Author: planet Jane

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) To Heaven & Back on a Song: The Soothing World of HEALER GIRL

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

“These are the beautiful miracles sung by humanity.”

The first thing to know is that Healer Girl was inspired by Symphogear. Comparisons between anime rarely do either work any favors, but for Healer Girl, knowing the name of its stylistic ancestors puts some things into perspective. The Symphogear comparison is merely the most recent in a list that also included Macross and, less centrally, G Gundam.

Ostensibly, these are strange bedfellows for what is at its heart an iyashikei series / sometimes-musical. In practice, it makes perfect sense. Like in Symphogear, the music in Healer Girl is not a background element; it’s diegetic, and the very source of the protagonists’ abilities itself. I’ve taken to calling this sort of thing the “dynamic music” genre, perhaps you have some other pet neologism. In either case, understanding that the music is not just a plot element but what the entire work is built around is key to understanding Healer Girl at all. It’s not a complex series, but there is stuff going on here beyond pretty songs.

Take our protagonists. Three young girls; Kana (Carin Isobe), Hibiki (Akane Kumada), and Reimi (Marina Horiuchi). For the majority of the series, they serve as interns at a clinic run by their teacher, Hibiki’s cousin Ria (Ayahi Takagaki).

A clinic, because as Healer Girl quickly establishes, in its world, the power of music is literal. Carefully-applied musical treatments can literally heal injuries, soothe sickness away entirely, and aid in surgery. This sort of there-is-power-in-the-song thing is something idol anime have been flirting with for years but never really commit to. (A personal frustration of mine.) Part of me enjoys Healer Girl just because it has the stones to actually dive into this idea. At twelve episodes, it doesn’t have the time to answer every question I had (I really want to know what healing music looks like around the world, but the show sadly doesn’t really go into it), but maybe it doesn’t need to.

From that central premise, Healer Girl builds a few strong, simple metaphors. Healing music as art is the easiest to understand, and effectively renders the series as a defense of itself. Taken through this lens, the anime is a series of iterative exercises; how much can art really help with? In the first episode, Kana sings a song to a boy who’s scraped his knee to take the pain away. Just three episodes later, the girls assist in a surgery where someone nearly dies on an operating table, and they face the truly harrowing experience of possibly failing to help someone. Much like conventional medicine, healing music definitely has its limits, but also like medicine, it certainly helps. Is this Healer Girl‘s argument, that art can heal the world, if not by itself, at least in a supporting role? It’s a strong reading, and I do think that’s at least partly what the series is going for.

Consider also the show’s actual music. A lot of people—including myself—initially assumed Healer Girl was going to be an idol series, and it is true that there is an associated idol unit, the Healer Girls themselves. But, if we consider it a part of this idol anime lineage, it’s a highly unconventional one, at least for 2022. In style, the Healer Girls are a lot closer to forgotten ’90s American soft-pop sensation Wilson-Phillips than anything presented in, say, its seasonal contemporary Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. More to the point is the presentation; the titular healer girls don’t really dance, and their songs are not performances. They’re tools. And learning how to use those tools forms the show’s other main theme; the passing of knowledge and love from one generation to the next.

Much is made of the girls’ relationship with their mentor Ria, a well-developed character in her own right. Reimi has a cute, one-sided crush on her, and much is made of her incredible skills. (Which we finally get to see in action in episode 9.) Over the course of the series, Ria guides the girls through simply being her pupils toward being healers in their own right. In the show’s finale, it implies via paralleling that Kana may herself one day take students of her own. It’s rare to see teaching and imparting wisdom treated as something beautiful and graceful, but that just makes appreciating it when a show can properly pull it off all the more important.

And look, all this writing about what the show means, and I’ve barely told you anything about why you might want to watch it! The simple truth is that, like most of Studio 3Hz‘s productions, the show is just damn good-looking. It’s beautiful, colorful, wonderfully vibrant, almost a living thing itself, in a way that is truly rare and all too easy to take for granted. That vibrancy makes Healer Girl something to be treasured. Naturally, it translates to the soundtrack as well; Healer Girl is at most half a musical, but enough of the show is sung—including incidental dialogue, in some episodes—that if you enjoy that medium, you’ll like Healer Girl as well.

And on top of that, it’s simply fun to watch. Rarely are anime fans starving for some classic slice-of-life antics, but Healer Girl‘s are a particularly well done set thereof. The show is very funny when it sets its mind to it, and not working in that mode 100% of the time only renders it more amusing when it does.

There’s even a pastiche of an old, old slice of life trope, the obligate “high school rock band” episode—episode 7, here—that’s been sorely lacking from most modern anime for a whole generation at this point. I have to admit, seeing one in this day and age made me nostalgic, so I suppose that’s another emotion that Healer Girl can effortlessly tap into.

Because of this kaleidoscopic emotional approach, Healer Girl‘s characters feel truly alive as well, even comparatively minor ones like the girls from the rival healing clinic (of course there’s a rival healing clinic), Sonia (Chihaya Yoshitake) and Shinobu (Miyu Takagi).

And, of course, we should discuss Healer Girl‘s visual ace in the hole. The girls don’t merely sing; the world changes around them as they do, a literalized, visualized version of the consensus fantasy-reality created by the most powerful music here in the real world. But in Healer Girl‘s universe, it can change the world in a truly direct and immediate way, and these bubbles of magic are called image songs. Episode 9 is the best showcase of them, where we see Ria greatly aid a surgery with hers; she influences literal events by manipulating abstract visual material within the image song. In doing so, she herself is a metaphor for the real impact of art in our own world. It’s a curious, but justified little thematic mobius strip, something that impressively never feels pretentious or self-impressed. Healer Girl knows what it’s doing, maybe that’s why there isn’t a weak episode in the whole thing.

