Posted on March 27, 2022 in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [3/27/22]

The Frontline Report 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.

Hi folks, simple writeups this week, nothing too fancy. But I hope you’ll enjoy them as one of our recurring anime comes to a close and another heads there at a mile a minute. But first–

Seasonal Anime

Miss KUROITSU From the Monster Development Department

Miss Kuroitsu probably isn’t quite consistent enough to be called a seasonal underdog, but damn if it doesn’t sometimes come close. This past week’s episode is the beautiful little fable of a mute monster girl filled with weapons (named Mumy and played by singer YURiKA) who wants nothing more than to become an idol. The general idea is hackneyed, and the episode looks like ass. Did I tear up multiple times throughout anyway just because the show got me so attached to this girl? Yes I did. Did I have to actively stop myself from crying even more at the end of the episode where a combination of vampire bioengineering and sheer fucking moxie means she’s miraculously grown a voicebox and developed a beautiful singing voice? Yes I absolutely did.

What else can be said? Sometimes even a benchwarmer bats a home run.

Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2

I wish people still sincerely called things “epic.” I can’t think of a word that better fits the blazing spectacle that Princess Connect has transmogrified to as it enters the final stretch of its second season.

To get something out of the way; in previous articles where I’ve discussed Priconne, I’ve made a point of entertaining alternate points of view. The show is widely liked, but not universally liked, and while I do still respect everyone’s rights to hold their own opinion, I think the time for trying to specifically acknowledge criticisms that others might have has passed. If you object to rapturous praise for stuff like this, you’re on the wrong site. Sorry.

“Stuff like this,” if you need to be brought up to speed, is an absolutely shameless blind-fire of the Proper Noun Machine Gun, mixed with what is certainly some of the flashiest animation of the year so far. (Priconne is good at that.) We get some new characters here (and a few old ones make return appearances), and a good chunk of the episode consists of a guild–a guild who seem to have some knowledge of how the world of Princess Connect really works–fighting against Christina, another of the Seven Crowns and Omniscient Kaiser’s sort-of lackey, below Kaiser’s palace.

This is, in a word, awesome. New arrivals Ruka (Rina Sato) and Anna (Asami Takano) attack Christina with Anna’s Final Catastrophe attack. Ah, but of course, Christina is one of the Seven Crowns, so her passive ability Absolute Defense renders her immune to normal damage.

But that too can be overcome by simply overloading the ability’s computational capacity–a kind of VRMMO underflow error–but then it turns out that Christina secretly also has access to Absolute Offense, which fires glowing beams that invert the world’s colors. They eventually subdue her…only for the secret true form of Omniscient Kaiser to emerge from the very thing they were fighting over! All of this is deeply ridiculous, but it’s a total blast. Anna in particular is really fun, being perhaps the most chuuni chuunibyou I’ve seen in any anime in years.

Alongside this is Pecorine’s fight to save Karyl. Impeded here by the return of Jun–the blindfold-wearing knight we were introduced to several episodes ago–but now she is, of course, brainwashed by Kaiser and in full battle armor. The two prove a solid match for each other, although it says a lot that this is actually the more restrained of Priconne’s two battle scenes in this episode.

Eventually, Pecorine is able to break Kaiser’s hold on Jun, and the two turn the tables against the evil wolf-woman and kill her. Except they don’t actually, because of the aforementioned hidden true form of Omniscient Kaiser lurking beneath Kaiser’s palace. The form that they’ve been fighting this entire time? Merely a particularly strong-willed shadow. It has a very hammy death, and it’s not gone for ten seconds before the real Kaiser starts tossing Pecorine and Jun around like ragdolls with a wag of her finger. (As a side note, Kaiser’s actor Shouta Aoi deserves some praise here. He has a reputation for voicing dangerous women, and he is indeed very good at that, but he can also holler like a motherfucker when the scene calls for it, and he uses that skill several times in this episode.)

As you can surmise from the appearance of credits over this final scene, this, and the cut immediately after where Yuki finally arrives, is the end of the episode. But we should back up a bit, because one more thing of import does happen in between all the flashy sword-clanking.

Kokkoro, in about the middle of the episode, is spirited away by the Ameth, that mysterious girl with the broken clockwork floating around her who, like Labyrista, seems to have been instrumental in controlling the world. Regardless of the specifics of her, though, what she gives to Kokkoro is important; a small device for “keeping Yuuki’s emotions in check.” Ostensibly to keep him from overloading his powers and hurting himself. It’s an odd turn of events, and seems to imply that maybe Ameth isn’t entirely on the level, either.

The season finale approaches, so perhaps we’ll get some answers there. Or at least, more intriguing questions.

Ranking of Kings

“Shine on toward a yet-unseen tomorrow.”

Ousama Ranking‘s finale begins thusly; Daida reaffirms his (puzzling, though given the vaguely medieval-ish setting perhaps slightly less so) decision to marry Miranjo, swearing that the both of them will turn over a new leaf and concentrate on doing good in the world. At the same time, he relinquishes the throne, and all of Bojji’s retainers hail him as the new king; the scene is a happy one, with all present praising Bojji’s bravery and strength of character. There’s much celebration, and King Bojji’s new subjects quite literally toss him into the air with joy, and later take him to his new throne room so he can receive formal homage from the townsfolk. It’s very classic fairy tale. There are a lot of happy tears. So, we’re all good, right? Happy endings all around.

Well, no, not quite.

