One season ends, another begins, and it’s time to revive one of the longest-dormant Magic Planet Anime columns. Yes! You may or may not remember Anime Orbit Weekly, an “everything else” column where I’d write my opinions on the various anime and manga—and occasionally even other things!—I’d experienced throughout the week, sometimes at considerable length but usually only a few paragraphs. Generally, these will assume that you have also watched the episode(s) in question, and will have spoilers up to and including said episode(s).
This, essentially, is the same as that column, but with one key difference. Most of what you’re about to read is not technically original writing. Instead, these small writeups are largely cribbed from my tumblr blog, with minor edits to bring them in line with this site’s writing standards. Why am I doing this? Well, because there is a subset of people who are interested in my anime writing but don’t follow me on tumblr, and because even for some of those that do, sometimes it’s just more convenient to have things in one place. Oh, and I’ll actually be archiving these, quite unlike the original Anime Orbit Weekly column. So that’s a good thing for those of you who like to be able to find things.
Without further ado, let’s get into this past week in anime.
Anime
The Wrong Way To Use Healing Magic – Episode 13 (Season Finale)
A solid end to a solid series. I don’t have a ton to say, here. I liked the little teasers for upcoming story arcs at the end, although given the state of the industry who knows if they’ll ever actually make more of this as an anime. I tend to call these “go read the books stupid” endings because I do feel a little like that’s what they’re going for, but the emotional beats worked well here so I think this was a good end to the series overall. Also, Rose [Tanaka Atsuko] is still ridiculously good-looking and I would watch an entire show about her without a second thought. Sorry!
Brave Bang Bravern – Episode 12 (Series Finale)
Oh, this was a really fun finale. I think shows like this are a very good argument for the idea that some kinds of storytelling just never go out of style.
Obviously, Smith/Bravern’s love for Isami, and his respect for him, burns from beyond the grave. Hot enough to resurrect him first as Bravern and then in the final scene of the episode, as himself. I was also so so so fucking happy that Lulu [Aizawa Saya] got to contribute to the final final final battle, I was worried she’d get left out.
Speaking of! Verum Vita [Kugimiya Rie] makes a lot of her brief screentime and I love how she goes from this cool, calm, collected ultimate final threat to psychotically planning to massacre the entire planet to incredibly annoyed at Bravern continually just being able to overpower her attacks. I liked how literally everyone came back for the finale, even if just to contribute to Bravern’s spirit bomb, I think that’s a good way of showing where the show’s priorities lie. I get that Smith has that whole little bit at the end about how “oh everyone who was there that day was a hero”, but if I can disagree with the show for a second, that’s really not true. Bravern and Lulu are the heroes because they’re the super robots. Everyone else is support
I do feel the need to concede that this was not a perfect series, at least not for me personally; some of the humor goes a little over the line for me (although not much of it to be honest), and while I’m mostly over the hoo-rah undertones present in spots, I do still have that little bit of an icky feeling that I get from anything involving the military. Also, hey, damn, Superbia [Sugita Tomokazu] sure got the short end of the stick, huh? Everyone else gets to come back to life but he stays dead, what’s up with that? Maybe the idea is that he lives on within Lulu, but if so, the anime doesn’t really make that clear.
Anyway, that’s all pretty minor stuff, honestly? Other than maybe the Superbia thing. And that’s the thing, this wasn’t a perfect series, but it was quite a good one, and I liked it a lot. If someone said it was an all-timer for them, I would understand completely.
Also, I am NEVER going to get the theme song out of my head.
Pokemon Horizons: The Series – Episode 45
So, there are two main themes of this anime, one is that experiences and adventures inherently change you and having a goal to strive for is more important than the actual act of reaching that goal. The other is that Pokémon are fucking awesome, which they really, really, really are in this episode. The team-up against Rayquaza? Sprigatito evolving? The Amethio assist? Are you kidding me, man? I’m just really glad this show exists.
Sengoku Youko – Episode 13 (Season Finale)
What a fucking way to end Part 1.
As is often the case in Mizukami Satoshi‘s stories, what we thought our initial goal was is no longer reachable, because the entire status quo has been turned on its head. As of the end of this episode, most of our characters are in some sense destroyed; physically, spiritually, mentally, or in terms of position. This is the barren wasteland that the mountain goddess refers to, in a sense.