The only real tragedy about Healer Girl is that its strongest moments are those where it instills pure awe in the audience. And that, unfortunately, is not something I’m truly able to replicate in text format. You will just have to take my word for it, that my jaw dropped more than once throughout the show, that I teared up a few times, and that several episodes—particularly episode 5 and the latter half of the finale—left me frustrated, although in a strangely positive way, over my inability to fully convey their emotional impact in mere words. You will just have to see it for yourself, and if you haven’t, I again strongly recommend that you do.

If there’s justice in the world, Healer Girl will be a watershed moment. But even if it inspires nothing, even if this artistic lineage ends here, I find it impossible to imagine that it will ever lose its potency as a work unto itself or, indeed, as a healing tool.

There is often a desire—spoken or not—in seasonal anime watching culture for something to get “another season.” Healer Girl, however, was clearly crafted with just these twelve episodes in mind. That renders the show small, certainly, but it does not rob it of its power. In a way Healer Girl is like the over-the-counter medical records mentioned in the first episode. It will soothe your sickness if you let it; simply rewind the tape and play it all back again. One more time; if you feel it, it’ll heal you.

If you’d like to read more about Healer Girl, consider checking out my Let’s Watch columns on the series.

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.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch HEALER GIRL Episodes 11 – 12

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

The time has come for measure-taking. Healer Girl ended today. I will not make a secret my feelings; I absolutely love this show. It’s a soft, glowing rainbow light that revitalizes the soul. If you don’t have the patience for unchecked fangirling, I suggest you turn back now.

A certain kind of studio hound will want to know where I rank Healer Girl among Studio 3Hz‘ other two well-known originals—Flip Flappers and Princess Principal—but in truth I find them so different that any comparison would be irrelevant. So instead, I will say this; Healer Girl, regardless of whether it’s the best or anyone’s personal favorite, is certainly the most healing and soul-soothing of the three. How appropriate, given its name.

We’ll spend much of this article talking about today’s episode, the finale, but it’s important to discuss last week’s as well (which I wasn’t able to cover on time). The gist is simple; our girls have found themselves in a rut with their C-Rank exams dangerously near on the horizon. When they try to sing, their image song breaks, and each of them is yanked out of it by a trio of biting orca-like creatures. Ria has the idea to send them to a training camp of sorts, spearheaded by Reimi’s former maid.

Over the course of the camp, they visit museums, take a pottery class, go bunging jumping, and hike in the mountains. None of it helps, because even as the diverse experiences temper and strengthen their songs, an underlying issue isn’t addressed: jealousy.

There were a few broad hints before, but episode 11 foregrounds the fact that all three of our leads are, in one way or another, jealous of each other. Once again, Ria actually notices this long beforehand. At the end of the episode, we’re given a quick peek at her notes, and they’re pretty revealing.

In a way this represents the first major interpersonal conflict these characters have ever had, but it’s entirely believable that a trio of teenagers, no matter how naturally talented, might develop inferiority complexes over that very same talent. All this leads to perhaps Healer Girl‘s single most unexpected scene; a full-on shouting match between the leads, each of them venting their jealousy. Even this, it’s to be expected, is sweet in its own way, given that the three are mostly yelling about how talented each of them thinks the other two are. (If you’re a certain sort of person, I could imagine finding this saccharine. But if you are that sort of person, I doubt you made it this far into Healer Girl unless you’re also a masochist.)

It will not surprise you to know that getting all of this out is exactly what they needed, and indeed if you read Ria’s notes up there, you’ll see that having the three of them grow closer together on their own, without her interference, was the plan all along. The camp completed; they return for exam day.

The image song, as sung during their exams, is a thing of beauty. They are more in harmony after their little fight, despite being physically apart and taking their exams in different rooms, than they were together, and the results are spectacular. Kana in particular, perhaps the one among them with the most raw talent, metamorphoses into a butterfly-winged fairy as she sings, the orca rendered nothing more than a blooming flower itself.

They all pass, because of course they do.

As the episode’s obligate heartwarming post-credits scene ends, Ria cheerily announces that all three of them are expelled. It’s a slammed door played like a punchline, but the underlying idea—that she’s taught them all she can, and they now have to stand on their own two feet—is sound. Ultimately though, any expectation that they move on permanently is to be ignored. Spoiler alert; at the end of the show they rejoin Ria’s clinic. Again as understudies, but also as proper healers in their own right. Still learning, but able to stand by themselves.

Still, episode 12 does deal with the girls out and about on their own for the first time. It splits into three parts for its first half, showing us the month-long internships that the girls enter. Reimi cuts her long blonde hair short and takes up residence at Sonia’s clinic. Hibiki interns at the newly founded audio medicine department at the hospital from episodes 4 and 9. Kana, who the episode returns the central spotlight to, interns abroad, at a hospital in what appears to be California.

This part of the episode is charming, especially in its depiction of how the girls remain in touch even when physically apart. Although Hibiki and Reimi in particular aren’t actually far from each other, and it seems like they occasionally hang out at the clinic. (Where Hibiki might still live? I’m not totally clear on this.) In what is easily the episode’s silliest scene, they embody every meaning of the term “moé blob.”

In general, episode 12 is concerned with legacy and the meaningful passage of knowledge and love from one generation to the next. Ria spends much of it with her own mentor, Sonia’s grandmother, but the real clincher takes the form of multiple callbacks to episode 1. Kana, in a land where she does not speak a lick of the local tongue, nonetheless soothes a crying, lost girl in the hospital’s lobby. Unlike her technically unauthorized use of healing from that first episode, this is exactly what she’s supposed to be doing, and it’s only through her study under Ria that she can accomplish it. Thus, here on her own, she draws on both her own life and the legacy of those who came before her. This is a difficult thematic balance to strike, but Healer Girl pulls it off.

