Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch LUCIFER AND THE BISCUIT HAMMER – Episode 2

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

Special Notice: As I established in the very first entry of this particular Let’s Watch column, I maintain a belief that this anime is very bad. I strongly encourage you to read the Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer manga instead.

This week, we see an arguable improvement from Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer‘s slipshod anime adaption, in that it is mostly bad in ways that are simply unflattering as opposed to ways that are out-and-out depressing.

The story of this episode is basically a miniature training arc, but I’m not going to condescend to anyone reading this by pretending you need me to recap that. Yuuhi gets it in his head that he should be more manueverable. Sure. The real question is whether or not Biscuit Hammer has meaningfully picked up at all from last week. The answer is just barely “yes,” but not in a way that inspires terribly much confidence going forward.

The truly maddening thing is that there are moments where it mostly works. But they’re so fleeting and scattershot that their presence more highlights how woefully deficient every other part of this adaption is than it does say anything truly positive. Unsurprisingly, most of these pinpricks of light revolve again around Samidare.

Near the front end of the episode, she works out as part of her apparent training regiment by doing pushups while Yuuhi sits on her back. It’s cute. Granted, it was cute in the manga, but it’s worth pointing out when something actually manages to come through mostly-unscathed. (Strap in, that’s what a lot of this column—both today’s entry in particular and in general—are going to be going forward.)

I tried to come up with some pun about how this is a visual metaphor for Samidare carrying the whole show on her back, but I couldn’t quite get there. Maybe you can.

Another instance comes when Yuuhi asks her a very reasonable question: why does she want to destroy the world? That is, after all, a ferociously violent thing, if you really think about it. Her response here—as in the source material—is cryptic, but illuminating, painting her as selfish and egomaniacal to a rare degree. (Do remember, this is our heroine, here.)

But that selfishness is exactly what makes her so interesting as a character. Again, this largely being a writing-side decision, it’s something the anime can’t entirely squash, even if this entire scene is a lot flatter and less impressive than in the manga. A lot of these shots actually look better as stills than in motion. (Which is saying a lot, because they’re not exactly painterly in this format either.) As with last episode—and I imagine, many to come—there are a few moments like this where you can squint and see the echoes of a much better version of this story in there. But that one has to work so hard to do so speaks to the problem.

I want to highlight this shot in particular. Whoever keeps deciding to juxtapose Samidare and Yuuhi against the vast, ominous shadow of the Biscuit Hammer itself should be working somewhere else, because they at least have an idea of what they’re doing. Even with the somewhat “starfield on the side of a van”-y quality to the backdrop, it’s way more visually striking than anything else in the show.

Samidare also gets probably the only half-decent bit of action in the show so far, where she chucks a fucking car at this week’s golem. (Yes, there’s one in this episode too, get used to them.) It’s not choreographed terribly well but, hey, it’s hard to completely mess up someone tossing a car.

Elsewhere, the series’ decisions are sometimes simply confusing. For instance, in the image below, Yuuhi is contemplating his grandfather’s ill health, and also on his own weakness. We can deduce from what we already know that Yuuhi’s grandpa is not a great guy, and we get the details not long after this scene, so he’s probably pretty conflicted in this shot. Why, then, is the soundtrack a full battery of chuga-chuga-chaw heavy metal guitars? Was the audio editor just taking the piss?

The annoying thing is that the last leg of this episode largely works pretty well. The dread Yuuhi feels toward his grandfather is explained as largely the result of said grandfather being a genuine abusive shithead. Those chains we keep seeing as imagery aren’t metaphorical, they’re trauma flashbacks literally intruding into the reality of the show, as Yuuhi was once literally chained up and locked in a closet for a few days by his grandfather. It’s really no wonder that when he gets news of his grandpa’s bad health here he’s very reluctant to go see him.

The impact of that abuse is something Biscuit Hammer handles with a surprising amount of nuance, given even more detail here as Yuuhi himself falls sick from trying to leap across the local river (it’s complicated), and has to have Samidare tend to him. But the entire time I watched this, even feeling as I do that it’s the part of the episode that works best, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of that feeling is holdover from the manga.

I largely think the print pacing works better here, because cramming both Samidare’s little speech a bit farther up this page and this whole thing about Yuuhi’s grandfather into the same 22 minute space just feels unpleasantly jumbled. I obviously cannot say this for certain, but I feel like this episode probably does not hit nearly as convincingly for someone who isn’t already familiar with these characters.