I have no idea how this story will end when Part 2 picks up in the Summer. And you know what? That’s a good thing.
Metallic Rouge – Episode 13 (Series Finale)
If anime were appraised solely on their last episodes, Metallic Rouge might squeak by as pretty decent, but they aren’t, so it isn’t.
I’m not going to recap all the various little revelations and plot twists here because honestly, who could possibly care? The gist is that the events of the preceding twelve episodes don’t truly matter because everything was really just building up to this, a showdown between Rouge and her father figure Dr. Junghardt [Shimoyama Yoshimitsu], a character who is barely in the show before this point (even in his hooded guise as The Puppetmaster), and who feels ancillary to much of what the series was trying to do. In as much as “what Metallic Rouge was trying to do” is even a coherent set of ideas.
The actual events of this episode feel very random. I’d almost say fanfic-y? In isolation it’s not a terrible finale but finales of course do not occur in isolation. When taken against the backdrop of everything Metallic Rouge could’ve been, and indeed actively tried to be, the episode simply makes no sense. The Neans’ plight doesn’t matter because the entire thing was orchestrated by Doc Jung, which he demonstrates in a long monologue that comes off as trying way too hard to make this boring cutout of a Super Intelligent Chessmaster type character seem interesting. If the show had just focused on this from the start instead of interpolating four or five unrelated plots along the way, it might’ve worked a lot better, but it’s impossible to know.
It would certainly feel less distasteful, at least. I cannot get over the fact that this series treated “serious examination of discrimination and a moral question over the ethics of armed struggle,” regardless of its (deeply shitty and unbelievably milquetoast) conclusions, as just another hat it could put on and take off at will. None of it ends up mattering! At the last minute Rouge just decides to free the Neans, because now she thinks it’s the right thing to do. If we were going to build Rouge up as some kind of liberator and savior it would’ve had to start many episodes ago, and despite occasional toothless gestures in that direction, it really didn’t. (As an editorial note, bear with me here, in the original version of this post I screenshotted someone else’s points to agree with them, but they’ve since deleted their tumblr blog for reasons unknown, so I don’t want to reproduce them again here.)
As for everything else the show tries to do, the genre-hopping was occasionally fun when it remembered to not be stupid about it, but that was really only a handful of episodes in hindsight and if someone doesn’t feel that that’s enough to make up for the show’s many writing mistakes, I find it very hard to disagree with them.
And then there’s the last couple minutes of this episode which….reveal at the end that clown robot girl Opera [Ise Mariya] was secretly a Usurper all along and installed a virus turning all Neans into murder-bots, which completely threatens to saw the legs off what happened mere seconds before, except that then it turns out to completely not matter because Gene installed an antivirus beforehand because he knew this would happen, somehow? (Gene is a nothing of a character and is another reason this show’s writing sucks.) And thus Neans have freedom now, because of a completely un-foreshadowed, last-minute minor plot twist that occurred offscreen.
The final impression is of a show that is unintentionally funny and deeply unserious. My friend and sometimes-podcast cohost Julian M. also pointed out that apparently a bunch of this a wholesale bite of the end of RahXephon? I haven’t seen that show so I can’t comment, but it’s indicative of the fumes the show is running on at this point. (I later learned that RahXephon was created by the same person! So if anything, it’s self-plagiarism.)
Just so this entire heading doesn’t come off like an angry rant, there are a few things that work. Mainly the buildup of real, mutual trust between Rouge and Naomi. (Or maybe I just want it to work because otherwise this show truly does have nothing going for it on the writing side.) At the very least, it’s delightfully gay, I like the visual of the two of them together inside Rouge’s mindspace. Although even this comes with an icky side effect in that Naomi is now functionally dead as her own physical person. Any time I try to give this show credit for something, I find another way in which it could have so easily done better.
Hey, at least they brought the dedicated combat theme back, that’s good. And Cyan [Shiraishi Haruka], Rouge’s surrogate little sister, is right, Rouge’s new form does look really cool. (Why did they feel the need to kill Cyan, by the way? You can’t both have a shitty central narrative and kill all your best characters.)