There is an extremely funny comment made by Abigail, the woman with brown hair on the left, where she’s startled by “what Japan’s C-Ranks can do.” This would maybe come across as a little self-aggrandizing if this scene took place anywhere but the United States. As someone who lives here; yeah, that’s fair.

Later, when the threes’ internships end, Hibiki and Reimi get a cryptic email from Kana on the eve of her anticipated return to Japan. True friends and, apparently living in a world where commercial flight does not cost a small fortune, the two actually take a flight to California, where they find Kana helping out with the aftermath of a wildfire.

In any case, it’s on their return flight that Healer Girl makes this parallel between its first and final episodes most explicit. One of the passengers, a young girl, has an asthma attack. Our girls, of course, volunteer to help, directly referring back to the very incident that made Kana want to become a healer in the first place. I honestly cannot do this scene justice with words alone; the soothing song itself is one thing, but the imagery of Kana spiritually duetting with the younger incarnation of her master got to me in a way that I struggle to properly describe. The parallel invites you to imagine that the young girl they sing to might one day become a healer herself; wouldn’t that be a beautiful thing?

Amazingly, Healer Girl has another trick up its sleeve, its last, as the finale comes to a close. When the girls return home to Japan, they’re formally “given investiture” as healers (another of the series’ many strange and mystical religious parallels). And as they depart the graduating ceremony, they sing the song from the OP. The long version, with more verses.

Healer Girl—the very show itself—dissolves into magical dream sequence; their song fills the air like the light of drifting stars. Their friends and teachers come to join them. Is this all literally happening? Is it artistic license? A better question for you; who cares? In an interview, Director Yasuhiro Irie cited the Symphogear series as an influence on Healer Girl. These anime are, on many fundamental levels, very different. But they are alike in that both have a deep, intuitive understanding of the fact that with enough raw emotion, you can transmute literal events into symbols and back again.1 So the question of whether this is “really happening” is irrelevant, what it is, is Healer Girl‘s case for itself. A definitive answer to the question of whether these twelve weeks have been worth it.

During this fantastical, mesmerizing ending sequence, any lingering doubt vanishes like shadows against the morning Sun. Healer Girl takes its final showman’s bow, and it exits, as suddenly as it arrived.

If you feel it, it’ll heal you. That’s all there is to it.

Song Count: In episode 11, just one, but they sing it four times, only completing it on the fourth. In episode 12, three in total, all of which are wonderful in their own way. If you’ve liked the show’s songs and have more money than I do, consider buying the soundtrack or official vocal album.

1: Incidentally, Hibiki Tachibana would make a great healer. And the girls from this show would probably be pretty good Gear-wielders as well. There’s a free idea for the four of you who read this site but also write fanfiction.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 14

One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

After a few chapters in a row where quite a bit happens, today’s is refreshingly straightforward. There’s only two real events that occur here; Mayor Boodle decides to take the fight to Buggy, and Nami allies with—although she’s very hesitant to use words like “join”—Luffy’s crew.

Boodle has a decent motive for wanting Buggy & Co. out of town; he helped build the place!

To me, this entire sequence raises tons of questions, and I’m not sure if they’re questions One Piece is interested in answering. This patch of land is one thing, but in general, where did these people come from? Where have they arrived at? Is this a “Europeans crossing the Atlantic for the first time” situation or something more innocuous? Are there natives? If so, where are they?

Many, many questions, and few answers. Maybe One Piece will eventually answer some or all of these questions, but it’s far from a certainty. For now, at least for me, they’re just something I will keep in the back of my mind.

More importantly, there’s a pretty funny sequence earlier on in the chapter where Mohji, stumbling back aboard Buggy’s ship, tries to warn his captain of the “rubber man”, but passes out halfway through his sentence. This leads to some misunderstandings.

And the chapter also establishes that Chou-Chou is fine. In fact, him ending up back at the shelter tips off the townspeople that their mayor has gone and done something reckless. They are absolutely correct about this, as previously established.

Boodle’s situation would probably be hopeless did he not have some backup; namely, Luffy and a newly recovered Zolo.

And even Nami, in her own way, offers something like support.

And just to not leave anyone out; the mayor himself is no slouch. I haven’t really talked much about Boodle because as someone who’s not even quite 30 yet, the whole “spending 40 years building a community only to have it destroyed” motive is a bit abstract to me. But it is executed well, and that means that at the end of the chapter, when he has a dock-to-ship stare-off with Buggy, he earns being drawn in that classically sketchy shonen style that conveys that someone is about 90% burning justice by volume.

Tomorrow: Luffy’s crew and the iron-willed mayor vs. Buggy the Clown and his circus on a ship.

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also 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.

Posted on in anime, Anime Orbit Weekly

Anime Orbit Weekly [6/19/22]

Hi folks. A bit low on energy as I write this, so I’ll just cut right to the chase for you. That’s the important part anyway, right?

Seasonal Anime

Birdie Wing

The news felt tragic when it was handed down. “Birdie Wing will have only 13 episodes.” These days, single cour anime are by far the norm, so it wasn’t too surprising to learn that Birdie Wing would have only a single episode more than the standard twelve. Still, for a show that seemed to be pivoting into ever-more absurd iterations on its central sport, it cannot help but be the tiniest bit disappointing. Part of me wanted Birdie Wing to run for dozens and dozens of episodes just to see how out there it could get.