Thus we settle into what I think will be the story of the Biscuit Hammer anime’s entire run (which might well be two cours, going by the BD listings). Moments of brightness left over from the manga’s original structure intercut with an awful lot of unimpressive-to-outright-awful visual production.

I am, then, judging Biscuit Hammer as much on what it represents as what it actually is. I remain unconvinced that there is any reason for this anime to exist beyond someone trying to do a quick IP flip to raise some money. The open question is whether it will eventually succeed even as something that nakedly unambitious, whether it will at least be a competent obvious cash grab. So far, the answer to that question feels like a flat “no.” Even the scenes in this episode that mostly work only do so by inheriting the manga’s existing strengths. There is not a single thing here that enhances or even meaningfully changes the source material. In the weeks to come, we will see if it remains so thoroughly pointless.

Biscuit Hammer Scorecard for This Week:

Times Samidare Literally Carried the Show: 2
Bad Perv Jokes I Didn’t Bring Up in The Main Body of The Text Because There’s Already So Much to Complain About: 1
Scenes that Actually Kind of Work for a Period of More Than a Few Seconds: 1
Lizard Moments: 3
Samidare Cuteness: 10/10

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 39

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

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

I like the way today’s chapter is put together. Functionally, you’ve got two fights; one between Luffy and Kuro and another between Kaya, Usopp’s ‘crew’, and Django (which later gets two extra participants as the chapter comes to a close). The chapter keeps up the tension with the fairly simple trick of swapping between them, so there are no real “dead moments” at any point.

One Piece is good about this in general, but I find chapter 39 fairly exceptional in this regard. Basically everybody—at least, all the ‘good guys’, excepting Nami—get a solid badass moment. In something this long, you cannot expect every single chapter to have major story revelations or anything like that, but it’s good one when can make an exceptional showing on the Cool Points front, if nothing else.

It’s Luffy who gets the bulk of them, as despite Kuro’s techniques, he’s not much of a match for the rubberband pirate (assuming he doesn’t have some other secret trick up his sleeve anyhow), and Luffy is able to lay him flat without too much trouble over the course of the chapter.

Kuro of course panics about this, and we get one of those huge open-mouthed hollers that Oda seems to love drawing.

Meanwhile, Kaya is willing to sign the will without being mind-controlled, if Django will just leave Usopp’s little friends alone. The hitman hypnotist is having none of it, though, and Kaya actually has to threaten to hurt herself in order to get him to even consider it.

And Usopp’s crew promptly get their moment a few pages later when they charge him from behind and knock him on his ass. Which buys all involved just enough time for Zolo and Usopp to show up.

It’s actually Usopp himself who gets the final blow on Django, hitting him with some sort of exploding projectile via his slingshot.

And meanwhile, back at the beach, Luffy seems to put Captain Kuro down for good. Look at that neck; I don’t know if he’s coming back from that one.

Tomorrow: Is the battle over, or just beginning?

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

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch CALL OF THE NIGHT Episode 2 – Do You Do LINE?

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

Last week, while covering Call of the Night‘s debut episode, I made mention that Nazuna is, in a way dangerous. Or at least, representative of dangerous things, in a way that’s fairly inherent to her being a vampire. I stand by that, because last episode still, you know, happened. But what was also evident even then, and is far moreso this week, is that she’s also a bit of a doofus.

What this episode really cements is that Nazuna and Ko have a great dynamic. They’re a pair of verbal pinball flippers. It’s always hard to convey banter as a positive quality in writing, but the fact that the back-and-forth of sex jokes and general endearing dumbassery doesn’t get old mostly speaks for itself. For instance, there is Ko’s attempt to get Nazuna to give him her phone number, which runs into some of the usual problems one might expect when trying to hook up with a vampire.

Using this specific term places Nazuna in the same realm of dorkdom as Pearl from Steven Universe. Truly, no mean feat.

Perhaps more relevant to the show’s actual plot, Ko here reaffirms that, yes, he is actively trying to fall in love with Nazuna so that when she bites him he will become a vampire. Given that he’s a teenager one would think this would be easy, but hey, some hearts are pickier than others. On the third hand, though, it’s not like Call of the Night is shy about pairing these two up pretty hard already. They spend the first third or so of the episode looking for each other (which eventually leads to the phone exchange above, since neither of them have any easy way to contact the other).

When they do eventually meet up, Nazuna again invites Ko over, and the framing is still less than subtle.

The episode’s second plot revolves around the two trying to find some way to keep in touch, given Nazuna’s lack of anything that can use a modern cellular network. Ko eventually hits on the idea of using….toy “transceiver” watches with walky-talkies in them.