Not present among Bojji’s gaggle of retainers is Kage. The shadow clansman rationalizes that the young king no longer needs him–and that his own reliance on the boy is bad–and leaves silently, seeking honest work in the same nearby town he used to make his way as a thief in. He ends up miserable there, of course, as the townsfolk haven’t really changed. No one wants to hire him for honest work, and when he sets up a small wooden hut outside of town someone destroys it.

Meanwhile, Bojji, too, is lost without his best friend. He seems like a fine king based on what little we see, but his heart clearly isn’t in it. Fittingly, it’s Queen Hiling (now Queen-Mother Hiling, one supposes) who picks up on this. In a cozy bit of motherly wisdom, she tells him that being a king is his responsibility, but if there is something that truly matters to him more, he should go seek that instead.

Bojji, thus, ends his brief reign by re-relinquishing (delinquishing?) his crown to Prince Daida. Making for, I’m sure, a fun footnote in their kingdom’s history some hundreds of years down the line.

Bojji sets out to find Kage the very day, and they meet up again not long later. He reveals to Kage his secret ambition; to someday found his own kingdom, after having a great many adventures before then, of course.

As for what happened to King Desha at the end of last week’s episode? We don’t know, and perhaps we never will. Some mysteries remain even under the morning Sun.

Ousama Ranking is occasionally criticized–and I’ve made these criticisms myself–for its odd pacing and the plot’s tendency to drift all over the place. Even in this final episode there’s an aside that really doesn’t add anything at all, although it does look pretty cool. (Kingbo makes a surprise return appearance, splits the rock that Ouken is imprisoned in in half, and then decapitates him and chucks his head into a lake many miles away in the span of about 3 minutes.) But, while that is certainly a flaw, it’s not one that negates the show’s many strengths. In the end, Ousama Ranking boils back down to what made it great in the first place; Bojji, Kage, a bag of treasure, and the great, wide world stretching before them. The promise of more adventure on the horizon billows into the sky like smoke. If not now, it seems to say, then someday, somewhere.

Elsewhere on MPA

Vote on the Next Let’s Watch for the Spring 2022 Anime Season

Please vote on this if you care about what I’m going to be covering during the (rapidly approaching) next anime season. You’ve got a little under a week left to make your voice heard!

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 11 – “I’m Bisco!”

Sabikui Bisco continues to be Sabikui Bisco-y as it comes to a close. I kinda feel like I’ve run out of much to say about this show other than what’s already in the

Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 12 – “My Dress-Up Darling” (SEASON FINALE)

Meanwhile, My Dress-Up Darling ends the only way it really could have, sweet nothings and fireworks. It doesn’t hold a candle to the very best fireworks-centric romcom finale in recent memory–that being a different show’s season one finale–but still, it’s a definite high point to go out on for a show that’s been something of a rocky ride. I hope the second season (and let’s be real, one is definitely getting made) is more like this than say, like episode six.

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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 March 27, 2022 in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 12 – “My Dress-Up Darling” (SEASON FINALE)

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

Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinary folks of the jury, our long national wet dream is finally over. Yes, it’s been a long twelve weeks, but here we are, at the season finale of My Dress-Up Darling. Before we even talk about this episode at all, let’s go over some facts of the prior eleven. Some of MDUD’s episodes have been spectacular, others have been pretty bad. This is an inconsistency not rare among anime or, honestly, among linear TV shows in general. Evaluating a run of episodes that includes both the former and the latter is difficult, especially since the “good episodes” aren’t entirely devoid of flaws and the “bad ones” aren’t entirely devoid of merits. Such are the limits of purely qualificative criticism.

One thing it has undeniably been, is successful, and while this is certainly the season finale I would not be at all surprised if the series were hastily renewed. An anime does not simply put an extra two million copies of its source material into circulation and not get a second turn at the plate. To argue that a second MDUD season is unlikely would be to argue that capitalist businesses aren’t actually that interested in making money. Things just don’t work that way. So, to put aside my own–and our own–collective biases for a minute, this is clearly a series that has connected with people in some way. Is it because Gojo is just really that relatable? Maybe it’s because something about Keisuke Shinohara‘s directorial style really resonates with The Youth. Or maybe people just want to wife Marin that badly. (Given the show’s target demo, probably at least some of that.) Maybe it’s all of these. But the point remains; MDUD is here, and it’s probably not going away any time soon. If you care about the current anime zeitgeist, it is at least worth consideration.

So, for the final time–at least for now–let us consider it. My Dress-Up Darling‘s 12th episode, its season finale, also called “My Dress-Up Darling”, begins with a heavy summer night hanging over Japan. A small breeze clinks a windchime as Gojo focuses on his first passion, dollmaking. He gets the sort of text that would send just about anybody–age, gender, whatever, aside–into a bit of a panic.

Cut to opening credits.

It is, of course, not actually that serious. She wants help with a costume thing and to vent about her dad not letting her go to a festival. Normal teenage girl stuff. Things happen, and our heroes end up A) working on summer homework and B) watching a scary movie. Also, somewhere in here Marin casually reveals that she has a side job as a model.

The horror movie itself is a real treat. We don’t see much of it, but, in keeping with MDUD’s prior visual ambition in this area, it’s animated totally differently from the rest of the series. The character designs are more grounded and realistic, and in general the visuals look like something out of the Boogiepop franchise. It’s pretty cool! Marin is scared witless by the film while Gojo nerds over costuming details, which, yeah, that sounds about right.

