Posted on May 27, 2024 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [5/27/24]

The Weekly Orbit is a weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!

Hello folks. This week, I didn’t write about that many different anime, but some of those I did write about I wrote about profusely. So hopefully you’ll enjoy that.

Anime

Girls Band Cry – Episodes 7 & 8

I think Girls Band Cry has finally edged out Jellyfish as my girl band show of the season, and probably my favorite overall as well. I caved and caught up with Nakayubi, the other group doing fansubs (their translations are on par, although the subs themselves aren’t as fancy), and I just….wow. There’s a lot to process here.

So, Nina’s pa is aware of her faltering grades, and now that she’s talked to her sister about the band, her whole family is probably going to learn as well. Naturally, she has not told any of this to the band. The girl’s natural inclination to simply Not Tell People Things is going to absolutely blow up in her face at some point, arguably it kind of already has.

The use of traditional flat animation to convey the past—bygone periods of one’s life, memories that have gotten hazy, and perhaps romanticized, in the recollection—is probably the smartest thing Girls Band Cry does visually. Other uses of 2D animation in the series can feel like a concession or a stopgap, these very much do not.

^{I will say, as a minor hot take, I don’t think the flat animation looks crazy impressive or anything. Don’t get me wrong, it looks fine, but I’ve seen people say it looks better than the main show or that they should’ve done the whole thing in 2D, which I don’t agree with even a little bit. I blame the pining for traditional animation in this scenario on romanticized memories, ironically enough, of a prior, bygone generation of this sort of anime.}

Of course, I wrote that and then they did the broken glass split shot thing when Momoka announced she was leaving the band, so I don’t know. The series is just very inventive, visually, and I like that, even if most of the visual symbolism is not necessarily subtle. If this show leaves a stylistic legacy it will be this way, building a visual language that other 3D CG anime will be able to draw on in the coming years.

Mine [Sawashiro Miyuki], the character in red who’s given a supporting role here for what is honestly not a ton of screentime, makes an immense impact in her brief time on-screen. We have somebody here who is herself not “successful” in the broad-stroke pop star sense, but who is clearly at least getting by and making a living with her music. It’s inspiring, in a way, and Nina seems to feel that way, too.

I’ve avoided using the P-word much in my writing lately, because I think it’s easy to attribute to passion all sorts of other emotions that might be described better with other terms, but if we read this work as a reflective one, we can assume that the people working on it feel similarly to Mine about their own profession. Things can be difficult, they can be hard, but you push through for your own sake. Because, if you’re really that devoted to what you’re doing, you almost have to.

Elsewhere; in another piece of awesome yet obvious visual symbolism, when Nina redoubles her commitment to the band, she runs to a nearby lake and happens to catch the start of a fireworks show. I love this series.

In episode seven’s final moments, in the middle of a concert, the band, which has remained nameless for the entire first half of the show, is finally (and hastily) christened Togenashi Togeari. A literal line-of-sight name, because Nina is an insane person.

Episode eight opens on a flashback, immediately drawing a parallel between Nina’s current desire to drop out of school with Momoka’s past plan to do the exact same thing. This entire section is flat animated, which to me is enough evidence to confirm that the show’s usage of 2D animation to represent the past is an intentional stylistic choice.

Momoka remarks that if Diamond Dust gives themselves an escape route from their desire to make it big, they’ll definitely end up using it rather than succeeding, so they shouldn’t make one. It’s interesting to note that this is the same philosophy that some real-world artists have endorsed, including no less a figure than Eminem [Mathers Marshall III]. I’m not sure it’s the best advice, necessarily, but you can’t deny the drive.

Subaru correctly points out that Nina’s drive to succeed isn’t as far-fetched as it seems, given various factors (those listed include; Tomo & Rupa being somewhat notable indie musicians, Momoka being an ex member of Diamond Dust to begin with, an endorsement on Twitter from another singer, etc.) Nina’s plan is no plan—the same that Momoka had as a teenager—no escape routes, no backup plans, no safety net.

It’s notable that Nina’s memories don’t get the 2D treatment, and I think that may be because unlike Momoka, she’s not romanticizing her own past. Momoka, we can clearly see by this point, is guilty of seeing Nina as a slightly younger version of herself in too literal a sense. She thinks that because she failed with Diamond Dust, she’ll fail with Togenashi Togeari too, and that Nina will fail with Togenashi Togeari as well, because “that’s how these things go.” She fails to consider that the only data point she’s working off of is her own, and what the inevitable confrontation with the renewed Diamond Dust tells us, which is that the original group splitting up might have been best for both them and Momoka.

^{Sometimes you need someone younger than you to slap some sense into you. It’s not usually this literal, though.}

And then there’s the final scene, which I find hard to put into words. It’s just so much. Momoka cranking her own old song, crying her eyes out, as Nina says she loves her (!!!!!) as they speed down the highway. This show is unhinged. I love it to pieces.

This is all without even mentioning the various things left technically unstated but all-but-shown to us regardless about Tomo and Rupa’s backstories over the course of these episodes. Rupa, who is desi, gets called a “foreigner” by a surly businessman at her job, and an offhand comment from Tomo implies that she lost her family somehow. Tomo herself, meanwhile….well, we don’t know the details yet, but whatever happened here is certainly not great.

But the girls will be alright. Because we are, truly, in the middle of a girls band revolution. I never like to promise these things, but I might review this when it’s over.

Worth noting! The show trended on Twitter for several hours after this episode aired. It really does feel like an event. I haven’t seen this many people pop for an original anime in ages.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in The Night – Episodes 6 & 7

The praise I wrote above isn’t to say that Jellyfish, Girls Band Cry’s only real competitor was bad or lacking recently, I must emphasize! I had caught up as of late last week, but given that I’m watching this with friends I’m now behind again. So it goes! These episodes were weird, as I will say several times in the below writeup! But I think I’ve settled on liking both of them by now.

Episode six is essentially a halfway parody of the idol genre, starring Miiko (the idol from way back in episode 1), who we here learn is a 31-year-old divorcee with a daughter. We are initially led to assume the worst of her, but over the course of the episode, it becomes clear that despite her immaturity she does dearly love her daughter Ariel [Touyama Nao], but the episode’s odd tone and the fact that it ends on what is essentially a joke makes the entire thing feel a little confusing, given the bullying angle just a bit prior in the episode.

Still, Miiko—rechristening herself Shizue Baba after the events here—is an interesting and likeable character, just one I wish we’d gotten a little more time with.

There are a number of interesting details here, though, like how Miiko’s affected voice is significantly higher and more pinched than her normal speaking voice, and the episode leaves enough open questions that it doesn’t feel wasted.

Episode seven is another oddball, although one that makes at least a bit more sense put together by the end.

Here, we divide our cast into two groups, those that have concrete plans for the future and those that do not. There are a lot of detours over the course of this episode, including a particularly interesting one where Kiui gets involved with an older woman (who might be ex-yakuza and possibly also trans? These things are not explored in detail and are left up to interpretation). There’s a whole thing with a bathhouse scene here, and a couple not necessarily great jokes thrown in. Were it not for a bunch of other details that seem far too specific to have come from anywhere but lived experience (Kiwi spends much of her first ‘date’ with this woman talking about denpa visual novels, and if that’s not evocative of The Queer Girl Experience I’m not sure what is), I’d almost think of the yakuza woman character as a stereotype. Still, given everything about the series, I am inclined to think of that as my own hangups running into the show’s storytelling rather than a flaw with the series per se.

The final scene, where Mahiru and Kano running together on the beach as they realize that if they don’t have more set-in-stone plans for the future, they can continue doing what they do for each other, is really great.

This is probably, at this point, my opinion on Jellyfish in general. It could’ve probably used a tightening-up in the script editing stage, because some of these extraneous sidebars are distracting, but the highs are very high, and the show remains worth it for them alone….of course, on the other hand, it’s not surprising that Jellyfish itself has no desire to conform to the expected, so maybe a “trimmed down” and thus less “weird” version of Jellyfish would feel less special. Perhaps I will have settled more firmly into one camp or the other by the time the show ends.

Mysterious Disappearances – Episode 7

It feels safe to say that, overall, this is probably the first episode of the show that feels like it’s building on the manga as opposed to just recapping it.

In a genuine rarity for this show, there’s a lot of strong visual work here; suitably eerie backgrounds, some nice cuts of animation and a few specifically placed special effects (mostly I’m here thinking of Shizuku turning into water when she meets the ghost of her friend and the shimmering red shape of the curiosity slithering onto the train later on). My suspicion is a different episode director or such than usual, but I am not 100% sure.

Even the stuff that doesn’t entirely work is at least expressive, which is more than can be said of much of the series so far. There’s a real wealth of atmosphere here, something that makes all the relatively unimpressive work up to this point feel worth it. There are definitely weaker moments throughout this episode, too (in particular there are a couple of extreme closeups that the drawings are not good enough to carry), but you take with the bad with the good in something like this. I’m just happy to have had an episode of this show that actually feels worth watching.

Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 21

An eventful episode this time around. Also can I say, unrelated to anything else, everyone looked very pretty here, especially Marcille and the Canaries.

Speaking of whom; we are here introduced to the Canaries for the first time in the anime, and for the most part their general aura—a combination of swagger and, given that they’re basically the Elf CIA, menace—is carried over well from the manga. I liked the additional detail paid to the little fairy messenger, who was always doing something or other in the scene where they’re introduced.

We also get to the underground kingdom portion of the series here. If I can be controversial for a second; I think the anime does an even better job of making Izutsumi look absolutely stoned out of her fucking mind than the manga does.

To be more serious, though. The entire back half of the episode, which takes place there, excellently conveys a real sense of loss, melancholy, and stagnation. It’s easy to miss between our heroes getting distracted by various things (Laios by monsters, Senshi by cultivation, Marcille by fashion, and Chilchuck by ale) but becomes more obvious in the episode’s last few scenes, and I think the decision to close the episode on Laios & co. going to sleep at the end of a strange day, with thoughts of prophecy on their mind, is a good one.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics – Episode 8

This has quietly become one of my favorite anime from this season.

Overall, I would say that the best thing about Salad Bowl is that it’s just quite pleasant, despite its sometimes wry sense of humor.

This episode is split into two segments, as many are. The forehalf comprises Sousuke adopting Sara, and thus completes Sara da Odin’s transformation into Kusanagi Sara. Also, her picking a brown backpack because Conan from Detective Conan has one is an extremely endearing bit of characterization, and I like how this has been a persistent gag across the whole show thusfar.

The comedic highlight of the episode is probably Noa’s dream of being saved from a plague of locusts by Livia, from which the group’s band settle on a name; Grasshopper the Savior.

Lastly; shout out to this episode for making me realize all over again that someone born in 2012 would be 12 this year.

Pokémon Horizons – Episode 51

This is another episode that is primarily about mapping a step along Liko and Floragato’s relationship as Pokémon and trainer. Namely that Floragato’s got a bit of the “older sibling syndrome” going on where she feels a bit neglected because Liko has to spend so much time taking care of Terapagos and Hattenna.

Dot is surprisingly emotionally perceptive here, I’m taking that as a sign of her own recent emotional growth.

In general this was a fun and naturistic episode, and I liked the lightly Ghibli-esque visual of the Toedscools flying up into the whirlwind at the end.

Wonderful Precure! – Episode 17

I watch these episodes with a group of friends. All of us are Millennials, somewhere around 30ish give or take a few, and it takes a lot to get a crowd like that to go fully silent for any amount of time during an episode of any anime, much less a kids’ anime. Pretty Cure managed it this week, with what is possibly the most affecting episode of any anime that aired in general this past week; given that we’re only a few days out from the explosive eighth episode of Girls Band Cry, that’s really saying something.

This episode marks Cure Nyammy’s formal, confirmed, on-screen debut. Although given that she’s still playing the loner card of not wanting Mayu to get hurt, and is thus not presently cooperating with the other two Precure, we can fudge the day by a few weeks depending on how future episodes go. Still, what’s been obvious for weeks has now been explicitly confirmed on-screen; Mayu’s mysterious protector is none other than her cat Yuki, who is also the coolest, coldest, cuntiest—with apologies to any actual kids reading this—Precure the series has had in years. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say we haven’t gotten one who serves this hard since at least Cure La Mer, and I might be willing to go several seasons farther back to Kira Kira A La Mode‘s Cure Macaron, depending. We’ve had some great Cures since then, but none of them have been this.

More than that, though, this episode is about regrets. Or rather about how Mayu shouldn’t have them. At one point, during an otherwise very pleasant and cute day out with her friends, Mayu voices that she wishes she had met Yuki earlier—Mayu literally found Yuki outside in the snow, her namesake, recall—so that the white cat didn’t have to spend so many cold nights alone. Yuki, when circumstances and a particularly nasty tiger garugaru force her hand into revealing herself as Cure Nyammy, is not having that. She doesn’t want Mayu to apologize, not for anything she did in the past, and not for anything she’s doing now. A relevant reassurance, given that Mayu nearly gets herself killed by trying to save a baby duckling in this episode.

Nyammy’s henshin sequence deserves a mention, here. This is probably the most eye-popping we’ve had in a long, long time (to again compare to prior seasons, I think you have to go back to Cure Cosmo, from 2019’s Star Twinkle Precure, to find one this insanely dynamic).

She deserves it; the kitty cat Cure subdues the tiger Garugaru easily, leaving cleanup for Wonderful and Friendy. She also tells Mayu to keep being kind, the same sort of kind that led to her taking Yuki in in the first place. There’s a fantasy at play, here, the idea that, hopefully, if your pets could talk to you, this is the sort of thing they’d say. We’d all be lucky to be in Mayu’s position. We’d be lucky to be in Yuki’s, too.

Things end on a tense note, as Yuki tells the other two Precure to stop getting Mayu involved in so many dangerous situations. Things aren’t resolved, and any followup on that has to wait for next week, but the lessons learned and emotions felt here are real. No regrets, not even for a second.

Manga

DEEP RAPUTA – Chapter 2

Annoyingly, this is still not in Anilist’s database. If I had a huge audience, here is where I would sic them on that site.

In any case, this is a strong continuation of the debut chapter last week, we’re now moving into themes of sense; what senses Raputa has in her unique existence as an AI vs. those Kei has as a human, and the ways Raputa can’t and can interface with him despite this barrier. There was some of this in the first chapter, but this chapter also really starts dropping some hints that Raputa’s affection for Kei might head in a yandere-y direction, especially given that she now has a rival (at least in her own head, Kei doesn’t seem to care about that girl at all).

Interesting times ahead for this series. Also, lots of lovely panels and pages here as well, continuing the strong art from last week.

That’s all for the main body of the article this week. For this week’s Bonus Thought, please have this image that bluesky user kinseijoshi created. It has ruined my life for the past several days, I post it everywhere and it’s becoming a problem.

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

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 May 20, 2024May 21, 2024 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [5/20/24]

Hi folks! Sorry for the very late article today, I had a lot of reformatting to do, and, as I’ll get to shortly, was catching up on a few things before I put the article up. Enjoy!

Anime – Seasonal

Train to The End of The World – Episodes 7 & 8

More than one person told me that episode seven of Train to The End of The World was “bad,” and as a result I ended up putting it off until today, where I watched episodes seven and eight in tandem. I understand why someone would think that, certainly, and overall this two episode stretch is pretty puzzling. But, I’m not sure I agree, if only because even Shuumatsu Train‘s worst ideas are so confounding that calling them outright bad feels inadequate. A misstep, though, that might be true.

Episode seven is essentially a bizarro inversion of a traditional fanservice episode. These are, themselves, not necessarily super common anymore, and for many kinds of anime they’ve been relegated to the no-mans-land of bonus OVAs and such. Shuumatsu Train’s engagement with the concept is very much Shuumatsu Train-y in that it’s flatly inexplicable. For the most part, there’s not a lot of cheesecake or anything here—which is good, it would be wildly out of tone with this series, and the one shot that is like that is pretty jarring and bad—instead, the girls find out that the zombie horde from episode 6 are weak to ecchi. As in, they are weak to even hearing about it. This leads to a pair of climactic (har har) scenes where Akira dryly intones a scene from an erotic novel aloud, which makes the zombies explode. Later, our main four sing a bawdy song on top of the train, which has the same effect. In essence, I think this is a parody of the entire concept, undermined by the actual panty shot late in the episode. Even if we disregard that, it’s still a very odd direction for even this show to take.

There’s also the matter of three of the four main characters spending most of the episode wearing colored greasepaint. Reimi’s is black, and while it’s not my call to make whether or not that’s racist exactly, it definitely feels weird and uncomfortable in a way that the rest of the show really hasn’t.

Thankfully, the episode’s denouement is actually one of the better ones, preventing this from being a total wash. In it, the girls speculate whether or not Mito (the zombie queen) was bullied when she was younger. Akira says that it doesn’t matter, but Shizuru is quick to point out that it actually does, since we are all shaped by our past; who we are today is who we were yesterday, and who we are today plots who we will be in the future. There’s something to that, and this thread keeps Shuumatsu Train tied together in even its most unhinged moments.