This odd little detour has more underlying implication than one might expect. Sure, they spend a while fiddling with them—playing hide and seek, basically, an apt display that they’re both immature in their own ways—but then Ko reveals that when he bought them as a kid he hid one away as part of a longwinded ploy to be able to talk to someone new, only for one of them to simply go missing. That’s honestly kinda depressing! Which Nazuna actually points out (with a signature lack of tact).

Perhaps the most revealing moment though comes when the two take a short flight to Ko’s school, where Ko manages to do some pretty amazing deduction about his new friend. Noticing that she makes a ton of sex jokes but gets flustered at discussion of actual romance, he has this thought.

It’s a little too early to say if he’s right (although, I think so), but if he is; that’s a pretty impressive target to hit considering his own lack of experience. It’s also maybe a smidgen unrealistic, although, then again, teenagers can be awfully perceptive in their own way.

As the episode ends, Ko heads home, and shockingly, his toy watch goes off. Before he can fully process the question of who could possibly have the missing watch and why, someone who seems to know him spooks him from behind. (Not unlike what Nazuna did last week.)

The introduction of another person into the show’s core dynamic this early is an interesting thing. But, really, you could see it coming even if there weren’t other people asides from Ko and Nazuna in the OP animation. The Sun always comes up eventually.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 38

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

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

Rule 1 of a shonen manga – Any time someone says something like “oh no, the ultimate technique!” you need to get out of where you are as fast as possible.

A few other things happen in this chapter, but for the most part, Chapter 38 is Kuro and Luffy going at it again, and Kuro threatening the ever-living hell out of his old crew.

You might think disclosing your intent to kill a bunch of people ahead of time would be unwise, but if it is, the Black Cats are even less wise, since they mostly take the route of pleading with him rather than, say, running away. Even later in the chapter when he starts saying things like this.

It is worth noting that given the makeshift-democratic character of most pirate charters, this could be argued to be almost the exact opposite of a “real pirate’s” attitude.

As the chapter closes, he unleashes his—seriously—“Out the Bag” technique, which seems to consist of moving so quickly that he’s invisible to the naked eye and slashing everything in the area to ribbons. Pretty standard shonen manga stuff, but still not something you’d want to get caught in, for certain. We very briefly catch up with Nami here, too, although only just long enough for her to have this reaction to the attack.

Meanwhile in the woods, Django tries to force Kaya to open her eyes so he can hypnotize her, and the pirate kids try to attack him while he’s distracted. This goes….badly, and their ultimate fate here is again left uncertain.

Tomorrow: These two stories sail on.

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

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 37

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

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

Before we get to today’s actual chapter, let’s take a moment to acknowledge that chapter art. For the second time now, it depicts a, I guess you’d say, chibi-Buggy? Getting into antics after his battle with Luffy’s crew. I wonder if this is canon and the clown-pirate will show up again sometime soon.

Regardless, the chapter itself is much more in line with the punch pop boom wow sort of feeling the last several have been. Really, the fact that so many chapters in a row have basically been straight action feels like it should wear on me, but it really hasn’t. (Although it does make coming up with novel things to say about each a little challenging, but, well, that’s baked in to this entire “One Piece Every Day” endeavor to begin with.)

I like this moment here, where Kuro gets one up on Luffy by predicting where he’s going to toss a punch, and then…stands on his arm as he does so.

Kuro’s version of the cover for Stillmatic was firmly rejected by Nas’ people.

Indeed, I think Kuro giving Luffy a serious challenge is in a lot of ways more impressive than Buggy doing it. Buggy was also a Devil Fruit….user? Eater? He also had powers, is what I’m getting at. Kuro just seems to be That Good at whatever this weird fighting style of his is.

He also gets rather testy when his crew cheers him on, specifically because they’re cheering “Captain Kuro” on. He even hollers at them for doing so.

Sorry man, but it’s fewer letters than “Klahadore.”

He launches into a flashback here, and through this medium his motive becomes, in a sideways sort of way, understandable, even as his methods remain dubious as ever.

Kuro of the Thousand Plans is tired. Tired of the planning, the pillaging, and the inevitable squads of navymen, marines, and bounty hunters that pursue him. Wanting out is understandable.

He uses one of those very same marine attacks as a pretext, boarding their ship on his own and killing everyone aboard except two.

He has Django hypnotize those two; one is given his own name—Captain Kuro—and the other becomes the brave lone soldier who managed to take him in.

