Hi friends, I’ll make this as short as possible. You’ve probably noticed that there was no Spy x Family recap yesterday. (It may still technically be “today” for a few of you, since this is going up at….1am, my time.) My initial plan was to simply move the recap to Sunday, but things have been complicated the past couple of days, and on top of that I’m not feeling terribly well. I’m instead going to be skipping this week’s recap all together, and there will not be an Anime Orbit Weekly this week, either. (I do encourage you to check out the Spy x Family episode regardless, it’s technically a “filler episode” in that there aren’t really any major story developments that aren’t a foregone conclusion, but it’s extremely entertaining.)
The next article that goes up will be the Healer Girl recap for this week, which itself may be up to a few days late. I appreciate your understanding in this matter, and if you’d like to support the site while I take some small time away so I can come back at full strength, as it were, that’d also be appreciated. (Although certainly, you have no obligation to do so and I don’t want to make it out as though you do.)
I will also note that I will still be reachable on Twitter and RetroSpring during this time if you have anything you’d like to contact me about.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I knew this day would come eventually.
He wants to express his feelings in rap. Miyuki Shirogane, student council president of Shuchiin Academy, wants to express his feelings through song. No, through performance art, in what is probably the absolute worst medium he could’ve chosen to do so short of perhaps mime. Ask anyone who’s ever been subjected to Lil Dicky; rap and comedy do not mix. Rap and anime have a very uneven track record and historically mix even worse.
A conflux of the three should signal a truly epic crash where Kaguya-sama: Love is War! burns out and never recovers. Improbably, it does not, but that may be because this is A-1’s most impressive production on the season yet, a true cartwheeling display of visual panache put in service of a bizarre pseudo-music video. The music is still very much at its worst the closer it is to actual hip-hop, but at least it’s never unwatchable. The combined first two segments of the episode are basically this Tumblr post, I don’t know what else to say.
Anyone familiar with the “Chika teaches Miyuki to do something” skits of prior seasons will understand immediately what’s going on here. The twist this time around is that Chika is also completely clueless about hip-hop and has to teach herself before she can teach Shirogane anything. This is admittedly pretty funny, but it does drift into the notion that rap is just funny as a concept, which definitely isn’t true and is usually the domain of a specific kind of bad American cartoons. Although Shirogane’s profound badness remains hilarious. His first try at “rapping” here sounds more like a walrus dying slowly. It physically propels Chika into the air.
The “actual” rap as it eventually develops here is, I don’t know, fine. It’s not the kind of skin-peeling cringiness that I usually associate with rap music showing up in cartoons, which is a positive. Shirogane’s actual song is notably old school, having something broadly in common with the retro pop rap stylings of chelmico. and similar acts.
What is he rapping about? Well, initially this is just followup on that karaoke episode. He wants to convince Hayasaka to be more honest with herself and others and such. We also get a flashback to the karaoke place, where Hayasaka mentions that her job is to “keep tabs on” Shinomiya. Hmm.
In any case, the “musical” segment that follows this is pretty damn impressive, just from a production standpoint. For my money though it’s actually Kaguya herself who has the best song, despite it being probably the farthest-removed from hip-hop music. It also has the best visuals, including a truly inexplicable nod to Queen‘s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” (Maybe it’s a pun? “Rap”sody? I don’t know.)
In the largely-unrelated final segment of the episode, we link back up with Maki.
She seems to be doing well.
In what seems to be a recurring pattern, this section of the episode is a lot simpler and less ambitious than what precedes it. It’s mostly Maki venting to the boys again. Ishigami correctly points out that it’s usually best to be quick on the draw in games of love. The fact that all three people in the room have crushes they can’t own up to having, some more involved than others, casts a palpable irony over the whole thing, something the series itself is very much aware of. Maki’s own regret boils hot enough to burn away the tea Ishigami prepares for her, and Yu and Miyuki nearly give themselves a stroke just imagining the other person stealing their crushes.
All in all it’s a pretty simple segment that serves mostly to close out the episode. And it is nice to see Maki making friends, of a sort, it helps all the comedy at her expense feel less mean.
There’s also a new ED this week, presumably a one-off. Once again done in a totally different stlye from the rest of the show, and also featuring a hip-hop soundtrack. (One that I’d go so far to say is a fair bit better than Shirogane’s rap in the actual episode.) It’s cool, but I’ll welcome the return of the usual ED next week.
Until then, Kaguya fans.
Bonus Hayasaka Screencap: Why have one Hayasaka when you could have five?
I should here note that Hayasaka’s song is probably also the one that comes closest to having any real bite to it. It conveys her increasingly fed-up attitude with Kaguya pretty well. She even has something that might actually qualify as a Bar™ if you’re generous, rhyming that she has so many faces that she feels like “a hydra.”
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
“The light of drifting stars fills the sky.”
The fact is, it’s actually pretty easy to review something bad. Reviewing something that’s mediocre isn’t that hard either; line up its strengths and weaknesses, weigh them and determine if, at least for you, the former outweigh the latter. The real challenge is writing about something great.
And that is part of why this particular Healer Girl recap comes to you a day (possibly multiple days) late. That and a combination of truly fearsome writer’s block. If this column seems a bit less coherent than usual, I do apologize. It’s not in my general nature to “break the fourth wall” during these columns, but sometimes explanations are in order.
In any case, the actual plot of this episode is so simple that it almost doesn’t bear summarizing. Our main trio visit Hibiki’s family in the countryside. There, we learn a bit about her and her family, and a bit about Kana as well. One of Hibiki’s many younger brothers develops a precocious crush on Reimi, which is cute.
We also get an elaboration on the event that made Kana want to become a healer in the first place. When she was young, she had an asthma attack on a plane, and without an inhaler on hand, was in serious trouble. A mysterious healer, who she has been looking for since then, soothed her, thus setting her on the path to becoming a healer.
We find out almost immediately that this mysterious healer is, in fact, the girls’ teacher, Ria, who has just apparently not heard this story before. There’re a few details that don’t entirely line up about this, and I’m not sure if that’s the show trying to deliberately evoke the faulty memory of young children or if they’ll come back to that later. Either way, the reveal is humorously anticlimactic.
After all that, the episode’s real point makes itself known. It’s always been fascinating to me that so much human art is dedicated to depicting the natural world. By all rights, it’s something almost all of us are at least passingly familiar with; it’s the world out our window, or at most, a drive away. Why is it then that we spend so much time writing about waterfalls, so to speak? Why are we so fascinated with the motion of water and the little skipping and wriggling things that live in it? The girls swim in a small river, and I am reminded of my own times doing the same, visiting my father’s parents in the Pocono Mountains. These were not the happiest times for me, but they were simple, maybe that is why a tug that is something like nostalgia pulls at my heartstrings even so.
