an unacceptable compromise to the show’s artistic vision and are therefore off-limits—presents the challenge of rendering something as intense as a judo match in “strictly” realistic terms.

The match in question, between the characters Towa Hiura (Chiyuki Miura) and Erika Amane (Aoi Koga), succeeds here with flying colors. The entire fight channels a genuine, raw intensity with technical fighting that seems to me, as an admitted layman, surprisingly realistic. Much of the combat focuses on extremely minute motions; grabbing, counter-grabbing, pulls and steps. It’s deeply compelling stuff on a moment-to-moment basis, as much as any flashier and more “out-there” action moments to come out of this season so far. For added support, the episode at several points flips back and forth between the present match and a flashback, imbuing the present round with a real sense of urgency and stakes. Not always an easy thing to do for something like this.

We don’t actually see the conclusion of Towa and Erika’s match in this week’s episode, as it ends on a cliffhanger. Still, if Ippon! Again can continue channeling its strengths into areas like this, where it really matters, it will remain worth watching.

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.