There’s something to be said about how we might admire a pirate, but find fault in one for trying to leave the life if his methods are unsavory. Hypocritical? Maybe, but maybe what makes it easiest to loathe Kuro is his lack of commitment to anything but buying his way to peace of mind.

In the end what matters more is that his monologue gives Luffy ample time to regain his strength. So when he makes a swing at a fatal lunge, Luffy blocks it with a massive chunk of rock.

Which he promptly bashes Kuro over the head with.

Tomorrow: The battle continues…?

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

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, New Manga First Impressions

New Manga First Impressions: CHAINSAW MAN Revs Again

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

This column contains spoilers for Part 1 of Chainsaw Man.

Content Warning: The material covered here contains depictions of extreme violence.

Two weeks ago, I had no working relationship with Chainsaw Man whatsoever. But sometimes, the stars align, and something grips you like it’s trying to choke you out and just doesn’t let go. Sometimes too, that happens just before a long-awaited follow-up is about to start. They say timing is everything because it is, and sometimes that timing works out in your favor. Hence this going up mere hours after the opening chapter of Part 2 drops on MangaPlus.

Suffice it to say we’re bending the rules here, too, since Chainsaw Man Part 2 is only a “new” manga with a fair bit of definitional stretching. (MangaPlus doesn’t even count it as a different series than Part 1.) So if you’re not caught up with the first Chainsaw Man arc, if you’re in the position I was in barely a week ago, I recommend closing this column now and go giving it a read, because I’m about to spoil the hell out of it.

It’s lurid, violent, bleak, coarse, and profane. The medium; a world where humanity’s fears materialize into living beings called devils, and of course, where humans called devil hunters must stop them. A story about bad people dying in worse ways that is not afraid to kill off even major characters sometimes suddenly and without warning, but never feels like it’s doing so for simple wanton shock value. It’s pretty fucking fantastic, easily a best-in-genre for the new decade without much in the way of competition. Part 2 has much to live up to.

The end of Part 1 marked also the end of the so-called “Public Safety Arc.” Denji surviving, nearly totally alone, after a wave of death and disillusionment that saw him shed whatever naivety he may still have had. But he’s come out the other side a better person regardless, even as he was one of just three named characters (four if you count Pochi) to survive the often-brutal first part of the manga.

It’s clear that some amount of time has passed, although perhaps not much. The main point to note here is the continued lionization of Chainsaw Man himself, Denji’s hellish heroic alter ego who now serves as both a source of inspiration to the general public and, going by the Curry Man buns we see in this chapter, marketing revenue. (That’s capitalism, babey.)

But anyone who’s main draw to the manga is Denji himself may be disappointed with the opening of Part 2. Instead, we follow a new character entirely, whose comparative mundanity is almost certainly a deliberate contrast to Denji’s dire circumstances at the start of his own story. Perhaps more importantly, like all of the best Chainsaw Man chapters, the opener for Part 2 begins with some off-the-wall crazy shit.

The logic behind this devil being weak is that no one is really scared of chickens. I feel like enough people have read Fourteen for there to be at least something there? Maybe not. It’s not like I’ve read it.

Our real POV character here is Asa Mitaka. An antisocial, and thus, profoundly normal, high school girl. The only real wrinkle here is that her parents were killed by devils, but that’s not particularly unusual within the context of Chainsaw Man. So the notion of the ordinary high school girl remains.

Don’t worry, she doesn’t stay ordinary for very long.

Mitaka seems to spend most of her days being vaguely annoyed at her classmates and, it’s pretty obvious even before it’s said out loud, jealous of their normal, healthy friendships with each other and, eventually, with Bucky, whose absolutely god-awful chicken puns inevitably endear him to the rest of the class. Meanwhile, the class president tries to get Mitaka to socialize a bit more and open up to the rest of her schoolmates.

Now, anyone familiar with Chainsaw Man would be easily able to tell that something was going to go south here, but I think a lot of people will mistakenly pin the suspicion on Bucky himself. Deliberate misdirection? Maybe. But maybe we’ve just been conditioned to be suspicious of devils over the course of the series’ run so far. Either way, he’s actually a genuinely affable sort by the look of it, and for a brief, split second, you can, if you want to, squint and pretend this is a happy manga where people are allowed to have personal realizations about themselves without an accompanying wallop of massive pain and loss.

Moments after this, she trips and falls, crushing the weak little devil to smithereens. It’s all rather nasty.

The fallout is immediate and predictable, and Mitaka takes this about as well as you’d expect.