On the other hand, this is the proverbial fire under Birdie Wing‘s ass. This week’s episode was the eleventh, putting the series just two away from completion. Every minute counts in a single cour anime, and never more so than in its final few episodes.

The question, then, that Birdie Wing asks you as it enters its finale, is how much can you care about golf? Not how much you do care about golf, mind you. I care about the actual sport very little and I’m sure the same is true of a fair number of people who are watching it. But like anything, Birdie Wing‘s first major obstacle to overcome as a story and a piece of entertainment is to make you care about it. It has a lot of tricks up its sleeve in that regard; Eve’s rainbow bullets, its plethora of absurd courses, the ludicrously high stakes involved in many of these matches, its once-present class commentary that seems to have largely just faded into the ether, etc. But at the end of the day, a key part of forcing your suspension of disbelief is to make you care about this thing you might otherwise not give a damn about. Birdie Wing, in what I think is probably its greatest overall strength, is really good at that. This time it uses a more conventional, though no less effective approach; a compelling but brief arc for a side character.

Part of this episode stars Kinue Jinguuji (Mai Nakahara). Jinguuji is the president of Eve’s adopted high school’s golf club, and over the course of the episode she puts Eve through some pretty intense training. (Yes, this episode is a Golf Training Arc. No one should be surprised by that at this point.)

One would correctly guess, then, that she’s a strong golfer herself. Over the course of this episode, Coach Amuro sets upon her the task of “polishing” Eve, who he describes as a diamond in the rough.

But, Birdie Wing makes a key distinction here. Jinguuji is a very good golfer; she has technique and intuitive course knowledge and all the sorts of things that make one actually good at the sport both within Birdie Wing and in real life. If this were Sorairo Utility, 2022’s other anime about girls golfing, she’d be the strongest player on the course by a mile.

But this is not that particular short, and it is also not real life. Jinguuji being a very good golfer is not enough to elevate her to main character status, something she is keenly aware of.

Instead, Jinguuji falls into the old archetype of someone who is deeply passionate about something, and is even quite skilled at it, but cannot compete with natural talent. This is a character type that has recurred many times throughout the course of the medium, usually in contexts far more “obviously” dramatic than this one. But Birdie Wing playing the trope completely straight, and managing to actually do so fairly successfully, is amazing. If it winked for even a moment, the illusion would collapse in a heap.

There is a real case to be made for Birdie Wing as a truly effective piece of camp theater, and arcs like Jinguuji’s (or earlier in the show; Rose Aleone’s) are great supporting arguments. Is it actually all that funny that Kinue literally breaks down and cries during her flashback because she can’t play golf anymore?

As a non-golfer, sure, it can seem silly. But in her own mind—and that of a sufficiently attuned viewer—it’s genuinely tragic that her dreams are forever beyond her reach. The episode’s very title is “No Matter How Tall a Weed Grows, It Will Never Reach the Sun”, a hard-truth proverb that some people are simply better than others at things for reasons well beyond anyone’s control. Wanting to do something is not the same as being good at it. It’s a tough lesson, and it’s not one everyone handles with terribly much grace.

Kinue at least, has found her answer. Unable to compete in the tournament (or by the sounds of it, much of any golf, at least for now), she passes her dream on to Eve and Aoi. I will fully admit that it’s strange to say this, but, as someone for whom criticism was perhaps a third or fourth-chosen life path, I actually related to this super hard, and I think Kinue might be my favorite member of Birdie Wing‘s secondary cast. In my mind, there is validity in seeking to uplift others’ dreams if you can’t truly attain your own.

Eve and Aoi have no such problems, of course, and inevitably, it’s them who are chosen to represent their high school in the doubles tournament. This, presumably, will form the show’s final arc.

Birdie Wing will not appear in this column again. I intend to review the series, and at this point I should focus as much on the big picture as I do individual episodes. But single cour though it is relegated to, Birdie Wing has been, and continues to be, an incredible ride, and I am happy to have gone on it with all of you.

Summer Time Rendering

There are a lot of things that are surprising about Summer Time Rendering. One is simply how popular it’s been despite the fact that a certain streaming service is still holding its English release in proverbial prison. Unofficial releases float around anyway, of course, and via a heavily-dialectical fansub (based on the manga’s translation), many people have found one of their Spring favorites regardless.

For me, Summer Time Rendering—unusually spelled name and all, it’s a pun—is a peculiar beast. Another, at least to me, is just how well-made it is. Maybe I’m just out of touch with the genre, but I feel like there aren’t many supernatural thrillers getting made anymore. Summer Time Render does not redefine the genre, but it’s a great take on it thusfar, leaning into the genre’s strong points and mostly (though not entirely) avoiding its pitfalls.

Since a fair chunk of people are waiting for the official release, I’m loathe to spoil too much about the series, even though certain aspects of it practically beg discussion (for example, walking “wow, that’s gender” tweet Ryuunosuke). The core point is that over the course of its run so far, Summer Time Render has managed to be both hair-stands-on-end spooky and one of the best action anime airing right now. That’s pretty impressive, although OLM rarely deliver anything but top-notch productions, so maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.

The Executioner & Her Way of Life

I have to admit, I fell behind on The Executioner & Her Way of Life for a while, which is why it’s been a bit since it showed up here. I’m glad I caught up this week in time for the finale, though. (Which will have already aired by the time you read this, although I won’t be covering it, if I do, until next week. Lead times and all.)