There are a lot of great character moments here, in fact. Gojo and Marin later end up needing to run to their high school to pick up some over-summer math homework that Marin left behind. (And, really, props to them, there. I don’t think you could’ve made me enter my high school over summer vacation if you put a gun to my head.) There’s a scene here where, after falling into a pool(!), Marin muses on how she loves going to the beach even though she can’t swim; to watch the Sun set and make the ocean’s surface sparkle, to talk with friends and eat tasty food. It’s a bit of quiet insight into her character that the show has done well a few times and I really hope it doesn’t let up on when the inevitable second season arrives.

Gojo gets his turn, too. He and Marin attend a festival after Marin finally does finish all her summer homework; one Gojo’s lived near for years but never actually gone to. There’s a lot of great stuff in this scene. Some of it, tropes that are so old to the genre that they’re practically cliche. Gojo is practically dumbstruck by seeing his love interest in a yukata, Marin buys way too much food, etc. But the one Dress-Up Darling works the best is probably the most classic. The fireworks go off; Gojo hears thunder and smells gunsmoke as a billion neon flowers bloom in the night sky. He spends more time looking at Marin than he does the actual show. Marin returns the favor by shattering the mood into a million pieces by goofily sticking out her tongue, which is a solid blue from the Blue Hawaii she’s been eating.

Is the moment actually ruined? Not really, Gojo has to carry her home. (Traditional sandals evidently do a number on your feet. I’ve never worn Japanese-style ones, but, that tracks with my experience with flip-flops.) And when Marin casually mentions being more careful with her footwear next year, when they go again, Gojo gets so hung up on the “next year” that the boy looks like he’s practically going to cry. It’s really sweet.

There’s an equally-sweet after-credits scene, where Gojo keeps Marin company over the phone after the latter makes the brilliant decision to watch the sequel to the horror movie they’d seen earlier. We don’t get a concrete sense of how long the two talk for, but it seems to be quite a while. At episode’s end, Marin tells a now-asleep Gojo that she loves him. Maudlin? Maybe. Heartwarming? Absolutely, and the visual of their two separate beds being stitched “together” by their phone call is really lovely.

The episode–and the season–ends with Marin wishing him a goodnight, and a promise to see him later.

A promise that might well extend to us, the viewers, as well. One can say a lot about Dress-Up Darling, most of which I already noted in the opening paragraphs of this column. But, the show definitely cares about its own characters, and that’s a good thing. I have my own hopes and expectations for the near-inevitable season two, but there will be time to write about those in a future column. MDUD will almost certainly return to the pages of Magic Planet Anime in some form or another. (Perhaps sooner than you think, even.)

For now, I think perhaps I should end this particular round of Let’s Watches the same way MDUD itself ended. To that, I say; goodnight, and see you later.

Egregious Horny Score: We’re at a tasteful 2/5 this week. Although some teenager is going to watch this and discover he has a thing for exposed necks. Pray for him.

Overall Egregious Horny Score: A solid 4/5. Frankly this was my biggest complaint with the show and probably a lot of other peoples’ as well, and I sort of regret waving the extraneous cheesecake that was present early on off in the way that I did. Oh well.

And finally, by far the most important of these little mini-entries, returning for the finale is the Bonus Nowa Screencap. Let’s hope we get more Nowa in season two. If we can’t get an authorized Flower Princess Blaze spinoff I at least want Nowa: The Anime. I would take that as a consolation prize.

Posted on March 22, 2022March 25, 2022 in anime, Misc. Anime

Vote on the Next Let’s Watch for the Spring 2022 Anime Season

It’s getting to be that time again, folks! Spring has sprung, and the time for a new Magic Planet Community Choice pick is here.

If you were here toward the tail end of last year, you already know the drill and can safely skip down to the poll link. If not, let me briefly explain for any newcomers how the Community Vote poll works. It’s quite simple.

Essentially, each season I (currently) cover two anime on Let’s Watch. One I pick myself, and a second show, that y’all pick. This past season that show was My Dress-Up Darling, which absolutely crushed that season’s community pick poll. I suspect this season will be a closer race, given the many highly anticipated anime coming out this season. (If you need a primer on what’s dropping, I suggest hopping over to Anichart.net and taking some time to poke around. Who knows, it might change your vote even if you do know some of what’s coming out!)

You may note that there are a few notable omissions (with one show in particular I’m sure people will be surprised to not see there.) There are three reasons I don’t add a series as a poll option even if it’s coming out.

It’s a sequel to an anime I haven’t seen.
It’s in “streaming jail”, which makes covering it week-by-week impractical.
I am planning to cover it anyway.

In any case, that’s basically all there is to say on the matter, so without further ado; here’s the poll. It’s a very simple checklist-style thing. Some important notes: the poll is organized in alphabetical order, by romaji title (which is how Anichart.net presents them), with a localized English title, if known, after a slash. Also, you can vote for as many shows as you want. So please don’t be afraid to really spread your votes out as you see fit.

I look forward to going over your responses over the next 10 or so days. Until then, anime fans!

Posted on March 22, 2022 in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 11 – “I’m Bisco!”

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

There is a moment near the halfway point of “I’m Bisco”–Sabikui Bisco‘s penultimate episode–where the hookers from episode one show up again. It’s little more than a cameo; the populace of Imihama watching Milo and the Kurokawa-Tetsujin duking it out in the wastelands outside their city with bated breath.