The class president, as well as the two’s teacher, Mr. Tanaka, get the idea to visit the poor little hell-chicken’s grave. Tanaka is perhaps under the notion that this will make Mitaka feel better, but the class president quite quickly reveals herself to have a rather different motive, and things promptly get all sorts of gnarly.

In the fractions of a second Mitaka has before this monster—the Justice Devil, per the class president’s own admission—slashes her head in half, she feels relieved, because the president brags that she tripped Mitaka, so Bucky’s death wasn’t really her fault. Implicitly, she’s also relieved that she won’t be hurt anymore. That’s the kind of weapons-grade depressing you can expect from Chainsaw Man.

But it also wouldn’t be Chainsaw Man without some bolt-from-the-blue insane twist, and wouldn’t you know it, even with her head doing its best impression of a rotting pumpkin, Mitaka has just enough presence of mind to witness—and hear—a devilish owl perching on a nearby stoplight.

We don’t hear Mitaka think ‘yes’, but what happens next implies that either she did or the owl even asking was a formality. Not a page later, Mitaka—or at least, something in Mitaka’s body—rises back to her feet, only a truly wicked scar where her head was previously carved in half.

The natural questions follow; “Didn’t you just die?” “What the hell are you?” etc.

Reborn, “Mitaka” replies by doing this.

And introduces herself as The War Devil. What follows is, of course, an absolute show-stopper. Hyperviolence on a level that is hard to even describe with words; somewhere in there between the spinal cord longsword and the hand grenade reconstituted from the Justice Devil’s own actual arm, is the kind of bloody poetry that you really just can’t get outside of comic books. It all ends in an explosion and a shower of gore, because obviously it does, this is Chainsaw Man, remember? This kind of casual “I’m back, bitch” flexing is, if anything, hugely welcome in a medium that is only very rarely kind to even its superstars. This is mangaka Tatsuki Fujimoto in a braggart mode he’s earned every right to be in.

Bring your own Black Sabbath.

The chapter’s last page establishes that everything we’ve just seen, if it weren’t already obvious, is an origin story. It’s never a safe bet to call any character’s longevity in Chainsaw Man, but Mitaka (or the War Devil? Or both? It’s a bit hard to say) seems like she’ll stick around for a long while. In the very closing moments here, she makes a comment about nuclear weapons that should be tossing up all kinds of red flags for any long-time Chainsaw Man readers; it’s been established before that those were among the concepts “removed” from reality by Makima’s makimachinations. (On that note; Makima is probably my favorite character in the whole manga, and I think about the only thing this chapter was missing was an appearance by her reincarnated self in the form of Nayuta. But! That will come in time.)

Trying to forecast almost anything about Chainsaw Man is a fool’s game, so I won’t pretend I’ve got anything sussed out. For me, the wait between the old and new Chainsaw Man was only a few days, and even I’m mostly just super happy to have it back. I find it difficult to imagine enduring the whole year-ish hiatus, so I know for sure I’m far from the only person who’s glad to see it again.

Chainsaw Man may well appear here on Magic Planet Anime again in the, ultimately, not-too-distant future, but until then, manga fans.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 36

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

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

Today marks the start of a new chapter. Another instance where the placement feels kind of random, since it seems more like this arc is ending than beginning. Still, this is a pretty explosive way to kick things off, and the chapter does use the extra couple pages afforded to it here well. Lots of action in this one; so if you’re into that sort of thing (and hey, who isn’t?) you could do a lot worse than this.

If you’ve somehow lost track of things though, don’t worry, One Piece will happily get you up to speed with this character cheat sheet. (Honestly, these things are a godsend for critics like myself, too. I won’t pretend otherwise.)

We also get a particularly nasty glower from the Bad Butler as our chapter art. It makes him right mean looking, I’ll say that much.

The chapter itself opens with Usopp’s pirates running Kaya through the woods to the North of the slope on which Luffy, Zolo, and Kuro are still fighting. They keep a good pace, but Django is in hot pursuit the entire time, and as we eventually see at the end of the chapter, he does catch up to them. Partly by doing a bit of ad-hoc forestry with his chakrams as he pursues them.

There’s also some character building for Kuro. Do remember; developing a character does not necessarily imply developing them to be a better person. Sometimes, it means just revealing what an utter heel they’ve been the entire time.

Usopp gets more of the good kind, straining and determined even through the Black Cat Pirates’ insults and his own serious injuries as Zolo takes down Butchie for good.

(It helps that Usopp has Luffy on his side here. Not someone who takes disrespect toward his friends lightly.)