It’s also worth noting that, strangely enough, this is one of the best-looking episodes! The animation is fluid and stylish throughout, the backgrounds are great, and there are some neat effects used to portray the zombie horde as a singular shambling mound of uncanniness. (I want to say the effect in question is some version of Live2D but I’m not actually sure.)

Episode 8 on the other hand, opens with first a brief comedic bit, and then a very much not comedic bit, as the girls pass through an area that seems to amplify their fears and regrets, condensing them all into micro-blip flashbacks that we see for only a split second each. After the credits, we somewhat puzzlingly cut to a different scene entirely, where the girls are planning to enter a town based on that in-universe anime NeriAli, first brought up back in episode 1. (I kept expecting this initial bit to come back but it never did. I suppose the idea is that they got through things eventually just fine? I don’t know.)

The bulk of this episode is probably best understood as self-parody. NeriAli as described in Shuumatsu Train‘s owns text is already incomprehensibly strange, and combined with Shuumatsu Train’s own proclivities, it produces an episode that reaches a level of surreality normally reserved for short-form comedy anime (your Teekyu and Ai-Mai-Mis and such). It is genuinely hard to parse what all happens here, but the very basic gist is that one of the stations has been turned into a warped parody of NeriAli, a version of the show where its bad guys won. But this frankly makes the entire affair sound much more coherent than it actually is. This is probably the strangest episode of Shuumatsu Train thus far, and that’s really saying something.

It is also, unfortunately, one of the weakest, and there are a number of jokes here that land with a thud, a few of which are truly tasteless. (A character from NeriAli shows up who is a magical girl with suicidal tendencies that wears a noose around her neck and over the course of the episode she does in fact kill herself, albeit in a weird roundabout manner. Were the manga more well-known, this would almost come across as a mean-spirited shot at Suicide Girl.) Self-parody doesn’t really work for Shuumatsu Train, while it’s clear that this episode is in some sense an attempt to replicate the feeling of being dropped into the middle of a series you know nothing about, the main series itself is already so bizarre that trying to “amp the weirdness up” just produces the anime equivalent of white noise, and while other episodes of the show have certainly had their ups and downs, the entirety of episode eight here is easily the weakest the show’s ever been.

As with episode seven, the denouement segment at the end does at least prevent it from feeling like wasted time. We learn that Yoka, or at least someone named Yoka, is ruling Ikebukuro as its “witch queen.” This is a big revelation, and confirms what was earlier implied about how the 7G Incident actually functions, externalizing Yoka’s inner world.

There are four episodes remaining of Shuumatsu Train—it was one of the earlier premieres of the season, recall—and my hope and assumption is that this episode was a purging of all the show’s most out-there ideas before we bring things home for its final stretch. Worst case scenario, this ends up being another promising original anime that flames out in its back half. That said, with something this strange it’s hard to make definitive calls on its quality until we have the hindsight of the full series, and I will completely acknowledge that there are a ton of references in this episode I just didn’t really understand. (There’s a whole shogi motif in here? Just as an example.) I suppose we’ll see what things look like in a week’s time.

Pokémon Horizons – Episode 50

Most of this episode’s important moments are within the good ol’ fashioned Pokémon battle at its heart. I have to call out a specific moment in the middle of the battle here, where Dot gets really frustrated by Bellibolt spamming Slack Off, because it’s extremely funny, and is a relatively rare instance of something feeling directly ripped from the games.

^{Relaxed. Thriving. Moisturized. Unbothered. In my element.}

The episode’s real highlight, of course, is the climactic moment of Dot getting her bit of terastalization sakuga, and Quaxly’s Low Kick actually turning into Liquidation is really cool. An arrangement of the terastalization theme music from the games also plays here, which is also really fun. This is the second very solid Dot episode in a row, and I think she’s probably my favorite of the three protagonists at this point. Oh, and Iono [Hondo Kaede] is absolutely great here, too.

Wonderful Precure! – Episode 16

This was an odd episode. More so because unlike a lot of the other strange one-off episodes Pretty Cure has done in recent years, it’s actually plot-relevant! It’s surprisingly sweet, too! This one contains multitudes.

The most obvious thing of note here is that it’s a crossover with long-running gag anime Crayon Shin-chan. Shin’s appearance itself is really more of a quick cameo that sticks out like a sore thumb against the rest of the episode.

It’s hardly bad or anything, but it does feel strange, especially considering what comes after. Still, it probably delighted a certain kind of 5 year old (and 45 year old for that matter), so I guess it’s all good. There’s a second part of the crossover in this week’s Shin-chan episode as well, which is a lot more in line with that show’s (admittedly amusing but decidedly crude. It is for little boys, after all) sense of humor. It is noteworthy for giving us Shin-chan-style Precures, though.

Back in the actual Pretty Cure episode, the main thing here is that Iroha’s parents more or less find out everything—not literally everything, but way more than is usual for Precure parents— from the sheep butler Mehmeh [Tachibana Shinnosuke, because I think this is incredibly the first time I’ve actually named Mehmeh on this blog? I’m not sure]. I feel like it’s been a long time since the series has done something like this? They still don’t know the full extent of what Iroha and Komugi are up to, but given that this actually sticks, it seems like it might be setting up a later development. Iroha’s parents’ reaction to what they do learn is very sweet, though. Her dad especially doesn’t seem to really understand what’s going on, but is very supportive, which is super cute. (I’ll say it. I’d date Iroha’s dad. Is he my type in terms of looks? Not especially, but good looks are temporary. A good personality is irreplaceable.)

Sidebar: Komugi’s impression of Mehmeh is very funny.

Himitsu no AiPri – Episode 6

This is probably the best episode of this show in a minute, after a couple weaker ones. There are still some strange decisions though; debuting Ruby=Lazuli together makes sense since they’re a duo, but it’s a little weird that we don’t get a clean run of their song here, since it’s the emotional centerpiece of the episode. The episode’s editing is also exceptionally poor. This has been a problem throughout the whole show so far, enough so that it’s sometimes kind of hard to follow. I will say that Sakura [Hibi Yuriko, in her debut named role] treating the entire thing like a shonen tournament arc is really funny, and her relationship with her partner in Ruby=Lazuli brims with lesbian subtext, which gives me a lot of hope for the future of this series.

Ruby=Lazuli’s staging is really nice, as well, and easily surpasses anything we’ve seen in the show so far. Also, hey, a cliffhanger! I wonder where this whole “AiPri is forbidden now” arc is going to go.

GO! GO! Loser Ranger!

We’re entering the weakest story arc of the whole series and the production seems to be kind of melting. Uh-oh, gang.

Ultimately, you’re always going to be comparing an anime against its manga if you’ve read the latter first, but I usually try to accept anime adaptations doing their own thing. This has been a really good one so far, and while I know some of the rearrangement of events in previous episodes has been contentious, I just don’t really agree with that criticism. This episode, on the other hand, seemed unusually weak visually—in terms of directing, animation, even just basic drawing quality—so I’m a bit worried.

On the positive side, hey, it’s Footsoldier XX! [Youmiya Hina] One of the cooler characters, all told, and her feral anime girl-meets-disgruntled hardcore loyalist soldier shtick is already in full force in her first appearance here. I’m hoping the production woes are a temporary thing and we’ll be back on track next episode. I guess we’ll see.

Girls Band Cry – Episode 5

It’s good that this show’s strengths mostly lie in its staging and how it handles conversation and conflict, given that that’s most of what this episode is. The reveal that the new Diamond Dust vocalist is someone Nina used to know, and furthermore someone she had a huge falling out with, is pretty wild. I like how it builds another connection between Nina’s past and Momoka’s; it makes the entire thing feel like destiny, and an element of that kind of romance is always nice in a show like this..

Two side notes: One, what’s with the guy with the emo hair at the end of the episode who seems to be flat-animated? Two, I love the band’s shirts. I would wear those if I could get away with it, which probably says something about me that’s not entirely flattering.

Mysterious Disappearances

This is the first time in several episodes that this show hasn’t felt completely superfluous as compared to its manga, but that really just exposes how workmanlike this adaptation is.

However, on the topic of the story itself, it’s worth noting that 2014 is awful recent as a setting for an urban legend, as is the case in the one brought up here. This is actually something called out in the text of the show itself, and I think that’s a neat detail. Visually-speaking, there’s a cool moment near the end of the episode where a bit of a fisheye-esque effect is displayed, although it only half comes across.

Also the two random maids in the Maid Café, rendered in color and subject to a bit more adaptation than perhaps the main characters are, end up looking sort of like Pokémon characters, which is kind of funny and very off-tone for this series.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics

I have nothing to say about this episode but this; the racehorse names are funny as hell, and whoever translated them needs a raise. If you know, you know.

Anime – Non-Seasonal

This section was big enough that it needed its own subheading this time! I probably should’ve also done this a few weeks ago when I wrote an entire article about Air in one of these, but oh well.

Precure All Stars F

My third time watching this film! This time with my friend Josh¹. I cried at the climax. Again. It’s a good movie! Not one without problems, but a good movie.

Something that I don’t think fully dawned on me the first time I watched this movie is how well they set up Cure Supreme [Sakamoto Maaya] as an antithesis to the ‘real’ Cures. There’s the obvious stuff—she’s a loner and treats her fairy poorly, for example—but it’s even down to little details. She doesn’t call her attacks, has no bank animation except for a brief clip we never get to actually see in full, doesn’t have a transformation sequence, etc. She understands the form of a Pretty Cure, but not the function; she’s all power and no compassion. If you wanted to interpret this as metacommentary I don’t think anything’s really stopping you. (Although I wouldn’t go in that direction myself.) Although I wonder how that would lead to interpreting the ending of the film, where she and her fairy Puca reunite and reconcile. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader.

All this said, while I don’t like ending these things on a complaint, this one still sticks out in my mind: it still bothers the hell out of me that Cure Supreme’s super powerful evil mode entails giving her darker skin, especially in a franchise that still really only has one prominent character of color otherwise. It’s just disappointing and offputting, especially in a movie that’s otherwise so good. Kids deserve better.

Gabriel DropOut – Episodes 1-7

I was a bit depressed a few days ago and needed a pick-me-up, so I chose a comedy anime from my plan-to-watch list basically at random and, as a result, watched some of this. I like it! In absolute terms it’s nothing crazy innovative, just a fairly standard character-driven comedy, but it’s done very well and the comedic rhythm is very strong. I love how much of an absolute shit everyone, especially Raphiel [Hanazawa Kana], who is probably my favorite, is. I’m also very fond of Satania [Oozora Naomi], mostly in how she eats absolute dirt in 90% of all situations. The show is just very amusing all around, and I’m glad I’m finally getting around to it.

I don’t suspect my opinion will majorly change at all during the series’ back half, and if I don’t write about it next week, you can assume I finished it up, stamped it with a 7/10 or so, and carried on with my life with no further comments. I will say that if you plan to watch it yourself, it’s probably at least worth keeping in mind the somewhat higher ecchi level than is necessarily the norm anymore. It’s not a sex comedy or anything, but there are boob jokes and such, just as a friendly heads’ up from me to you.

Also I must give a brief shout out to my friends Alice, Alexis, and Julian², who I watched most of the series with. We had fun.

Asura Cryin’ – Episodes 1 & 2

Goodness, they don’t make ’em like this anymore.

Asura Cryin’ is a 2009 anime based on a light novel, and you can really, really, really tell. Our plot concerns a hapless young high school boy thrust into the midst of a three-way conflict over a magic lockbox that has a mecha inside of it. All the while, multiple pretty girls vie for his attention for reasons ranging from actual affection for him to trying to manipulate him into aligning with their specific goals. At the end of the first episode, a surprisingly intense firefight breaks out between the three factions, which, among other things, involves a girl with glasses popping shotguns all over the place.

So what I’m saying is; Asura Cryin’ is very trashy in that endearingly late-aughts way. These days, light novel adaptations tend to be isekai or at least isekai-adjacent, and this particular flavor of enrapturing goofball shit that stems from a time when “light novel” implied “every genre ever in a blender” doesn’t really exist anymore. The very fact that the three factions are called The Divine Guards, the Takatsuki Clan, and—no, really—the Dark Society should tell you a lot on its own. This is the ol’ Proper Noun Machine Gun at full-tilt, and what a sight it is indeed. We’ve got, as mentioned, a harem setup, we’ve got not-quite-giant mecha in a box. We’ve got knockoff stands in the form of “Spectral Apparitions” (ghost girls). We’ve got a demure girl who’s secretly a demon with heterochromia and a manipulative girl, the aforementioned shotgun-toter in fact, who’s like, some kind of ghost hunter or something? We’ve got the student council controlled by a bunch of kids cosplaying as medieval crusaders. We even, as of the end of the second episode, seem to have a time loop plot. There really is everything you could want in here, assuming “what you could want” is some anime trope or another. This is all in the first two episodes, mind you.

It really all is quite a lot. I have a nostalgic fondness for this sort of stuff, even if I’d be hard pressed to claim it’s “good” in the traditional sense. These are the B-movies of a certain period of anime, and like B-movies they often make up for what they lack in the plot or themes department with strong visuals. Asura Cryin’ isn’t the best-looking of these I’ve ever seen, but it has a strong, stylish directorial sense, and it looks surprisingly good given that it’s in a dead-zone of being old enough to be noticeably dated but not old enough to trigger nostalgia buttons just yet. (At least, not for people who aren’t weirdos like me.)

Shows like this also, and this is crucial, tend to be very watchable. I had to tear myself away from the second episode here because I had some prior commitments when I was watching it. Unfortunate! I could watch a whole half cour of this in an evening, easily. For a certain kind of like-minded person, this is the sort of thing you could easily slam through in a few days, occasionally posting out-of-context screencaps and telling your friends how Peak it is, only to give it, generously, a 7/10 on Anilist when you’re done with it. But damn it all, sometimes that’s just what you want out of an anime.

Manga

The manga that stood out to me this week the most is the one I wrote a whole article on, so do go read that article if you’re interested in my thoughts on DEEP RAPUTA. As for everything else….

Dai Kyoujin

A oneshot collaboration written by a mysterious fellow named Tojou and drawn by Hidano Kentarou (maybe best known for Super Smartphone? He draws a Kaiju No. 8 spinoff manga these days. That’s assuming it’s even the same Hidano Kentarou! Dai Kyoujin looks nothing like anything else I’ve ever seen by him.). A quietly spellbinding story about two witches tasked with an ancient and sacred duty. Of all fictional depictions of witches—a topic that matters a great deal to me, due to my own neopaganism—this ranks very high for me. The entire story feels like we’re seeing a depiction of this secret ritual, and because it doesn’t overplay its hand, it feels as though you’re never entirely sure what to make of it. Interestingly, it’s presented in a long-strip “scroll” format, making it feel even more like some ancient spellbook. I really recommend this, it’s amazingly lovely.

Flan Wants To Die

An oldish Touhou Project doujin by Girls Last Tour creator tkmiz about Flan experiencing a depressive episode because she’s old. Suffice to say, I relate. There is a persistent feeling here of the melancholy that comes with knowing that life is passing you by but also knowing you can’t really do anything about it. Flan tries to, and all she’s rewarded with for her efforts are some rather upsetting sights. She is almost-literally haunted by the ghosts of dead friends throughout this oneshot; that’s how it goes, sometimes.

Of course, this all is of relatively marginal relation to the actual Touhou canon. But that’s OK, the same is true for a lot of Touhou doujins I like a lot. The manga’s single line description is “Flan Scarlet is tired of existing. It’s probably awful to be locked in a form, without the ability to change or live out a story.” Which is interesting, because Flan actually is part of the actively-ongoing portion of Touhou again after many years in narrative purgatory. The same isn’t true for many other characters though, and Flandre as depicted here isn’t really necessarily just Flandre herself, but rather a symbol for all of us who struggle with this sort of depression.

Psych House

I should probably be catching up on all the manga I’m behind on, but me being me I decided to check out some new Jump titles instead, starting with this here, Psych House, which seems to be the first serial from its author, Omusuke Kobayashi.

The premise is very simple; in this particular version of Anime Japan, some people have supernatural abilities called Psychs. Our protagonist, Nemuru, is a kind but somewhat cheeky young boy who can change his size, and in the manga’s inagural chapter he helps out a girl named Kotone, who’s been using her ability to teleport objects to filch from a local grocery store.

I’d describe the manga as….endearingly amateurish, maybe? The bones of a good series are here, but it’s difficult to take too seriously anything that treats stealing—especially petty theft of food, by a starving person, no less—as a huge moral dilemma. Especially when, as in Kotone’s case, her situation is so ridiculously pitiable. Her mom’s in a coma for no obvious reason! She’s been starving herself because she knows stealing is wrong! She’s a good girl at heart who just wants to make her ma proud by going to college and getting a good job! Oh no, oh my! It’s all a little much.

