Author: planet Jane

Posted on in anime, Monthly Movies, Reviews

(REVIEW) EVANGELION: 3.0+1.01 THRICE UPON A TIME

SPECIAL WARNING: This review contains extensive spoilers for the reviewed material, and assumes familiarity with it and the remainder of the Neon Genesis Evangelion franchise.

“You’ve grown to be an adult, Shinji.”

In a very real sense, this is the end of something. Neon Genesis Evangelion has existed as a series since 1995. Long before it became a “franchise” as such, there were those original episodes and the films that followed them, most famously End of Evangelion. The Rebuild movies, always controversial, serve as a way to rewrite and redefine Evangelion, which has remained true through the rocky first, the astonishing second, and the burned-black, emotionally deadened third entries in the series. That Thrice Upon a Time, the fourth and final, will spawn mountains upon mountains of discourse is only natural. This is Eva. One can talk forever about its influences and its impact, but there is nothing else that is truly like it. Twenty-six years of history come to a stop here. Welcome to the end of an era.

Let’s start not at the beginning, but at the end.

After the harrowing of the soul that was You Can (Not) Redo, Thrice Upon a Time concludes as the only iteration of the Evangelion series to receive a wholly unambiguous happy ending. There is no room for confusion here. Shinji Ikari is all grown up, and accordingly, this movie will make you weep like a proud parent on graduation day. For a certain kind of Eva fan, this is a claim to be met with skepticism. Eva derives no small part of its immense reputation from being a truly withering under-the-microscope look at depression. But it’s important to clarify our terms here: Thrice Upon a Time does not rob Eva of that accolade, it reinforces it. After twenty-six years of spiraling, Thrice assures even those of us in the darkest pits of misery that yes, there is a way out of this. As a kind of anti-End of Evangelion, it is an open window disguised as a trap door.

Which is to say, having a happy ending and being a happy movie are two different things. Getting to that ending is quite the ride, a fact only enhanced by Thrice‘s incredible length, clocking in at two and a half hours. Improbably, it earns every second, but one could be forgiven for wondering.

After some action-focused eye candy to start things off with a bang, and which mostly stars Mari, the film refocuses on its protagonist. We open with Shinji in near-catatonic burnout. He is entirely non-verbal for the first forty minutes of the film, and the first words anyone says to him are an accusation that he is a spineless loser. When, at one point, he gets a look at Asuka’s collar, has a PTSD flashback, and vomits on the spot. This, just so you know, is what we’re dealing with here. That he manages to, in the course of only the film’s remaining 110 minutes, go from there to where he is by its finale is nothing short of astonishing. If Thrice Upon a Time did not have two and half decades of cachet to lean on here, it probably wouldn’t work.

Over the course of Thrice Upon a Time, we see Shinji make sustained and–this is key here–permanent character growth for, arguably, the first time ever. His character actually changing in a sustained way, the way one’s character is supposed to change as they grow up, rather than simply shifting. Where You Can (Not) Redo seemed to bitterly mock the very idea of ever growing as a person at all, Thrice demonstrates that it’s possible with nothing more than some genuine care. Village 3, the town of survivors that Shinji, Asuka, and one of Rei’s clones are based in for the first third or so of the film, is a place where people are forced by the aftermath of the near-Third Impact disaster to work together.

It is in this environment, shepherded by two of his old friends; the now-adult Kensuke and Touji, that Shinji is finally able to make real, positive changes to himself. Village 3 shows Shinji what he does not have. His friends have become adults, started families, and, in the way that their circumstances dictate, become healthy and productive people. Shinji has none of that, and although he never says as much out loud it’s clear even early on in the film that he’s keenly aware of it.

But he’s not alone, here. Asuka stands at a distance from Village 3–as she always has from everyone–and the Clone Rei, naïve as a newborn, rapidly integrates into it, only for her to die near the film’s one-third mark. This could easily send Shinji spiraling, but the fact that she appears to die happy seems to spark something inside him, which Kensuke in particular helps nurture, and this becomes the catalyst for his growth.

It’s tempting to map out his entire emotional journey here, but a fair amount of it feels so natural that doing so could be an article unto itself. If we skip ahead to near the film’s climax where Shinji is suddenly not only able to face Gendo but do so unafraid, you could be forgiven for thinking a natural transition impossible. Yet, it simply works, there is no explanation for it beyond the built-up credibility of Shinji’s long history as a character. It makes sense because he’s Shinji.

Further in, the middle stretch or so of the film is a clash of dazzling surrealities. Massive battleships slug it out in conceptual spaces, nonce terms like The Key of Nebuchadnezzar, The Golgotha Object, and The Anti-Universe gain biblical significance fitting their names.

It’s all wonderful, and all Extremely Anime, in the genericized sense of the term that commentators like myself tend to avoid using. Explosions, giant robots and monsters, incomprehensibly vast scales of combat, and of course the plethora of proper nouns. Asuka pulls a plot-significant item out of her eye at one point, you get the idea. Rarely is this done as well as it’s done here. Somehow all of the disparate parts make perfect sense, and one would not be wrong to invoke one of Eva’s own successors in the feeling of how. There really is a bit of Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann in it.

But, yes, the key thing. Shinji fights Gendo. He fights Gendo bravely and while wholly accepting himself, and this lets him question his father in a meaningful way for the first time. As the two’s bout turns from physical to conversational, Gendo reveals what we’ve all known all along. He is, beneath his monstrous acts, beneath his abuse, beneath the mad scientist and would-be godslayer, a deeply lonely man willing to go to inhumanly great lengths to see his late wife again. The most evil men tend to be simple, and Gendo is no exception. Shinji defeating Gendo is an entire generation conquering shared trauma. The sort of solidarity that is direly needed in an era as grim as ours, and the sort that means even more coming from Evangelion than it might almost any other series.