Kuro ultimately confronts Luffy head on once Zolo gets his past him, asking why, exactly, he’s standing up for a village that isn’t his and that he has no connection to. Cryptically, Luffy replies there’s someone there he doesn’t want to die. I imagine he means Kaya, given his newfound respect for Usopp. But he might also just mean the butcher in town, knowing the gum-gum pirate.

In any case, the chapter ends with the two of them about to face off, and with Django catching up to Kaya and Usopp’s little pirate friends.

Tomorrow: the fight continues.

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

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 35

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

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

Hello folks! You’ll have to forgive the late upload today, I thought I had one in the tin for this morning already only to wake up and realize I did not. Hence; this one coming to you a bit late. (Don’t worry, I’m going to be penning a couple this afternoon, so this shouldn’t happen again. At least not for a while.)

Something I like about One Piece, and I’m not sure if I’ve outright said this, is the amount of weight it gives its battles. In modern shonen, even the very best fight scenes can sometimes feel over too quickly owing to the rather brisk pace of most modern TV anime and the manga they’re adapted from. (A particularly bad offender here, because I never miss a chance to take a shot at it, is the anime version of God of High School.) This isn’t to say the opposite is inherently a good thing, as someone who grew up watching a lot of Dragonball Z with my stepfather I am well aware that a single fight being doled out across weeks or potentially even months can be on the draining side, but still, I think so far, One Piece strikes a nice balance. (How this goes in the show I couldn’t tell you, given that I’m not watching said show.)

Not a ton actually happens in this chapter from a “narrative perspective.” Basically it boils down to “Luffy and Zolo cover for Usopp’s little ‘crew’ of kids as he orders them to flee the battlefield with Kaya.” But everything has a nice sense of solid urgency. That it manages to convey that in the still rather economical space of just 20 or so pages is pretty impressive. (Get used to that observation, I don’t think it’s the first time I’ve made it here and it will almost certainly not be the last.)

Take for example, the mostly-comical Butchie getting a chance to slam into the ground with enough force to do that “rocks and terrain explode everywhere” thing that people (including myself) are so fond of.

“What happened to the ground?!” “My parents took it down because I’m grounded :/”

Or even this on-its-face silly scene where the pirate kids wail on a still-laid-flat Captain Kuro with sticks. Sure, it’s funny, but he could straight-up disembowel those children if he wanted to. That’s a scary notion!

Especially since Kuro is only wounded to the extent of feeling the need to remark that Luffy slugging him in the face “smarted.” (What is he, a British schoolboy?)

Usopp certainly knows the score, as he spends several pages trying to get the kids (and Kaya) to run away.

Eventually, he convinces them to by framing it as an order from their ‘captain,’ which is pretty clever. I don’t know if I’ve properly conveyed this but I really have come around on Usopp since his introduction, it’s clear he cares a lot for these people and (spoiler alert here) I know from prior knowledge that he joins the main cast eventually, so I’m interested to see what he adds to their dynamic when he does. (He also gets an amusing and very literal cheap shot at Django, here, which is mostly worth noting because it literally makes the big bad hypno-pirate say “owie.”)

None of this is to say our other heroes don’t get a minute to shine here, though, because they do. Specifically, Luffy and Zolo pull off a pretty badass “you shall not pass” sort of moment when intercepting Django, who’s been ordered to pursue Kaya and the kids.

And the chapter ends there, leaving what will become of the heiress and Usopp’s little buddies a question for tomorrow. See you then, pirates.

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

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) I Would’ve Written a Review, But SHIKIMORI’S NOT JUST A CUTIE

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

Sometimes I open these reviews by calling something unusual, weird, or peculiar. This is not one of those times; Shikimori’s Not Just a Cutie, a romcom from this already romcom-saturated year, is pretty normal. It’s about a pretty normal pair of high school sweethearts, who attend a pretty normal (by anime standards) high school, and have a relationship that is, all around, pretty normal. This is neither a strength nor a weakness, on its own, but it’s worth keeping in mind what we’re actually looking at here.

Even compared to, say, the also fairly conventional My Dress-Up Darling from just a season prior, much about Shikimori is very much standard for its genre. There are really only two axes along which it will catch any interest; for one, the couple are actually dating even from the very start of the story, admittedly a bit of a rarity for the genre. For two; Shikimori herself (Saori Oonishi) is….well, cool. Princely, as more than one character puts it. The series goes out of its way to suggest that, between her and her boyfriend, the easily-flustered shortstop Izumi (Shuichirou Umeda), she’s actually the more masculine of the two. (This despite being shorter and having pastel pink hair. It’s mostly a vibe thing, and it’s usually sold pretty well.)