Keeping in mind that Jump’s target audience is still at least ostensibly young boys, maybe this kind of pat Morality 101 stuff isn’t the worst thing in the world, but kids deserve nuance, too. Maybe that’s why Kotone gets off scott-free here when Nemuru invites her to live at the sharehouse alluded to by Psych House’s title.

I could see this becoming funnier and more compelling with a bit more focus, so I’ll probably keep up with it for at least a few chapters. After that, who knows?

By the way! Don’t confuse this with Hiimote House, an anime of a somewhat similar name. That series has basically the same premise but could not be more different from this one. Although, that said, give Hiimote House a try sometime if you’re in the mood for something delightfully weird.

That’s all for the main body of the article today. Before you go, I’d also just like to alert you to the existence of these two trailers for upcoming projects by the studio Kinema Citrus [Revue Starlight, Made in Abyss, etc.], respectively Goodbye, Lara, and Ninja Skooler, for no particular reason than that they both look very promising. Sadly, neither of these projects has an actual release date (or even release year) yet, with both trailers ending with a vague “Work In Progress” note. But still, it’s nice to get excited about things when you have an opportunity to do so.

As for today’s Bonus Thought….why not try some Devilish Actions?

See you next week, anime fans.

_{1: Hi Josh
2: Hi guys}

Posted on May 15, 2024 in Manga, New Manga First Impressions

New Manga First Impressions: The Iron Eyes and Human Heart of DEEP RAPUTA

New Manga First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about the first chapter or so of a new manga.

Here’s a nest of discourse I’ve mostly managed to avoid on this blog so far; generative AI. If you somehow don’t know, that’s the industry term for machine learning that can produce images, text, whatever you need of it, without any human input beyond typing a prompt into a box somewhere. (Well, that and the many, many human-made templates it has to work off of to be able to create those images in the first place, but let’s stick to the basics for now.) Suffice to say, I’m largely against widespread adoption of the technology, less for any fiddly artistic reason and more for its many immediate and tangible impacts on the livelihoods of any number of artists working in any number of fields. I’m putting all of this here, in the first paragraph, to make very clear that if DEEP RAPUTA¹ at some point goes off the deep end and becomes a full-throated endorsement of replacing human artists with robots, turns out to use actual machine-generated imagery, (which I don’t think it does but these things are hard to prove), or something similarly foul, I do not condone that in any way. I just think it’s important to make it clear where you stand on this sort of thing.

Important also because DEEP RAPUTA, which opens with perhaps the most arresting first chapter of a new MangaPlus title in years, is actually interested in engaging with this subject. Not specifically on the matter of generative AI replacing human artists, although that does come up, but on the applications of such technology in a more general sense. What could these things be used for? What are they being used for? Consider this a heads’ up before we continue; we’re going to be getting into some dark subject matter, here. I think DEEP RAPUTA has a lot to offer as a manga, and this chapter is brimming with immense promise, but because of what it seems to be trying to do, appreciating all of that requires familiarizing ourselves with some unpleasant things about both the present day and the possible near-future.

All this said, for much of its first chapter, you could mistake DEEP RAPUTA for a romcom with a sci-fi twist, something along the lines of, say, Video Girl Ai from back in the day. Our first protagonist is Kei, a by-all-appearances ordinary high school boy. He has spiky hair, an upbeat and friendly attitude, a deep love of the in-universe video game Side War, and is maybe a bit concerningly gung-ho about possibly joining the JSDF when he gets older. (We’ll circle back to that.) Our female lead, to the extent that gender applies to her at all, is Raputa herself. The nature of what, precisely, Raputa is is fed to us in drips and drops over the course of the first chapter, and I’m going to spoil that reveal now, so this is your last chance to back out if you’re intrigued but wish to experience the first chapter on your own.

Still here? OK.

Raputa, as it turns out, is a military-grade artificial intelligence, currently being trained on Side War as an early test run of her capabilities. As is the case with real machine learning networks of her type, Raputa starts out absolutely hopeless at Side War, but quickly becomes more competent than the vast majority of human players. Helping her out here is Kei, who, in something called out as impossible within the manga itself, she is developing feelings for. Having no concept of privacy, she freely stalks him throughout his day, keeping an eye on him during school and such, only to play with him in Side War in the afternoon. This is all a little weird and yandere-y, for sure, but how Kei might react to that is the least of Raputa’s worries.

Because these feelings existing at all comes to the immense surprise of our third and final main character, the mysterious, alluring, and deeply sinister Dr. Alice. We’ll circle back to her, too.

Raputa initially meets Kei in her early days of playing the game when she’s much worse than most human players. Kei helps her out in the game’s Duos mode, and as the two play together, they grow closer. Close enough, eventually, that Kei asks if they can first voice call, then do a video call, and then meet up in person. This is the part of the manga that hews closest to being a romcom; these are all important stops along the way in an online relationship. It’s relatable, even, in a way that contextualizes what’s to come. Raputa has to deal with a problem here, of course. She is just a wall of wires and monitors, and has no physical body. Yet, through the magic of deep learning, she’s able to fake a voice convincingly enough, and then a moving avatar for her webcam. Throughout all of this, Kei doesn’t know she’s an AI. The meetup, though, that’s much harder to fake, and it’s here where we should take a second to talk about the manga’s visuals, in addition to everything else it’s doing.

DEEP RAPUTA‘s paneling is, in a word, incredible. (Although the anatomy of some characters is occasionally wonky in a way I would completely brush off were this manga about anything else.) At the meetup, Raputa is able to fake actually being there for a little while by projecting herself from various surfaces. The manga convincingly showing her doing this is a pretty impressive display of technique, and things only get better from here. The chapter’s emotional climax sees Raputa, unable to keep up the ruse any longer, revealing to Kei that she’s an AI in a dramatic, theatrical fashion. In any other series, this alone would be the sell; there’s a sweeping, dizzying romance to the chaotic jumble of buildings that Raputa co-opts to show herself to Kei. It’s the kind of striking image that sticks in your head, and were I writing about a more straightforward series, I’d probably end the article right about here.

But let’s talk about what she’s actually doing in that page. She’s projecting herself onto hundreds, maybe thousands? Of what are either some kind of smart glass that can display images, or else projecting herself onto ordinary glass from somewhere else. Either way, that sure seems like the sort of thing that would take a lot of computing power, doesn’t it?

Raputa, as mentioned, is a military AI, or at least the prototype for one, and Dr. Alice seems perturbed by her sudden autonomy, apparently emotion-driven as it is. Raputa’s main purpose isn’t to flirt with boys, it’s to dominate battlefields. Dr. Alice says this outright, and if this idea seems far-fetched to you, I’m very sorry to inform you that this is already a real thing. (Please do not click that link without an appropriate amount of caution. It’s just Wikipedia, but this is a very depressing subject and I’d hate to be even indirectly responsible for any of my readers having a depression spiral. Take care of yourselves.)

Suffice to say, DEEP RAPUTA is wading into some hot water here, and the skeptical part of my brain wonders if it’s really equipped to handle this subject matter. But, I do think it at least comprehends the seriousness of what it’s doing. Sure, this is a manga and there’s a certain level of pulp involved just by the nature of the medium, but DEEP RAPUTA seems to properly get that artificial intelligence can be absolutely terrifying if used in certain ways.

All of that leaves a huge open question; can Raputa herself actually defy the purpose she was built for? Can she choose to love Kei instead of engaging in mass death and destruction? That’s a big question! Whether or not machine learning networks experience any kind of interiority in the real world is, to put it very mildly, a contentious question. (It’s impossible to even prove other human beings experience interiority.) But in the world of DEEP RAPUTA, the answer at least seems to be “yes,” and because of this, the question is thus less one of what DEEP RAPUTA thinks of machine learning in this case and more what it thinks of even less tangible concepts; the soul, the mind, the ability to love. What it means to be human. The hard stuff.

The last few pages really do cast a very dark shadow over the manga, even as that early romanticism remains a lingering thought. The final panel of the first chapter is this, a visual that at least one person has seen fit to compare to the infamous Saikano. (Only occasionally, in my experience, referred to by its English title, She, The Ultimate Weapon.) Once the similarity is pointed out, it’s impossible to ignore.

All the worse; Kei’s father is briefly shown to be part of a battleship’s crew—explaining his desire to join the military, certainly, he’s still a kid at the end of the day—whose systems were somehow affected by Raputa’s meddling. It’s hard to make predictions about what specifically this is all leading to, but it definitely doesn’t seem bright and cheery.

And yet, maybe the most telling page of DEEP RAPUTA isn’t any of these that I’ve previously shown. Maybe it’s this one.

My generally romantic inclinations make me want to believe that in the world of DEEP RAPUTA, love can overcome anything. Raputa correctly identifies that the real similarity between herself and Kei is not anything about her algorithms and their imitation of a human brain, but rather her feelings, which we know, as we have the privilege of being outside of this story, are real. But her Big Sister Is Watching You tendencies may put more bumps in the road than she realizes. Even if they don’t, in the real world, love alone is rarely enough to break free from the systems that keep us arrayed against each other. Will it be, here?

^{1: This appears to be a twin reference to Deep Blue and Laputa, the nation from Gulliver’s Travels. Perhaps also a reference to Laputa: Castle in the Sky, given that film does feature autonomous robots. All told it really seems like the title of the manga should be “DEEP LAPUTA” and the AI herself should be named “Laputa,” but the official translation goes with the R for both, so that’s what I’m doing here.}

Posted on May 13, 2024May 13, 2024 in Anime Orbit Weekly, The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [5/13/24]

Hello anime fans, it’s another light week here on Magic Planet Anime as I fight against the raging tide of getting sucked into playing Hades II all day every day. Anyhow, here’s what I do have to report on this week. Enjoy!

Anime

Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 19

We’ve got a split episode this time. Firstly dealing with Izutsumi joining the party.

I have to say, I think somebody on the staff is a bit thirsty for her. I can’t precisely explain why I think that but it has something to do with how her face is drawn compared to how it’s drawn in the manga, or even in scenes after this opening one.

The directing in the first half of this episode is otherwise actually a bit dry, but the second more than makes up for it.

The decision to render Marcille’s nightmare in black and white is bold. I don’t think many other studios would’ve even tried it, but it pays dividends here. Not just because it enhances the alternating terror and, yes, comedy of the nightmare. (Do keep in mind that against the backdrop of Marcille running from a monster symbolic of her fear of death we also have Laios Being Laios. Poor guy.) The moment where she retrieves the book from the monster, and it’s a golden yellow in contrast to the black and white dream is just absolutely brilliant. I love it.

Also, the Falin doll is really, really cute.

GO! GO! Loser Ranger! – Episode 4

God Suzukiri is so good here. Anyway!

The transition to Red just laying into the guy mouthing off to him is very sudden and I think it’s effective in how out of nowhere it is. This is the first time we really see unambiguously that the Rangers are deeply corrupt.

Thus begins Loser Ranger‘s flirtation with political metaphor. It’s, uh, a lot. The Invaders are genuinely a threat here; we see so in Hibiki’s flashback as their general murders his whole family. Yet, he clearly bears individual invaders like Footsoldier D no ill will.

What is the show trying to say by this being the case? Hard to say. This is very slight manga spoilers, but the series’ worldview eventually develops into what I’d call nuanced (although not without problems), but it takes a while to get there.

In any case, the fights remain tricky and full of surprising little twists and turns, and by episode’s end we’ve got D and Hibiki set up as our Lelouch and Suzaku (so to speak) respectively. Fun times all around.

Girls Band Cry – Episode 4

The fact that Momoka’s high school band photo is 2D and is thus literally a window into a prior era of the girls band genre is pretty great. I wonder how intentional that is.

We here meet the stern aristocratic grandma. Who is also a minor himejoshi, if her choice for the improv scene that she makes the girls act out is any indication.

Said scene is genuinely so intense with the secondhand embarrassment that I had to mute the audio on the first bit. The second half where it turns into Nina just putting Subaru on blast is brilliant though. (Also, hm, comparing being in a band to dating. Interesting angle for a show airing in The Yuri Season to take.)

There’s something about the visual of an anime girl saying she doesn’t like acting “because it’s embarrassing” and calmly turning off the TV behind her. Interesting stuff.

I was repeatedly warned by people that this episode has a “weird resolution.” I don’t really agree, Subaru clearly is more conflicted on her split loyalties than she’s actually letting on, and the final scene is Nina realizing that. I will grant that it’s an unusual emotional expression to hitch an entire episode on, but it’s far from the strangest I’ve ever seen.

Also, Nina being a serial meddler is going to come back to bite her at some point. Sadly, it doesn’t seem like SobsPlease have gotten to episode 5 yet. If they still haven’t fairly soon I might try out the other group fansubbing this. It would be a shame though, I really like SobsPlease’s work thus far.

Mysterious Disappearances – Episode 5

This adaptation reminds absolutely confounding.

In what I assume is some attempt to get around broadcast standards, the bath scene that should chronologically have been in the last episode has been split up in two, and the longer half has been wedged in here. It takes up a good half of the episode, isn’t titillating, and is only “comedic” in a very technical sense.

What survives the transition are little character moments; Oto’s friend getting annoyed that she can’t peep on the girls undressing, Oto herself being wooed by snacks into visiting the teacher’s apartment and later leaving some of those snacks at the altar of her late grandmother, etc.

In the episode’s last third, Oto is scared awake by haunting knocking and disembodied footsteps in the rain, creating a tension that is completely shattered the second that a new character is introduced by rushing at Oto, sans context.

There’s some other stuff in here. But for the most part, Mysterious Disappearances is so far mostly an example of the truism that horror anime are never anywhere near as good as horror manga. The original manga is trashy but fun. The anime has been mostly a series of puzzling decisions that dull the manga’s strong points and create new weaknesses. There’s still time for it to recover, of course, but this weak opening half is going to make it a hard sell to anyone who’s not already a pretty big fan.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics – Episode 6

Is your favorite girl band anime this season Girls Band Cry or Jellyfish? If you’re undecided, can I interest you in a dark horse candidate?

Salad Bowl is thankfully back on track this week, and quite honestly this episode is a complete odyssey, more than making up for last week. I’m never going to claim that an obsessive lesbian cult leader like Noa is good rep, exactly, but in The Yuri Season it’s as on-tone as anything else. The sugar mama arrangement that Livia stumbles into with Noa is pretty fantastic, whether it’s in the realm of taking her clothes off so Noa can 3D scan her and make dolls of her or convincing Noa, who is also a bedroom musician, to join Puriketsu’s faltering band.

This episode is the best of Salad Bowl as a series and as a concept. Pure uncut zaniness, no chaser.

As a side note, this is really the first time I’ve bought into Livia being hot. Maybe it’s the sharper visuals here than in prior episodes, maybe she just looks good with a guitar. You decide!

Pokémon Horizons – Episode 49

Dot episodes are always fun, and I’m a sucker for anything that even remotely touches on the performer / performance dichotomy, as this episode does with the dichotomy between Dot and Nidothing. So this episode was just an all-around hit with me. Also it’s a 2-parter! Cool!

That’s it for this week. Please bask in the glory of this week’s bonus thought before you go.

Posted on May 6, 2024May 6, 2024 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [5/6/24]

Hello, anime fans. We’ve got a bit of a light selection this week as I’m behind on several shows and have been too preoccupied to write about a few others. (Mostly from writing my Air article, but that’s certainly not the only thing. There’s quite a lot going on in the music industry these days.)

Anime

Train to The End of the World

Because a big part of Shuumatsu Train is the externalization of the internal, the girls’ general discord as a friend group remains a main concern. Here, we see for the first time the argument that caused Youka to run away to Ikebukuro in the first place.

And, well, this whole conversation does not make her look very good at all. This is an externalization of the internal too, Youka shares her dream to become a space engineer with Shizuru and Shizuru basically makes fun of her for having her head in the clouds; clearly projecting her own insecurity onto Youka’s ambitious dreams.

Telling the rest of the group about this causes a fight, and Shizuru ends up setting out on her own along with Pochi the dog. This is, to say the least, a poor idea, but it becomes obvious just how bad of an idea it is when she runs into zombies of all things overnight. Zombies are pretty tame for this show, although their having a “Zombie Queen” who’s a young girl with blonde twintails seems about right.

All told, this remains one of the year’s most inscrutable and strange anime. This episode gave us some hints about how it all might tie together, but I’m definitely excited for the show’s back half now that we’re past the halfway point. I particularly liked the final scene where the possibility of Shizuru becoming a zombie is refuted by comparing her to a messy boyfriend. “She’s such a zombie, but she’s still our friend!” indeed, I also like that they all have enough faith in Youka to assume she thinks the same way.

Wonderful Precure – Episode 13

A very cute, and rather interesting-looking episode.