It’s prudent to take an aside here to say that the film is of course not perfect. There are faults to be found, but they’re minor and mostly on the production side. Studio Khara’s CGI-heavy, live action film-influenced visual style has always been divisive, and it will never be moreso than it is here, putting the capstone on what is far and away their most well-known series. For my money, I’d say it works in some contexts better than others. Truly disturbing and otherworldly imagery, like Asuka’s loss against Unit 13, or a bizarrely photorealistic, haunting echo of End of Evangelion‘s “floating Rei” are excellent.

In other places, especially in certain battle scenes, one can’t escape the feeling that there’s a grandiosity that these fights should have that they don’t always quite pull off. Mostly in the form of the sheer scale of the actors involved–especially the battleships–not always coming through. Still, these criticisms are easily offset by the other, aforementioned visual merits.

On a slightly more substantial level, one could argue that limiting the film’s perspective to mostly Shinji limits its impact. The death of the Clone Rei relatively early on being the example I suspect many will glom onto. But I think this is the wrong tack to take. Shinji, despite everything, has been all of us. Which is not to say he is all of us. Some folks, even some who love Evangelion dearly, have left that particularly dark phase of our mental illnesses long behind us. But we have all been “back there”, where every room is suffocating, and any activity is a distraction from our mind’s attempt to eat itself. And the fear of going “back there”, of possibly hurting yourself or worse, hurting others, is very real. Which is the exact thing that makes it so cathartic when, pushing back against twenty-six years of history, his own initial characterization, and the countless reductionist depictions of the character as a spineless wimp, Shinji wins. The Son, finally understanding his Father, vanquishes him without further struggle.

The new world he creates, as he is made able to do, is not some perfect paradise. It is a world not unlike ours, though I suspect, perhaps, a little brighter. Of course any distance between the two is a mere illusion. After such a long time clawing at one’s own soul, any daylight is welcome.

If the film’s climax seems to leave some questions unanswered, they simply don’t feel relevant. It’s Mari who pulls Shinji from his rapidly-fading sketch world into the new universe he’s created. The ending scene depicts Shinji, now an adult, living a truly, peacefully, ordinary life.

And so, the Sun shines on a world without Evangelions, and, for us, without Evangelion.

I am reminded by Thrice’s finale not so much of any other piece of Eva media, or indeed any of Gainax’s other marquee properties. Instead, my mind turns to the finale of the largely-overlooked Wish Upon The Pleiades. In that series’ finale, which marked the end of Studio Gainax’s time as a going concern as a producer of TV anime, no words are wasted on complicated, overwrought goodbyes. Instead, as here, it’s simply on to the next. The next universe, the next adventure, the next dawn, or, if you prefer, the neon genesis.

The final remarkable thing about Thrice Upon a Time is that it puts Neon Genesis Evangelion on the whole in the past, and at the same time, immortalizes it for the future. The end of an era, but the beginning of a new day. It is over, but it will be with us forever.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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 anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [8/8/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture.

Hi folks, relatively lean update this week because I haven’t been sleeping well and am still sick. Hopefully what I’ve got written is interesting to you!

—

Kageki Shoujo!! – For whatever reason, I’ve held Kageki Shoujo!! at arm’s length. I’m not entirely sure why. Was I afraid it would disappoint me somehow? I like to think of myself as above that kind of behavior (shows are going to be what they’re going to be, going into them “bracing for them to get bad” doesn’t actually change anything, natch). But I’m as inclined toward the ‘aimless skeptic’ impulse as anyone who spends too much time on the internet. Still, the series’ fifth episode has proved to me that it’s the real thing. Arguably I should’ve caught on back when it managed to competently tackle something as deadly-serious as sexual assault a few episodes back. But, while I’ve been lucky enough to lead a life free of that particular evil, I have absolutely felt ugly, untalented, and worthless before. Which brings us to Ayako Yamada, a supporting character who developed an eating disorder a few episodes back, and who the latter half of episode five centers on.

Dealing with Yamada’s eating disorder is necessary for keeping the series’ thematic core coherent. But the episode opens with a reprieve; the conclusion of the prior week’s plot-line, where Ai and Sarasa both finally become friends and commit themselves fully to their goal of becoming the top stars in the Kouka Troupe. In particular, there are hints of Sarasa’s abilities as an actress, which may far exceed what anyone expected of her, something I really hoped the show would lean into.

But it’s Yamada’s story that definitely does steal the show here, marking Kageki Shoujo!! as the first anime of the season to make me tear up. Yamada has been a minor character in the series, and the eating disorder that she developed several episodes ago threatened to take her out of the series entirely. Indeed, in episode five a conflux of her waning health, her dance instructor’s nasty attitude, her failing grades, and a spat with Ai send her spiraling, and it does look for a while like she’s going to drop out. It’s only an impassioned plea from her music teacher that convinces her to stay. A time skip later, we’re rewarded at the end of the episode with her leading the music class in song and showing off her wonderfully bright, expressive, timbre.

Would I choose to, I could criticize that the series does not spend enough time “working” this development for it to feel “natural”. The entirety of what I summarized is over in about 15 minutes of footage. I could too criticize that the series does not explicitly condemn her dance instructor, but that would be willfully ignoring that her motives are presented as understandable but not remotely sympathetic. The tightly-wound storytelling, I would argue, actually helps a lot in keeping the anime from dragging, something that is a real concern when writing stories that deal with material this heavy. (And of course I have yet to get to episode six, given that the show comes out on Sundays. Sigh!)

Magia Record – As last week, my recap sums up my thoughts here. It’s no episode one but I still loved it a lot.

—

Other articles from MPA this past week:

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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 anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes: Eureka Seven Episode 48 – Ballet Mechanique

Twenty Perfect Minutes is an irregular column series where I take a look at single specific anime that shaped my experience with the medium, were important to me in some other way, or that I just really, really like. These columns contain spoilers.