I don’t want to come off as though I just completely hated the thing top to bottom. It was entertaining on a week to week basis, but in trying to do so many different things it just does nothing, and I find it really frustrating for that reason. The visual aspect of the show remains decently compelling (the Gladiator designs in particular), but I could never in good conscience recommend this to someone even if I don’t “regret watching it” per se.
What a mess! I’m glad it’s over.
Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 13
I think I’ve called the last five episodes of this show “the best episode so far” so, so I’ll stop doing that now but really, what a good episode. I was a bit behind when I watched and first wrote about this, so I’ve covered episodes 13 and 14 separately here.
This may be a hot take, but I actually think the show does an even better job of conveying Thistle’s [Kobayashi Yuu] menace in this part of the story than the manga does. That’s perhaps at the cost of sacrificing some nuance, but as I’ve said before, an anime adaptation definitionally cannot have everything.
There are so many good faces in this episode, especially from Falin, who spends a lot of the episode understandably looking absolutely haunted, and Marcille, who goes cackling mad while fighting off Thistle’s blood dragons.
I’ll admit, I sort of forgot about this whole second bit with the orcs. The orcs in general are not my favorite part of this story, but I like Chilchuck’s Character Moment here of having to confront the fact that he, you know, is worried about his friends, and I think Zon’s sister [Murase Michiyo] is very well-cast.
Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 14
Overall, not my favorite episode of this series, but still a very strong piece of character work, mostly for Kabru’s [Katou Wataru] party.
As for the big obvious change brought on by us moving into part 2; the visuals in OP 2 are great but I don’t like the song nearly as much. Many such cases! Hopefully it’ll grow on me.
The animation in this episode is not quite as good as in the previous episode, but it still looks very nice. Also, this part of the story does a very good job of establishing Kabru’s very extreme but principled in its own way personality. I also like the way they slowly reveal how good at memorizing details about people Kabru is, it’s a nice touch.
Everything about the introduction of Shuro’s [Kawada Shinji] party, meanwhile, is incredibly good and makes up for any deficiencies the episode could be said to have. Plus, Tage [Furuya Yoshino, in what appears to be her debut role?] is here! And I loved the samurai moves Shuro pulled on the sea serpent.
There’s a fun cliffhanger at the end here. Also! In contrast to the OP, I might like this second ED song even better than the first; it’s got a soft-focus indie rock sound of a sort I’m very fond of.
A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics – Episode 1
This was alright?
First, an actual case of literal “portal fantasy” in contemporary isekai. You don’t see that super often, although I feel like it’s slightly becoming more in vogue again. At the very least, I’ve seen it a few times over the past couple of years.
There are some elements of the visual presentation in the early moments of the show, with what seemed to be real photos with a filter slapped on them, that were pretty weird.
The main thing Salad Bowl of Eccentrics does well is small-scale gags; I liked the bit where Sousuke [Furukawa Makoto], our lead, literally picked the bratty princess Sara [Yano Hinaki] up and ran away with her. Sara’s Detective Conan fixation, the “job” popup introducing supporting character Livia [Ichimichi “M.A.O” Mao] flipping from “Lady-Knight” to “Homeless”, etc., are similar examples of little moments that work pretty well. The actual premise I’m not entirely sold on yet, and I feel like the show may be inclined to abandon it if it gets in the way of the humor, but it’s hard to say for sure.
Also said Lady-Knight being the hapless fanservice character is….a little annoying. I’d rather it be her than the 13 year old, I suppose, but it’s a bit of a tired cliché at this point isn’t it?
As I said, I like the general character interactions, and it’s got a pretty good command of quick little gags, but I’m not sure if I’ll keep up with this or not. Time will tell.
Go! Go! Loser Ranger! – Episode 1
I really wanted to do a full writeup on this, but my hands are not happy with me after all the writing I’ve done over the past week, so my thoughts are here, instead.
Overall; fucking fantastic first episode. There are not a ton of situations where I’ve gotten into a somewhat lesser-known (in the Anglosphere at least) manga and had it then get a big splashy anime adaptation, so I’ll admit a part of me was a little worried, but the Yostar Pictures team working on this honestly just knocked it completely out of the park. Go! Go! Loser Ranger! deserved a full-force adaptation and they seem equipped to give it one.