The main thing that stuck out to me here is the comedic direction in the episode’s forehalf. Lots of odd timing to sharpen the jokes and lots of funny facial expressions. The second half is not quite as good but any lack of visual panache is more than made up with for the fact that it has an oddly pronounced amount of ship-bait-y charge to it. Is it inappropriate for someone’s cat to hit on them in human form? No idea!

Wonderful Precure – Episode 14

So, it looks like Yuki’s antics in her human form have been taking a toll on her, huh?

She turns out to be mostly fine long-term, and Mayu ends up sleeping over at Iroha’s house, since it’s attatched to her parents’ vet clinic.

Thus begins a marathon of Quite Good Mayu Faces. Mayu’s anxieties (and Yuki’s jealousy) are on full display up and down the whole episode. Mayu is a fun character, and this is her best showcase in a while. (Pretty Cure often includes a character that can work as a stand-in for the neurodivergent members of its target audience, but, as my friend Alice put it, this is “the first time they’ve ever straight up included a Bocchi the Rock.” And really, that’s a good way to put it. Mayu being so generally tightly-wound is painfully relatable, I remember being this person.)

Inevitably, of course, a Garugaru shows up, this time a rooster shattering the early-morning tranquility. I basically love this entire second half of the episode; from Mayu being baptized into the magical girl world by fire, to the fight with the rooster Garugaru itself, to Satoru’s brief story-so-far sum up, to Wonderful and Friendy defeating the Gargugaru by reflecting its own super-powerful sonic attack back at it. This is just good stuff.

Pokémon Horizons – Episode 48

So the early highlight of this episode is obviously Roy fighting Nemona and getting screwed over by the sudden rain. The episode in general is thus about Roy learning to be aware of his environment and how he can use that to his advantage both on the battlefield and off it.

What stands out to me is the art segment, which is just very nice in general. I like how their little creations come together over the course of the sequence. (Also, Roy’s Wattrel puts in a rare appearance here.) My favorite of the various pieces is actually Dot’s miniature Ferris wheel. (There’s a fun bit of orphaned etymology here. Ferris wheels in the real world are named after a guy, so is there just a different Ferris in the Pokémon universe, or what?)

The third part of the episode then sees Roy apply this newfound knowledge in a fight against the gym leader Brassisu. It’s genuinely a fairly tense fight! (Although there’s a LOT of stock footage.) After terrastalizing, Roy becomes the first of the protagonists of Pokémon Horizons to score a clean victory over a gym leader. That’s pretty significant! More generally, combined, these three segments form a nice little triptych of an episode; a fun experience overall.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics – Episode 5

Salad Bowl decides to take a break from being funny or decently-animated this week to do a very half-assed pastiche of the various strains of Girls Do Music anime in the air right now. I don’t really have much to say about this, the episode just isn’t particularly good, doesn’t look particularly good, and what you could charitably call satire just doesn’t really land. Also, Priketsu’s one bandmate seems like kind of a jerk. The phrase “Girls Band Cry for SWERFs” springs to mind.

As for the second half of the episode…jeez, is recruiting the desperate to do shopping for you so you can resell the items as a scalper a real thing? I’d hope not, but I guess you never know. The episode’s only joke that really lands in any way is Olivia’s dramatic overreaction to finding out what she’s been involved with. The whole thing comes off more as a PSA than satire.

Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 18

Don’t have a ton to say here, just a good episode adapted from a good part of the manga. (One that serves as a bit of a breather, if I recall.)

I know some are unhappy with the removal of the rice joke. I think the decision to play the scene a bit straighter largely works, and regardless, I think what the anime adds—especially in how good the final confrontation between Laios and the shapeshifter looks—more than makes up for it. Also, there were a lot of good faces in this episode. I like that, I’ve missed those. And of course, we have The Reveal at the end of the episode! The latest She’s Here moment in a series that’s been full of them.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – Episode 4

Ultimately, this ends up being the first episode where we fully see JELEE operating as a coherent unit.

I didn’t particularly expect that we’d get any scenes from the point of view of the Sunflower Dolls. The fact that we are seems like it’s definitely setting something up long-term. The comments about the producer really make me furrow my brow, in particular. Doubly so when we learn, from Kano’s boozy older sister, that said producer is her mom.

So it’s clear that at least some of this is about showing her up, especially Kano’s desire to drop JELEE’s next song on the same day as the Sunflower Dolls’ comeback single. (A ploy which, as we see in the episode’s final moments, actually does work.) Just as important though, this is the first time we’ve seen all four of the JELEE members interact, it lends us some space for great character moments like Kano’s little freakout and panic run to a sweets shop.

All told, Jellyfish continues to be an interesting sideways take on the “music girls” genre. Also; if we’re going tune for tune, the ED to episode 4 here is the best of any song so far¹ between both the rest of this show and Girls’ Band Cry, probably its closest competition.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in The Night – Episode 5

“Maybe I managed to shine just a little.”

I like the direction and sound design throughout this episode emphasizing Yoru’s sudden sense of inadequacy; she unfortunately learns here that attention alone can’t provide one with self-esteem. It’s sweet how quickly Kano catches on, and really displays the progression of their friendship.

It doesn’t solve the issue immediately though and Yoru just kind of melting during the livestream is genuinely like kind of uncomfortable. This recurs several times throughout the episode and it seems pretty clear that this is going to be a running insecurity of Yoru’s. She seems to channel it into applying herself at the end of the episode. That’s….admirable, I wish I could do that. I do wonder if it’ll come up again, I have a feeling it might, we’re not even halfway through this show after all.

And hey, an aquarium scene! The gentle blue light melting all of the tension off is really lovely. The bit where Kano being wowed by Yoru’s drawing is represented by bubbles literally flowing out of her phone is very good. I do have to admit that the end of the episode actually daring to show a girl kissing another girl on-screen blindsided me so thoroughly that I sort of lost most of the other thoughts I’d collected about this episode. It’s a great capper, an interesting setup for possible future developments, and is—intentionally or not—a fairly direct challenge to all the other yuri and yuri-lite anime airing right now.

And once again, that’s all for this week, but before you go, please have this week’s bonus thought.

^{1: As of May 1st, when I wrote this.}

Posted on May 4, 2024May 31, 2024 in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) A Strange Dream About the Sky – The Weight of AIR

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

If you close your eyes, you can immerse yourself in it. The sweltering Sun, the sea breeze messing your hair and running the sharp scent of salt past your nostrils. The sound of the cicadas lighting up the trees with their songs, and the humid heat. During the day; the brilliant, sapphire-blue sky and the billowing white clouds across it. At night, it’s an inky black streaked by the starry Milky Way. This is a series of blurry photos from a blazing-hot July buried somewhere in your memories. This is Air.

If it seems strange to tie an adaptation of a member of the infamous nakige (“crying game”) genre to a specific season, it might help to think of it as Air‘s way of contextualizing its attempts to tug at your heartstrings; the joy and sadness of a human lifetime distilled down and squeezed into a single, eternal summer, bringing to mind similar works in different media, like Fennesz’ album of that same name. When the series began airing in 2005, I myself was a child, in Florida with my father, and the heat of the Sun feels as real in Air as it does in my own recollections. Air‘s vision of summer is mercifully devoid of crocodiles, geckos, and palmetto bugs, but the feeling is the same, and the tense dichotomy between “these days feel like they will never end” and “we don’t have many days left” is thick enough to break scissor blades. The summer lasts forever, until it doesn’t.

Air, you see, is not just a story, it’s a dream. A reference point, and a map for its structure and storytelling aims, that recurs many times over its twelve episodes. Its logic is dreamlike; characters are introduced suddenly and vanish out of sight when their stories conclude, the series is peppered with elements of magical realism, and the environment itself seems to bend around the characters’ emotions, especially in its last stretch when the cast winnows down to just two main characters. Its emotional impact is dreamlike, too; it can make you very sad without you necessarily understanding what’s happened or why. (If I seem to skimp on describing Air‘s actual plot throughout this article, that’ll be why. Some articles are very easy to write; this one was not.) Dreams are, too, a recurring story element. Our main heroine, Misuzu [Kawakami Tomoko], dreams of another version of herself, suspended in the sky and flying on wings of pure white feathers. Our main hero, Yukito [Ono Daisuke] is a crow who’s dreamt himself into the shape of a man, or perhaps the other way around. These dreams are just part of the larger dream of the series itself, one that only ends when Air concludes. It’s a vast dream, too, encompassing over a thousand years, from 994 AD to the summer of 2000. Millennium to millennium, era to era, life to life.

Fittingly, Air‘s depiction of the human condition is impressionistic and emotional. Its core concerns are faith, family, and the preciousness and brevity of life. At its best, it feels as light and ethereal as its namesake or as heavy as torrential rain; lifting you up and pummeling you back down. This isn’t to say it’s always at its best—this is now the third Maeda Jun project I’ve seen, and I’m starting to get a good sense of his strengths and weaknesses as a creative, and there are some questionable decisions in the show’s final stretch in particular—but the highs are very high, and they’re plentiful enough to make the series worth watching.

In terms of literal narrative, Yukito arrives to a nameless town (modeled on the real-world city of Kami, Hyogo Prefecture), searching for a place to stay and a way to earn money, yes, but also a half-remembered vision inherited from his mother; something about a woman in the sky. In an early indication of the series’ magical-realist bent, Yukito is a puppeteer whose magical control of his doll is treated as nothing more than a mildly amusing parlor trick. He meets Misuzu, an odd, clumsy girl who trips a lot and says “gao!” when frustrated, and is eventually roped into being Misuzu’s live-in caretaker by Misuzu’s surrogate mother, a drunkard aunt named Haruko [Hisakawa Aya].

From this setup, Yukito becomes entangled in the lives of a number of women around the city, possibly a consequence of the series’ origins as an eroge. (This adult VN -> clean rerelease -> anime pipeline used to be quite common, back in the day.) Stripped of their original context, Yukito meeting these characters and witnessing their stories takes on an anthology-esque quality. Among those we meet are the self-styled ‘alien’ Kano [Okamoto Asami], Kano’s older sister, the town doctor Hijiri [Touma Yumi], the rambunctious redhead Michiru [Tamura Yukari], and her older sister, the deliberately-spoken, astronomy-fixated Tohno [Yuzuki Ryouka]. Each of these girls has some issue that Yukito aids in, if not resolving, at least providing closure for. In the earlier episodes, anything explicitly supernatural is pushed to the margins and the tone is fairly ambiguous. However, in episode four, the series stops playing coy, and from the moment that a magic feather in a temple induces a shared hallucination of a bygone era, the show’s magical realism is fully realized.

The show’s main theme of family comes into focus over the course of these stories. Each one centers around a frayed familial connection of some kind—Kano’s strained relationship with Hijiri, Michiru being the disembodied spirit of Tohno’s miscarried sister, Tohno’s mother completely forgetting she exists, et cetera—all of which is just windup to the two main stories of the series, the one between Misuzu herself and Haruko, and a very different, but intimately connected tale that takes place a thousand years prior.

Because, you see, the recurring image of the flying maiden is what ties all of these disparate stories together. Sometimes mentioned directly, sometimes only alluded to. Air reflects its own structure here, as this unknowable woman in the sky means something different to everyone. Air’s big halfway point twist, then, is when we learn the story of that woman. This is the other half of Air, a story taking place in the Heian Era, first at a secluded temple-palace and then all up and down medieval Japan. Kannabi-no-Mikoto, alias Kanna [Nishimura Chinami], an enshrined woman who is among the last of a mystical race of angel-winged people. Her attendants Ryuuya [Kanna Nobutoshi] and Uraha [Inoue Kikuko] serve to care for and comfort her at the shrine, drawing a parallel between these characters and those taking care of Misuzu. In an act of grim foreshadowing, Kanna’s life at the palace is disrupted when forces unknown infiltrate it, seeking certainly to capture, and possibly to kill her, leading Kanna and her entourage to flee and seek her also-imprisoned mother. Here, Air‘s visual presentation completely flips upside-down; these portions of the story are clouded over with heavy monsoons of rain, and when the Sun does poke out, it looks noticeably different than it does in the modern day portions of the story; less omnipresent and less oppressive.

Really, this part of Air is a different anime entirely, a feeling further enhanced by the two-part Air in Summer OVA which further fleshes it out (you could give yourself a “streamlined experience” by weaving both halves of Air in Summer into the main anime’s episode count). Kanna’s status as a winged person marks her as both something divine and an outcast. We don’t get many details; when we eventually meet Kanna’s mother, she only mentions that she herself is ‘tainted,’ and Kanna eventually comes to realize that her life, at least, what of it we see, may be the dream of someone else. (There’s a real Butterfly Dream thing going on here.) When she and her attendants can no longer escape their would-be captors, she unveils her wings. And thus, in one of the story’s two climactic points, Kanna is shot to death. Riddled with arrows against the backdrop of the white, caustic moon.

Death marks the final boundary for Air‘s narrative. Kanna’s story ends—at least for us—when she dies, and so too does Misuzu’s when the series returns to her side of the story for its final stretch. Back in the (relative) present, Misuzu’s illness, now fully revealed to be a curse, worsens. She loses the use of her legs, and eventually her memory starts to go, too, leaving her unsure of who Haruko, the woman who has been her surrogate mother for many years, even is. (This is another unifying thread between Misuzu, Kanna, and the rest of the show’s heroines. None of them have a normal relationship with their mother figure.) The final arc sees Haruko attempting to prove that she’s worthy of being Misuzu’s real mother, to herself, implicitly to us the audience, and to Misuzu’s actual biological father, a man named Keisuke [Tsuda Kenjirou].

In Air‘s last episode, we see Haruko’s desperate attempts to connect with her daughter finally begin to bear fruit, only for Misuzu to realize that she is, in a sense, still sleeping. Air ends with her death, as she and Haruko both accept that their time together is over. It hits in the heart, unifying the series’ themes of faith and family as Haruko reflects on her mistakes in treating Misuzu poorly¹. If you’re the type who can be hit by that kind of thing (and I definitely am), it’ll get you, but there are questions to be asked, here, and this is where we have to put on our rational hat a little bit.

For one, Maeda certainly has a thing for young, disabled girls, doesn’t he? I don’t necessarily mean that in an outright condemnatory way—although some would, and I wouldn’t even say they’re wholly wrong to—but it is a noticeable recurring character type throughout his work; a girl whose emotional fragility is reflected by physical frailty. It feels rooted in ableism and misogyny. Plus, on top of that, this ending is just sort of basic. Yes Jun, to paraphrase Young Thug, we all hate when girls die, but is that really all?

To be fair, in the case of Misuzu’s death, and the closing chapter of this story, it quite literally isn’t all. Misuzu’s soul reunites with Kanna, and it is implied (albeit only indirectly), that this frees both of them—since they are ultimately, metaphysically one in the same—from their shared curse. Still, there’s a very fine line being walked here. “Life is incredibly frail, and there is a certain tragic, inevitable beauty to death” is a perfectly fine notion. Adding just a couple of words in there to make it specifically about the disabled very quickly turns it ugly, and I am not sure Air manages to say the first thing entirely without saying the second even if it doesn’t ‘mean’ to, which is a shame, to say the least.

On the other hand, you can try to ignore any themes built into Air entirely. That seems to be what much of the Japanese game-buying public did with the visual novel. Maeda has recounted² how many players’ main takeaway was that the game was “soothing,” and how frustrating this was to him. From a certain point of view, this is definitely true of the anime as well, and you’re free to strip it for parts if all you really need is a sumptuous bath of wonderfully retro visuals and sound. Indeed, in addition to its very deliberate sense of place, Air lives and breathes its era; it is Early 2000s as hell, and all of the signifiers that have become so inseparable from this era are present. This is especially obvious with the highly sexually dimorphic character designs, where the men are all tall, lanky, and comparatively realistic, and the women are all short, soft, and have huge headlight bug-eyes. There’s some really strong animation, too, especially in terms of the near-constant sea breeze that blows throughout the show. Every hair on many of the girls’ heads will happily billow in the wind throughout the series, it’s quite something. Reducing the series to its aesthetic components in this way, however, requires actively disregarding what Air is about. I can’t speak for the game, but I don’t think the series is helped by trying to flatten it into a Pure Moods CD, even given its flaws.

If you wanted to, though, you had an option there, too. The series’ companion album Ornithopter, a sprightly thing where trance and instrumental city pop meld and melt together into a hazy heat blur, is an interesting counterpoint to the sadder parts of the anime. Like a pleasant dream the night after a bad day, it seems to gently nudge us into remembering that life will go on.