“I’ll tie up my hair, swaying in the wind, take one giant leap onto the earth, and then hold my head up high and go see him.“

Eureka Seven is a series that deals with big ideas and has a large cast. But for nearly all of its 50 episodes, the story remains centered on Renton Thurston and the titular Eureka, with tangents and leaps over to other characters being generally tied to one or the other in some way. This makes sense, it gives the anime a solid grounding and provides a foundation on which to build up those big ideas. It is completely and totally understandable that Eureka Seven, at its core, is the story of Renton and Eureka.

Except, of course, when it’s not. Arguably, the single best episode of the anime, and the one that embodies some of those big ideas the best, is one of the few that isn’t really about either of those characters.

For about twenty-four minutes, Eureka Seven ceases to be the story of Renton and Eureka, and becomes the story of Anemone and Dominic. A girl who has hidden herself for so long that she’s forced herself to forget how to smile, and a young man so desperate to right the wrong he’s committed by not telling her how he feels that he’ll go to any lengths to finally do it. One of Dewey Novac’s surgically-altered child soldiers, and someone who used to believe in the man. “Ballet Mechanique” does not, as some similar episodes in other anime do, turn Eureka Seven into a different show, because the themes and emotional core remain the same. But it is a fascinating, heart-rending, but ultimately, uplifting look at what the series is like through different eyes.

“Ballet Mechanique” opens, after some basic scene-setting, with Anemone, deployed on what looks to be a suicide mission, and her internal monologue.

It’s faux-casual. Anemone lists her regrets; she’d like to go shopping more, she wants to try different foods. And of course, tossed in with a careful, pained fake-indifference, she would just love to have a real romance. Certainly, she seems to imply, there is no way a certain lieutenant who she at this point believes has abandoned her is at all on her mind. She tries to downplay her own heartbreak. The defense mechanism of someone who has never been allowed to express pain.

By this point in the series, anyone watching blind (a category I myself was in) is holding their breath. Eureka Seven is an anime with several emotional peaks and valleys, and there is a long stretch in the middle of the series where it seems like things are going to go very badly indeed. By “Ballet Mechanique”, the tone has been more hopeful for some time, but at least for me, there was a lingering thought in the back of my mind that I was hearing a teenage soldier’s last thoughts before her tragic demise.

As she moves out, alone with only her LFO (the theatrically-named Type the:END) to keep her company, the façade rapidly starts to crack. She starts to wish that she had told Dominic how she felt when she still had the time, and that when she dies (tacitly accepting it as inevitable) that she’s reborn as someone smarter.

Meanwhile, the moment Dominic learns that Anemone is involved, he springs into action. Dominic is not normally that sort of character by any means–he’s not even an LFO pilot–so it takes real guts for him to hijack one of the Izumo’s escape pods to intercept the:END himself. He even balks at Holland’s attempt to get him to turn back.

Eureka and Renton’s involvement in “Ballet Mechanique” centers around their initial interception of Anemone. This being the rare episode where they’re more supporting characters than the main focus. They first fight, and then attempt to save, Anemone when the Nirvash’s drive (a literal empathy machine) makes it clear to them that she can be. But, it’s key to note, Renton and Eureka cannot, and do not, save Anemone.

That is up to Dominic. He arrives, falling from the sky and screaming his heart out. The episode’s climax is a tangle of shouted emotion and pained declarations of love. Anemone and Dominic kiss while falling through the air, a piece of imagery Eureka Seven had a notable fascination with and that it would repeat two episodes later in its finale.

Even the:END gets a brief turn here, as he’s “purified” by Anemone’s change of heart, only to die minutes later when he protects her and Dominic from Dewey’s orbital cannon.

Eureka Seven is a messy series, and it’s one that, despite being very strong overall, has few single standout episodes, since they tend to rather immediately flow from one to the next.

Even “Ballet Mechanique”, I must admit, became just a touch harder to follow among some of the finer points upon my revisiting the episode nearly a year later to finish this article. (I don’t really remember what that laser cannon was about. Do you?) But still, it remains one of the show’s strongest cases for its core theme of love as a salve to the world’s many evils. Plus, if I can admit my own bias, it’s an incredibly cathartic end to the character arc of Anemone, who was and remains my single favorite character from the series.

At Eureka Seven‘s end, she and Dominic stand as the title couple take center stage. They lock hands the entire time, quieter than the leads, but no less in love.

“I once was lost
but now am found
was blind,
but now I see”

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, The Manga Shelf

The Manga Shelf: Mirror, Thy Name is KINE-SAN NO 1-RI DE CINEMA

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.

“Are we cinephiles because we watch masterpieces? No! We’re cinephiles because we watch whatever we damn well please!”

It’s a known phenomenon. Occasionally, a writer will get an idea stuck in their head. A challenge to themselves, a way to prove that they can write compellingly about anything. Yet, even more occasionally, the world itself will present you with this sort of challenge entirely of its own accord. As if to say “hey bozo, you think you’re so smart? Review this.”

This, in the form of a pair of close friends who I’ll here call H. and Z., is how Kine-san no 1-ri de Cinema, (I Love Cinema, I am Lonely or Kine-san’s Solo Cinema as it’s been variously unofficially known in English) entered my life. What prompted this thought that I simply must read and review Kine-san? Well, that’s down to its premise. Kine-san‘s title character, Kine Machiko, is a 30-year old businesswoman, whose main hobby is watching western action films and writing about them on her blog.

I could belabor the point, but there’s no reason to. Yes, I was curious as to how this fictional woman’s habits would reflect my own. Our interests are, in a way, a mirror of each other’s. She is a Japanese woman who loves American live action films. I am an American woman who loves Japanese animated television.