Since we last spoke, Executioner has turned into a full-on horror film. That’s not to say that its isekai (and more generally, fantasy) trappings have gone anywhere, but it’s rapidly become clear that the world Executioner takes place in is, if anything, even more fucked up than we thought. For its tenth episode, Executioner gave a sensible motive to arc villain Manon Libelle (Manaka Iwami, just in case I forgot to credit her before). There, we learned that Flare killed her mother before telling her that she was not worth killing. Why? Well, despite her mother being a Lost One, Manon herself is just an ordinary girl, and there’s nothing taboo or forbidden about ordinary girls, no matter who their parents are. Quite rightly, this fucked Manon up—something she actually acknowledges, in what is either the show being a bit too clever or the character herself gussying up her own backstory—and her whole plot over the show’s second half has been driven by a desire to attract Menou’s attention so the executioner will kill her as well.

We’re not actually really here to talk about Manon, though. She dies in the second half of episode 10, and the mysterious mute girl we’ve been seeing occasionally for a while now (Anzu Haruno) formally takes over as the show’s main baddie. Her name is Pandaemonium, and she is fucking scary.

Not just because of the full-on gnarly body horror the show starts deploying as soon as she shows up, although that certainly helps. There’s some arcanobabble in here about how she can’t die because she uses herself as a sacrifice to resurrect herself, a sort of Magic The Gathering infinite loop combo as applied to some truly grisly storytelling. The real reason she’s frightening—at least to me—is her cavalier attitude toward all this. She cheerily introduces herself to Menou and starts announcing her summoning a horde of demons like she’s hosting a B-Movie marathon (a term she actually uses, which raises questions of its own). All the while twisting her own head off in a way that is, sincerely, super fucking grotesque.

But of course being introduced to this total horror villain who spouts blood and cheeky metatext in equal measure is just step one. Menou has to actually fight her, too. Episode 11 only deals in part, though, with that particular fateful encounter, because there are quite a few other things going on as well. As Menou—and eventually, Princess Ashuna, as well—fight off Pandaemonium, Akari encounters her, too. There is a lot of exposition, here. The key point is the revelation that, at least if Pandaemonium is to be believed, Akari cannot actually meaningfully change her fate. Even when Akari declares that she has no desire to return to Japan, Pandaemonium taunts that she’s failed to have Menou kill her every time so far for a reason. Someone, possibly Flare herself, is interfering.

Other things Pandaemonium says about her are similarly upsetting. Perhaps the most so is the notion that Akari’s lack of desire to return to Japan stems firstly from the fact that she can barely remember it anymore—using one’s Pure Concept powers erodes their soul, including their memories—and secondly from the fact that she wasn’t treated well there. (We see only a brief flash of her being bullied, but that’s really all the context we need.)

In a way, this is both a literal advancement of the plot, but also a step backward for Executioner. As a social outcast using the other world as a way to escape the life she once lead in her own, this recontextualizes Akari as very much a typical isekai protagonist, even if the specifics are different. I’m unwilling to call this a letdown, because it’s likely that this is on purpose on Executioner‘s part. And indeed, part of the point Pandaemonium makes—and she isn’t wrong, exactly, even if she’s only saying it to get under Akari’s skin—is that Akari’s actions are inherently selfish. No world, after all, exists for one person alone. But all this is a bit of a curveball as the show heads into its finale. I do wonder if it might end up with a pretty common fate for anime that adapt still-ongoing works; ending without resolving much of anything at all.

Still, there is only one way to find out. The finale awaits.

Elsewhere on MPA

https://magicplanetanime.design.blog/2022/06/14/first-impressions-ruri-dragon/

https://magicplanetanime.design.blog/2022/06/11/so-oshi-no-ko-is-getting-an-anime-lets-talk-about-that/

https://magicplanetanime.design.blog/2022/06/18/lets-watch-kaguya-sama-love-is-war-ultra-romantic-episode-11/

https://magicplanetanime.design.blog/2022/06/18/lets-watch-spy-x-family-episode-11-stella/

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 13

One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

A theory I’m putting forward to you all; Mohji is the worst character in One Piece so far.

I know! It’s probably controversial, but bear with me here. What kind of heartless motherfucker picks a fight with a dog? Not a big scary threatening dog that is in your way, just a random dog guarding a random building that you have no interest in and your pet lion only kind of does. What kind of person does that? Mohji, apparently. I hate Mohji. Fuck him.

But pick a fight with Chou-Chou is exactly what Mohji does, and as such the first third or so of today’s chapter is a fight sequence where Chou-Chou and Mohji’s lion Richie duke it out. Through sheer moxie, and the loving memory of his owner, Chou-Chou manages to not just survive but to actually hold Richie off for a time. And I know that love for his owner is what’s motivating Chou-Chou here, because of the technique here used where the panels are aligned into strips that seem to “fade in and out” by getting narrower and wider, representative of the memories coursing through Chou-Chou’s mind as he fights.

But even though Chou-Chou is a very good dog, he’s still going to struggle against a lion (much less a jacked anime lion), so at some point, off-panel, Mohji burns the store to the ground.

Worst character in One Piece so far, I rest my case.

Unfortunately, Mohji fails to account for Luffy, who is A) very much still alive and B) very, very upset at Mohji for taking Chou-Chou’s “treasure” from him. In a display of karma so quick it’d give you whiplash, Luffy piledrives Mohji’s lion into the dirt, and doesn’t take much longer to deal with Mohji himself.

You wouldn’t like Luffy when he’s angry.

Mohji joins his pet lion face-down in the dirt soon after.

All of this is small consolation to Chou-Chou, though, who after all, cannot get the building—or his master—back.

Nami, in particular, is not impressed by all this.

But it is worth pointing out her inching toward pirate-acceptance here. Pivoting from the above, and a whole lot of “fight me, bro”-isms flung in Luffy’s direction, to this….