After the river scene, the girls trek toward a split-apart stone monument that reaches into the sky like the hand of a lost god. By the time they arrive, singing all the while, day’s become night.
The episode’s visual and emotional crux is a pair of landscape shots; the Milky Way rising into the sky like a plume of neon smoke. Later, the constellations that the fireflies within a cave play out on its ceiling and hovering in its air serve as a reprise. They are sights simultaneously familiar and obscure to me; even in my years living in rural Pennsylvania, there was simply too much light pollution for me to ever see that many stars. The night has always been black for me. Not so for Healer Girl, whose devotion to the natural world ranks up there with among the all-time best of its medium; Ghibli films, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Kamichu!
But the sky’s vastness and beauty shouldn’t obfuscate something else important. The Night on the Galactic Railroad namecheck, brought up explicitly in conversation, is what gives this episode its title. And it is casual, but not careless. Galactic Railroad, one of the seminal works of modern Japanese literature—which was, in 1985, transmuted into one of the most stunningly beautiful films ever made—is ultimately a story about death. Recall that only a week ago we saw a man nearly die on the operating table. This week Kana relays her own brush with ill health. Are these allusions a gesture toward the flip side of the show’s very premise—those whom medicine, no matter how fantastical, cannot save—or something else? Or “just” a reminder of the circle of being? All that begins ends, and dust begets dust, and the big wheel keeps on turning?
All this from a pseudo-beach episode that is also very much about how pleasant a trip to the countryside can be may seem like a stretch, but Healer Girl can juggle all these thoughts and emotions effortlessly. Healer Girl feels a lot like Kana herself, able to pull others into its own little world with a prodigal effortlessness. (Another thing we learn this episode, but one which is only dwelt on briefly.)
For precisely these reasons, it is one of the best things airing right now. Nothing else right now makes me feel this strongly or feel this much. I am happy that it exists.
Song Count: Just one for this episode, as the girls and Hibiki’s family are hiking up the mountain.
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 Directoryto 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.
Anime Orbit Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hello, anime fans. I don’t have much to say to you this week. I hope you enjoy the writeups below. I had a lot of fun writing about Birdie Wing this week in particular.
Seasonal Anime
Birdie Wing -Golf Girls Story-
If you’re anything like me, you started watching Birdie Wing not because it’s particularly good, but because it’s fucking ridiculous. I am pleased to report that, after a somewhat disappointingly tame (but admirably lesbian) past two episodes, Birdie Wing not only gotten its groove back, it’s also reached utterly stunning new heights of absurdity.
The episode begins with Aoi’s tournament-winning putt being interrupted by a laser pointer to the eye from one of Rose’s lackies. On its own, this is a mildly amusing Dick Dastardly-esque turn. To say things escalate does not do justice to what eventually transpires here.
Post-tournament, Rose immediately calls in the favor she used to get Eve into the tournament in the first place. That favor? She has to win another underground golf game. But not just any underground golf game. Oh no, not just any by a long shot.
This episode’s plot goes so far into pure ridiculousness that I feel tired just typing about it. Things start at, for Birdie Wing at least, normal. The job Eve is called into handle is merely the way that a brewing mob war between Rose’s “patron” Catherine and one of her rivals is being resolved. When one realizes that the term “underground golf” is here meant literally—as in, the golf course is subterranean—they might think “wow, this is pretty absurd. Definitely more so than anything that’s happened in Birdie Wing so far.”
They might have a few seconds to hold on to that thought before Catherine pushes a button and the entire course begins transforming like Autobot City into Metroplex.
They have a “randomize golf course” button! A button to randomize the physical golf course! Like it’s Pokémon and they’re loading in a ROMHack! The terrain is ripped apart, a random little lake is drained, and it reconfigures into a new and novel shape. I am so utterly thrilled to live on the same planet as the person who dreamed up this beautiful spot of true-blue total nonsense. It’s awesome.
And we haven’t even gotten to discuss Eve’s actual opponent yet. Meet Viper, or “Vipère” (Kaori Nazuka) as I will not be calling her because I don’t feel like pasting that accented E every time. Now, every important character in Birdie Wing is two things; one, obsessed with golf, and two, a lesbian. Viper adds a twist on the formula by being an evil golf lesbian, meaning that she’s uncomfortably pushy, wears a ton of perfume, and has a skimpy outfit. In any other show, I’d probably find this character, and her relentless advances on Eve (down to a wager wherein whoever loses has to do what the winner says for a whole day. Yikes.) rather off-putting.
Golfing!
I still kind of do, but it’s hard to entertain any thought of reality when the character in question is named Viper the Reaper. (Yes, she needs two menacing nicknames apparently.) And that she’s playing against our hero on a mighty morphin’ golf course that can bend into any shape its owner wants. I’m not a big advocate of the “turn your brain off” philosophy for campy bullshit—it’s not hard for something to be both entertainingly silly and meaningful—but in this particular case, it might help. If only to save yourself from psychic damage.
Oh, and I should also show you all her golf ball.
Of course there’s a two-headed snake stamped on it. Did you think there wouldn’t be? Have a little faith.
Viper cheats, of course. She’s the villain! Obviously, she cheats! But Eve is able to sniff out her strategy pretty quickly. Literally, because she cheats by having a perfume-scented tattoo that throws people off-balance just enough to disrupt their swings. She gets the perfume to diffuse by unzipping her top, which “explains” why she does that several times over the course of the episode. I want to really, really strongly stress that I am not making a word of this up. This happens. This is real. This is the actual plot of Birdie Wing.
The truly absurd thing is that there actually is a trickle of a genuine theme in here. Eve’s distaste for the bourgeois, despite playing perhaps the most rich-folk-only sport in the world, has become consistent enough that I’m convinced it’s part of the central point of the show. I sincerely hope that the series finale somehow involves Eve destroying golf as a concept and replacing it with something far better, more egalitarian, radical, and lesbian.
In any case, Eve wins after figuring Viper’s trick out, naturally, and her one order to Viper is for the evil snake golf lesbian to drive her to Nafrece Golf Course by 5am. So that she can meet Aoi for a final game before the latter goes back to Japan. (I neglected to mention that that’s a running B-plot throughout this episode. Can you blame me? There’s a lot going on.) She just barely misses Aoi, who is straight-up heartbroken. How do we know that? Well, Eve finds something on the golf course. I’ll let the series speak for itself here.
Golfing!
Even when Eve tries to prove that she got there by shooting golf balls at Aoi’s plane as it takes off, Aoi still screams and cries that she’s a liar. End episode, roll credits.