But in that moment, I was led to think about how the show has grown and changed over these eleven weeks. What started as a post-apocalyptic mushroompunk (is that a word? It is now) tale of intrigue in a near-future city morphed into a traveler story and then, as it entered its final act, a much more traditional shonen, with Imihama Governor Kurokawa playing the role of the stock evil villain. (A role that, admittedly, suited him very well.) Now, Bisco is in its final stages, and has boiled down largely to its climactic final fight between Milo and the Kurokawa-Tetsujin. It’s not the ending I would’ve picked for the series, but that’s only marginally relevant when the time comes to discuss it. In the framework of what it’s trying to do, does Sabikui Bisco’s final act succeed? That is the question we should be asking ourselves as the series draws to a close.

Well, it’s not a total washout. But I think the fact that “it’s not a total washout” is the most positive descriptor I can muster speaks volumes. “I’m Bisco!” is divided roughly into two parts; the first involving the Kurokawa-Tetsujin attacking the Children’s Fortress from the episode of the same name. We do get some cool returning characters here; chiefly the town’s chieftain / leader / whatever term you’d care to use Nuts. Who I must confess, I forgot was called Nuts. What a great name.

He gets a fun little turn here where he covers for the other kids under his care, distracting the Kurokawa-Tetsujin as they flee the town. Milo shows up to properly give the thing a challenge not long after, of course, but it’s still a solid little interlude.

The second part of the episode is Milo’s challenge against the Kurokawa-Tetsujin proper, after a brief respite in the middle where he has to protect Pawoo, Tirol, and Jabi from the creature’s hitherto-unused main cannon, a massive weapon the fires appropriately huge blasts of Rust wind. This is where the cameo from the hookers (and several other Imihama citizens, all also from the first episode) comes in.

And it is nice to see our protagonist’s heroics being appreciated, although the actual fight choreography and such here is oddly workmanlike compared to last week’s.

The episode ends with Milo nearly getting killed after managing to get on top of the Kurokawa-Tetsujin and carve up part of its noggin with a knife. After doing so, he briefly (and mistakenly!) thinks the creature is dead, and takes the time to mourn Bisco when he finds the latter’s goggles embedded in its weird gelatin-y flesh. He nearly gets squashed for his trouble as the Tetsujin wakes back up, but he barely has time to process being smacked across half a city block by the monster before we get to this episode’s final revelation.

Surprise! Bisco wasn’t dead after all.

Yeah, I don’t know how I feel about this. Like superheroes, it’s fairly rare for a shonen protagonist to actually die and stay dead. (Goku alone has gone back and forth to and from the afterlife so often that he probably has a second house there by now.) But Bisco was incinerated in a pit of lava. Once you’ve established a character can survive that, any attempt at further raising of stakes just feels inherently hollow. Also Bisco’s right arm is all red and glow-y now, who knows what that’s about.

If this all feels a bit anticlimactic in the retelling, it’s moreso to actually watch. I said a few weeks ago that Sabikui Bisco falls apart when it’s forced to deal with large-scale dramatic stakes and I’ve yet to be proven wrong about that. This entire “Bisco lives on within Milo” subplot we’ve had running since the former initially died is rendered moot by his return. And while the Kurokawa-Tetsujin is a cool foe in a video game enemy kind of way, the knockoff Titan is not exactly the most compelling narrative force.

As a final, and I admit, deeply petty complaint, Pawoo once again gets about a minute total of actual fighting screentime before spending the rest of the episode worried about her brother and/or being protected by him from Rust-wind-laser-whatever attacks.

^{And also complaining about how slow trucks are.}

So, yeah, part of me does feel like the show is basically fizzling away into seafoam as it ends. I wasn’t bored while watching the episode, and I don’t want to give that impression, but it was hard to care about anything that happened on a stickier narrative level, and that’s a pretty big problem, given that we’re now heading into the finale.

Will episode 12 make up for episode 11’s shortcomings? Will I ever figure out a more compelling format to end these columns in? Only one way to find out, anime fans! Until next time.

Posted on March 20, 2022 in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [3/20/22]

The Frontline Report 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.

Hi folks! No fancy lead-in this week, just two solid writeups for you and some links to other stuff. Enjoy.

Seasonal Anime

Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2

“The advancing hands cannot be turned back.”

If you only ever liked Princess Connect for its softer merits; the warm character interactions, the charming comedy, etc. I can imagine finding the past two episodes disappointing in a strange sort of way, for the simple reason that they’ve been the heaviest on the show’s capital P Plot that Princess Connect has ever gotten, and that’s not a development that looks to change any time soon.

Two weeks ago we saw Omniscient Kaiser kill Labyrista and claim her powers. Within the text of the show itself, the rules that the Princess Connect universe operate on remain somewhat fuzzy, but it wasn’t hard to tell that this was a bad thing. The episode was huge and sweeping; a clash of cosmic forces conjuring gigantic CGI labyrinth-spheres and the obligatory near-defeat of Kaiser herself. As villains do, she won with a dirty trick; teleporting in her underling, Karyl, to serve as a human shield.

Labyrista’s defeat has probably rendered Kaiser the most powerful being in the whole setting. Given that she’s been the lurking broad-scope villain of the entire series so far, that’s not great. What’s worse is what she does to Karyl, who is here empowered with a magic mask and rendered Kaiser’s all-too-willing puppet. If Karyl has ever had a genuine, serious character flaw, it is her belief in Kaiser, a sort of surrogate mother figure whose approval she desperately seeks. That need for approval turns her into little more than a weapon for Kaiser in this past week’s episode, where she unleashes absolute terror on the people of Landosol. Why she suddenly commits so hard to being Kaiser’s attack dog is left ambiguous, although I side with the theory I’ve seen floated around social media. Karyl feels guilty about indirectly causing Labyrista’s death has left her feeling as though she has no choice in the matter. (Perhaps she believes that if the rest of the Gourmet Guild found out, they’d turn on her as well, leaving her well and truly alone.)