Not unlike my own preference for TV anime, Kine’s interests skew toward pop action films. Early on she names Michael Bay as a favorite director (a man who I mostly associate with defacing the Transformers franchise, myself), a later chapter is about the then-timely process of avoiding spoilers for the 2015 Star Wars film. Etc. This interest is what colors the manga the most. Kine-san is certainly the only manga I have ever read in my life to feature a shadowed gag-cameo from Jar-Jar Binks.

Kine doesn’t have a ton of character beyond “insecure and deeply nerdy woman”, but I’d argue she doesn’t really need it. A few chapters later she uses an illness as an excuse to get buzzed and watch a cluster of trashy zombie movies. As somebody who semi-recently downed the entirety of the deeply mediocre Magical Girl Raising Project in a single afternoon, I can’t help but relate, even if I don’t drink.

What Kine-san excels at is tapping into the universal etiquette dance that we build around the stories that mean things to us. Chapter 7 has Kine’s coworkers gawk in disbelief when she tells them she’s never seen a Ghibli movie. I briefly sympathized more with the coworkers–after all, my own interest in anime was sparked by seeing Spirited Away at a young age–but then yours truly remembered she’s never seen any of the Star Wars films, and the entire point of the sequence clicked into place.

Young girl DESTROYS possessive fanboyism with HEARTFELT PASSION and LOGIC.

On the other side of things, when Kine does vibe with someone (often her recently-divorced coworker and sometimes-roommate, Kasumi Satou) it’s a moment of joy. What we all ultimately want is just to be understood, and works of art are basic cultural units we trade with each other to expand that understanding. Satou in general is a fun character, and I often found myself relating to her particular brand of projective Letterboxd logorrhea a bit more than Kine’s own largely uncritical fangirlism.

Visually the manga is competent, with a particular knack for wide shots that convey an impressive sense of scale, albeit usually to comedic ends. There are a fair amount of impressive splash panels, often parodying famous movie scenes or posters, so, appropriately, cinephiles will have a lot to latch on to here.

It can even occasionally pull off some more serious composition. These moments are rare, but they prevent Kine-san from falling into a fairly common trap of comedy manga; making it seem like the cast don’t actually like each other at all.

On the less positive side, there’s a weird habit throughout of centering panels on the cast’s collective rear ends. Of course, Kine herself would probably argue that complaining about such a thing is simply nitpicking a genre cliché. (This thing runs in Young Animal, alongside a number of other seinen manga, yes, but also photos of scantily-clad gravure models, so perhaps it’s to be expected.) On its own it’s a minor complaint, but here it is unfortunately indicative of an undertone of sexism that at its worst takes some of the fun out of Kine-san. And it dampens some otherwise strong characterization. Take for instance, Kine’s mother, who is depicted, usually via flashback, as fairly strict about not wanting her daughter to become an otaku “because she’s a girl”. Later, we learn in chapter 19 that she’s a former sukeban, and much of her harsh demeanor stems from wanting her daughter to be a proper lady, and her own complex about her self-perceived lack of femininity. Does this add dimension to an otherwise fairly minor character, or is it that old otaku misogyny creeping in?

Well, let’s say this. As I finished reading all of Kine-san that’s currently available in English, I found myself realizing that despite finding it pretty funny in its best moments, I certainly don’t love it. I don’t like to get into the ten-point rating scale game on this blog (I think it’s kind of superfluous) but 21 chapters in, I was struck by the realization that the way that the title character and I are most similar is in our lackadaisical attitude toward actual quality. Now, at one point Kine disses Citizen Kane by implication (one of the very few live action western films I’ve both seen in my adult life and actually quite like), and I can’t stand for that. But, do I relate to the broader feeling of, say, watching a classic and finding that even if you respect its craft you don’t really, you know, like it? Well, all due apologies to Cowboy Bebop, but, yeah.

So I leave you with the quote sitting at the top of this article as a final thought. I find it hard to pass judgment on Kine-san, given how much of myself I (unfortunately?) see in it.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have an episode of Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid to watch.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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 Uncategorized

The Frontline Report [8/1/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture.

It probably says a lot about me that for this week’s Frontline Report the show I wrote the most about is the one I think is the least good. Oh well, you know what they say about tigers and changing stripes. As always, let me know what you think in the comments!

—

The aquatope on white sand – This week’s episode deals with Fuuka being recognized, first by a coworker who happens to be deep into idol culture and later by a trio of curious teens. The bizarre public afterlife of people who aren’t famous but used to be is a fascinating and very complicated topic, and I’m glad that aquatope is not just conveniently forgetting Fuuka’s recent past. Something that’s interesting to me is that it’s not totally clear whether Fuuka actually regrets leaving the industry or if she thinks putting it behind her was the right choice. At different points in this episode you can make the case for either stance.

Blue Reflection Ray – This show is draining, man. For as good as BRR is, the fact that its episodes contain so much exposition combined with how heavy the show gets can definitely lead to episodes like this one where watching them just kinda feels exhausting. That may sound negative but I actually think that’s a positive trait. Is that weird? It’s probably weird.

The Detective is Already Dead – With the constant torrent of new anime, there’s a pressure to only let yourself watch the best of the best. Things that are masterpieces or at least seem like they’ll get into that conversation. If you subscribe to that philosophy, you can go ahead and move Detective to your Dropped list now. Detective is not the best, it’s honestly not even very good. But, when I find myself auditing my own time once a week (as I always do, it’s a bad habit arguably), I ask myself, “am I still getting anything out of this show?” Inevitably, I walk away answering “yes.”