An important thing to note is that Shikimori began life as a series of Twitter comics. In their original form, Shikimori’s “coolness” was essentially the punchline to a joke. A very simple subversion of expectations that works well in that format.

As such, while Shikimori and Izumi, as well as their supporting cast, are definitely decently-written, both they individually and the anime on the whole feel underdeveloped. The main pair are cute together and I buy that they’re in love—I get why she likes him and why he likes her, which is important—but there is just a little something missing. And over the course of the anime adaption, that absence becomes more and more pronounced, even in the show’s best episodes.

But, let’s focus on the positives first. As mentioned, while most of the characters fall into broad archetypes they are at least competent executions on them. Shikimori genuinely does come across as pretty cool, and maybe even a little intimidating. Izumi seems nice, and is a total softie in an endearing way. Their main group of three friends includes a chummy hothead (Shuu Inuzuka; played by Nobuhiko Okamoto), a feisty wildcat who’s good at sports and also herself seems to have something of a thing for Shikimori (Kyou Nekozaki; Misato Matsuoka), and a stoic, somewhat snarky lovable weirdo (Yui Hachimitsu; Rina Hidaka). All are solid, and it’s fun to watch them interact.

Magic Planet Anime understands the glory of Hachimitsu.

Visually, the series is excellent, directed by a team that includes many staff who will eventually be making the Oshi No Ko anime. They breathe a sense of vibrancy into the school life setting that really does make it feel like a real, present place, and the set design in particular contributes a lot to that. Watching it, you can practically feel the Sun illuminating your face as you walk through the school courtyard. It takes talent to do that, and that talent is worth pointing out and respecting. And at times, it does manage to be genuinely romantic, with relative mundanities like theater and theme park dates blown up big enough that you can really immerse yourself in the emotions they convey. In these moments, when Shikimori is essentially at its peak, it does a good job of that.

And I really wish I could say those moments defined the whole show, that Shikimori lived up to such strong visual work, but mostly they don’t and it doesn’t. It’s pleasant, it’s decent fun, but it is rarely anything more than that, despite these highlights.

Fundamentally, it’s unfair to say any of Shikimori‘s strengths are in some way insufficient because it fails to measure up to some imagined version of what it could be. Things like that are pat and they’re rarely particularly substantial. Yes, Shikimori would be a bit more interesting if, say, Izumi was a girl (he wouldn’t need much of a design change to pass), but a criticism that basic misses the fact that Shikimori is routinely unwilling to commit to even its fairly tame level of gender non-conformance. The entire premise of the anime is that Shikimori is a cool, princely type, but just as often, it’s Izumi who is the assertive one in their relationship’s key moments. A trend that continues up until the last episode, where it’s Izumi who plants the couple’s first kiss on….Shikimori’s cheek.

And this would itself be fine if the show had a bit more fire to it. Comparing almost anything to Kaguya-sama: Love is War! is going to make that thing look bad, but it and Shikimori aired in the same season, and (spoilers here) they both have a kiss in the finale. It is telling that Kaguya‘s finale is a heart-pounding hurricane of grand romantic gestures that defy all common sense and reason, and the kiss that caps that episode is a full-on makeout. Shikimori just can’t compete with that kind of thing, even with all the visual panache in the world. It can’t even really compete with the aforementioned Dress-Up Darling, a series that is in many respects much less consistent, but by simply having the running plot of two crazy kids who aren’t dating yet but clearly eventually will be, it feels much more urgent. And, frankly, that show’s unabashed horniness—tasteless as it could often get—feels more reflective of a lived-in teenage experience than Shikimori is. (So does Kaguya, despite its absurd premise and in-theory unrelatable rich kid cast, for that matter.)

As it is, Shikimori is clearly is aiming for a laid-back, iyashikei-esque easy pace. It achieves that, so it’s perhaps even more unfair to complain that that’s “all” it does. But at the same time, this absence of any more substantial emotional weight is highlighted by the show itself, because when it can find a piece of the original story that it can make something truly wild out of, it does so with gusto.

Take, for example, the side character Kamiya (Ayaka Fukuhara).

Kamiya once fell hard for Izumi, too, but no longer pursues him because she knows he’s taken, and she has no chance. Over the course of the episode-ish’s worth of material that focuses on her, she imagines herself as a counterfeit Cinderella, her glass slippers and Prince Charming alike missing.