I’m tired of beating around the bush. There’s a lot of good to great stuff airing this season, but Birdie Wing might be the best. If it’s not, it’s at least in the conversation. What else is going this hard for so little reason right now? Nothing, and that’s why Birdie Wing can’t be beat.
The Executioner and Her Way of Life
Some anime’s strengths are subtle; their merits only become obvious either upon repeat viewings or prolonged contemplation. And then, on the other end of the scale, are those where just watching them can feel like repeated kicks to the ribs. Guess where The Executioner and Her Way of Life falls?
That breath-snatching immediacy is a very subjective thing, of course. But I feel it in a real and present way with Executioner. The most recent episode is, from start to finish, a slow-churning nausea in the stomach, the knowledge that something is about to go very awry, and then a chop to the throat when it finally does. Menou loses everything she’s held important, both new and old, in an instant, and the episode stops dead at the end of its run on what might be one of the most evil cliffhangers I’ve ever seen.
I don’t actually feel comfortable detailing the episode at length. I intend to cover the fallout of all this in more detail next week. For now, take this fiery impression as yet another recommendation to watch Executioner if you aren’t already.
Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club – Season 2
In which Karin and Ai try in vain to comfort a depressed girl.
I’m being flippant, but that really is what the plot of last week’s Nijigaskai High School Idol Club boils down to. One of Ai’s friends, recently recovered from some nonspecific long-term illness, is out and enjoying her freedom again. But oh, she’s sad because Ai’s become a successful singer while she was gone, and she feels left behind. Look: I’m sympathetic, I’m a blogger, I do not have an exciting life and I sometimes envy people who do more outwardly interesting things. That’s a valid feeling, and as a base for creating an interesting character, you could do some strong things with it.
The question is whether it works in the context of this show, as a mostly self-contained story that takes up the better part of its fourth episode. And the answer is no, because what this plays out as is everybody involved—Karin, Ai, Ai’s friend, whose name I have already forgotten—just kind of being a downer to each other for about 12 minutes. I could recap the specifics for you, but there’s really no point. None of this seems like it’s going to have a big impact on the series, none of it reveals anything new about Karin or Ai, and the girl in question is certainly not an interesting character on her own.
You have depression.
There’s also a bizarre B-plot wherein Ai tries to get Karin to form a group with her, which Karin initially doesn’t want to do. That seems like it might have lasting implications, and perhaps draws a parallel between Karin and Lanzhu. But it’s made a moot point at the end of the episode when they decide to group up anyway, under the pretense that they’re “rivals” on-stage, “competing with the same song.” That does not make any sense. You don’t need me to tell you that. It’s also totally unimpactful, since we only have known Karin feels this way for about half an episode by the time she changes her tune. Also; at one point, Karin tries to comfort Ai when her friend’s being down makes her consider quitting being an idol at all. Her approach here is hilariously dickish, and completely whiffs as an intended emotional moment.
Immediately after this scene Karin says that if Ai quits being an idol, she’ll steal all her fans, including her friend. This, somehow, is what gets Ai out of her funk. In a better context this could actually work. Here it mostly just seems like someone remembered they had to get these two on stage together by the end of the episode.
The good news is that the music itself is still there. The duo of Ai and Karin (yes, they team up anyway, despite all the talk. They even get some very sharp matching outfits) perform the insert song “Eternal Light” for the music video portion of the episode, under the name DiverDiva, and instantly it becomes pretty easy to forgive any missteps the show might be making. These, at least, are still consistent highlights, even if none have quite reached the highs of Setsuna’s total fucking barn-burner from season one yet.
For my money, if we want to indulge their “idol duo who are rivals” bit, Karin absolutely smokes Ai on the song. She just has the more powerful voice by a good margin and Ai’s admittedly dexterous rapping doesn’t really make up for that. But hey, I may be biased.
Eventually it all turns out fine, and Ai’s friend officially declares herself to be Ai’s fan also (which is a fucking weird thing to do, but whatever, it’s an idol series.) She redoubles her commitment to working overseas (in what capacity, we never learn), and says something about how Ai inspires her. That’s all fair enough, but we again run up against the problem of none of this seeming to much mean anything. Are we ever going to see this girl again? The last thing this show needs is more characters, especially if they’re totally extraneous.
After the credits roll, we’re quickly introduced to another new character who will presumably make her proper debut next week. She, though, is an actual idol—that’s not pointed out explicitly and, frankly, it doesn’t need to be, you can just tell from her two-tone hair and cocky attitude—and I feel like her contribution to the show will, by its end, massively dwarf that of Ai’s little friend here. (This is without mentioning other far more interesting running plot threads. Lanzhu’s inevitable upcoming face turn, Shioriko Mifune (Moeka Koizumi)’s likely eventually becoming an idol. ETC.)
Plot detours are normal for seasonal anime, so none of this spells the end for Nijigasaki as a series or even for this season of it specifically. I intend to find out today if this is merely a rough patch or the start of a recurring problem. (Nijigasaki actually airs on Saturdays, but, because of my schedule, I can rarely get to it earlier than Sunday evenings.)
Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie!
I won’t pretend I have a ton of value to say about Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie!, my obligatory after-the-season-starts pickup. It’s an entrant into the growing “romcom about a valid straight couple” genre, and one I like. It is, admittedly, a series of extremely limited ambitions. (Which only makes sense, given that it got its start as four-panel gimmick strips on Twitter.) But that actually works in Shikimori‘s favor, a lot of the time. The series is relentlessly pleasant enough that it almost operates on the same wavelength as an iyashikei anime. You turn it on, you enjoy the lovey-dovey vibes between main characters Izumi (Shuichirou Umeda) and the titular Shikimori (Saori Oonishi) for about 22 minutes, including whatever particular antics they get into this week (and there are certainly antics to be had), and then you turn it off. It’s not a particularly complicated show.
I mostly wanted to shout it out here for the most recent episode, which showcases two things I really like. One, and the more low-key of the two, is the show’s smart eye for set design. All of the places about town that our cast end up in feel tangible, yet nostalgic. The mall in particular is sure to trigger nostalgia for a lot of people.
Secondly, I really like the fact that every member of the cast seems to be casually bi. Izumi himself has mulled over the idea of his girlfriend as a boyfriend before, but this episode spotlights said bi vibes more directly with Nekozaki (Misato Matsuoka), who spends much of the flashback sequence she stars in freaking out over how hot she thinks Shikimori is.
And there’s a post-credits scene where Shikimori herself gets flustered by Izumi’s mom. (They take a cooking class together. It’s a long story.)
It’s very easy to be unkind to a romcom, as a queer critic. Especially one where the main couple are straight. And I have definitely seen my fair share that just make me want to puke. (An impression you could be forgiven for not getting from this blog, given that I don’t tend to write about anime I dislike and never finish.) But I do think that for what it’s trying to do—which is admittedly not much!—Shikimori is pretty good. My hope is that I can provide a bit of a counterbalance to the show’s small but definitely present antifandom. And if you’re not watching Shikimori, well, it’s a busy season so I certainly understand, but consider penciling it in if you want something to help you unwind.