As the Gourmet Guild struggles to piece together what’s going on, we get a lot of cameos from supporting characters from previous episodes. Most of these are pretty inconsequential, although Yuni contributes to the plot in a huge way at the episode’s climax.

The bulk of the episode’s runtime consists of a smattering of characters fighting off Kaiser’s shadow army as she uses Labyrista’s powers to trap the entirety of Landosol in a huge metal dome. The episode is very effective at conveying a sense of impending doom. Really, it’s remarkable how far Princess Connect has come. There was always a wider story slinking around in the background, all the way from the first episode of season one, but to see all those hints and plot points be forged into a proper Epic Fantasy Story is pretty amazing. Despite this, the story’s bones–VRMMO genre, light novel, and gacha game tropes entering their second decade of dominance right now–ensure that it could never exist in any other medium. Princess Connect is damn good, and it’s also very much an anime.

Of course, this properly epic scale is also very effective at making Kaiser seem like possibly the worst woman to ever live. Sacrificing the souls of your entire kingdom is some classic evil overlord shit, and whoever boarded her expressions in this episode worked damn hard to make sure we know that she’s enjoying every minute of it.

Perhaps the worst of her offenses here is what Kaiser does to Karyl once she stops being a willing part of her plans. Pecorine eventually confronts Karyl.

Initially, Karyl commits to the fatalism–that’s where this subheading’s quote comes from–and begins launching barrages of magical energy at the townsfolk. But it’s hard not to notice that she doesn’t actually kill anybody. She can’t bring herself to do that, even this late in the game.

Kaiser, naturally, has a trick up her sleeve. Be it a result of the mask, Karyl’s recent empowering, or something else entirely, Kaiser extends literal puppet strings from her hands; forcing Karyl to resume firing on innocent townspeople as she begs Kaiser to stop. It is probably the closest Princess Connect has ever come to being genuinely hard to watch.

It’s here where Yuni comes in, using her patented um….turn-rocks-into-walky-talkies-and-also-projectors magic to blow the whistle on Kaiser. Earlier in the episode there’s a scene where she and some of her assistants piece together the identity of the real Princess Eustania, the one who should be ruling Landosol. We, of course, have known for an entire season who that is; Pecorine.

It’s on that note; Kaiser’s deception revealed, Karyl hanging in the sky begging for help, that episode ten comes to an end. Who knows what awaits our heroes in their final, darkest hour?

Ranking of Kings

It’s been quite a long time since we’ve seen young Prince Bojji and his merry band on this blog. But, much of the reason I stopped covering Ousama Ranking for a while was simply that the series has not fundamentally changed at any point, really, since its premiere. It started as a modern spin on classic fairy tale-style fantasy. It’s still that, just with a lot more players now, and with everyone having complex, sympathetic motivations.

That may sound like a good thing. It may be a good thing. But it makes discussion of Ousama Ranking hard, at least for me. I would say, broadly, that Ousama Ranking has only one real problem, and it’s an analogue to an issue often seen in editing. Many series, especially those short on actual plot, employ a tactic of rapidly cutting between different scenes. This produces the illusion that more is going on than actually is. It’s a clever way of disguising a general lack of forward narrative motion. Anime guilty of this particular shortcut usually have a beginning and ending mapped out, but everything in between is essentially guesswork.

Ousama Ranking, on the other hand, has almost the opposite issue. So many plot details have been sprinkled through the series; the demon, the titular Ranking of Kings itself, the woman in the mirror, the war against the Gods, etc. etc. etc. etc. That when the time comes to actually tie up all these plots, it does feel a little like the series is rushing through them. Plot twist comes after plot twist. Sympathetic backstory after sympathetic backstory. It can be thrilling, but also exhausting. I can imagine someone really liking this about the series and conversely, I can imagine it completely ruining the show for someone else.

I fall somewhere in the middle of that spectrum, lest it sound like I’m being too negative. But it is notable that in just the most recent episode alone (22), we get the near-instantaneous resolution of the “Miranjo sentenced to an eternity of suffering” plot from the episode before that. Things are, basically, resolved in a poof. Similar examples recur throughout the show’s recent run. The most glaring example being Daida’s rather inexplicable decision that the solution to Miranjo’s lingering woes is to…marry her?

We could excuse this, if we wanted to, as Ousama Ranking glomming to old fantasy tropes. Or even, alternately, an in-universe folly of youth (although the show doesn’t treat it that way, certainly). But it does make the show feel strangely rushed despite its many other strengths.

And so as not to end on a down note, we should talk about those strengths. In spite of any other complaints, it’s inarguable that Ousama Ranking is a visual stunner. This past episode is not quite the visual feast that episode 21 was, but it’s still incredibly impressive. Even if Ousama Ranking‘s story issues were much more serious (and I fear I’ve perhaps overstated their importance here), it’d still be well worth watching for its production alone. Its characters also largely remain excellent, with only one or two possible exceptions. Queen Hilling gets a great moment in this episode where she tries to put on a serious, stern face when congratulating her sons, only to break down crying about halfway through. Scenes like this help the series feel alive in a way that offsets some of its writing issues.

Elsewhere, the tale of King Bosse trading Miranjo’s soul and the strength of his then-unborn son for more power is told with suitably epic visual storytelling, with the presentation of one his mightiest opponents, a literal god, being the highlight. (Bosse himself, arguably, is one of the aforementioned exceptions. Dude just isn’t great.)