The action is really well-done. There’s an interesting bit in the first fight where CGI and flat animation are blended, but in an inverse way of how you’d expect; the rangers get the CG, since they’re not the actual protagonists of this story, and the Duster footsoldiers get the traditional animation. Clearly a deliberate stylistic decision for this first fight and I think it pays off really well when the episode does its pivot at its halfway point. The comedy is really on-point, too. Our lead, Footsoldier D [Kobayashi Yuusuke] is fantastically cast and I love how he’s the focus from the second he’s introduced onward, and I love the fun riffs like him shoving his own introductory text out of the way. Our scrimblo has made it, Loser Ranger fans.
Lastly, even though her role in this episode is firmly secondary, I have to note Suzukiri. [Yano Yumika] My beloved. I have no idea whose idea it was to cast Yano Yumika, since this marks only her second role of any real note, but it was a great decision. I will also admit that If this show doesn’t absolutely take off in popularity I will be a little sad. Because it’s very good, yes. But also, admittedly, because I want way more Suzukiri fanart than there currently is in the world. She’s just very pretty, OK?
Train to the End of the World – Episode 2
In a sense, the real litmus test of any anime is usually not its first episode, but its second. Thankfully, Train to the End of the World‘s is quite good.
With this episode Shuumatsu Train establishes what I imagine will be a template it works off of for much of the rest of the season. The episode’s first half is largely dialogue-driven, focusing on the characters playing off of each other in both dramatic and serious ways.
We get a lot of goofy stuff here, for sure, since Shuumatsu Train clearly wants to be a funny anime in addition to all the other stuff it’s doing, but we also get a surprising amount of genuine tension; it’s implied that these girls have been each other’s only friends for years, and because of that they can easily poke at each other’s insecurities if they get angry with each other, which Reimi and Akira in particular absolutely seem perfectly willing to do. Which, honestly, who can blame them given the situation they now find themselves in? Far from home with minimal food, money, etc. It’s a tough spot!
The first Weird Thing the girls come across is relatively harmless. This guy paddling his duck boat up and down the river seems, briefly, like an indication that the girls’ journey will perhaps not actually be that dangerous. Despite this, he gives a genuine and serious warning to the girls about what’s left of the world outside of the train line along which they live. (Akira promptly shoots him down, claiming his warning is a poor imitation of a monologue from “absurdist theater.” This appears to be Shuumatsu Train smacking itself in the face to make you laugh again, said theatrical tradition is a big influence, directly or indirectly via other anime, on a lot of the anime this series is taking cues from.)
The real capital-M Moment is toward the end of the episode though, when a tsunami threatens to overtake the train and drowns the railway behind them. Their tentative plan of going back to Agano to more properly prepare is thus fully rendered impossible, and it’s made clear that there is no way but forward. I think this is Shuumatsu Train again signaling its themes of pushing forward an growing up in a world that is indifferent or actively hostile toward you. Also! I like the symbolism of the plant that Nadeshiko brought along growing into their emergency food supply. She definitely seems to be the “mom friend” of the group despite perhaps lacking the strong convictions of the other three, it’s cool to see that play out directly in the show’s worl.
Also also! Someone on reddit pointed out that the map the girls get from the hermit appears to foreshadow the nature of each of the train stops, given that we immediately meet people with mushrooms growing out of their heads for the closing scene here. I’m really interested to see where that goes. Great episode, great show.
Manga
Magical Girl Tsubame: I Will (Not) Save The World! – Chapters 20-23
This was the only substantial bit of manga I read this week! Tsubame remains one of the most fascinating and odd contemporary magical girl stories to me. I love the dual expression of Tsubame’s naivete in particular, how it both prevents her from fully understanding the gravity of the situation she’s in but also lets her reject the boxes that Kokoro has been placed in by the Center. If that’s gibberish to you because you haven’t read the manga, I highly recommend it. It’s quite good.
And that’s all for this week, I hope you enjoyed the somewhat more off-the-cuff writing style of these posts. If you want to see them before they go up each Monday, you can of course follow me on Tumblr, but do be aware I post about a lot of things there in addition to what I cover on this site.
Here’s a weekly bonus thought for you all. “Wherever you happen to be, if you look around you, that’s where you are.”
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