Poor Ishigami can never seem to catch a break. I feel bad for the guy a lot of the time. Oh yeah; and the last part of the episode with Chika sleeping over at Kaguya’s place is great, too.
Fun fact: I believe this is the longest article title anything on this site has ever had. It’ll probably be a long while until something else breaks that record. Anyway, yeah, this manga is great. It’s got lesbians, cool fantasy nonsense, and swords. What else do you need?
And that’s all for this week, folks. See you tomorrow for the Healer Girl recap.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Ask any parent, even completely mundane admissions interviews are stressful. School admissions interviews are nowadays mostly the domain of college applicants and the ultrawealthy, but they used to be more common. And as with anything involving both parents and teachers, they are nerve-wracking for all involved. The Forgers, though, aren’t just any parents. We don’t actually explicitly learn if they pass the interview for Anya to get in to the prestigious Eden Academy or not in this episode, but let’s say the forecast is positive. With one…minor exception.
Before the interview itself, the Forgers—along with dozens of other hopeful families—must make a first impression on their way through the academy’s courtyard and to the halls where the interviews are being held. Even this early on, the academy has eyes on them. Recurring character Henry Hendersson (Kazuhiro Yamaji) makes his debut here as one of the school’s housemasters. Hendersson observes the Forgers, along with the other families, from a tower overlooking the courtyard, and we instantly get a pretty good idea of his character. He’s an odd man, obsessed with his personal ideal of “elegance”, but despite what may be easy to assume, he is not the antagonist of this episode. It only gains one of those in its second half.
First, though? Cattle stampede.
Yes, in what I am convinced simply must be a Revolutionary Girl Utena reference, a stampede of random livestock breaks out in the courtyard. Why does Eden Academy have a farmhouse? How did the animals break out of it? Who knows! Stop asking such silly questions. What’s really important that Yor takes out the leader of the herd with, ahem, “yoga techniques.”
Golfing! Wait, wrong series.
Also, the Forger family changes outfits twice over the course of this first half of the episode, once when helping a little boy who’s fallen into an open storm runoff(!) and then again after the cattle attack. Mr. Hendersson is first impressed, and then slightly terrified by all this.
The interview itself is of course the episode’s real focal point. For the most part, it goes well. Hendersson is joined by two other interviewers; the mild-mannered Walter Evans, and this episode’s true antagonist, a vindictive, recently divorced, woman-hating jackass named Murdoch Swan.
The interview mostly goes according to plan. Anya professes to hobbies such as “going to moozeums” and “eating the opera,” and calls her father “a spy-cialist in mental health.” Loid and Yor convincingly recite their canned backstories about meeting at a tailor shop (which is, to both’s benefit, mostly true). Anya even adorably says that she’d give both of her parents “a perfect 100 points,” and that she wants to be with them forever. All seems to be going very well.
And then Swan asks this.
And Anya starts crying. Which makes perfect sense when you remember that she’s a small child being bullied by bitter, snide snake in the grass who takes out his frustrations with his own personal failings on other people. The situation, shall we say, escalates. Loid barely restrains himself from clocking Swan directly in the face—and smashes a nearby mosquito hard enough to crack a hardwood table in two in the process—to say nothing of Yor, who genuinely looks ready to kill the man.
Yor Forger in the process of figuring out, in real time, how to murder a man with a vase and flowers.
About the only thing that stays her hand is Loid taking his “fake” family and simply leaving. His parting remark, something to the effect of not being interested in a school that bullies children as part of its educational system, would be cutting if Swan was the sort to be hurt by such things. But perhaps predictably, he doesn’t really care. (Original mangaka Tatsuya Endou deserves a lot of credit here, Swan is exquisitely hateable.) But this stain on the academy’s honor is enough to piss off Hendersson, who, after the Forgers depart, finally gives Swan what’s coming to him.
Elegantly done.
The episode basically ends here, with a tearful Anya apologizing that she couldn’t do better at the interview. All three Forgers are now worried about the future of their family, and it’s only the knowledge that Hendersson was on their side during this whole mess that prevents this from being an out and out downer of an ending. I called the forecast positive in the opening paragraph because I am quite sure that the Forgers will be fine, but they don’t know that yet. Their concern for each other is sweet. (Frankly, it trumps what I’ve seen from many “real” families in my day, but that’s another conversation altogether.)
We will find out next week, of course, if Anya’s chances of getting into Eden Academy are really as dashed as they all think. Until then, anime 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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Yuu Ishigami has a conundrum. He, with all of his nerdy insecurities, is harboring a crush on one of Shuchiin Academy’s Popular Girls ™. Our boy is distraught by this in a manner not rare for internet natives of his age. He sees the object of his affection, cheer vice-captain Tsubame Koyasu (Haruka Fukuhara) as untouchable and perfect; somebody who lives in a different world than him and is forever beyond his reach.
He has plain black hair. She has quirky anime hair complete with a two-color gradient. It could never work between them!
Ishigami’s situation would be unenviable even in a normal school. Obviously, he’s not entitled to Tsubame, and what she thinks of him we don’t currently know. But the unspoken, yet, obvious, underline here is that Ishigami’s biggest obstacle to getting Tsubame to consider him as a romantic option is actually himself. Namely his own lack of self-confidence, not any inherent difference between them. Were he in any other high school on Earth, he might get advice that actually reflects that reality. But, he is a member of Shuchiin Academy’s student council. And the person who first pries the knowledge of this crush out of him is none other than our title lead, Kaguya Shinomiya.
Kaguya, I genuinely believe, has nothing but the best of intentions when she tells Ishigami that women are attracted to power, so his first step should be to gain “clout” of some kind. (She suggests gunning for a Top-50 placement in the upcoming exams.) Now, Kaguya may not entirely be wrong in suggesting this course of action—it certainly will attract peoples’ notice if one of the school’s worst students is suddenly out-scoring most of his grade on exams—but anything she says should be taken with a grain of salt. We know, but Ishigami unfortunately does not, that Kaguya comes from a deeply broken home. The Shinomiya Family has drilled into her the importance of regarding others only as tools for self-advancement. And while it’s true that she’s shed much of that programming by this point in the series, the roots of such a dog-eat-dog hypercompetitive mentality are hard to pull out. She’s still approaching this from the wrong point of view by encouraging Ishigami to change himself rather than simply be honest. (Of course, as the series itself humorously points out, that’s as much a reflection as her own unwillingness to be honest as anything else.) Regardless of what happens next, we should keep Kaguya’s upbringing, and how it informs this advice of hers, in mind. Although it is worth noting that she does realize that he needs to do something, or else….well.