….just a few pages later. Again, I like to call out clever technique like this when I see it. By slipping this bit in here, Oda prevents any “dead pages”—stuffing, essentially. Devoid of meaningful narrative or visual content—just to reach a page count, a thing that many mangaka seem to struggle with.

In general, I think the saga of Chou-Chou the dog—who departs toward the end of the chapter here, possibly toward the refugee shelter Boodle mentioned in the last chapter—is my favorite of the small story arcs we’ve seen so far. I’m sure it will eventually be dethroned, but I’m a sucker for tales of animal loyalty, so it may be a bit before that happens.

Back on his ship, Buggy the Clown learns of Mohji’s demise, and is not pleased.

I DO NOT WANT TO READY THE BUGGY BALLS.

Tomorrow: No more clowning around!

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also 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.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SPY X FAMILY Episode 11 – Stella

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Last week’s dodgeball plan out the window, Anya Forger needs to find a new way to earn Stella stars if Operation Strix has any chance of succeeding in the long term. In this week’s episode of Spy x Family, she finds a way, although not intentionally, and not without a fair bit of harrowing suspense beforehand.

The episode opens simply, with Loid again struggling with Anya as the latter’s grades continue to sink, although with a more understanding approach than we’ve previously seen. (Also, at one point Loid mentally refers to Anya as his daughter with no further clarifiers, which I think is sweet.) Even from the point of view of a mundane parent, Anya’s scores would be a problem; we see at least three F’s, and there may be several more, so clearly, he’s got to do something. Anya’s academic woes aren’t solved in this episode. Even as she has a fun internal monologue about how she can totally just read other peoples’ minds to cheat, and makes an attempt to sound like Loid while she does so, it’s clear that things need to change for Anya to have any hope of getting a Stella.

All of this vexes Twilight. And indeed, Anya’s ESP means that since she can read his mind, his worries become hers in a very real and immediate sense; a literalization of the idea that children tend to inherit their parents’ anxieties.

He does hit upon one possible solution though, a father-daughter “ooting” to a local hospital. There, he hopes that perhaps Anya acquiring a taste for volunteer work might eventually lead to her getting a Stella for being an exceptional community member. If not any time soon, at least eventually.

Loid gets far more than he bargained for. Initially, this is played for comedy. Anya, being a girl of recall, only five or so, is terrible at helping out around the hospital, first breaking a vase and then shirking her task to reorganize the hospital library by reading their comics section. (Presumably, something they keep around to entertain young patients, which Anya definitely falls in that bracket.)

Just when this gets bad enough that the Forgers are practically kicked out, though, something much more serious occurs. A young boy named Ken, attending a physical therapy session in the hospital’s pool room, idles around near the adults’ pool. Not paying much attention (do kids ever?) he falls in, and almost immediately “Stella” takes a turn for the significantly darker.

Ken cannot swim, and being unable to even thrash or make noise, he simply sinks to the bottom of the pool like a rock. The direction of the episode takes a sharp detour into the visually harrowing here, with the underwater shots especially composed like something out of a tragic drama. The boy is saved only by his own thoughts; mental pleas for help that happen to be picked up by our resident psychic.

In a visible panic of her own, Anya rushes off to the pool with a flimsy excuse to help. Thankfully, Loid gives chase, because even though her bravery is admirable and her desire to help equally so, Anya can’t swim either, and it’s only the fact that Loid hurries after Anya into the pool room that saves both her and Ken. A mission well done, if ever there was one.

Her role in Ken’s rescue is enough to earn Anya the titular Stella, her very first. She gets something vaguely akin to a henshin or other kind of visual power-up sequence as it’s put on her uniform, and it puts a sweet cap on what is otherwise a rather harrowing story. Perhaps more important than the Stella is the other thing Anya has earned: some self-confidence. For the first time, she considers that her powers might be able to actually help people. (And, of course, that this might make people like her. Something she’s also still not entirely accustomed to.)

The remainder of the episode focuses on the aftereffects of all this. Anya briefly gets a bit of a big head, in fact.

But unfortunately her hopes that having earned a Stella in a genuinely heroic fashion might endear her to her classmates are quickly dashed. Some nameless girls in class are straight-up mean about it, and even suggest she might’ve faked it somehow. Only for Damian (!) to, roundaboutly at least, stick up for her by telling the gossips that if they think Eden is such a cut-rate school that they’d hand out a Stella by accident, they should transfer. (He leaves out the part where the main reason he cares about Anya’s Stella being authentic is that it hurts his pride that she got one before him. And it would hurt even more if it weren’t genuinely earned.)

Anya’s little friend Becky also suggests, running on pure spoiled-little-princess logic, that since Anya did something good she should ask for a reward. Eventually, she hits on the idea of a dog (because, you see, Damian has a dog. And if Damian has a dog and Anya also has a dog they’ll have something to talk about. And that will lead to world peace. The mind of a first-grader is incredible. The mind of a telepathic first-grader, all the more so). Anya’s able to talk Loid and Yor into it fairly easily—though not without them respectively wondering about a dog’s utility as a house guard and threat level respectively—and the episode ends there, with the promise of Dog Shenanigans next week for the last episode of the first cour.

Except, there’s a little bit more. Somewhere in a mad laboratory-turned-hellish dog pound, a group of canines who’ve had something done to them—it’s not clear what—waste away in tiny, dirty cages. A pair of villains, obvious by their poor treatment of the animals, talk about their client, who they speculate will use the animals as “bomb dogs.” What the broader implications of any of this may be are presently unclear, but the camera focuses on one dog in particular as the episode fades out, and I do suspect we’ll be seeing him again soon.