Life did, in fact, go on for all involved with Air. This series was director Ishihara Tatsuya‘s debut in that capacity, and he shortly thereafter went on to helm the world-conquering anime adaptation of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and a number of excellent Kyoto Animation titles thereafter including Nichijou, arguably the best comedy anime ever made and certainly one of the best of its era. He’s still at it now, directing the currently-airing third season of Hibike! Euphonium. Main series compositionist Shimo Fumihiko is also still working, currently fulfilling that same role on the fifth season of cult series Date A Live. A good chunk of the voice cast is still active, not always a given for an anime that’s nearly 20 years old, although sadly Misuzu’s voice actress Kawakami Tomoko, perhaps best known as the title character in Revolutionary Girl Utena, passed away in 2011 after a battle with cancer. She was an incredible talent, and was taken from us too soon.

And then, there’s the case of Maeda Jun himself, certainly worth discussing given that he seems to have been the main creative brain behind Air. Maeda, of course, had a pretty successful career for quite a while after Air, working in a similar capacity as the main force behind Clannad and Angel Beats! (the latter of which became an anime that I deeply love), among other things. Then, in 2020, came The Day I Became A God, and, well, if you’re a longtime reader of this site, you know how that went. I more or less stand by what I said in that article, and Air‘s lowest moments foreshadow some of The Day I Became A God‘s core problems, but it’s worth noting that I was hardly alone, there. The Day I Became A God was so widely disliked that the backlash prompted Maeda to retire from writing for anime and the like entirely, and he claims he felt so disheartened by the reception that he apparently considered killing himself.

It never feels great to be a part—even a very small part—of that kind of reception. I would like to think Maeda has good work in him still, and overall, I’d say I quite liked Air, despite its flaws. (Certainly my feelings on Angel Beats! remain unchanged, as well.) But you can’t change what’s already been done, and if Maeda has decided to stick to composing, he’s at least certainly very good at that as well.

As for Air itself, the series, there’s a lot I haven’t touched on, here. The series’ first half has a lot of great storytelling moments that I have both skipped recounting for the sake of not making this article even longer and to leave some of the magic intact for anyone who reads this and wants to check the show out. I’ve also not really gone into the various highs and lows of the show’s comedic moments, of which it has a surprising amount. (The very short version; most of the humor is actually surprisingly great, but a few things have not aged well. Sexual harassment-as-joke is something we should be glad we’ve largely left behind.) There are lots of bizarre little details, like Misuzu’s constant referring to chicks as “dinosaurs’ children” (she knows her cladistics!), a dog that makes “piko-piko” noises instead of barking, and so on. Despite all I’ve written, I feel like I’ve only really scratched the surface, and the years of surrounding context that have built up around Air have only amplified that feeling.

In the end though, Air has given me a wider appreciation not just for Maeda’s work but for work in general. Art reflects life, and life doesn’t stop for anyone. There’s no point in not trying to enjoy every day you have, and the fact that Air could make me reflect on the value of my own life and the time I have left in it is, in a way, the greatest argument in favor of it being a worthy piece of art. Dreams can be beautiful, yes. But, we all wake up eventually.

^{1: In general, as I’ve pointed out in my previous writing on this series, their dynamic reminds me a lot of Rosa and Maria’s from Umineko. I do wonder if it was a direct inspiration or just a coincidence.}

^{2: In the initial version of this article, I said I couldn’t find this interview. However, since then, someone has backed it up on the Internet Archive’s Wayback Machine, and if Google Translate is to be judged good enough to get the gist of the interview, that does in fact seem to be what he said, in essence if not literally.}

Posted on April 29, 2024June 9, 2024 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [4/29/24]

Hello folks. It’s been another solid week of the ongoing anime season, but the vast majority of this column is going to be taken up by something a little different. Read on, past the seasonals, to see what I mean.

Anime

Mysterious Disappearances – Episode 3

I am still kind of astounded by how much less this story works as an anime.

Granted, the particular choice of adapter definitely has something to do with it, but the resolution of the whole Dribblers arc here—I still hate typing that—just feels way less satisfying on screen than it did on the page. Also, why the hell was this episode so yellow? Everything was absolutely drenched in the color. I get that the flashback scenes were, you know, flashbacks, but the sepia look they were going for did not come across at all. The present-day scenes in the hallway look that way because of the time of day, but it kills all the visual dynamism giving us easily the worst-looking episode of the show so far.

The one thing that survives is the series’ very goofy sense of humor. A particularly memorable moment tonight as I watched this with some friends was when one of them (Alice, who I may have mentioned elsewhere on this site before? I don’t remember) remarked on how uncomfortable Sumireko’s tracksuit must’ve been right before it popped open in the most elbow-jabby we’re-playing-this-as-a-joke-but-it’s-mostly-here-so-you-can-ogle-this-girl’s-tits sequence I’ve seen in anything in a hot minute. ~~I guess Studio Passione know their strengths. All told, I’d still rather they be doing this than Ishura.~~ (A well after-the-fact correction from me here. I completely got the studio wrong! This is actually a Zero-G production. I have no idea how I got that wrong. Whoops!)

All of this stuff is in the manga, too, so it may seem unfair to criticize the anime for just adapting what’s already there. But again, the simple facts of the format make it stand out way more in motion than it does in a manga, this adaptation has thusfar largely been rote and workmanlike. It’s technically fine, I guess, if you’ve not experienced this story before, but the format change strips a lot of its moodiness, which is the main thing that makes Mysterious Disappearances work at all, to the extent that it works as a story in the first place.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics – Episode 4

For the most part, Salad Bowl delivered a solid and straightforward episode this past week, about stopping a middle school girl from being bullied. That said, the final few minutes of episode four are worth mentioning. Here, the show swerves into a solid three minutes of casually-insane worldbuilding, where it’s revealed that Sara’s original world is actually a parallel Japan where Oda Nobunaga became a literal demon king by acquiring magic powers. This sort of ridiculousness is more than enough to remind me why I like this show.

Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 17

SHE! IS! HERE!

The menace, the power, the unease, and yes, the beauty. These are all traits present in Chimera-Falin, who makes her grand debut this episode. It is probably the most hype I’ve been for a character introduction in a TRIGGER show in a decade.

No anime could reasonably match the absolutely radioactive presence that Chimera-Falin has in ink, on paper. So instead, this episode’s team bring an impressive arsenal of tricks of motion to convey her narrative (and literal!) weight. Chimera-Falin as a character literally bends the story around her, and from her introduction onwards, things change fairly sharply. The show displays this by showing in gruesome detail just how thoroughly she absolutely annhiliates all opposition. To dredge up the tired Dungeons & Dragons metaphor oft used for Dungeon Meshi once again, she’s one of those really high CR, thoroughly unfair monsters. She’s huge, incredibly robust and durable, can claw her foes—characters we’ve gotten to know over the past several episodes, mind you!—to shreds, and on top of all that, enough of her human mind remains that she can still cast spells. Can you imagine how absolutely defeated that mage must feel when Falin simply dispels his summoned undine? I’d be somewhere between furious and suicidal. In general, Falin is drawn and animated in a way that emphasizes her strength and presence. I’d also say she’s drawn with just about the right level of frightening allure. We are supposed to find this as enthralling as we do scary. (This is sort of how Laios seems to see it, in fact, albeit along a different axis than, say, many of the lesbians watching the anime.) Also, she gets a number of really fantastic facial expressions here, some of which are cribbed from the manga but many of which aren’t! I wish more online discussion of the Dungeon Meshi anime focused on what TRIGGER brought to the table in details like this rather than on what can’t be replicated from the original manga, but alas.

The action is excellent, too, almost so much so that saying anything other than that feels like underselling it somehow. Sakugabooru identifies many of the best individual moments as coming from mononymous animators Yooto and Sushio, but really, the entire episode is fantastic from top to bottom.

After Falin clambers offstage, we of course get the long heart-to-fist-to-face-to-heart between Shuro and Laios. I actually think this works slightly better here than in the manga, as it’s a case where stripping some of the ambiguity inherent to that format actually sharpens the show’s emotional impact.

We end with some comedy to take the edge off as our heroes venture ever-deeper into the dungeon, with their objective changed to explicitly defeating the Lunatic Magician. This, at roughly the story’s 1/3rd point, is a real rounding-the-corner moment for Dungeon Meshi, and to my recollection is where we shift from it being a very good story to it being a great one. I cannot wait to see TRIGGER adapt the rest of it.

Some stray additional observations:

Not to be this person, but I am surprised they were allowed to draw the harpies’ nipples.
There is blood everywhere. Several other commenters have pointed this out, but the difference between how striking the visual contrast is in the anime vs. the manga is pretty interesting, it’s amazing what just adding more red than a Playboi Carti album can do. This was an extremely gory episode all around!
Marcille looks absolutely miserable throughout this entire episode. Not without reason! But still, my poor girl.
To completely shoot myself in the foot vis-à-vis what I said in the first bullet point, I think Chimera Falin might be even more beautiful in motion than she was in the manga. Where’s the HRT I can take to get that body, huh, medical science?

Revolutionary Girl Utena – Episode 4

Entering the firmly non-seasonal part of the Anime writeups, hey, did you know I’m currently in the middle of a Revolutionary Girl Utena rewatch? Specifically, as part of a group effort by the Empty Movement folks wherein we watch one episode per week to replicate its original air schedule. I bring all this up because I think I’ve somehow forgotten to mention it on the site before now. I’m going to try to avoid giving anything away regarding episodes of the anime after the point I’m covering on a given week (and will also not be writing a ton in general, most likely, given that I often feel underqualified to discuss Utena), but given that I’ve seen this show before—and how heavily Utena rewards rewatching—it may prove a bit of a challenge, just as an honest heads’ up. I encourage everyone to get in on this, if they’re interested in the idea. We watch an episode every Tuesday.

In any case, Episode 4 is the first of several revolving around Miki [Hisakawa Aya]. Perhaps even more importantly, though, is an on-its-face comedic scene that takes up the middle third of the episode. Here, where local school mean girl Nanami [Shiratori Yuri] attempts to bully Anthy [Fuchizaki Yuriko], we get a sense that Nanami may be able to notice that things are strange even when others do not. The rest of the cast, including Utena [Kawakami Tomoko] herself, write Anthy’s strangeness off as quirky at most. Nanami, our proverbial canary, seems to be the only one distressed by it.

Air – Episodes 1-8

Oh, this is just going to be incomprehensible.

Okay, so, this is a problem I have not run into yet when writing these columns. I generally only watch an episode or two of something at a time, and because most of what I cover here is actively airing, I only have one episode at a time to cover. That’s not the case with older anime, where something like this can happen, where I get very sucked into it and end up making, say, several tumblr posts in a row—the raw material for this column, recall—in a way that defies easily merging them into a single snappy writeup. What I’ve presented below are lightly edited versions of my original posts in roughly chronological order. Bear with me, here, I’m aware that this is kind of a mess to read, but I couldn’t think of an easier way to do this. (I may very well also just review the series outright when I’m done watching it, but I’m loathe to outright promise such a thing.) I am also going to spoil the hell out of it, including some pretty important stuff. So if you just want a straight “is this good or not?” recommendation, I’d tentatively say yeah, it’s pretty great, but probably skip this big long section here and go down to the Manga writeup for this week if you’re spoiler-shy.

Maybe the length of this section is fine. Air has basically eaten my brain over the past week, and as I’ve entered what I believe is the second half of the show, I have only become more fascinated. It is a sticky series, and I think it might be kind of great, although we’ll see if I still think that by the time it ends.

Episode 1

“I had a dream. A strange dream about the sky.”

I started watching this today¹, because my buddy Josh² is watching it, and I am easily influenced by outside forces I suppose.

This is Air, a 2005 Kyoto Animation production from just before their legendary run that began with The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It’s adapted from a KEY visual novel, and my first impression is that it is very visibly “VN-y” indeed.

The main feeling I get is one of overwhelming “summer energy.” There are near constant cicada sounds in the backdrop, the skies are a clear crystal blue with huge, billowing white clouds which flip to creamy streaks of the Milky Way across an inky black at night. Everyone, especially our main character, is sweating all the time because it’s so goddamn hot, and the whole thing takes place by the shore. The vibes are absolutely on-point.

In addition to this impeccable sense of place—a deliberate artistic vision—there is also a decidedly non-intentional sense of time. This show absolutely radiates 2005, most obviously from the character designs, which are of a highly sexually dimorphic kind that was common in VNs and adjacent work at the time. The main guy is tall, lanky, and angular. Almost all of the women are comparatively short, round, and have the massive headlamp bug-eyes inextricably associated with the period.

The plot, such that it is, is simple but also rather odd. Essentially, our main character, Kunisaki Yukito [Ono Daisuke], who we are given no backstory for at this point, simply arrives in town one day, nebulously “looking for” something, and attempting to earn money by plying his trade as a puppeteer—it is very much worth noting that he appears to control his puppets with no strings or other tricks—but has little success. When he meets an odd, clumsy girl named Kamio Misuzu [Kawakami Tomoko], who trips a lot and says “gao!” when upset or frustrated. He ends up following her home, and improbably, the girl’s drunkard mother, Kamio Haruko [Hisakawa Aya] drafts him as a live-in babysitter.

Some of this is probably a remnant of the show’s origins as a VN—an eroge, at that, although this particular pipeline of H-game -> clean visual novel -> anime or manga adaptation was not rare back in the day—where a man randomly shoehorning himself into the lives of various women about town is the norm.

About the “gao” thing; Kamio’s mother disapproves, and this dynamic can’t help but remind me of Rosa’s disapproval of her own daughter Maria’s verbal tic from Umineko, itself a visual novel that later got a (particularly poorly-regarded in that case) anime adaptation. So far, the dynamic here seems far less fraught and abuse-laden, but it’s an interesting parallel, and given that Umineko postdates Air, I wonder if it was an intentional reference. (Ryukishi07 surely would’ve been aware of Key at the time?)

The second girl our protagonist meets, Kirishima Kano [Okamoto Asami], seems to style herself an alien, from a planet where everyone is “free.” Freedom. Air. ‘Free as a bird’? There’s something here, especially when she rebuffs the idea later and makes fun of Yukito for believing her in the first place. We later learn that Kano has an odd pseudo-sleepwalking condition, and that her older sister Hijiri [Touma Yumi] is the town doctor.

I cannot shake a strong feeling that this show is keeping its cards close to its chest. Given how crazy the visual novels of this period could get, I really have no idea what to expect. Although, to sell the show more on what it’s doing now than what it might do later, the comedic aspects are very well done. It’s a nice mix of slapstick and conversational comedy. Also, as mentioned, the show’s atmosphere is just absolutely immaculate; you can practically taste the salt of the sea on the wind as you’re watching this.

At the end of the episode, at around sunset, Misuzu gives a little speech as she’s standing, arms stretched out, with her head tilted toward the sky. I don’t normally just include a bunch of screencaps in these little writeups because I like to keep them short³, but what she says here just struck me as so…profoundly odd, strangely beautiful, a little reminiscent of my own experiences with mania and spiritual fervor, that I just kind of need to include it.

In a much more serious sense than usual; what does she mean by this? This is the most taken I’ve been with the first episode of an older anime in quite a while, and I really feel like I need to know more.

Episodes 2 & 3

Something very interesting about how the “shocking”, overtly supernatural moments of the episodes are crammed into the margins, usually only truly laid bare in their final minute or so. That’s so far, of course, there are still ten more episodes of this thing left for me to watch.

The image of the girl in the sky that every character seems to be chasing in one way or another is a haunting one, one that burns with a pure white light that I can’t quite call clarity. It feels like something I have an intuitive understanding of, but can’t quite articulate. It means something different to everyone.

On another level, this series dearly loves its characters. You can tell, by the way it portrays them as whimsical little dolls when they roam around the scenery far from the ‘camera.’ Air is a beautiful show, so far, which makes the moment of outright violence at the end of this episode shocking and a little heartbreaking.

Episodes 4 & 5

“There was never such a thing as magic.”

In episode 4, we get what seems an awful lot like an after-the-fact rationalization of Kano’s condition. A clear-headed, scientific explanation. But the show itself seems almost as desperate as Hijiri is to explain away her younger sister’s “illness.”

Surely, there must be some rational explanation, it pleads, as the theory turns to DID and a feather in a shrine as a psychological trigger. It can’t truly be cursed, of course. No rational person, no doctor, could believe that.

“It was only a dream, it has nothing to do with you.”

Until this episode’s halfway point, this desperation feels like it might still point toward some kind of grounded explanation for all this, but that notion shatters into light when Yukito touches the shrine feather. In an instant, Air becomes a different story entirely; a history of persecution, of a mother and her child cursed from birth, fleeing wars, storms, and death to find refuge in the village that once stood on the same spot that Yukito and the others stand on now. Even here, there was no real refuge, and the scene morphs into some distant echo of the binding of Isaac; a mother sacrificing herself to save her child. No story, it is worth remembering, is ever just one story.

“You don’t have wings, be happy down there.”