At least she’s self-aware.
She does, at least, wisely shoot down Ishigami’s ideas for “ultra romantic” confession gestures, including such bizarre notions as leaving themed flowers on Tsubame’s desk every day for a week and presenting her with a half-empty photo album and expressing a desire to “fill it up with pictures of us together.” That much is probably the right call.
Now, let’s be clear here. Regardless of any romantic intentions, Ishigami improving his grades would hardly be a bad thing. He spends the second third of the episode studying, and it’s explicitly pointed out to us that it’s not the thought of wooing Tsubame so much as simply the fact that Kaguya actually believes he can improve that motivates him to try his hardest. Recall that not many people have ever expressed even that much faith in Ishigami before.
But, in a recurring theme for Love is War!—and honestly, Aka Akasaka‘s work in general—simply wanting something is not enough. Despite his best efforts, Ishigami places only around the 150 mark. An improvement, to be sure, but a far cry from his attempted coup of the grade rankings. He is absolutely devastated. (“So bitter that blood might as well shoot out of his eyes”, in the words of the Narrator (Yutaka Aoyama).)
But, of course, failure is not the end. Kaguya confronts Ishigami, getting him to admit that he is torn up about this, and he will try his damnedest to do better next time. Kaguya approves, although (jokingly?) warns him that the “kid gloves” of her study help are coming off.
It is interesting to me, in a series that is very firmly in the romance genre, how well Kaguya and Ishagami’s relationship is written. They’re certainly not romantic partners—and many romance anime neglect to depict friendship as much more than a steppingstone to love at all—and honestly, they don’t seem terribly close as friends in the typical way one imagines such a relationship. But they clearly care for each other; Kaguya would not spend as much time trying to push him as she does if she didn’t. Ishigami, in turn, would not care about those attempts if he didn’t on some level like and respect Kaguya. It’s an interesting, tangly relationship, which makes it feel very real. The two have come along way from Ishigami frequently suspecting that Kaguya was trying to kill him back in season one to a true kouhai / senpai pair.
I do fear I’ve perhaps made this entire part of the episode sound overly serious or even dour. In truth it’s not much more so than any episode of the season so far, but I think the character work here is interesting enough to devote the bulk of the column to. The gags are great throughout, here, of course, but that’s par for the course with Love is War! I particularly like this little nod to a fact we know about Shirogane; his tendency to shadowbox when psyched. Showcased here when he again scores the #1 spot on the exam rankings.
In any case, the final third of the episode is about Chika and Kaguya FaceTiming with Shirogane while sleep deprived.
There’s nothing particularly complicated about this segment, which brings the episode to a fun close that avoids being a trifle. Chika stays over at Kaguya’s place for a sleepover. She meets “Mr. Herthaka”, yet another of Hayasaka’s alter egos. This one has….quite the backstory, as we soon learn.
But really, the highlight of the evening comes when, through a series of convoluted misunderstandings, Chika gets the idea that Shirogane and “Mr. Herthaka” are romantically involved. In doing so, she resurrects a proud, ancient tradition perfected by her ancestors.
A completely unironic nosebleed gag in an anime in 2022? Nature really is healing.
The episode ends on a sweet note, though. Kaguya, very much past her usual bedtime and barely able to think straight, nearly tells Shirogane that she’s into him, only to pass out mid-sentence. A little frustrating? Maybe, but I can’t help but find it adorable. Will these two colossal nerds ever truly have the courage to own up to their feelings? Perhaps we’ll find out next time, Kaguya fans.
Oh, and before I forget, the Bonus Hayasaka Screencap. How about the chart of the many faces of our favorite blonde maid that we get at the episode’s end?
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 Directoryto 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.
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.
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; totally average person from our world dies and gets reincarnated as someone of note in a stock JRPG-style fantasy universe. This is, fundamentally, the rock that the modern iteration of the isekai genre is built on. There are many, many variations of it, but the central premise remains familiar to anyone who has even a slight familiarity with modern anime.
The Magical Revolution of the Reincarnated Princess and The Genius Young Lady, monstrously long title and all, is really only different in one key way. Our protagonist—and her obligatory love interest—are both girls.
Yes, it’s true, a yuri fantasy isekai. There are a couple of these. I’m in Love with the Villainess is well-liked, and The Executioner and Her Way of Life has an anime airing right now. Revolution Princess is a bit simpler than either of those, though. It is, at least going by the nineteen chapters currently available in English, a more straightforward heroic fantasy. (That’s nineteen chapters of the manga, for the record. It’s based on a light novel, presumably much farther along, by Piero Karasu.) It also draws a bit on the “tech boost” subgenre, a style wherein the hero uses their modern knowledge to fast-track technological development in their new world. It’s a fraught, and frankly, very silly, style, but that doesn’t much matter here. We haven’t really seen many fruits of this pursuit of better living through magitek yet, and indeed some part of the series’ point seems to be in illustrating how difficult doing such a thing would actually be. But I risk getting ahead of myself. Let’s start with the basics.
Anisphia (“Anis” for short) is the princess of a roughly medieval European-ish kingdom somewhere in a fantasy world. She used to be someone else, in another life. We don’t learn much about that “someone else,” but we do learn, crucially, that she was obsessed with the idea of magic. Now living in a world where it’s a reality, she’s hellbent on learning as much about it as she can. (Credit here, the scene of young Anis’ personality being “built” puzzle piece by puzzle piece, and finally completing as her past life memories come rushing back to her, is an intriguingly poetic visual.)
Because of a condition, she can’t actually use magic herself, directly. But over the course of her young life, she studies it extensively, becoming something of a magical mad scientist, creating useful gadgets for herself and inventing an entire field of study; a sort of “applied science of magic” called magicology. If that all seems a little dry to you, early parts of the manga are indeed a bit so. Things get more interesting when we’re introduced to Anis’ co-protagonist.
The daughter of a duke, one Euphyllia (“Euphy”), is renounced by the man she was betrothed to. That man? Anis’ older brother, the kingdom’s prince. It’s not totally clear why he’s dumping Euphy—he claims she was talking badly to a lady-friend of his who he seems to have far stronger feelings for, but the situation seems more complicated than that and we don’t learn all the details—but he’s doing it very publicly, destroying her reputation in the process.
Cue Anis, flying in on a magic broomstick of her own design. In an absurd—even in-universe—turn of events, Anis sees this as an opportunity. She reasons that if her older brother doesn’t need Euphy anymore, maybe Euphy should come with her instead. None of the nobles present are particularly okay with this, but Anis does manage to (eventually) convince the only person whose opinion on the subject really matters; Euphy herself.