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.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 11

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

We knew this day would come. There’s been a fire burning in Miyuki Shirogane’s heart since we first learned that he’d be transferring abroad for college, probably since before then. Hourglasses wait for no one, and Miyuki and Kaguya’s dynamic has shifted fairly drastically since the first season, or really even, the earlier parts of this season.

Episode 11 is, top to bottom, filled with the actions of a man who knows he’s running out of time, and running out of time fast. We learn at the very end of this episode that the transfer to Stanford is not some far-off thing, he’s been accepted. And will be skipping his last year of high school. Shooting for the moon is no longer an option; it’s a necessity.

But as much as this episode does to pour the powder in and light the fuse, the long-awaited confessionary gun does not fire just yet. That’s for next week’s episode, a double-length finale. This week, there’s a lot of tension, a lot of buildup, and, thankfully, still quite a lot of jokes. A ton of great visual tricks here, too, most of which I don’t have the space to discuss individually.

We begin with what I’m fairly sure is a deliberate throwback to the back-and-forth antics of season one. Kaguya visits a balloon tying table, which ‘just so happens’ to be staffed by Shirogane. Obviously, she wants him to make her a balloon heart, but in her own mind she still can’t just say that, leading to her giving out an increasingly ridiculous list of things that the balloon can’t be, culminating with her arguing that flowers are animals. (It’s complicated.)

Notably, in this and a few other nods to the first season’s structure, Kaguya and Shirogane’s roles are reversed. It is now Kaguya who is at a distinct “disadvantage” when it comes to playing these little games. Notice, for instance, how things turn when she finally gets her heart balloon, and finds out that you don’t pay for them with money like you do any of the other designs.

Whoops!

Flustered, she slaps far too much money down and flees. It’s funny, but it does also show that Kaguya and Shirogane are really no longer even doing the same thing. When they both thought they had all the time in the world to work this out, the stakes were relatively low. Now that Shirogane, at least, knows that that’s not the case, he has much less to lose. (Arguably, he never had anything to lose in the first place other than perhaps a misplaced sense of pride, but you know how teenagers are.)

Eventually, Kaguya encounters Tsubame, who is having a tough time figuring out how to respond to Ishigami’s unintentional confession. Specifically, figuring out how to turn him down. She’s used to turning down playboy types who think they’re entitled to her, but Ishigami’s confession was (from her point of view, see last episode’s recap for how this whole mixup happened), sincere and straightforward, and that’s not something she knows how to deal with.

It’s not even, really, that she doesn’t like Ishigami. She just doesn’t know him very well, and is concerned that being in a serious relationship would damage other areas of her life.

Kaguya, always with a minor in villainy, initially assumes that the person she’s talking about must be someone else—and thus one of Ishigami’s rivals—and in the process she very nearly convinces Tsubame to shut him down in perhaps the worst way possible.

Thankfully things eventually clear themselves up. Kaguya and Tsubame eventually find themselves spying on Chika, who deals with the out-of-the-blue confession that she gets by challenging her would-be beaux to a quiz and then spouting koans at him.

There’s also a short scene where Iino very nearly gets sweet-talked by a pair of random incidental characters. Girl really needs to be more careful (thankfully Ishigami is there to bonk her on the head).

The remainder of the episode sees Kaguya run into Shirogane again. He promptly invites her to walk around the festival, and once again, Kaguya does not entirely know how to deal with Shirogane’s suddenly much more blunt personality. When she asks him if people won’t get the idea that they’re on a date, to which he promptly responds….

….again, he knows he’s running short on time. All of this is fairly interesting in that outside of the context of Kaguya-sama as a series itself, it wouldn’t be that notable. But within that context, knowing what we do about both of these people, Shirogane’s sudden comparative boldness is pretty striking.

This includes, for example, taking her to a fortune telling booth manned by a girl known for asking questions that border on the lascivious. Meet Yume Atenbo (Ai Kakuma). She’s what some sorts of people, a long time ago, would’ve called a one-scene wonder. She gets in, does her thing, and gets out. She’s kind of amazing, an opinion I definitely don’t hold in part because she’s dressed up as a witch and my Twitter account is called “Jane the Anime Witch.”

She needles the two to the point of, frankly, harassment. (As always, romcoms are not a good place to get your notions of proper romance or just behavior in general from, kids.) But she does also drop this particularly interesting bombshell in between all the quips about how Kaguya will make a great wife.

Is she just messing with them? Is she playing cupid? Does she have actual supernatural insight somehow? Who knows, but no matter the method, she is actually right, as we’ll come to see. She also compares Kaguya to pure water; someone whose very nature changes depending on who she surrounds herself with. (I would argue this is true of all people to some extent, but that it’s truer of Kaguya than most would not necessarily be wrong.)

The both of them flustered (but definitely happy), Kaguya and Shirogane spend much of the remaining day together, after a hilarious sequence where the two narrowly avoid having their date ruined by random interference from their friends. (My favorite of these involves Iino, who is hungry, and gets abruptly drafted into a soba-eating contest out of nowhere before she can even talk to the two of them.)

Near the end of the episode, Kaguya has this absolutely adorable thought.

The only thing putting a damper on this happy ending is what I mentioned back up there in the very first paragraph. Shirogane needs to talk about something serious, and it’s not what Kaguya would’ve wanted to hear.

Can they make it work out somehow? Will Shirogane actually find the nerve to confess his love? Will the mysterious phantom thief stealing up all the heart balloons ever be caught? (Yeah, that whole plot runs throughout the background of this episode, too. It’s why Chika’s in her Love Detective uniform up in the banner.) All of these questions and more will be answered next week in the finale. See you then, Love is War fans!