Detective is…just kind of flummoxing. It has middling production values, and consists almost entirely of dialogue. (A trait I imagine works a little better in the original light novels.) Nonetheless, once or twice per episode it will do something that reels me back in, and temporarily banishes my skepticism. This week it was Nagisa talking down badly-traumatized cyborg idol Yui as she threatened both her and her co-lead with a pistol. Yet, while I maintain that Detective‘s problems have never been rooted in its premise (which I believe absolutely can be put to compelling ends), the fact remains that when Siesta reappears in a flashback in the post-credits, she is a dynamic, charismatic, theatrical presence that the show has no access to without her. Thus, the question of what happened to Siesta and how it will be resolved, and consequently whether Detective will ever actually earn its premise, is still an open one. She remains a compelling character, even in absence. A true “subtracted woman” who exists outside of the very narrative she controls. What can you do? The detective is dead already.

Magia Record Puella Magi Madoka Magica Side Story Season 2 -The Eve of Awakening- – I made most of my thoughts on MagiReco’s second season premiere pretty clear in my writeup for GGA. But it bears repeating; this is probably the best premiere of the year. It is pure “fanservice” in the older sense of the word; it’s a love letter to Madoka Magica as a franchise, the fans who are still ride-or-die for it ten years later, and the magical girl genre itself. It’s an open question as to whether the rest of the season will live up to the admittedly very high standard set by this premiere, but even if it doesn’t, I remain confident the show’s going to continue to be worth watching.

Sonny Boy – Barely to its quarter mark, Sonny Boy is the season’s easy standout, the only thing in the same conversation as Sonny Boy is the aforementioned MagiReco, from which it is otherwise very distinct. If you’re only going to watch one show this season, make it this one.

A friend ventured that Sonny Boy, at present, is depicting its characters reinventing the worst facets of society from scratch, since it’s all they know. This week’s episode with its magic blackout curtains and supernatural NEET-ism solved only by empathy seems like it may gesture to a way out somewhere many weeks down the road. Honestly though, you don’t need me to say this, but as hard as it is to say where Sonny Boy is headed, the ride alone is worth the price of admission.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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 anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) The Web That Was and .hack//SIGN

This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Rahkshi. Many thanks, as always.

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

“I am not in front of a terminal.”

.hack//SIGN is what one might call a bit of a difficult anime. It actively demands your patience, and it’s a slow-burner in a way that’s rare nowadays. Hazy and dreamlike, .hack//SIGN asks a lot of questions but is never too quick to provide answers. It engages in meaningful repetition and circuitous, questioning conversations, and is generally light on action. To compare it with most other anime that use the VRMMO plot device is nonsensical, it is more of a piece with Serial Experiments Lain than with Sword Art Online.

It is also very, very of its time. Not in a good way, not in a bad way, but down to its bones, .hack//SIGN would make no sense in the present moment. The Internet as it was in 2002 and the internet now, nearly twenty years later, are incomparable. .hack‘s very premise involves a group of friends in an MMO–itself not really much like any that’s currently popular, not even World of Warcraft, which postdates it by a few years–who know little to nothing about each other’s offline lives. A standard experience at the time, but unthinkable nowadays where ones gender, sexual orientation, race, abledness, mental health, political stances, and so on are generally shared with little illusion of privacy. .hack is, thus, a time capsule.

Asking whether .hack//SIGN is “good or not” then feels irrelevant, it’s like asking whether the ruins of Babylon are “good”. They have a lot to tell us, that’s the important part.

That sense of lost history bleeds into the feel of the anime itself. .hack is a jumble of cryptic conversations, hacker lore, GeoCities pseudo-mysticism, and genuine mystery. It gives the anime a distinct feel. The excellent soundtrack, a unique combination of early aughts dance and world music, helps a lot to sell all this. As does the fact that the rare occasion where “real world” information is revealed is always treated as a major moment, and with only one exception, the few scenes that take place there are bathed in a sepia-tone static filter. Indeed, in terms of reacting to the increasing impact the internet would have on our lives, .hack is as prescient as it is of its time.

Speaking literally, .hack//SIGN is about someone who is trapped in a video game. But this plot device alone is its sole link to the VRMMO genre that it largely predates. The existential wringer that protagonist Tsukasa is put through seems unlikely to prompt the kind of “wouldn’t it be cool if-” hypothesizing that later such stories would eventually inspire. Tsukasa’s exact situation is ambiguous for most of the series; it’s clear he’s stuck in the game but not how or what exactly the ramifications are. Nor is it clear how exactly the mysterious cat-like figure and equally mysterious woman floating above a bed that the series repeatedly returns to factor in.

It does give him one hell of a penchant for (quite justified) angst, but on the whole, the series’ actual plot is very cryptic. This applies even to the end-episode previews, which employ the unique tactic of playing multiple few-second clips simultaneously to an audio background of random noise.

If this all sounds like a little much, that’s because it kind of is. I stand by my statement that the question of whether .hack is “good or bad” is mostly irrelevant, but it’s certainly not a casual watch. I’d go so far as calling it hard to follow in spots, with the show-long quest for the artifact known as the Key of The Twilight being a particular source of head-scratchers. It is all eventually explained, but that it takes so long to get there means that it’s very easy to spend much of the show wondering where this is all going. Being part of a very large franchise, only some of which has ever been available in English, does not help.

Thankfully it’s easier to pick up on less fantastical plot threads. Mimiru and Bear, who make up the other two members of Tsukasa’s “party” of a sort, provide lifelines for those seeking more straightforward character arcs. Mimuru gets Tsukasa to open up (and opens up to him in turn) throughout the series’ first half, while Bear’s strained relationship with his real-world son provides interesting, implied motive for his attempts to mentor Tsukasa. Meanwhile, the semi-antagonistic characters of B.T. and Sora spend much of the show locked in a relationship of trying to intellectually one-up each other that is, at least for me personally, maybe a little too on-point as a reflection of online social dynamics.

And on that note, while .hack’s aesthetics and subject matter remain firmly rooted in its date of origin, it’s eerily prescient in one respect. Throughout much of the series a plot thread about in-game group The Crimson Knights bubbles under, only coming to a head in its final third. The Knights, especially their collective mouthpiece Silver Knight, are a spot-on reflection of the attitudes of online authoritarians, down to Silver Knight’s angry insistence that Tsukasa is a law-breaking “illegal” rather than a victim. Toward the end of the show he eventually mellows out, but the point remains.