Even this early on, Anis’ spur-of-the-moment decision to pick up this random disgraced woman as her (we soon learn) lab assistant is strange, but Anis is a beaming ray of pure personality, and it’s hard both for the other characters and for us the audience to not be charmed by her. Her sudden absconding with the Duke’s daughter somehow manages to scan as romantic.
Anis is, in general, an endearing protagonist, although not a flawless one. She’s charming when taken with the magic of her world, which she’s singlehandedly wrought into a science mostly by herself. She has an enthusiasm for admiring her own handiwork (sometimes to a positively Dexter’s Laboratory-ish degree).
But she also has a cool side. She was born without the ability to use magic naturally, and so Sciences her way around problems that would ordinarily be solvable with “regular” spellcasting. It’s easy to be cynical about this kind of thing nowadays, but Revolution Princess sells this characterization very well, partly by making it clear how into her Euphy is, and partly by cutting it with her general immaturity to not make her too perfect. She can occasionally come across as remote and, when pursuing her interests, reckless.
(There’s also the matter that her disregard for the spirits that are responsible for the world’s magic system, and the stones they leave behind that she uses to power her devices, does feel kind of Reddit Atheist-y at points. Thankfully it doesn’t come up enough to be a real problem.)
Euphy, meanwhile, is so dazed by the sudden shakeup in her life that it takes a while for her to know what to do with herself. She knows she likes Anis, at least in some way. She knows that all the training she did to become the future queen—remember, Anis’ brother is a crown prince—was for naught. She feels directionless and adrift. Anis doesn’t entirely get this, and the two come into conflict a few times over it. Anis, you see, is more than content to let Euphy do what she likes, but since she doesn’t know what “what she likes” even is, it just makes her feel restless.
They come to an understanding during of the manga’s first—and currently only—big, dramatic arc, wherein Anis decides to try stopping a rampaging dragon. Why? Well, aside from the fact that if left unchecked it might kill a lot of people, she wants the magical stone it carries within it to make more magitek gadgets. Fair enough. There’s a whole other slate of stampeding monsters to take care of, too, and Anis gets to really show off her action heroine chops here. (For those of you who, like me, just enjoy watching anime girls go full stone-cold killer, this is probably enough to sell the manga alone.)
The fight with the dragon is a visual treat, artist Harutsugu Nadaka‘s compositional skill is really something to behold in general, and he knocks the climactic battle scene here out of the park. I could easily fill this whole article with examples, and the dragon itself is worth highlighting; all shadowy wings beating the air, teeth and claws.
But I have to say my personal favorite is this absolutely bonkers page where Anis uses one of her gadgets, a magic dagger, to split the dragon’s breath in two.
These would be the obvious highlights of any hypothetical anime adaption as well, but don’t consider Nadaka a one-trick pony who’s only good at fight scenes. He can also excellently portray say, warm intimacy or imposing projection equally well, and it is this that gives the manga most of its visual strength. It’s immersive in a way that’s all too easy to take for granted.
When Euphy saves Anis from her first, botched run at the dragon, the princess is undeterred, and the panel makes her look positively majestic. You can practically see her cape flapping in the wind, feel the breeze blowing, and smell the sulfur and burnt fabric. It’s only natural that this eventually leads to that page of Anis splitting the dragon’s breath above. How could someone this confident not be able to do the impossible?
This is the difference between a relationship that feels convenient and one that feels real, and it’s here where Anis and Euphy seem to finally “click” with each other for good. The general sentiments here are old—far older than the manga format itself—but they’re expressed very well. Reading Revolution Princess, I get why Euphy and Anis are into each other, and the visuals play a huge part in selling that. At a ball, some weeks later and held in celebration of Anis’ victory, Euphy straight-up confesses. I’ve seen a lot of confession scenes over the course of my time reading manga, and I have to say that this is one of the sweetest. I absolutely love how we get to see a rare shot of Anis being totally, sincerely flummoxed by someone else’s actions, the brave isekai heroine reverts to a blushing schoolgirl in the face of such strong feelings. (Note also how this scene and the one immediately above mirror each other. I like that, it’s a nice visual touch.)
I’d tell you more—because goodness dear readers, do I ever want more people to pick this up—but in truth, there isn’t much more, at least not yet. Revolution Princess is still a fairly young serialization, and as good as it’s been so far, I feel as though its best chapters are ahead of it. I can only hope it picks up the following it deserves. In addition to its obvious appeal to the WLWs of the world (or just anyone who likes a good romance), there are other, intriguing plots forming in the background; dragon prophecies, jealous older siblings, and and an eccentric girl who “collects curses.” A world is being built here, and while Anis and Euphy are at the center of it, they aren’t the only interesting parts of it.
I often lament that so much yuri focuses solely on the romantic aspect. I like romance (I’m covering two romance anime this very season!), but having some other plot as well definitely helps things feel more fleshed-out and lived in. In general, I’m fond of this current wave of yuri isekai manga, and I hope that Executioner is not the last to get an anime adaption. Stories like this are built on old foundations, but Revolution Princess is a breath of exhilarating, magical fresh air.
Update: If you liked this article, be sure to check out my writeup on the anime!
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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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Today on Healer Girl: someone almost dies on an operating table!
Yes, really!
I can’t pretend this is an entirely unexpected turn for the show. It’s been fairly clear from the jump that the practices of “vocal medicine” and, you know, normal medicine are well entwined. On its own, then, it’s not strange that Healer Girl would eventually involve someone doing Actual Serious Surgery in an Actual Hospital Setting. But I am surprised that the show went there this early. The girls have just acquired their assistant’s licenses, as they remind us at the top of this episode with Kana’s amusing bragging.
Putting them in a medical setting this dire seems like skipping a step. Especially, since, as the first part of the episode hilariously demonstrates, none of them are even really used to seeing blood. (They end up “training” by watching a bunch of splatter horror flicks, an idea that strains credulity. It’s very funny to watch them freak out, though, so I’ll let the show have this one.)
Plus, on the other hand, the girls are not doing the surgery. (Thankfully.) Instead, our heroes’ assignment here is to provide live music during a surgery, with the idea being that it calms down the surgeon and assistants and helps them focus. Healer Girl has mostly been pretty good about not pitting its own fantastical branch of medicine against the mundane thing so far, so this arrangement is smart on that front, as well.
Not that everyone feels that way. Ria is fine with it. Shouko, her assistant, is fine with it. And of course, our protagonists Kana, Reimi, and Hibiki are all (eventually) fine with it. But one person who isn’t is the actual operating surgeon. Not because of any “this isn’t real medicine” ideological conflict—something I have to admit I became worried about when the character was introduced—but simply because this is his first surgery, too, and he thinks his skills are being belittled.