It helps, also, that the series seems to be heading in a more focused direction as it nears its close. The final two episodes promise to return to the Ranking of Kings system that gives the series its title. As the episode ends with Desha accepting his ranking as #1 and descending into the vault that holds the mysterious treasure accorded to those who earn that title.

Ousama Ranking, certainly, remains compelling, in spite of anything negative I’ve said here. I am not sure if I’ll cover the finale (though I’d like to), but I can safely say that it’s a good series and worth watching, regardless of if it sticks the landing or not.

Elsewhere on MPA

https://magicplanetanime.design.blog/2022/03/15/lets-watch-sabikui-bisco-episode-10-tetsujin-revived/

Sabikui Bisco kinda picked up again last week. Isn’t that nice? I guess we’ll find out tomorrow if it can keep that up or not.

https://magicplanetanime.design.blog/2022/03/20/lets-watch-my-dress-up-darling-episode-11/

To paraphrase myself in a Discord conversation from yesterday, I really like some parts of My Dress-Up Darling and really dislike some other parts. This episode was about 50/50.

Posted on March 20, 2022 in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 11 – “I Am Currently at a Love Hotel”

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

Alright, let’s get this out of the way. Yeah, this episode of My Dress-Up Darling is called “I Am Currently at a Love Hotel.” That’s the title they chose–and the premise they chose–for the penultimate episode of this show’s first season (let’s be honest, there’s no way it’s not getting more), and we just all have to deal with that together.

But why is it called that? Well, true enough, Gojo and Marin end up at a love hotel after a Wacky Misunderstanding ™. The explanation is simple in concept but winding in practice; Marin wants to cosplay a new character (a succubus named Liz from a comically-long-titled 4koma series. The sub track abbreviates its name to the frankly hilarious SuccIDK, so I will be using that here, too.)

She ends up booking a “cheap studio” to take photos at. The studio ends up actually being a love hotel. Whoops.

There are some good shenanigans in the episode’s opening, pre-mixup, where Gojo has to have both what succubi are and their appeal explained to him. He doesn’t entirely get it (and to be fair, I’m not sure I could rationally explain demonic gap moe` to anyone either), but he gets pretty into making the costume. Given that SuccIDK is drawn in a chibi art style, he has to come up with most of the details himself. He does not get that leeway with the bottom of the costume, which is basically just a pair of panties with frilly lace. Yet another excuse for the show to put Marin in showy outfits or just true to actual anime character design tropes? We here at Magic Planet Anime ask; is there any reason to assume it’s not both?

The actual love hotel portion of the episode is…something else.

On the one hand, it’s genuinely pretty funny in spots. Marin seems to make the wildly improbable mistake of thinking an honest-to-god vibrator propped against the bed’s headboard is an “electric massager” before revealing that she’s just pulling Gojo’s leg. And she also brushes off Gojo’s objections to them being there at all in a way that is both pretty insensitive and fucking hilarious. (It’s in exchanges like this where Gojo and Marin feel most authentically “teenager-y” to me, maybe that’s just me.)

Gojo, being an awkward bundle of nerves in a vague humanoid shape, verges on panic attack throughout a good chunk of all this, but eventually the two get too caught up in the actual process of taking cosplay photos to mind the environment too much. (And Gojo’s desire to photograph almost literally everything Marin does while in-costume is genuinely sweet.)

This bit is very cute, and as I often do, I wish more of the episode were like it. Things seem like they’re going to get awkward again when Gojo has Marin sit on him to get a better photo angle (no, seriously. He does this, and seemingly without any ulterior motive. That second fact might be the least realistic thing in this show so far.) But they largely don’t! Not through any fault of Gojo and Marin’s own, at least. The two get some good shots in this position and Marin talks about how much fun she’s having. It’s nice.

Ah, but then Gojo and Marin hear a woman getting her back blown out in the next room over, and suddenly they are again very keenly aware of where they are, and the moment of fun ends. We are treated to an absolutely delightful (EDITOR’S NOTE: THIS IS SARCASM) shot of Gojo getting an erection and awkwardly trying to get Marin off of him, which of course just makes things worse.

The final main scene here is the two of them sitting in dead silence in the dark, with nothing but the sound of their breathing filling the audio track.

And like, I get it, right? This entire 22 minutes is a juxtaposition of the absurd, the funny, the awkward, and the intimate. This bit is supposed to be that last thing; the two of them forced together for a moment that lasts an agonizingly long time, until an external force (a phone call from the front desk telling them to pack it up, they’re out of time) pulls them apart.

That slurry of different emotions and absurd situations is not a bad portrait of what being a teenager is like, and to the show’s credit this all does scan as believable, in its own way. But it’s all just a little much, isn’t it? This is not the worst episode of Dress-Up Darling (not by a longshot), and it certainly isn’t the best. But it is among the skeeviest. I won’t pretend I can dictate how other people feel about that, but to me at least, the final few scenes end up cutting the legs off the otherwise pretty solid first two-thirds of the episode. Maybe I just need to get out more, I don’t know.

I will say, as a positive side note, that whatever team actually did this episode is very good at capturing strong emotion in facial expressions. Marin really does look like she’s about to jump out of her own skin at the, ah, Moment, she and Gojo just shared.

(I have a suspicion some of the Akebi’s Sailor Uniform guys might’ve been involved, since it’s the same studio and some of the exaggerated facial shots remind me of a more reined-in version of that series’ weird faces. But I don’t have the show’s production details in front of me and, frankly, I don’t feel like looking it up.)