Subaru, the Knights’ ostensible leader, is another character who benefits from a fairly grounded relationship with Tsukasa, and her sympathy for him puts her at odds with the rest of the Knights. The two eventually grow close, and a scene in the nineteenth episode where Tsukasa comforts a crying Subaru (who, as we see in a rare cut to the real world, is crying there too), sticks in my mind as one of the show’s most genuine and emotional moments.

There’s also a dash of Gender in here, something that wasn’t super common at the time and remains rarer than it ought to be today. It’s a nice touch.

Moments like this allow .hack//SIGN to bundle together a solid core by its end. If you’re the sort that likes found family stories, .hack‘s concludes with (among many other things) one character literally offering to adopt another. You can’t get much more literally “found family” than that.

So, while parts of it are confusing and while the series is overall slow, it’s really hard to dislike this show. .hack‘s aesthetic and story beats anchor it firmly in the year of its release, but tales about groups of misfits who help each other through hard times over the internet are arguably even more relevant now than they were in 2002. What is The World but a souped-up Discord server, after all?

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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.

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Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [7/25/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture.

I’ll be straight with ya, folks. It’s my second week of battling what I’m like 99% sure is mono, so I haven’t had the most energy for anime-think-about-‘ing. Still, I hope the three brief paragraphs below on some airing seasonals will give you something to contemplate. Let me know what you think in the comments!

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Blue Reflection Ray – Call it the little show that could, the most unsung anime of 2021, or whatever you will. Fifteen episodes into its two-cour run, Blue Reflection Ray decided to drop one of the most delicate episodes about depression I’ve ever seen. Sadly, I think it will probably go mostly-unwatched, like the rest of the anime has been. Is there any hope that this thing might find the audience that would appreciate it, this late in the game? It’s hard to say. I’m not optimistic, but it doesn’t diminish the quality of BRR itself. Shine on, girls.

Kageki Shojo!! – Is it fair to call Kageki Shojo!! “complicated”? It feels fair. There’s a distinction between wanting to tackle difficult, complex subject matter and actually doing so, and I’ve kinda been worried up to this point that Kageki Shojo!! would fall on the wrong side of that divide. The series has a really unfortunate tendency to have male characters support its primary, almost entirely female, cast in a way that feels somewhat detrimental to both. Consequently, it can feel contrived at times. But on the other hand, if you’re willing to reckon with this flaw the point remains that Kageki Shojo!! is dealing with some really heavy stuff and it’s not holding back in doing so, and I think that’s commendable. This week’s episode, the fourth, is probably the best of the series so far, and is the first to markedly develop the leads’ relationship. I’m hoping it’s a sign of things to come.

Sonny Boy – Sonny Boy is the rare anime I feel underqualified to discuss. It draws on an obvious, long lineage (one I’m mostly unfamiliar with) of “society in a jar” stories that dates back at least as far as Lord of The Flies. (And in anime and manga, at least as far as The Drifting Classroom.) I’m not really super familiar with this stuff, so it’s hard to gauge how “original” Sonny Boy truly is in this regard. But what it’s not hard to gauge is how interesting the show is, in addition to the central mystery I’ve been really impressed with the brilliant little loops the show’s character writing keeps creating. The way it’s edited is doing a lot of the heavy lifting here, but that’s not a bad thing, and it keeps everything coherent even with such a huge cast.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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 anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [7/18/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture.

It’s been a while! Yes, this is the spiritual successor (or whatever you’d care to call it) if my old Weekly Round-up posts. I want these to be more casual in tone, and they’ll often be on the brief side, but I do want to keep everyone up to date on where I’m at lately, anime-wise. First though, the seasonals that’ve been on my mind this week.

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The aquatope on white sand – I wrote a column earlier this week detailing how I found myself unexpectedly relating to aquatope’s main character, Fuuka. I have to say I’m pleased that I’m vibing with the show a bit more now than I was when it first premiered. I wasn’t quite as blown away as most folks seemed to be, but I do think this will be a good anime, and its two-cour length gives it time to stretch its legs. No rush, y’know?

Girlfriend Girlfriend – I kind of still don’t entirely know who this show is for. I have seen it praised as a crucial step for bringing polyamory into the public conversation and also disparaged as a completely empty male power fantasy. Personally, while I don’t dislike the show, it is definitely in the lower half as far as my early personal seasonal rankings. Less because of any moral qualms I have and more just because the comedy really likes to skirt right up to the edge of “obnoxious”, and sometimes goes over it.

Sonny Boy – This just debuted this past week, and it’s easily the strongest opening episode of the season. The premise is a fairly direct riff on The Drifting Classroom, but it’s stark, abstract visual style is what’s really going to win people over here. Seriously consider checking this out, a half hour isn’t much to ask for something this intriguing.

The Detective is Already Dead – A recipe for a hospital visit: take a shot any time this show drops its own title or someone is referred to as a “legendary detective”. Detective probably qualifies as the season’s oddball. If you’re more cynical than I am you can go ahead and upgrade that to “trainwreck in progress”. As a character-driven mystery, Detective is pretty pat. As a series with no clear endgoal in sight and no method of achieving anything it might want to, it’s borderline mesmerizing. As the second episode in a row that consists mostly of characters talking circles around each other and very little actually happening, it’s probably safe to say this is a series that’s fallen off most peoples’ radars. I intend to stubbornly stick with it even as the only reference points I can reach for turn into Blast of Tempest and In/Spectre. I will never claim I know what’s good for me.