Despite his distaste, he goes along with it. (The person in charge of his department favors experimenting with live music in a surgical setting and is an old college classmate of Ria and Shouko’s, so really, he’s outnumbered and outranked.) And for a while, it seems like everything is basically fine. The girls sing in shifts, with each of them ducking out and letting the other carry the tune for a while to rest their voices and get some water at set intervals.
Then, just as he’s about to finish up, the surgeon notices that the issue with the patient is far more widespread than initially realized, and they need to do more than they initially planned. This goes badly. As in, “shots of the heart rate monitor going down and one of the nurses yelling ‘he’s critical!'” badly. In keeping with how we’ve seen this work before, the girls’ song-environment promptly falls to pieces under the stress, all three of them are shaken. But crucially they don’t actually panic. Instead, Reimi pulls Kana back in to the song with what might be my favorite two-line exchange of the whole season so far.
Healer Girlreally loves imagery of ground and earth being knit back together after a cataclysm, this is the second of these “song spaces” to invoke that particular visual trope, and it looks even better here than it did two episodes ago when Ria comforted a pregnant woman. Angels fly from the skies and return everything to a serene—and slightly surreal—calm.
In terms of the actual surgery, a more experienced doctor intervenes and fixes the patient up. Crisis averted; everything is fine.
The girls take the well-earned time to bask in a job well done, and Ria is relieved that she didn’t actually have to intervene, praising the girls for their good judgment and level heads. The grumpy doctor, if you were wondering, does eventually thank the girls for their services, though only in a rather brusque and abrupt way. (You ever stepped in front of someone’s car while they’re pulling out of a parking lot? Not the best idea, usually.)
More importantly, back home, the girls text each other in the episode’s epilogue. Kana thanks Reimi for encouraging her. It’s a cute, warm end to another casually dazzling episode. How does Healer Girl make it look so easy?
Song Count: Just one, technically, this time around, but what a song it is.
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 Directoryto 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.
Anime Orbit Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hello, anime fans. Once again, I’ve got a couple short writeups for you below, and some links to my work of this past week below that. Don’t have much else to say this week! (Still dealing with Medical Issues™) So please, do enjoy.
Seasonal Anime
Estab-Life
Before we talk about the episode of Estab-Life that actually aired last week, I want to discuss the first one again. Why? Because the show has actually gotten an English dub, and against all odds, a solidly good one. The real stars of the production our are leads, Julie Shields is a touch stiff as Equa, but given the character’s weird nature that only makes sense. Alexis Tipton‘s take on Feles really gets the “always at least a little fed up with everyone’s nonsense” aspect across splendidly, and the dub impressively manages to amp the ship teasing between Equa and Feles up even more. Martes, played here by Sarah Wiedenheft, is also done very well. Wiedenheft’s take on Martes’ fake-drunk rambling near the conclusion of episode one is a particular highlight.
The supporting characters are also dubbed well throughout, and Anthony Bowling‘s take on the robot buddy Alga sounds totally different than the original JP dub but in an interesting, transformative way. He’s gruffer, here, and his snarky side made more obvious. Good performances require a good director, of course, and it’s probably thanks to ADR Director Jeremy Inman that all of this comes together so well. All in all, a solid dubbed start to the series that I hope will give it a somewhat wider audience, it deserves one.
This week’s episode is leaner than that explosively weird premiere. Essentially; Equa has a cold, so the rest of the team needs to extract their client (a wheezy otaku) without her. They fail to do so, because their mission devolves into bickering and they don’t communicate with the client terribly well. What they seem to not quite get—but Equa definitely does, as she demonstrates when she shows up anyway toward the episode’s end—is that the Extractors’ main goal is to give their clients some agency. Without doing that, they can’t accomplish anything else, either. I suspect this theme will come back around as the series enters its second half.
The Demon Girl Next Door – Season 2
It took a bit, but it seems like the second season of The Demon Girl Next Door is starting to find its footing. The first segment of episode 3 is about Shamiko learning to use the computer (and then, more specifically, Twitter). Gags like this are arguably old hat at this point, but the execution here is pretty good, starting from Momo’s “Magical Girl Lesson on Internet Literacy.”
The pair’s inability to be honest with each other is also brought back, here. Both want to connect with the other on social media but can’t get themselves to directly say it, which leads exchanges like this, where Yuuko tries to be sincere.
Only to course correct moments later.
In the episode’s second half, Momo takes Yuuko’s ever-present, normally statue-bound ancestor Lilith (Minami Takahashi) on an outing to a health spa. This is mostly an excuse for the self-proclaimed Witch of Eternal Darkness to annoy the magical girl. There’s a few moments of genuine bonding in here, too. (This is also the best-looking part of the episode. I’m a sucker for the shadowless technique.)
….but of course, this being Machikado Mazoku, that much is also rolled into a gag, where Momo promptly uses the newfound knowledge that Lilith is scared of the dark to blackmail her.
It’s good that the series seems to be finally stabilizing after a somewhat rough first two episodes. (They were hardly bad, but the lack of structure was noticeable.) Next week promises to get the ball rolling on the show’s actual plot once again, something I quite look forward to.
Summer Time Rendering
Somewhere in the Pacific, there’s been a death on the island of Higotoshima. A tragic accident; a girl drowning at sea while saving another from the same fate. Shinpei Ajiro (Natsuke Hanae) returns there—to his home—for the first time in two years to pay respects to the departed; his sister by all but blood, one Ushio Kofune (Anna Nagase). For its first fifteen minutes, it’s all atmosphere. The palm trees hang huge and crooked like hangman’s gallows, and the summer sun beats down a heat so hot it’s oppressive.
Every bead of water—from tears to air conditioner condensation—is placed with elegant finesse. At night, Ushio’s own sister Mio (Saho Shirasu) stares at her own house from outside, like she’s a stranger. The island goes eerie. Something is in the air. This is Summer Time Rendering.
Eventually, something like an explanation creeps forward, though not without a payment in blood. The so-called Shadow Sickness, a haunting via doppelganger that ends with the victim being killed by their own double. This, it seems, is the island’s secret. By the time Mio’s holding herself at gunpoint at the end of the episode, everything’s spun into freefall. Shinpei gets a bullet to the brain for his troubles, only to wake back up on the same boat he arrived on the previous day.
Who can say, really, where all this is going? Summer Time Rendering is not going to be a regular fixture of this column. (It’s being held in streaming jail, for one thing.) But I may cover it occasionally. In truth though, if you want to see what happens, you’ll just have to seek it out for yourself. Good luck.
Ya Boy Kongming!