It’s also possible–though certainly not a given–that this all scans less weirdly if you’re still in the target audience of actual teenagers. As somebody who’s 28, it’s a little difficult to look at this stuff with the same lassiez-faire attitude I had ten years ago. It’s not like, say, B Gata H Kei didn’t exist during my teenage years, and I won’t pretend I didn’t like that show at the time.

In any case, the finale airs next week, and as such, our long national wet dream is almost over. Until then.

Egregious horny score, which I forgot to do last week, whoops: Yeah, this is a straight 5/5. There’s less skin shown than some other episodes but…well, re-read the whole article if you need further explanation.

Posted on March 15, 2022 in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 10 – “Tetsujin Revived”

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

I will say one straightforward, positive thing about “Tetsujin Revived” before we get into the ups and downs of the episode in more detail. It opens with one hell of a little plot detour. Remember the Ganesha Cannon? The bio-engineered elephant nuclear missile launcher from last episode? Well, Sabikui Bisco opens this week by making it seem like the thing’s going to fire anyway, despite Kurokawa’s timely demise. Instead, Pawoo, in what is provably her most substantial contribution to the plot thus far, throws one of the giant cyborg gorillas at it and knocks it over, disabling it.

^{God, I wish that was me.}

Now, does this cause its reactor to go critical and almost kill a bunch of people? Yes. But that’s fine, Pawoo is a knucklehead who thinks with her fists. She’s allowed to make mistakes like that, I’m just over the moon that she actually got to do something important for once. The show does not really use Pawoo that well, and even this little moment is over way too soon (and she’s conspicuously absent from what follows). But still, it’s something.

It’s been clear to me for a while that, in general, what I like about Sabikui Bisco is different from what it actually wants to focus on. And true enough, the moments of sentimentality and stabs at subtler character shading that the show attempts here largely don’t work. I’m repeating myself at this point, but they mostly come across as unintentionally humorous.

But that doesn’t mean that Bisco is a lost cause. Even with one of its leads dead (frankly, the less interesting one), there is still space to make a compelling cartoon, here. And when all the commotion from the fight at Kurokawa’s facility reawakens one of the Tetsujin giants, Bisco suddenly feels far more coherent than it has in a long time.

^{Attack on blightin’}

The Tetsujin here is a creature in a long tradition of weird nuke allegory-ish giant monsters from anime and manga. It kinda rules despite being pretty ugly. It’s hastily established that the Japanese government (remember them?) can’t reasonably fight the thing off, what with its arsenal of poisonous Rust clouds, laser vision, self-healing screams (?!), and sheer size. But Milo might be able to, because he was given the full Rust-Eater injection and is probably immune to Rust.

So, there you go, our last arc is set up; Milo sets off to defeat the Tetsujin with Jabi and Pawoo at his back, supporting however they can. Somewhere in here, the show unsubtly hints, and then confirms, that Kurokawa’s consciousness is somehow merged with the Tetsujin (villains like him rarely stay dead on the first try, though I must admit that I didn’t see this particular twist coming.)

There is a wrinkle in all this. Remember Tirol?

^{You know, the pink one.}

She was introduced near the start of the series, and last appeared in episode six, in what was, in hindsight, the show’s last unambiguously good episode. (That first paragraph reads like stage irony four weeks later, but what can you do.) Here, she’s wandering around some town, only to be caught up in the tide of soldiers fleeing in the Tetsujin’s wake. This has the effect of very quickly cementing just how serious the whole situation is and provides a nice inroad for her to link up with the rest of the cast, later.

The episode climaxes, of course, with a fight between Milo and the Tetsujin. Only, it’s really more like another fight between Bisco and Kurokawa. Milo begins acting strangely too, claiming to be Bisco. Whether this is some genuine supernatural / sci-fi stuff going on, Milo developing an Anime Split Personality, or something else entirely has yet to be spelled out. Maybe it never will be, who knows.

Regardless, the fight is pretty great. What it lacks in truly spectacular animation it makes up for with great staging; everything feels appropriately huge and sweeping as Milo pelts the Kurokawa-Tetsujin with mushroom arrows. The nomadic astronaut-helmeted people from episode six get in on the action, too, acting as fire support (and narrowly dodging being annihilated by the Tetsujin’s laser eye.)

When the episode ends and it somehow heals itself, only to unleash another massive Rust blast, there is a real sense that the fate of Japan hangs in the balance. That’s a good thing, and those are the kinds of stakes Sabikui Bisco can afford to raise. It’s totally possible it’ll faceplant again sometime over its final two episodes, but this is the best the series has been in some time, and for now, that’s good enough.

Posted on March 14, 2022 in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 10 – “We’ve All Got Struggles”

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

Since I started the Let’s Watch column late last year, I’ve noticed that over the course of a full twelve weeks talking about a specific show, I do tend to repeat myself. This is probably normal–if a little annoying, as a writer–since there’s only so many ways one can make the same broad statements about an anime’s central characteristics.

For example, how many times have you heard me say that My Dress-Up Darling shines when it’s focusing on cosplaying, its primary subject matter and its chief distinction from other romcoms? If not in those exact words, I’ve expressed the same sentiment about a half-dozen times over the course of these columns. Maybe I’m being repetitive, but on the other hand, it’s true. So, when “We’ve All Got Struggles” opens with the Flower Princess Blaze cosplay shoot we’ve been building up to over the past several weeks, it has a pure warmth to it that matches MDUD’s prior best moments. The series deftly calls back to several prior insights we’ve gotten into Juju and Shinju’s characters, and the episode’s title is a quote from a sympathetic Gojo. It’s great stuff, and not just because Marin looks absolutely amazing as Black Lobelia.