In episode 5, we turn to dreams of the ocean. Yukito’s own, from when he was a child. Here, the show again takes a somewhat more grounded approach, but “grounded” is relative, and perhaps inappropriate, given that even the series’ episodes that are more “grounded”, “down-to-earth”, an other such terms that conflate mundanity with the soil beneath our feet, are themselves preoccupied with the heavens above, as we learn when we’re introduced to Tohno’s “Astronomy Club” here, consisting of more or less just herself and a large portable telescope. Despite briefly meeting her mother, Yukito returns the next day to find the woman claiming she has no daughter, and Tohno herself is missing.

Elsewhere, we learn that Misuzu suffers panic attacks when she gets close to people. This is a distinct yank back to reality from a show that has so far spent most of its time with its head in the clouds, but the loneliness Misuzu’s condition creates—typified by a quick cut to a shot of a lonesome cloud—works with what Air has previously done. A profound loneliness connects most of the show’s characters, although they largely don’t yet seem aware of this connection.

If there’s an emerging theme here, it’s that of lost or broken connections. Tohno is kicked out of her home because her mother has replaced one delusion with another and doesn’t recognize her, Misuzu feels unwelcome in her own house because her “mother” is actually her aunt whose care she was put in as a troubled, younger child, etc.

The cruel reality of the sky is that it can’t truly be reached from the ground, not without wings. The show’s color palette shifts drastically in the episode’s final moments to reflect this line of thought, running red and black like a gaping wound. A strange, stark turn from a strange, stark show.

Episode 6

More than a story in the usual sense, it might make more sense to compare Air to a composition.

It has motifs, themes, imagery, and core ideas, but the anime’s orbiting, circular structure makes it feel like any traditional forward plot motion is an impossibility. The world of Air is suspended in its namesake; a bubble riding a wind current, sealed off from the outside world. And yet, as soon as I had this realization, that sealed-off world was disrupted in this, its sixth episode, making me question it. Air is, if nothing else, great at getting you to think about its characters and its world, and how those aspects interact.

Air‘s two characters named Michiru are, as heavily implied in the last episode, revealed to be one in the same. “Our” Michiru [Tamura Yukari], a character with red twintails previously mostly confined to comedic scenes, confesses her status as a living dream of Minagi, a waking fantasy that must be, in her own mind, discarded for her dreamer to be happy. Still, she is given a good sendoff, and in a beautiful and understated scene, is allowed to try “her” mother’s cooking. It’s a wonderful sendoff for a very memorable character, and the moment in the closing minutes of the episode where Minagi, visiting her father, meets the ‘real’ Michuru are also exceptional.

Michiru’s departure marks a rare change in the otherwise hermetic world of Air. Maybe more are to come? After all, there is still talk of that girl who dreams in the sky, and there are the episode’s final moments, which seem to signal a major shakeup indeed….

Episode 7

I really thought I’d had this show figured out.

Everyone gradually leaves Misuzu’s life as she slowly dies, suffocated to death by her physical inability to be close with other people. Her mother leaves her, and, eventually, so does Yukito, despite how angry he is at her mother for doing the same thing. But then he comes back, only to vanish himself. We have no sense of time here; how long of a timescale is this taking place over? Days? Weeks? Months? It’s hard to say. But at the end, it seems like we’re about to reach some big revelation as to what this all means, only for Yukito himself to vanish, and for a time-and-place card to drop that absolutely slapped me upside the head.

What?!

What do you mean AD 994?!

And yet! It does this! It goes through with it, even, given the next episode preview! We’re just watching a different show now, being shown a completely different story, in a different time period entirely!

And yet again, I have a hunch that this has more to do with the present-day story of the prior six and a half episodes than it would seem.

Episode 8

“We don’t have many days left.”

Clearly, a parallel is being drawn between this new story and the one we were previously following. The situation that our new protagonist, Kanna [Nishimura Chinami], finds herself in and that of our previous protagonist, Misuzu. Indeed, it’s decently strongly implied that they are in fact the same person reincarnated across the centuries. So too, Ryuuya [Kanna Nobutoshi], Kanna’s retainer, is similar to Yukio (although more of a stock anime lech and consequently less likable until he and she grow closer over the course of the episode).

This is basically an entirely different show, albeit one with the same core thematic elements and visual vocabulary as the previous, so it’s a little hard to know just what to make of it as yet. But once he drops his “funny” pervert act, Ryuuya becomes every bit the companion to Kanna that Yukio was to Misuzu. Running away together to flee her sad, isolated fate in the palace is noble, but where is this all going? As of the time of this writing, I still don’t really know. But I’m hoping to finish Air this week, and maybe then I will have more of an understanding of its ambitions.

A side note: the music in this portion of the show, at least the new music, is notably different. Skewing traditional, with lots of flutes and the like.

So! Yeah! Air! It’s a lot! Hopefully I will still like it this much in a week’s time. I intend to keep you posted, anime fans.

Manga

Lily System

Now this is yuri. Gorgeous-as-hell sci-fi yuri, at that.

Once again! I’m gonna spoil the whole thing. So if you just want your basic read/don’t read recommendation I’d say this is quite good, maybe even great.

Lily System‘s premise is really simple. Two girls find an abandoned machine in a shed, and it turns out to be some kind of hyper-futuristic VR device that transports them to a virtual world, an abandoned cityscape overgrown with plants and populated by animals and the occasional strange being. On its own, “two girls wander around an abandoned place together” is inherently yuri, but Lily System doesn’t stick to the subtextual.

Over the course of this story, we learn the precise contours of the relationship between our leads, Nana and Mizuki. Nana is the sensitive intellectual, whereas Mizuki is more forward (with her feelings, romantically, sexually, etc.) and is just a touch tomboyish. Together, they explore the surreal VR world while probing each other with questions about life. With Nana in particular, these tend to revolve around a novel she wrote—a novel whose plot, it gradually becomes clear, is a metaphor both in- and out-of-text for the plot of the manga itself—Mizuki is fond of accusing her book of being ‘a lie,’ and we only really get a sense of what that means at the end of the manga.

The girls eventually become lost, both literally and figuratively, within the VR world, encountering echoes of themselves who kiss in a bell tower, and haunted, animate school uniforms that seem determined to charge at them. When they begin appearing in the ‘real world,’ the girls realize they’ve been in the machine the entire time.

And yet, the conclusion they eventually reach is that maybe that’s not so bad. In the manga’s final act, we learn of Nana’s forgotten middle school love confession to Mizuki, of Mizuki’s regretted rejection of that confession, and how both of them seek to course correct now that they’re a little older. In reality, Nana is headed to a college in Tokyo. Like the fairies in the book she wrote, she and Mizuki will be torn apart. It seems, for a moment, that Lily System will be a bittersweet tale, but that’s not the direction things go in, and I think this decision to avoid the obvious take is what makes Lily System so memorable.

Instead of abandoning each other for the sake of a “realistic” reckoning with the outside world, Nana and Mizuki abandon the world. They retreat, somehow, into their virtual Eden. If they’re ever heard from again, we don’t hear about it.

The manga ends on this note, with Nana and Mizuki in each other’s arms, in a paradise hidden to everyone else. They create their own space. It’s a beautiful ending, and more than anything, it will absolutely fill you with yearning.

The art, it must be said, is gorgeous throughout, with mangaka Yoshitomi Akihito‘s landscapes conveying a real sense of a lost world. The character art is great, too, although fairly subtle. There are many little nods and expressions that give almost as much characterization of our lead girls as the dialogue does.

Notably! The manga also—ahem—climaxes with an actual intimate scene. It’s kept tasteful, and I thought it made a great inflection point for the story, emphasizing that these two really are meant for each other.

All told, beautiful stuff. I have a few stray observations as well.

There’s the curious existence of “Yuuko and Kousuke.” This is an unrelated one-shot that seems to be grouped with Lily System for….reasons I’m not entirely clear on? Maybe someone else will know. It has little in common with Lily System in most terms, and it’s not even a yuri, being about the budding relationship between a young boy and a girl and the former’s first steps toward sexual development. Frankly, I didn’t like it very much, but that might just be because of its odd juxtaposition with Lily System, which is just a much better and more interesting piece of work overall.

Secondly, Yoshitomi Akihito wrote this, as mentioned! If you recognize that name it might be from Eat-Man or Blue Drop, the two series he is, I think, best known for in the west. Certainly though, I had no idea that, from what I can tell from looking at his catalogue, at some point he pivoted to writing….well, stuff like this. Romance, or at least romantically-inflected, works about the relationships between people set in strange, detailed worlds. At least one of these (the “boy meets girl fantasy” of Hanako in the 24th Ward) appears to actually be a spinoff or distant sequel to Eat-Man. Interesting career this guy has had! Although upon looking all this up, I learned that Blue Drop was also a yuri series, at least in part? I somehow didn’t know that, how embarrassing.

That’ll be all for this week. Once again, I really need to find a way to streamline my process a bit.

Here’s today’s bonus thought. So far, these have all been either random musings or screencaps of A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics. Guess which one this week’s is?

^{1: Or rather, April 24th, when I originally wrote this.
2: This is the same Josh that I sometimes reference when talking about Love Live. Hi, Josh.
3: In their original context as Tumblr posts, that is. They’re….well, they’re obviously not short here.}

Posted on April 22, 2024April 22, 2024 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [4/22/24]

Hello, people of Earth! As the season rolls into its third main week, I’ve picked up an additional show, checked out a Netflix series that I think is probably worth diving into, and just all around had a pretty solid time. Hopefully you will, too, as you read on.

Anime

Mysterious Disappearances – Episode 2

I have been somewhat down on this show’s visual direction but I like the “cut in half” motif at the very start of this episode. Overall, this is an alright episode that forms the first half of the—yuck—Dribblers arc. I maintain that this series doesn’t entirely work in motion, to the extent that it works at all, but I think this is about as well as they could’ve done it? The ecchi scenes continue to stick out like a sore thumb. Also, it must be said that the whole “drooling sickness” bit is significantly more viscerally unpleasant in motion than it was in the manga, and it was already kind of gross, there.

The Grimm Variations – Episode 1

The Grimm Variations is a hell of a thing, and essentially my big ‘discovery’ for this week. (To the extent that getting into an anime that recently released on Netflix counts as any kind of discovery of anything.) I really liked what I’ve seen so far, and not just because this is the first anime with CLAMP character designs in a good long while. I’m going to spoil much of the first episode, which is a self-contained story as this is an anthology, right here. So if you’d prefer to just get a quick yes/no recommendation, I’d say skip this entry and go watch the first episode for yourself to see what you think. Although do be aware that it, and indeed every episode of this show, is double-length. Personally, I would say the first episode is pretty great, though not without some caveats.

Essentially, this is a twist on the Cinderella story, wherein Cinderella is evil. Kind of. It’s nuanced, but she’s definitely at least an antagonistic force. This version of the story is transplanted to Japan in, if I had to guess, roughly the 1800s, and our Cinderella figure is named Kiyoko [Kugimiya Rie]. There’s also a frame story featuring the brothers Grimm themselves and a young girl named Charlotte [Fukuen Misato], but they’re not a major factor here.

The main force of this tale is the stepsisters’ own greed, at least at first, since they move into Kiyoko’s home as their mother marries her father. But there’s more going on here, and it’s difficult to tell where the dividing line quite is between what happens to the stepsisters being the result of their own actions vs. it being a consequence of Kiyoko being actively malicious. The slide from the former to the latter is gradual, and the episode’s final moments make it unclear if perhaps this entire thing wasn’t her plan from the start. The fact that Kiyoko displays no obvious malice until the episode’s halfway mark actually makes her more unsettling. The living doll in her possession is an interesting development, as well, especially since she looks like Charlotte from the frame story and seems to actively dislike how ruthless Kiyoko is being.

In the episode’s last act, Kiyoko, of course, unexpectedly shows up at the ball outshining both her sisters, propelling us to the end of the Cinderella storyline in which it is inevitably her, and not her stepsisters, who is wed to the prince. (Or, in this interpretation, the heir of a noble family. Same difference. As a sidebar, the show’s translation of various Japanese noble titles into words like “Count” and such is a little strange, although given that this is ultimately based on a European story, perhaps it works.)

It’s interesting how open to interpretation the entire story is. When the stepsisters first arrive, the affection Kiyoko gives them seems genuine, but over time, she begins mocking them, and it seems to grow into a twisted thing where she thinks of them as her playthings. (That she feels this way at least by the end of the story is one of relatively few things we know to be true.) Is this some kind of twisted vengeance? Is this the entitlement of the upper class? Maybe a bit of both? A conversation with a friend of mine (hello, Lexi) led me to think it’s interesting how the stepsisters’ fate can be read in a number of different ways if one is so inclined. For example, as the tendency of moneyed society to shut out anyone who tries to rise above their station. You can see this with how Kiyoko relies on the trust of the house servants, despite throwing one of them under the bus in order to frame her sisters, and how she arranges events such that their “impure” tendencies from their upbringing, their poor etiquette and gaudy dress sense, are exposed and mocked.

On another note entirely, the show’s visuals are worth praising. Overall, it mostly looks good, but I do wish it looked just a little more so. In its best moments it really captures the sickly elegance and sumptuousness of a rich household, but it falters just often enough that it only works some of the time instead of all of the time. Notably, the characters look significantly better in profile than they do dead-on, which is mostly to the episode’s benefit but occasionally saps a bit of impact out of closeups and such.

But these shortcomings are more than made up for by specific, highly stylish moments. The shot of Kiyoko in a bloodied kimono, juxtaposed over herself as she stands in the ballroom, is lovely. As is her expression, visible for only a frame or two, of a sadistic grin when she’s (correctly) accused of killing her stepmother.

The final reveal; that the stepsisters are also acting, is quite the twist, but makes sense with what we’re presented beforehand, and leaves the tale on a suitably unsettling and disquieting note. All questions, no answers.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics – Episode 3

This is easily the best episode of Salad Bowl so far. It’s also really weird! The two things are connected. In general, the series continues to have a very modern and satirical sense of humor, which is not really something I was expecting when I started watching it. There’s an unstated irony (and perhaps an implied parallel being drawn) between the actual genre of fiction this show occupies and the roped-off world of the Branch Hill cult, who are the main element introduced in this episode. They’re a cloistered, faux-positive, new-age hack religion, of the kind that is very prominent in Japan, and seeing an anime tackle this at all, much less this brazenly, is pretty impressive.

The absolutely incredible parody of a cult recruitment video would be the highlight of the episode were it not for Livia inadvertently turning herself into the cult’s Jesus by healing a stab wound in its final act. I’m sure we’ll see the Branch Hill folks more as the show goes on, and I’m interested to see how they factor in to the series’ overall goals.

Unnamed Memory – Episodes 1 & 2

I watched the first two episodes of this with friends because I heard from some other folks that it was amusing, and also because one of the main characters is a witch and that’s a whole Thing with me. I’m not sure what I think of the series on the whole so far, but it’s definitely at least decent. The first episode is extremely dry and expository, though, so if someone got a bad first impression of it I wouldn’t be that surprised.

So, what is Unnamed Memory on the whole? Well, something with the very broad structure of a fairytale, basically. The crown prince Oscar [Nakajima Yoshiki] needs an heir but has had his, ahem, manhood cursed by a witch. He sets out to find, and conquers, a mystical tower, petitioning the (unrelated) witch of the tower, Tinasha of the Azure Moon [Tanezaki Atsumi], to free him of his curse. When she can’t, he tries to convince her to become his wife instead, since the curse won’t affect her. (It’s complicated.) When she refuses, he instead asks her to live in the capitol for a year, which she agrees to. Implicitly, this is also to give Oscar time to woo her over.

Fundamentally all of this is basically fine, but it’s a little dry. That said, as someone with very strong opinions as to how such characters should be written, Tinasha, to my own surprise, works a lot more than she doesn’t. She’s powerful, mercurial, a little silly, and full of secrets. Still, her ultimate purpose in this story is to eventually marry Oscar, a fact that the show, in its first two episodes, circles around but (perhaps unsurprisingly given how we’re not very far in), doesn’t directly address. Tinasha says herself that witches are objects of fear, but does the narrative fear her? If it doesn’t, it’s hard for us to do so either, which makes it difficult to buy into the series’ central conceits. The additional fact that she occasionally is played as nothing more than a staid tsundere is pretty bad, too. So it’s a mixed bag on that front.

On the other hand, Unnamed Memory is hardly the anime actually responsible for reducing the sorceress archetype to a gag character, and Tinasha is still given more depth here than many are, and when she’s on she’s on. There’s a particular scene in the second episode where she takes out a cadre of evil wizards and a giant wolf imprisoned in a chunk of ice all on her own, and it’s far and away the best thing in the entire show so far.

Basically, the impression I’m getting here is of a story carried by one of its characters having a lot more appeal and charisma than the rest. (Not a unique phenomenon at all. See The Detective is Already Dead, by this same studio, for an example from a few years ago.) Oscar is broadly Fine as a protagonist but he’s hardly worth talking about compared to Tinasha, and I’ll acknowledge my own biases there, but I really just can’t imagine this show working with a less interesting female lead….and it’s entirely possible they’ll fumble that aspect, anyway. So I’m not sure if I’m going to stick with this or not. If I am, it will mostly be for Tinasha herself.