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Elsewhere, I finished Fate/Zero this week after watching it a few episodes at a time over the last several. (I did a little live-tweeting of it if that’s your thing. Obviously spoiler-laden, though.) I haven’t seen enough of the Fate franchise to know if its reputation as the best-written iteration of it is entirely earned, but the show is definitely very, very good. A common thread among Fate media is characters having their worldviews challenged, and that’s ramped up here to having them just straight-up destroyed. With one exception, everyone goes through the wringer here and for that reason I wouldn’t exactly call it an easy watch, even if I do think it’s a worthwhile one.

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And as far as actual anime, that’s about all for this week. It’s been a rough one personally speaking with troubles around the apartment and such, so I haven’t had quite as much energy as I’d like. Still, I hope this return of the weekly roundup posts (under a slightly different name!) excites you. My hope is that there’ll be many more to come.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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 anime, Other Posts, Seasonal Impression Roundups

The Dream is Over – Brief Personal Reflections on THE AQUATOPE ON WHITE SAND

The two girls met in the ruins of damaged dream

When I was eighteen, I wanted to be a rap producer. In hindsight, with the self-awareness I now have nearly ten years later, it was a stupid idea. Like a lot of people whose ambition far outstrips their capability, I went to school for this doomed little fantasy. Perhaps predictably, I barely lasted six months, and a decade on the only thing I have to show for this part of myself that I mostly keep buried from public view is a lengthy bandcamp page of music no one listens to and a cloud of student debt that will loom over me for the rest of my life.

I bring this personal anecdote up not to needlessly self-deprecate, but to explain something about The aquatope on white sand, and how I find myself unexpectedly relating to it. Fundamentally, most popular fiction that deals with aspiration deals with fulfillment of that aspiration. It makes for an easy-to-plan story arc and it concludes in a satisfying ending. Your protagonist(s) want to become a dancer, or a singer, or an actor, or whatever. Across some amount of story-units, they struggle and fight, that distant mountain still in reach, and they eventually achieve their dream. In anime a common manifestation of this particular story-type is that of the idol anime genre (of which there is one airing right now), relevant here because aquatope‘s protagonist, Fuuka Miyazawa, is a former idol.

And that “former” is very important here. Fuuka begins aquatope with her brief career as an idol already in the past tense, her departure from the industry uneventful but bitter. (Its depiction in the first episode reminded me no small amount of one-off character Mana in Oshi No Ko.) She is adrift for much of the first two episodes, eventually settling in with the other lead, Kukuru Misatino, simply because the latter is willing to take her in. She’s hired by Kukuru’s aquarium, which is in financial tatters, and threatens to close at the end of the summer season.

At the tail end of the second episode, Fuuka realizes that even if she cannot fulfill her dream, she can help Kukuru with her aspiration of keeping the aquarium open. Where all of this will eventually go is not yet clear–aquatope is planned for a nowadays-rare two cours, so it has plenty of time to stretch its legs–but it’s clear that the series fundamentally understands that Fuuka’s renewed sense of purpose here is just as valid as her original goal to become an idol. That’s important, because the easy thing to do here would be to try to route her back into the industry, and treat that as the only valid form of “fulfillment”. That aquatope doesn’t do that is an excellent sign. (And gives me a lot more faith that its supernatural elements, which I haven’t mentioned up ’til now, will have some greater point, as opposed to merely being window dressing.)

Also, I suppose, naive as it may be, that I just see a commonality between myself and Fuuka. Criticism, or at least the mode of criticism I prefer to write in, is nothing if not the promotion of someone else’s dream. Uncountable hours go into any even remotely professional anime production, it is not a stretch to say that one making it to screen is the culmination of not just one dream but many. My approach makes for decidedly less interesting television, of course.

In its attitude toward Fuuka we find the first traces of what I suspect aquatope will eventually forge into its core thesis; the idea that in selfless lifting up of others’ passions one can find a way to rekindle, or reshape, their own. I am quite confident that by the series’ end, Fuuka will have found something new that fulfills her and brings her life meaning. And, yeah, I do relate to that, as someone who has turned this strange hobby that I picked up on a whim into a kind-of career without ever consciously planning to, I empathize with Fuuka quite a lot.

Beyond my own personal emotional mire; character writing this delicate is a rare thing, and while plenty of anime are good natured, not nearly as many can work in shades of compassion that are this subtle. aquatope is one to keep your eye on.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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 anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) The Long Road Home and The WONDER EGG PRIORITY

This review contains spoilers for, and assumes familiarity with, the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

“Sometimes adults seem like a different species.”

Six months that now feel like a decade ago, the first episode of Wonder Egg Priority premiered on Nippon TV. No one, least of all myself, really knew what to expect. Most pre-release scuttlebutt came from the odd title and charming character designs. (Courtesy of Saki Takahashi, and still excellent.) Some smaller amount came from its intriguing staff list and its status as an original project from CloverWorks. I don’t think anyone, really, expected the bizarre technicolor magical girl psychodrama we were given.

Many people ran to the series with an outstretched hand, myself included. When I wrote about that first episode not long after its premiere, the horizon was endless before us. Wonder Egg Priority could have been anything, and as long as you had the patience for a little bit of overt artiness, you could join the ride. And many people did! I made quite a few friends and acquaintances over the course of watching this series, some of whom are quite possibly now reading this article. A sizable amount of them now dislike, or at least are no longer fond of the series. Asking “what happened?” is the easy, but in my view incorrect, thing to do.

And for this series, which meant–and still means–so much to me personally, I do not want to take the easy way out. I have been workshopping different versions of my notes since the original twelve-episode run of the series concluded. But I wanted to wait until its finale–unlucky number 13, delayed after a truly awful production fiasco–aired to make any last calls. As I’m writing this opening trio of paragraphs, I sit in a limbo, aware of the sharply divisive reactions the ending has brought on but not having seen it myself. What will I think of it? It almost doesn’t matter, self-defeating as that may sound. The fire is out and the wizard is dead. Wonder Egg Priority seems tragically destined to exist as a footnote in popcultural memory.