Bonus Hayasaka Screencap, which I have been shamefully forgetting to do: Here’s Hayasaka giving a full-on idol performance during the school festival.

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.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 12

One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

Today, we’re introduced to three new characters; a villainous lion-tamer, the mayor of the city Buggy and his lackeys have ransacked, and a dog. Working out which of these three has the most impact to the plot is left as an exercise to the reader. But I’ll give you a hint; it somehow isn’t this guy.

That’s not to say that Mohji isn’t important. Nor to say that Boodle—the mayor—isn’t, either. But the real star of this chapter is that dog, Chou-Chou.

This is a bit of an odd thing that I’ve noticed One Piece likes to do, introduce several characters at once, sometimes dropping their backstory on us like a sack of wrenches, and then resuming the current main plot either in the back half of the chapter’s page count or in the next one entirely. It’s not an approach I dislike, but it’s one I don’t see in much else—if this isn’t abundantly clear by now, I don’t read a ton of other shonen—so I’ve had to get a bit used to it. (And who’s to say if it’ll even still apply, a hundred chapters from now?)

You may remember that yesterday ended with Zolo in pretty bad shape, bleeding out as he hauled Luffy off to flee from Buggy’s crew. Luffy himself is still stuck in the cage he’s been imprisoned in as the chapter starts, and Nami seems a bit exasperated with the both of them.

All’s well that ends well, though, because she stole the key to the cage, so Luffy can break out with no issues. Problem solved, right?

Well, no. Remember that dog?

Munch squad.

Boodle shows up not long after, explaining that Chou-Chou has been fighting off Buggy’s crew all on his own. Why? To protect the pet food store owned by his late master, who passed away a few months before the events of this arc of an unspecified illness. I’m super underselling this here, but it’s actually pretty touching, considering how brief it all is. (Or maybe I’m just a sap.)

One Piece also floats an interesting theme here that I suppose it has actually brought up before, but I just haven’t been paying a ton of attention to. The notion of what “treasure” itself actually is. Luffy’s greatest treasure, after all, is the hat given to him by Red-Hair Shanks. Chou-Chou the dog, Mayor Boodle puts forward, sees his late master’s pet food store as a treasure in that it is all that remains of the man. A memento of sorts.

Perhaps I’m just reading too much into it, but I think this is an interesting idea and it’s one I think we should be on the lookout for as we move forward.

In any case, Mohji does eventually make his way to where Luffy and friends are “hiding.” He brags that he can control any animal—a statement initially backed up by the presence of his riding-lion, Richie—but when he tries to take command of Chou-Chou, this happens.

And Luffy continues his unbroken streak of flipping switches on every new villain he meets.

But Mohji doesn’t have much more success against Luffy than he does against Chou-Chou. He orders Richie to maul him, but all the lion succeeds in doing is breaking Luffy out of his cage.

The lion tosses Luffy into a collapsing building, which is enough for Mohji to declare that ‘no one could survive that.’ (He does not have a good command of what manga he’s in, I think.)

When the lion makes a move on the pet food store (presumably hungry for the shelves upon shelves of Meow Mix that lurk within), Chou-Chou growls fearlessly. The chapter ends on this shot of Luffy, ready to bounce back into action, and I’m quite excited to see how all this shakes out tomorrow.

Tomorrow: The Dog, The Monkey, and the Lion!

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also 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.

Posted on in Uncategorized

New Manga First Impressions Archive

You know my Seasonal Impressions Archive? This is that, but for Manga. Enjoy!

2022

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse the Archives.

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

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 11

One Piece Every Day is a column where I read a chapter of One Piece every single day—more or less—and discuss my thoughts on it. Each entry will have spoilers up to the chapter covered in that day’s column.

Please keep in mind that many other readers are also first-timers. Do NOT spoil anything beyond this point in the comments!

The introduction art for today’s One Piece is a curious one, which appears to depict Luffy racing against a….I think that’s a cheetah. Is Luffy a Speed Force user? We may never know.

In any case, today’s chapter opens with what was pretty obvious at the tail end of yesterday’s. No, Buggy the Clown is not dead. He survived being cut to bits just fine, a fact that catches Zolo enough off-guard that Buggy’s able to get a nasty stab in with his cutlass. Why don’t I let Buggy himself elucidate?

There are many good things about these three panels, but I think Luffy’s Extremely Look Who’s Talking reaction is my favorite.

Buggy genuinely seems to have our heroes on the ropes. But in the nick of time, Luffy resorts to the most powerful weapon in his arsenal; unintentionally pushing somebody’s buttons.

This is enough to make Buggy so furious that he chucks his hand—he’s still cut to pieces, remember, he’s just not hurt by it—and at Luffy, who then catches Buggy’s cutlass—attached arm and all—between his teeth, because manga is the highest form of art.

Buggy isn’t impressed, and, totally distracted from Zolo and Nami, takes the time to taunt his captive.

Right.

This distraction is enough for Zolo and Nami to turn the tables. Almost literally, since the real issue for Buggy’s crew is that Zolo flips their ship’s cannon around, still loaded with one of the—ahem—‘Buggy Balls’, and Nami does the honors of lighting it and wrecking their ship. The three escape in the confusion, while Nami deals with some confusion of her own; after all, why would a pirate risk their own life and limb to save somebody else?

The turnabout is enough to set Buggy, already a pretty angry guy, absolutely seething. And the chapter closes on Zolo, Luffy—still in a cage, mind you—and Nami fleeing into the city as Buggy makes his full intent known.

Tomorrow: Clownwar!

One Piece Every Day relies on reader support even more than most of my columns do. Please consider sharing this article around if you liked it!

Also 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.