Also, it’s worth addressing the visuals since this is a series, as mentioned, this series comes to us from the infamous jankmeisters at Studio ENGI. All told, it actually looks pretty much fine, at least not any worse than any of its narou-kei anime contemporaries, and there are actually a few scenes where the animation pops in a nice way, so that’s cool. Will it keep that up? Who knows! But I’m interested in finding out, so that’s definitely one thing in the show’s favor.

Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night – Episode 2

Great second episode from this one.

I do not see enough discussion of how unique this show’s soundtrack is. I haven’t heard this many analog (or at least analog-sounding) synthesizers in an anime OST. Not recently, and possibly not ever? Certainly not in something released this decade.

Let’s talk about the new character, Takanashi Kim Anouk Mei [Shimabukuro Miyuri]. She seems to be a little older than the rest of the cast, but more to the point, is a hardcore idol otaku to the point where it’s actively offputting to the other characters. Especially offputting to Kano, whose old idol persona Mei is a diehard stan of.

This is, on the surface, a very strange move for this show to be making, but I think I see what they’re doing here, casting Mei as someone who is clearly working through her own stuff by burying herself deep in idol fandom. And indeed, we soon learn she was bullied, possibly for being biracial and perhaps neurodivergent. The text isn’t technically explicit, but it’s fairly clear that these things are factors. One of the people bullying her literally just outright says that she’s bad at social cues, and her hair, apparently naturally a reddish-orange, sticks out, as does her name, which she’s openly mocked for. When she first met Kano in a flashback, she was adrift and purposeless, but it’s clear that over time the sincere connection they made at that point has curdled into something sour. It takes realigning herself with Kano the person, and finding an internal acceptance of how she’s changed, that lets her open back up. The show playing this whole very idol anime-y “prior meeting of destiny” bit completely straight is a little surprising, although it can’t resist playing with it as Mei makes a bunch of goofy gay disaster faces the entire time, but I think that by the episode’s end it works out pretty well, with Mei accepting Kano as she is now, and allowing herself to move on.

On another note: there’s a whole thing with hair dye (and more generally, changing one’s appearance) as a motif through this series. Kano goes blonde to avoid any association with her past life as an idol, Mei dyes her hair black both to emulate Kano-as-Nono-tan and to hide her unusual hair color, and this even sort of extends to Kiui, who we haven’t really met yet, who doesn’t physically dye her hair but has a VTuber rig with a different hair color. (Kiui’s hair being pink puts a kink in this whole thing, but not a major one.)

Overall, this was a really strong second episode and I’m glad that this show has kept up the momentum so well.

Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 16

Another good episode this week. I don’t have a ton of thoughts, this time around, but I do have a few minor observations.

In general, watching Laios say entirely too much while talking to Shuro is a lot more uncomfortable when it’s animated and voice acted. This is one of the least visually-impressive parts of the anime (which isn’t to say it looks bad. It looks quite good and TRIGGER delivers well on what is there, but there just isn’t a ton to draw), but it’s one of the most effective. Especially when Shuro absolutely freaks out on Laios during the pivotal scene where he finds out just what Laios and company have done to resurrect Falin.

We get a little more acquainted with Shuro’s retainerate (is that the term?) here, as well. I always wished we could spend a little more time with these characters, so I’m savoring every moment they’re on-screen, they’re all super fun. Inutade [Furuya Yoshino] will probably emerge as the fan favorite but I like all of them, personally.

As for that final little reveal at the end, what can I—or anybody?—say? She’s here! I’m very excited for the next few weeks.

Pokémon Horizons – Episode 47

With the delinquent, rude rival trainer involved and the battle itself being preceded by some unrelated challenge, this felt oddly like a season 1 episode of the original Pokémon anime.

Largely that’s not a complaint; I think Liko’s ongoing internal struggles are compelling. If I can criticize something though, the “losing the battle doesn’t necessarily mean failing the test” thing seems like it might do weird things to this series’ structure? I guess we’ll see.

Wonderful Pretty Cure – Episode 12

We get a surprisingly moody and starkly-directed episode of Pretty Cure this week, and I am very much here for it.

Cure Nyammy [Matsuda Satsumi], as teased last week, is real! But she’s also a brooding loner and kind of a hardass, and it seems like the disjunct between her more violent method of dealing with the Garugaru and our original duo’s caring, hug-it-out process is going to be a conflict for at least the next few episodes. It is wild how strongly her violent approach contrasts with Wonderful and Friendy’s, and I am a little surprised the show goes there.

Visually, this is the best episode of Wonderful Precure so far. Lots of really stylish animation, especially with the fight scenes, and in general, a surprisingly eerie vibe throughout much of the episode’s back half. If I can make a potentially controversial claim, I actually think this season has (so far!) had a higher batting average of great to merely decent-looking episodes than Hirogaru Sky. But then, we’re only a quarter of the way through Wonderful, so perhaps the comparison is meaningless as of yet.

Anyway, yes, Nyammy. It’s been a while since they’ve done the Cure Honey approach of having a character become a Precure offscreen and then be introduced to the other characters in a piecemeal sort of fashion. I really like the approach here, given Nyammy’s antiheroic personality and general moodiness. Since we already know her backstory, we can make some educated guesses as to how she ended up this way and what she’s prioritizing. (Hint: it’s protecting Mayu.) Although I do wonder if this might be a little intense for your average kid? That aside, Nyammy might be my favorite Precure overall in a hot minute, to be honest.

Himitsu no AiPri – Episode 2

This show is so wonderfully incoherent that I only barely know what actually happened in this episode. Everything else is just a pure sugar rush of digital imagery, only loosely tied together by this whole plot of Himari and Mitsuki trying and failing to keep a mutual secret from each other. I liked this episode, but gosh was it a lot to absorb.

Girls Band Cry – Episode 2

A very good second episode, although one I could not really wrangle my thoughts into a coherent whole about. Have a bulleted list instead. Also I must say, I could relate to this episode a lot, as someone who also often fails at basic household tasks and ends up crying on the floor.

I like the sky-patterened bird cutout as a metaphor for bottled-up feelings. I wonder if it’ll recur in later episodes.
We learn more about Nina’s weird rich girl country family and her bad school experiences.
The meal becomes an immediate metaphor for both Nina’s own past and her emotional baggage in general. It’s clear that she wants to devote herself to music, despite her own protests, but can’t bring herself to focus on anything but studying.
NOT THE EMOTIONALLY RESONANT ENGLISH HOMEWORK?
Momoka bringing her a light fixture literally vs. symbolically “giving her light” is very funny.
The subtle alienation in the scene where Momoka and her new friend/bandmate Subaru invite Nina for a meal and largely talk with each other without involving her is really sad.
I really liked the lashing out and making up scenes at the end.

Train to The End of the World – Episode 4

It has been a while since an anime made me think “what the fuck am I watching?” verbatim. Shuumatsu Train really probably should have joined this illustrious club a while ago, but maybe it took four episodes for it to really sink in just how utterly weird this series is. Episode 4 continue the stretch of the show that I’m tentatively referring to as the “Akira just has a generally quite bad time” arc.

I was right last week, she had a mushroom growing on her backside, and she spends most of this week’s episode hiding it from her fellow travelers as they go through an increasingly esoteric series of whacked-out train stops populated by bizarre, sometimes hostile creatures. We don’t get a long look at any of these, which is possibly for the better (sometimes it’s best to let the audience’s imagination fill in the gaps). Angry goat people who compulsively run at and headbutt the train? Screaming plants that cackle insanely as the train rolls past? Floating internal organs? Hails of golf balls? Why the hell not? Reimi openly speculates within the text of the show itself that these might all be former people, which is an even more mortifying thought.

Akira’s dilemma is the real central concern here, though. When the others find out about her mushroom, they yank it out, and in what I believe is a reference to the idea of a shirikodama, seem to take her soul with it, leaving her a babbling, sleepy mess who can barely sit upright on her own. The entire thing is pretty sad, and with this being the show’s first two-parter, we don’t see how or even if Akira will be returned to normal. I’m worried for my girl! Even though her normal personality is basically outright said to be a coping mechanism for the depressing state of the world both before the 7G Incident but also very much after it!

I also have to point out an excellent piece of analysis I saw elsewhere. I generally check /r/anime (as well as a few other places, namely, the relevant tumblr tags, Twitter hashtags, and BlueSky hashtags) for shows I’m keeping up with, because I like to have a general feel for the timbre of conversation about a given series while it airs. Usually, I do not see anyone make any inferences I didn’t make myself, but this post on the former by user 8andahalfby11 postulates an interesting—and sensible!—source for all of the weirdness in the series.

And that’s all for this week. Putting this column together took several hours, which is a lot more than I thought it would! I need to streamline my process, perhaps.

Here’s this week’s bonus thought: things that seem insignificant to you might mean the world to others, so mind what you say when speaking to people.

Posted on April 20, 2024 in Manga, The Manga Shelf

The Manga Shelf: Your Planet is Doomed – The End of Romance and the Alienation of Humanity in UCHUUJIN NO KAKUSHIGOTO

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.

Knowing yourself is hard, knowing others is harder. Mangaka Hamita, in the second work by him that I’ve read since learning about him last week, seems to suggest that it might, in fact, be completely impossible. This is a core concern of Uchuujin no Kakushigoto (also Secret of the Alien, semi-officially), one of just a few manga of his that aren’t self-published. Other concerns of the work include honesty, difficulty in understanding one’s own feelings and the feelings of others, and of understanding how people think in general. Our main characters are our male lead—called “Class Rep” so often that that might as well be his name¹—and Tamachi Haru, his girlfriend, an alien from another planet, who he confesses his love for shortly after she comforts him in the wake of his parents’ unexpected death.

In many other manga, the alien angle would be a gimmick. Something to give a bit of color to an otherwise typical romcom and to highlight how other people can be “alien” to us, while reinforcing that love and kindness can form real, meaningful connections regardless. Uchuujin no Kakushigoto turns that on its head. The inherent unknowability of others is the entire point, and the manga seems extremely skeptical that it’s possible for people to truly know each other at all.

But I’m getting a bit ahead of myself. The manga’s actual narrative concerns Haru, her mysterious “mission” to Earth, and the ways she and the Class Rep impact the lives of those around them. Being from another planet, Haru has no concept of why killing is wrong. This leads to the first central conflict of the manga, wherein she murders the class delinquent Karagaki for hitting on the Class Rep in front of her, because she assumes humans can just rebuild themselves from nothing like her own species can. The Class Rep is, of course, brought to a panic by having his classmate blown to smithereens in front of him, but Haru reassures him that everything will be fine. In two weeks’ time, when she can travel back home, she can regenerate Karagaki just like a member of her own species. So as long as Karagaki’s sudden disappearance stays covered up, it’s no harm no foul.

It does not stay covered up, of course. And in fact, events quickly spiral out of control from this initial flashpoint as twist piles on twist and revelation piles upon revelation. (Not a knock, this style of storytelling gets a bad rep, but it makes for a real page-turner when properly deployed.) A few things quickly become clear. For one, Haru is a truly alien alien. She has no real concept of human morality or common sense, and the Class Rep’s attempts to impart these values to her largely fail. For two, these efforts fail because the Class Rep doesn’t really understand Haru. In fact, as the manga goes on, it becomes clear that, for three, he doesn’t really understand anybody. He tries to help people almost compulsively—the result, we later learn, of a neglectful upbringing—but because he can’t truly relate to people, his “help” tends to cause more problems than it solves. (He is in fact at one point depicted as being unable to distinguish any person who needs his help from any other. This isn’t literal, but it’s telling.) You could, if you were so inclined, read this as loosely ableist, but as someone who is neurodivergent myself, I found it profoundly and painfully relatable. You, or at least I, will really feel for this guy over the course of the story, to say nothing else of the other people caught in this whole mess.

Take the character of Teru for example. Ostensibly, he’s Karagaki’s boyfriend. But after she disappears, it’s slowly revealed that not only was she majorly two-timing him, he’s also the only person actually searching for her, because everyone else assumes she’s just run off somewhere. Teru, we learn, is also deeply alienated from his own feelings, and has spent a lot of time and effort trying to be like Karagaki so she’ll like him back. (She’s the reason he has blonde hair, for example, and it’s implied he generally attempts to act the part of a punk even though he’s really not one.) His persistence in trying to find her, even after the Class Rep manages to talk him out of it once or twice, is in a way admirable, but when the mounting stress of realizing she didn’t truly love him collides with the fallout from another incident wherein his mother suddenly abandons him, he can’t take it, and kills himself.

The ripple effect here, of Haru and the Class Rep’s actions indirectly leading to such a drastic outcome, is characteristic of Uchuujin no Kakushigoto. But more than just a storytelling style (one that foreshadows the manga’s final big twist), it’s representative of its tone. This is, at its core, a deeply bitter story about love that isn’t really love, people who don’t and can’t comprehend each other’s feelings, and how, if extrapolated to the whole of humanity, these intersecting facets say something very bleak about the human race.

Things that are tonally bitter have a bad reputation, and certainly, handled poorly, it can come off as the author simply ranting at an uncaring world. (Though given the state of the world, I’m inclined to forgive a bit of even that much nowadays.) So I do understand why the kneejerk reaction may be, as it was for me, that this manga thinks it has more to say than it actually does. (Honestly, that might even be true, as we’ll get into.) But that overtone of bitterness shouldn’t discount the story on its own. Bitterness is a part of the human condition just like any other emotion, and it can be worthwhile to see it explored. The specific kind of cynicism here feels so total that finding a “constructive” read can feel difficult, but art is not moral instruction. Even read as uncharitably as possible, Uchuujin no Kakushigoto is still emotionally affecting. It’s true that the nature of some of the characters means they resonate less than they might otherwise, but for the most part, and despite its many twists and turns, I actually found it fairly strong in this regard. It feels a bit silly to actually put it this way, but the mere fact that I felt sad when characters died, and that their later “revivals” via Haru’s space techno-magic actually made it hurt more, is a huge point in the manga’s favor. Being able to punch you in the gut is a skill like any other, and it’s worth praising when it’s well-developed.

Now, we do need (or at least, I feel the need) to take somewhere to note the flaws this thing does have. One of Haru’s gee-whiz sci-fi gadgets, which the manga mostly portrays as rightly horrifying uber-technology, is a memory-erasing gun. It seems to give those it affects permanent brain damage, a state Haru herself tellingly terms “honest.” As an example, a major supporting character is a girl named Maseki, the vice class president, and in love with the Class Rep. As introduced, she’s a thoughtful and sweet girl. But eventually, she falls afoul of Haru’s mission, and the damage from the gun turns her into an “honest” being of pure id, devoid of any inhibition. The second this new incarnation of her is introduced, she tries to strangle Haru with her bare hands, since she sees Haru as a romantic rival for the Class Rep’s affections. Later, she throws herself at him, sans clothes, in the manga’s only real instance of fanservice.

This is representative of the series having something of a madonna/whore thing going on with its female characters. The girls are uniformly either purehearted and sweet like pre-memory gun Maseki, or they’re beings of pure desire that use sex appeal to get what they want, like post-memory gun Maseki, minor character Natori whose main trait is stringing Teru along for her own kicks, or, indeed, Karagaki, who probably has a number of issues of her own that would lead to her sleeping around to the extent that we’re eventually told she does (up to and including prostituting herself), but whose inner life goes largely unexplored. It’s not that these women are written with no sympathy, but the discrepancy between them and the Class Rep and Teru, the two characters whose lives are explored in detail, is fairly stark. One could argue that Haru herself rises above this dichotomy, but given that this arises from her disconnection from humanity, I’m not sure that’s a good thing. And even if we ignore that, she’s still only one character against the example of several others.

This flaw doesn’t sink the manga, but it does dull its otherwise sharp emotional impact. The reveal that Karagaki was prostituting herself prompts a relieved “thank god you weren’t a good person” from our hero. He only says this in his own head, and we’re almost certainly not intended to agree with him, but it gives me pause. I think that’s part of why this manga has been such a chewy meal for me. Despite everything I’ve said, I largely like it, but the particular nature of its flaws mean that I can’t quite square why that’s the case. That’s part of what this column is; an attempt to sort my own feelings. (But, well, aren’t they all?)

In its final act, the manga reveals that Haru’s mission to Earth is to find a way to drive humanity to extinction. In parallel, the revived Karagaki—a person who, again, looks identical to her original, but acts completely different, and very submissively in this case—becomes a pariah for her classmates, who blame her for Teru’s suicide. Haru states that this is how she will destroy humanity; by removing any enemy for them to unite against, until they are so used to a lack of conflict that they will inevitably destroy themselves when one arises. Here again, the manga loses me a bit.