But enough of that. Let’s start with the very first note I wrote, when the series had just ended its original run, over a month ago.

The world is a vampire. Those in power prey on the marginalized, who often feel helpless to escape their situation. If they do, it is often by opting out of existence entirely, either directly via suicide or indirectly via other self-destructive behaviors.

That thought out in the world, it is natural to ask what can save us. Wonder Egg Priority does not answer that question, and indeed I think the great contributor to the finale’s negative reputation is that it doesn’t actually try to. A fact I think many are finding frustrating and alienating.

The natural human impulse to seek an end to a story finds no recourse here. Wonder Egg draws on a long lineage; from Perfect Blue to Revolutionary Girl Utena, from Puella Magi Madoka Magica to Flip Flappers. But the key distinction to be made is that Wonder Egg Priority does not draw a conclusion in the same way that these works do. Utena, most dramatically among these, famously advocates rejection of and escape from oppressive systems entirely.

What is Wonder Egg‘s contribution here? Well, from this point of view, nothing. Wonder Egg Priority ends where it began, the only major change made being who protagonist Ai Ohto is seeking to find again.

Instead, it captures a strange, extremely specific feeling. The series’ final minutes billow and dissolve in the air like a dream the night after a tragedy. Was anything in Wonder Egg Priority “real” to begin with? It’s a fair question to ask, and if the answer one comes up with is “no” they might well feel cheated.

But perhaps we should back up a bit. Let us remind ourselves of the actual facts of the series, its characters and narratives.

As you know, Wonder Egg Priority is the story of Ai, a heterochromiac hikikomori. Before the series begins, her only friend Koito Nagase throws herself from her school’s rooftop, adding Wonder Egg Priority to a long list of anime from the past twenty-five years that fixate on suicide. Ai is given a chance by a pair of mysterious, magical benefactors to bring her friend back to life. The only catch? She has to purge monsters from the strange mental elseworlds of the recently-suicided, in a bizarre funhouse mirror of a typical modern magical girl setup. It’s quite the premise, bearing a passing but notable resemblance to the aforementioned Madoka Magica, but otherwise escaping easy description.

Eventually, she is joined by three other young girls, who form what becomes her new friend group; the playful and blunt Rikka, a former idol, the stern and serious Neiru, the young nominal head of a corporation, and the androgynous Momoe, whose gender nonconformance forms a plot point all its own.

Thematically, the topic of suicide is made mystical and ascribed a sinister, sapient character, named The Temptation of Death here. All else leads back to this, and understanding that is key to understanding the bulk of Wonder Egg Priority. The truth the main run of the show wishes to shine a spotlight on is a very simple one; people, particularly young women, are cast into idealized shapes by the world we live in. If they do not conform to them, they are punished and ostracized. Their eventual death by their own hand is seen as a tragic inevitability, rather than a preventable, active action on the part of the ostracizers. Those who survive eventually become the oppressors themselves, and the cycle repeats. (This, roughly, is what happened to the character of Frill. She is an oppressed-turned-oppressor.)

So all this in mind, what do we make of the show’s ending?

Ai and her friends, in a literal sense, solve very little. Frill, implied to be responsible for the Temptation of Death phenomenon, is not stopped. Acca and Ur-Acca, the maintainers of the entire eggs-and-elseworlds system, are not openly rebelled against, and Ai ends up back on their doorstep at the end of the show. (One might even indeed read certain things as implying that this has happened many times, and the main run of Wonder Egg Priority is just a single one of these iterations.) Even the less supernatural driving questions, such as why Koito killed herself, and whether Sawaki, Ai and Koito’s teacher, is a sexual predator, are not directly answered. Everything remains obscure. One might, not unreasonably, demand to know what the point of all this was. After all, the middle of the show seems to criticize these systems so sharply. What is the point of offering no solution, or even any obvious catharsis?

Well, rarely do I reach for the author(s) in cases like this. But Director Shin Wakabayashi offers this thought, and I find it illuminating:

On the surface it’s a curious notion, given the actual events depicted. But if considered in the proper light, it makes sense.

When Ai finds the garden in which she meets Acca and Ur-Acca in the first episode, she is distraught and directionless. When she returns in the finale, it is after much time has passed, and despite surface appearances, it is on her own terms. Note, specifically, the lack of the Acca-possessed beetle in her second arrival to the garden.

Whether or not she will succeed “this time” is not terribly relevant. She has returned to the unconquered mountain to try again. In her life, it is all she can be asked to do. The same is true of all of us in ours.

Evaluating whether Wonder Egg Priority “works”. Whether or not it “earns” its right to hash through all this difficult material and provide no definitive answers, and so on, is difficult. The series, especially its ending, is challenging and highly unconventional. I do not mean to suggest anything as pedestrian as those disappointed by the ending simply “not understanding it”, but I do think it deserves time and patience that it is not necessarily being given.

To go back to my opening remarks, I have never more in my brief career as a critic wanted to be wrong about the afterlife of an anime. Nothing would make me happier than five, ten, twenty years from now learning of some director, writer, or animator citing Wonder Egg Priority as an influence. But even if that never comes to pass, those to whom this series would speak will find it, I am confident of that much.

Even if we take Wakabayashi’s tweet as the series’ sole artistic aim, it well succeeded. Ai, Rika, Neiru, and Momoe will live forever in a certain corner of my mind for the rest of my life. As is true of all truly impactful works of fiction. If that was all the team went for, well, mission accomplished.

In these ephemeral, fleeting lives of ours, all that we can truly ask of each other is understanding. More than maybe any anime I’ve ever seen, Wonder Egg Priority understands that, if nothing else, on a deep level. In the end, it asks of us just two things; do your best, and take care of each other.

And surely, I think, we can do that.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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.