Over the past few weeks, Kongming has strategized and schemed his way into getting Eiko, his friend, client, and the idol singer he’s an unashamed fan of, into bigger and bigger placements. Last week that culminated in stealing the thunder of a popular indie band at a pop-up festival. Here, Eiko presented with a choice. She’s invited to a second festival of a similar size. Or, the festival-runner making this offer explains, a truly massive summer music festival, but there’s a catch on that one. She needs 100,000 likes on social media. Eiko, no longer content with taking the easy route, opts for the latter option, to the amusement of the festival organizer and the comical distress of her boss.
Kongming brainstorms several solutions, but one is to hire other personnel to join Eiko’s backing band / form a group / etc. Specifically, he suggests “a mighty rapper.”
This is an interesting obstacle for a series like this to hit. Hip-hop and anime are uneasy bedfellows and trying to integrate one into the other usually results in—at best—offputting results. And as someone who’s a lifelong fan of both, I feel pretty qualified in making that statement. (Not for nothing will I never cover Hypnosis Mic on this site.) But there are degrees here. “Rapper” is vague, does Kongming mean an actual, full-on hip-hop artist? Or more of an EDM / pop rapper, someone constant late ’00s / early ’10s Billboard Hot 100 presence Flo Rida? In either case, there’s a lot of leeway. To put it another way; chelmico. aren’t Lauryn Hill. Calliope Mori is not Paul Wall. “A rapper” can be a lot of different things. What does the show actually mean when it says it’s going to involve one?
For the time being, it seems like neither Kongming the series nor Kongming the person are actually interested in answering that. Kongming spends several nights (it’s not clear how many exactly) chatting up a hypebeast outside of the club he and Eiko still both work at. The scene contrasts the two’s approaches for this stretch of time; Eiko hustles with her singing at home, Kongming seemingly skips out on his duties to go party early in the morning. Eventually, when Eiko confronts him about this, he convinces her to come with her one night to a club in Roppongi (an area of Tokyo I mostly associate with being the setting of the truly god-awful Speed Grapher. But it’s hard to hold that against the place). Kongming rubs shoulders with quite a few people while out, including a ripped Black American who speaks no Japanese, several girls who are club regulars and seem to think Kongming is cute, and the aforementioned hypebeast guy. None are the mentioned “rapper.” We don’t meet them here at all, and they remain a question mark for the series, for now.
Eventually, he explains to Eiko, all of this is “intel gathering.” He’s trying to read the scene, and the two resolve the minor misunderstanding over bowls of udon, after the club.
The climax of this scene sees Eiko reveal the full scope of her ambitions to Kongming; she doesn’t want to just be a singer. She wants to perform at the world’s largest EDM festival. A concrete, but absurd, goal, for someone who is still at this point a fairly unknown pop singer from Tokyo. This is, she says, the first time she’s ever told anyone she wants to do this.
Kongming thanks her—he also lightly reprimands her over her continued lack of self-confidence–and there are no hard feelings here. At episode’s end, Eiko passes Kongming her phone, and asks for his thoughts on her new song. The credits creep down the screen as 96Neko‘s voice hisses out of the tinny iPhone ear buds. I could describe how I feel about the song, but how Kongming feels is a lot more important.
She is, of course, embarrassed by this high praise. But it’s a good reminder of why anyone is watching this show in the first place. Yes, the premise is funny. But what Kongming is actually about is how one person can be so moved by music that they need it like a fish needs water—again, Kongming’s words, not mine. Kongming may be the one to put Eiko on the path to stardom, but he needs her, too.
I picked up a third seasonal. Why? Because I really, really love Healer Girl, and I hope to contribute in some small way to it becoming even a little more popular. That’s genuinely it.
A downbeat turn from Spy x Family this week. Comparatively, anyway; there are still a lot of great little character moments in here, and it’s worth watching for those alone.
And that’s all for this week. See you next time and keep out for an additional article on Tuesday in addition to the Healer Girl recap on Monday, this week! It marks the return of a column we haven’t seen around here since last year. I hope you’re all excited.
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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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Spy x Family takes a slightly more relaxed, downtempo turn this week. Really, that’s fine, with two cours split across half the year, the series has time to stretch its legs. As such, “Prepare for the Interview,” its third episode, only briefly involves any actual forward plot motion. It’s mostly scene-setting, and an opportunity to put the Forgers in a genuinely domestic context. If only, perhaps, to endear us to them further so that later, when this status quo is threatened, we feel all the more sympathetic. (Not to be cynical about it, that’s just good storytelling.)
We can basically break the episode down into a couple different kinds of scene. There are scenes where the Forger “family” achieve the illusion of domesticity, there are scenes—usually immediately following that—that break said illusion to comedic effect, and there are finally the scenes that actually move the show’s core narrative forward. All three are important in different ways, and there is groundwork laid here that’s sure to pay off later.
The actual interview bit is a fairly minor part of the episode, coming after Loid and Anya help Yor set up in their new, collective home. (Everyone has their own room, which we’re shown in detail. More importantly, we’re reacquainted with Anya’s plushie Mr. Chimera.)
They briefly try some interview practice right away, but it doesn’t go particularly well. I like this little gem here, Yor’s response to the question of what her “parenting philosophy” is.
The bulk of the episode simply revolves around the Forger family having a nice “upper-class outing.” Loid reasons that maybe getting some culture will help.
This is all on the quiet side, but there are still some pretty great gags in here, like Anya briefly getting scared of Yor when the latter has a stray thought about how she once accidentally hugged her brother too hard and cracked his ribs. Anya’s pretty great in general in this episode. She expresses shock when Loid bluntly tells her that she didn’t really help get the house ready for Yor to move in, she falls asleep at an opera, and at an art museum, this happens.
Yor gets in a few good gags too, mostly revolving around her character tic of blushing whenever something related to violence is around. (At one point she fiddles with a knife at the restaurant they’re at. At the museum, she gets all dew-eyed over a painting of a beheading.)
There are a few more serious scenes as well, such as Anya getting a bit of esper overload when the family hangs around a political rally and has to be escorted away.
The episode’s focal point, though, comes when the trio, taking in some fresh air at a small overlook, happen to see a purse snatcher rob an old woman. Loid, being naturally inclined to not draw attention to himself, doesn’t initially do anything, coldly commenting that the woman should’ve been more careful. It’s Yor who springs into action, and while Loid is eventually the one who takes the crook down (Yor loses him), the old woman thanks them both. Loid thanks Yor for inspiring him to action, and she blushes, which leads to another astute observation from Anya.
The episode concludes with more interview practice, and the promise that we’ll see the real thing next week.
If I don’t seem to have much to say about this episode that’s because, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a terribly important one. Other than that scene with the thief, this one is best enjoyed by just hitting play and letting it wash over you.
Until next time.
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 Directoryto 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.
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