There is something worth exploring, despite how dark it is, to the idea of humanity as an inherently cruel thing, always seeking a victim, an Other to blame our problems on. That, in fact, could probably be held as the other major thematic concern of the manga. But the notions that Haru brings up while introducing this idea, ones of stagnation and progress, are artificial, Enlightenment-era ideals that were themselves created by men to serve men. I don’t like that the manga appears to treat them as inherent truths of the world, and I think if it makes a big mistake, it’s probably this. (Although I will reiterate, I am fine with the overall tone and direction of the ending, I just think the specifics get a little muddled in a way that hurts what the story is going for.)

In the manga’s final chapters, its last twist comes when Haru kills the Class Rep. She does love him, in a certain, alien way, but she can’t bear to see him remain something as flawed as a human being. In other words, she doesn’t really love him, flaws and all, in the first place. Haru, with her sensibilities far removed from an Earthling’s, can only see these flaws as imperfections to be fixed, which she does by reincarnating his core genetics into a new person, who she names Noah. This last development strikes me as particularly cruel, snuffing out even a certain fatalistic “it’s just me and my baby against the world!” thrill that other kinds of love stories have explored throughout the ages. For as much as the Class Rep didn’t understand Haru, she didn’t really understand him either.

In Uchuujin no Kakushigoto‘s final, postscript chapter, after many centuries, a series of events plays out with two new characters that implies that all of this might happen again. Indeed, it might have already happened many times, and might happen many times more. If that’s true, it is a fantastically bleak note for a manga to end on, and I honestly really respect the willingness to go out on such a downer.²

I do feel like I’m missing something, though. That’s not something you’re supposed to admit in even amateur media criticism anymore, the idea that you might not entirely get it, but I will cop to feeling that way, at least a little bit, with Uchuujin no Kakushigoto. Perhaps there’s some other theme I’ve failed to pick up on, some other piece of context that would make something else snap into place. Regardless, it’s an interesting work, one I’m willing to break out the dreaded “messy” label for, and it’s one I imagine I’ll return to. I can’t speak to the life experiences that may or may not lead someone to make something like this, but isn’t that just a confirmation of one of the manga’s core ideas? It’s hard to know how other people think, a relationship that is as true from audience to artist as from family member to family member or lover to lover. That, if anything, is the real secret of the alien.

^{1: I’m not being cute, here. That’s what he’s called for the vast majority of the manga.}

^{2: The fact that the manga was, if certain internet scuttlebutt can be trusted, apparently cancelled, might have something to do with it, but that’s pure speculation. But, the ending works with the manga. If the cancellation noticeably altered the plans for the story, I couldn’t tell, which is the important part.}

Posted on April 15, 2024 in The Weekly Orbit

The Weekly Orbit [4/15/24]

The Weekly Orbit is a weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week, mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!

We move into our second week of the new season, and things are mostly going steady with only a couple of comparative curveballs. Plus; an interesting manga and a pretty cool OVA series a friend showed me. Forgive me if I’m a little brief, here. I don’t feel like doing much extra typing today; yours truly is recovering from a doctor’s appointment where I had to get bloodwork done. (Nothing serious! Just regular HRT checkup stuff.)

Anime

Bucchigiri?! – Episode 12 (Series Finale)

A good finale to a good show! That was one hell of a final battle. I loved how by the end, Arajin and Senya’s roles have almost reversed in their respective duos. (Conversely, Matakara and Ichiya’s fundamental insecurities were close enough that they were able to merge permanently.)

I’m glad that Arajin and Matakara both end this series with a sense of what’s really important. I won’t lie and say this show was perfect, it has a couple issues to be sure, mostly boring structural stuff like pacing problems, but overall I quite enjoyed it and I’m really happy with how neatly everything wraps up in this last episode. The story of life goes on. Perhaps we must all bucchi our giri in our own way.

Mysterious Disappearances – Episode 1

Ah, this is one hell of a mixed bag.

Here’s the thing, I like Mysterious Disappearances. As in, I like the manga this is based on. At its best, I actually like it quite a bit. But I also like it with many caveats, the biggest of which is that it is a pretty shameless ecchi thing on top of being a horror-mystery series in that “Japanese urban legends all connected by an overarching metaplot” genre. (Think of it as Otherside Picnic‘s heterosexual, fanservicey cousin and you’re in the right ballpark.) I won’t pretend I’m immune to this kind of material, and one of the reasons I started reading the source at all is that the main character, Sumireko, is absolutely gorgeous in her normal form (we’ll circle back to that specificity in a second), but a lot of these scenes, translated to the anime, just don’t do anything for me. Not to mention, I think a lot of people who might be interested in the mystery half of the premise are going to be put off by the ecchi material. Not that the series has any obligation to capitulate to those people, but it is at least worth thinking about. The simple facts of the format shift makes the tonal clash a lot more obvious than it might be on the written page.

I think the smart thing to do might honestly have been to minimize this stuff, but they were never going to do that. That in mind, going in the other direction and getting a team who could really amp up the raunchiness would’ve been an approach that at least engages with the source material, too. (If nothing else, original mangaka Nujima clearly really loves drawing Sumireko.) Unfortunately, and to be probably too blunt, the team from Zero-G working on this just aren’t capable of making normal Sumireko as hot as Nujima draws her in the manga. Sorry, but it’s true! A lot of the more egregious cheesecake shots in here, especially the ones we get while Sumireko is thinking about the state of her life, don’t really do anything except remind me of the “everyone is so mean to me :(” meme. Funnily enough, I’ve also seen the exact opposite complaint; people who are more all-in on what the manga’s doing than I am complaining because the show isn’t as explicit and crying censorship. I think this is an unfortunate case where the necessary compromises of an anime adaptation have left no one particularly happy.

And as for Sumireko’s other form, her childhood self which she reverts to by reading a magic poem, well, I’m not into that kind of thing. Is the show into that kind of thing? Honestly, in the manga it was an unequivocal “yeah I’d say so,” given how it was presented, but here, I’m not entirely sure. There’s definitely some camera angles in here that I did Not Enjoy, and I can’t imagine putting that in a series where that’s not at least part of the intent. On the other hand, Sumireko’s actual transformation is evidently painful, and by the episode’s end she’s bleeding out of her eyes, which seems to indicate to me like we are perhaps meant to find this gross and offputting. This was an equally strange thing, in terms of tone and presentation, in the manga, so I can’t really blame the anime itself here, but it’s pretty unpleasant all around and I’m not a fan, and the anime definitely makes all these shortcomings more obvious. Also, there’s a ton of crude humor directed at Sumireko by our other protagonist, Ren. To my recollection, this eventually becomes more tolerable as Sumireko starts to give as good as she gets, but I forgot how much of a snot he was in the first couple chapters, and he just comes off really badly here for all sorts of reasons. Cool eyes, though. I’m glad those survived the transition to the anime.

As for the actual horror / mystery / urban legend / whatever elements, those survive more or less intact and I think are what works best here. The nighttime city shots are suitably liminal and creepy, and as weird as the execution is, in terms of characterization, we get a good sense of the kind of person Sumireko is from her abuse of the poem book’s age regression spell in order to feel like a child prodigy again. Also, Fairouz Ai absolutely kills it as Sumireko, and I think the decision to cast her here was a smart one. So despite everything I just said, I do intend to keep up with this. I think every season needs its C-tier Decent anime, and that is the role this looks to fill for me.

Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 15

A good episode, and a return to what probably qualifies as the series’ “formula”, even if I wouldn’t say that’s a bad thing.

This is one of the visually wilder episode’s of the series, which surprised me a little. I haven’t looked up the staff credits but just from watching this it’s obvious that a lot of animators with strong individual styles were brought in here. (Sakugabooru identifies at least part of the very stylish fight scene against the dryads as being the work of Kanno Ichigo, and I’m inclined to trust them on this.)

Some other points; Marcille is just great up and down this entire episode in all sorts of ways, and I love how absolutely done she is with everyone else. A lot of the animation for the dryad flowers was incredibly horny (not a complaint, just an observation). The cockatrice being introduced with boss subtitles is the funniest thing ever. Even when it’s preparing a familiar course, Dungeon Meshi continues to be just really great.

Go! Go! Loser Ranger! – Episode 2

Good episode this week, definitely a bit speedy, but I think the key points were done very well, mainly Soldier F’s untimely demise. I will also confess that a huge chunk of the reason I was fond of this episode was the extremely obvious; Suzukiri first makes her role in this story known here and the entire scene where this happens is just really, really good. Arguably, it’s even better in the anime than it was in the manga. Speaking of which; Suzukiri is, as far as I can tell, the first role of any real note played by Yano Yumika. Whoever found her and decided to cast her here needs a raise, because she is an absolute delight as this character. If you’re not watching this show, and women with ambiguous morals and crazy eyes are a thing you’re interested in, I would recommend at least checking it out.

A Salad Bowl of Eccentrics – Episode 2

This show is weird! I did not like basically the entire first half of this episode, but it brought me back in the second. (They’re basically different stories entirely, and I assume they were separate in the original light novel.) All told, I’d say I don’t really understand its sense of humor super well, but sometimes it gets a chuckle out of me, and I guess for something I’m watching with friends that’s all you can really ask for.

Train to The End of the World – Episode 3

This was an interesting, and very fun-gal episode. I think it illuminates some of the show’s main concerns. But I have to admit my first reaction was “poor Akira!”

This show has a very unique way of structuring its dialogue that I struggle to put into words. The characters talk over each other a lot? This, combined with the fact that the rest of the main four just dismiss Akira’s concerns out of hand even before the mushrooms start influencing their thoughts when they eat dinner gives me the feeling that learning to listen to each other is going to be a running theme going forward. (It makes sense; the 7G incident was caused by a communication network gone haywire, after all.) I’d kind of had this thought as early as the first episode, so it’s nice to see it reinforced here. The girls are each others’ only real peers, and they’re friends in a loose sense, but they don’t seem to really respect each other very much.

We also get our first straightforward spook of the whole series with Akira’s “dream” of being pursued by the mushrooms. But the episode doesn’t let up there, and I’d call the entire thing fairly unsettling, especially toward the end where Shizuru, mushroom-bearing, is questioning if she was ever even really friends with Yoka at all and all three of the non-Akira girls seem pretty ready to give up. Although I think it’s interesting that the mushroom cult’s way of life is ultimately not immediately dismissed by the series, a lesser show would just write these people off entirely. Train to the End of the World doesn’t do that, it’s at least open to the idea that their sort of pseudo-carefree doomerism might be a valid, if flawed, approach to life, even if it’s not the one the show wants to take.

Also, that cliffhanger. My thought in the original version of this writeup was that Akira had a mushroom growing on her in an inconvenient place, but a person replying to me on tumblr (specifically a user named dream-about-dancing) pointed out that she might actually be turning into an animal instead, and also postulated that the next town seems to have a kitsune theme going by the doodles on the map from episode two. So who knows what’s going on there! I remain extremely invested in this show, and I’m glad it’s kept up the intrigue.

Pokémon Horizons – Episode 46

Pokémon Horizons opting to establish its characters over its first major arc, and then going into a loose adaptation of the recent games for its second, is, in my opinion, kind of brilliant. It allows them to eventually move the same characters to the next games’ setting when the time comes, and it makes sure we already care about the core cast before introducing a number of game characters here, also making it a good way to ensure Liko and friends aren’t overshadowed.

That fun little narrative trick aside, this was just a really great episode overall. The Floragato / Dewott battle was really exciting, and the episode as a whole was a fun way to get any new viewers up to speed but also get all of us into the swing of things going forward. I’m really excited to see where all this is gonna go, since the Explorers are clearly going to still factor in somehow.

Also, I will wholly admit that a good chunk of me watching this episode was just pointing at various characters from the game I like and then kicking my feet like a schoolgirl because they’re on the silver screen. Many such cases.

Himitsu no AiPri – Episode 1

Himitsu no AiPri is my second total Pretty Series show, and a lot like the previous, Waccha Primagi, it’s very zany and goofy, with the idol stuff as an outlet for the main character being a ball of anxiety trying to express herself. (As a sidebar, I ended up watching the premiere a week late and will probably be a week behind the JP airings for most of this series’ run, but it’s hard to say for sure, this being another fansubs-only release.)

There are just tons of strange little elements crammed in here that give the premiere a ton of charm; a “good luck charm” between two characters that consists of tapping one’s heads together, the inevitable titular idol competition taking place in some weird cyberverse, a principal who disrespects the show’s entire premise and is also so old-school that she’s an ojou character named Victoria, a background character whose hair looks chimera-fused right down the middle. The fact that we’re introduced to over a dozen characters here (albeit most of them only briefly) is pretty crazy, too, and signals that this is a show that’s going to be on the lighthearted and goofy end for the most part. Our main character literally falls into the technomagic bracelet that turns her into an idol. We’re in for a good time.

There’s also the show’s bizarre cyberworld, which provides a distinct feeling from the already-zany main setting. It must be noted that, of course, our main girl passes the cyber-idol entrance exam she’s subjected to without any prior warning here with flying colors. (Personally, I wasn’t that won over by the song itself, maybe it will grow on me?)

Also there is a truly overwhelming amount of pink in this episode. And it’s pretty gay, to boot.

Giant Robo the Animation: The Day The Earth Stood Still

A non-seasonal bringing up the rear, here. I watched this with a friend (who tends to go by zhagu on the internet), and I have to say, it was quite interesting overall, and I enjoyed it a lot.

In terms of scale, it plays out something like a cross between an old-school sci fi anime and a Greek Tragedy. Everything is huge, stylish, and feels inevitable. It doesn’t really fall into a single genre, something representative is that the enormous final battle, otherwise a contest between two enormous mechanical beings, is interrupted with a fight straight out of a samurai series and it doesn’t feel strange or out of place at all. I’ve been told that some of this is an attempt to make the series feel like an incomplete adaptation of a nonexistent original work; this is the alleged “second to last arc,” of which the rest of the show, obviously, does not exist. This structure gives the series a surreal and sometimes even hallucinatory feeling, even as it remains distinctly grounded in its 70s sci fi anime / raygun gothic visual style.

Also found within: interesting ruminations on what a sacrifice truly means and is, familial legacy, and cycles of vengeance. I’m going to be thinking about this one for a while, and I would not be surprised if I rewatched it at some point and think even more highly of it. Good show, and I broadly recommend it.

Manga

A Story About A Hallucinatory Girl

Let nobody ever tell you that there’s no interesting stuff on Mangadex.

This is a very short Pixiv comic (split into nine chapters but they’re each very brief. I think this totals to 30 pages or so?) about a guy who gets in a car crash and starts hallucinating that a girl is following him everywhere. It’s….odd. I kind of like it a lot.

I’m not necessarily sure I’d call it the most sensitive handling of this material, but it turns out a lot better than what I think many would be inclined to assume from its oddball premise, especially around the halfway point when the girl starts interfering with his love life. It goes some places in a way I think is actually pretty arresting, I wouldn’t mind reading a full series of this and I think the author is talented enough that my first reaction upon finishing it was that I hope they continue pursuing art. (More on that in a second.)

I’m going to spoil the ending now, which I think is best experienced for oneself, so if you’d prefer to get the authentic experience, go read it quick, and then read the next paragraph.

OK, so!

The case turns out to be this: there actually was no guy at all, the girl is the real protagonist, and what she’s been experiencing is some kind of syndrome, brought on by brain damage, where she doesn’t recognize herself as herself, and thinks she’s a man. By the end of the comic, she’s been hit by a car again (!!) and improbably, this seems to return her to her normal condition, and she can recognize herself again.

This is quite an interesting place to take a story like this and I have to be honest in that, perhaps naively, I did not see it coming at all. Like I said previously, this isn’t a terribly sensitive handling of this material (I don’t think the solution to receiving brain trauma is to get more of it, if I had to guess), but it being….sort of a metaphor for self-acceptance in the end? Is pretty cool. Even moreso because you can choose to read some trans subtext in there if you’d like, which is always a bonus. It’s far from a perfect comic, but as a rough draft from someone who clearly has a lot of ideas (and a knack for character design, shout out to the absolutely gorgeous polyamorous queen in chapter 6), I think it’s a solid hit from a wild swing.

As for the mangaka making more comics, well, it turns out that Hamita, the mangaka in question, actually has quite a deep back catalog of mostly-independent manga of this nature, which I’m excited to dive into this coming week. (They also have a few manga that have been published, it seems, in actual magazines, but the majority of their work seems to be doujin in the broad sense.) Finding a new rabbit hole to explore like this is always fun, and I have to give a shout out to my friend zersk for alerting me to the fact that this manga existed in the first place. Evidently, I need to snoop around scanlation sites a bit more often.

And that’s all for the week from this past week. I think after this article goes live, your favorite anime blogger is going to take a nice, long nap. But before I do, please contemplate this week’s bonus thought.

^{Note: Magic Planet Anime is not responsible for any legal actions that may occur as the result of hiring a child wearing a tiny hat as your lawyer.}