The series itself bends around her, bringing a rainy overcast to the serene high school rooftop, threatening a Biblical flood. Hers is a deep, dramatic, and messy love. And it demands a story louder, wilder, and more complicated than Shikimori, one that could accommodate the drama that inherently comes along with this kind of thing. But Shikimori is not that story, and her feelings prove too much of a challenge for it to wholly untangle. It’s not coincidental that when her short arc reaches its conclusion, she essentially disappears from the show entirely.

It still feels wrong to judge a series based on what it isn’t, rather than what it is. But the pieces of the show that focus on Kamiya—and other, smaller shards of something that is simply bigger than the rest of the series, always out of shot or between the frames—almost demand you to imagine a world beyond Shikimori‘s fairly limited notion of teenage romance. There is a lot else out there, and on some level, Shikimori knows this. In a few places, it almost seems frustrated with itself, that it cannot truly cut loose from the bounds of its own genre. The most obvious of these is perhaps the OP animation, which depicts a dimension- and genre-hopping pair of micro-vignettes for our lead couple, far removed from the series itself. Including even, perhaps most tellingly, one where there is a token acknowledgement of that same basic criticism I mentioned earlier; a version of the series in which Izumi and Shikimori are both girls.1

These two shots are literally all of Fem!Izumi we ever see, but they raise the question of why she looks so sad and troubled. In this tiny bit of non-verbal characterization, the OP animation establishes that she and Shikimori must have a rather different relationship than that between regular Izumi and Shikimori. The fact that I’m able to write this much about it is ample evidence both that this team is quite talented and that there’s a lack of stuff like this to chew on in the main series.

What you get, then, is a series that is a warm, personable elevation of what is ultimately very thin material. This isn’t to say that the Shikimori is a bad show—if I thought that I’d say so outright—but its origins as a gimmick strip on Twitter never really stop casting a long shadow over it. And in the end, it comes across as an elaborate expression of a very basic thought; “wouldn’t it be great if I had a tall, cool girlfriend?” Sure, it would be. Lots of people would love that. But you need something beyond that to push it past the realm of the merely cute, and Shikimori can only manage that in frustratingly short bursts. I find it almost impossible to imagine actively disliking Shikimori, but at the end of the day, you are basically watching six hours of fluffy Pixiv fanart.

The ongoing new romcom boom will do weird things to this particular period of anime in the long view of history. It’s hard to say if this show—or My Dress-Up Darling, Komi Can’t Communicate, etc. etc.—will persist particularly long in the public memory. In the case of Shikimori specifically, I rather doubt it. If it picks up a long-term fanbase, it will be a cult one, made up of people for whom the show offered some measure of comfort during difficult situations or simply helped them get through a day. To those people, Shikimori will be a cup of tea during an illness or a cool breeze on a summer day. To everyone else, it will be a pleasant, but half-remembered memory that pops up like a firework into the sky; brilliant for a fleeting moment, and then gone.

1: A correction: A commenter pointed out that this is actually Kamiya, which comparing the screenshots is obvious and I feel a little silly for thinking otherwise. Still, given its juxtaposition with all the alternate universe stuff I think my confusion is a bit more understandable, and my larger point still stands.

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

Posted on in Manga, One Piece Every Day

ONE PIECE Every Day – Chapter 34

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

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

Today’s chapter is a terrific little tornado of tough-talk, tussling, and takedowns. First of all; if you were worried about Nami yesterday, well, don’t be. Luffy happens to (quite accidentally) get between Django’s chakram and Nami’s very vulnerable body. Unlike Nami, Luffy can take a blade to the head just fine.

Average Abdullah the Butcher match aftermath.

Not that he won’t complain. In fact, the speech bubble for his yell is so loud that it’s larger than the panel!

The real development of this chapter though is Kaya arriving on the scene. She calls out to her former butler to stop all this, but, predictably, it does not help.

She even just tries to buy Captain Kuro and his crew off, but because Kuro is a villain in a shonen manga, that doesn’t work either.

Kaya pulls out a gun in response to that little comment, but Kuro successfully rattles her by listeing off all the things he’s done for her, and making it clear that he hated every minute of it. Then he goes on the defensive, and Usopp tries to cut in to prevent him from hurting Kaya, despite his being rather unsuited to the task.

But then, well, someone else gets the drop on him.

He’s gonna feel that in the morning.

The chapter ends with that explosive pop from Luffy. I imagine Kuro will have something to say about that tomorrow.

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

Also consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.