Or because the style-cut gags make a welcome return here.

It’s nice because the whole cast clicks together in a way that just works and is good, simple fun to watch. And all of that happens in the episode’s opening six or so minutes, before the OP even rolls.

Most of the rest of the episode is about Marin’s next cosplay. And also, her being a bit jealous after she finds out that Gojo and Shinju spent time alone together. Because this is Dress-Up Darling, this creeping jealously is cut with scenes of Marin rewatching FBZ. Specifically, the scene where Shion’s soul gem becomes corrupted. Funny visual gag or foreshadowing of something darker in the show’s future? Who can say? (Probably just the former, though, if I had to guess.)

This time, she wants to cosplay a girl from an unnamed game, Veronica. There is a pretty substantial difference between Marin and Veronica. See if you can spot it.

To say that cross-skin color cosplay has historically been somewhat of a contentious subject would be greatly understating it, especially when skin tone-altering cosmetics are involved, as they are here. It’s also not a subject I feel terribly qualified to comment on, for a number of reasons (my own whiteness, my being American and not Japanese, and the fact that I don’t personally know many cosplayers being the first, distant second, and ever more distant third, respectively). But it is at least worth noting that the completely blasé tone the show takes toward this feels a little weird, even as an outsider by all metrics. If someone were outright angry, I would understand completely.

Thankfully, this particular plot point is shuttled past pretty quickly. Gojo is unable to overcome his own awkwardness and can’t really bring himself to help with the Veronica cosplay beyond making the basic outfit itself. (Which, given how little Veronica wears, a whole other subject of conversation in of itself, is not much.) The cosplay ends up shelved, at least for the time being.

^{Sorry, Ver. You’re simply too edgy for this world.}

That doesn’t mean we don’t get anything good out of the effort, though. One of the things Gojo makes for Marin before eventually bailing on this particular cosplay is a set of fake pointed teeth. Marin goes nuts for them, of course.

^{And on that day, something awoke inside Gojo.}

The final bit of the episode is spent with Marin taking Gojo out clothes shopping. This is another case of the two of them being uncomplicatedly sweet together, even if that sweetness mostly expresses itself this time around by Marin not realizing that Gojo looks like an absolute turbonerd in any outfit she puts him in.

This all concludes with the scene I mentioned earlier, where Gojo confesses that he can’t bring himself to help any further with Marin’s Veronica cosplay, and awkwardly explains why. Despite the brief hint of genuine tension, once Marin learns his reasons, she immediately dials back into ruthlessly teasing him. You know, like couples do.

In an unusually shrewd move for Marin, she even sees the opportunity to double down, by saying she’ll keep the outfit as housewear, and then doing this to whisper something about sending him pictures in Gojo’s ear.

She almost immediately retracts the “offer” of course, though I doubt Gojo’s heart got the memo right away.

I could see someone finding all this silly or maybe even just dumb, but I think another strength of My Dress-Up Darling‘s is when it works in this fairly traditional light-romcom mold. We don’t get the coveted confession scene yet, and hey, maybe we won’t get that this season at all (a second season seems like a given for something this popular), but progress is being made, inch by inch. I imagine anyone who watches this show for the lead couple will walk away from this week’s episode happy.

Anyway! The next episode is called “I Am Currently at a Love Hotel.” See you next week when we learn whatever the hell that’s about, Dress-Up Darling fans!

Posted on March 12, 2022March 12, 2022 in anime, Monthly Movies, Reviews

Magic Planet Monthly Movies: Half The Battle is Being There in POKÉMON THE MOVIE: I CHOOSE YOU!

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

This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Rakhshi. Thank you for your support.

^{A Small Note: Because}^Pokémon^{is in the rare position of being an anime where the English localized names are more well-known–at least to my Anglophone audience–than the JP originals, I have largely used them here, crediting some major characters with both, divided by a slash mark where applicable.}

Pokémon is a cultural phenomenon with rare company, comparable in terms of pure success and footprint to, quite literally, no other Japanese series. It is such a global phenomenon that it stands far removed from other anime or games, and comparing it to them makes little sense. You have to turn to other media, toward juggernauts like Star Wars or the MCU, to see similar impact on the world of pop culture.

I’ve never written about Pokémon on this blog before. Not for any particularly strong reason, really. It’s just felt a little…unnecessary? What does anyone have to say, really, about Pokémon? If I had been approached to review the first Pokémon film, I’d have declined. Some works of popular culture are so thoroughly absorbed into the fabric of the times that reviewing them is like trying to review Shakespeare. No other series I will ever cover on this blog is known so widely to so many people.

With that in mind, it is a shame that the specific iteration of said series I am reviewing today feels so minor.

Pokémon the Movie: I Choose You!, the franchise’s banner movie for its anime’s 20th anniversary, is not a direct adaption of any of the widely beloved games. It is not, either, directly related to said TV anime, which has run without any major interruptions in both its original language and in many, many dubbed forms since 1997. It is directed by series stalwart Kunihiko Yuyama, who has done almost nothing else but direct various Pokémon projects since then as well. (With apologies to fans of Wedding Peach, and, uh, Minky Momo.) But while his directorial eye, going by this film, is as sharp as it was in ’97, he’s using it to tell a different story here. (Likewise, as you might guess, it’s animated by OLM.)

I Choose You! is an alternate continuity of sorts. Based on the TV anime, but with other elements from later generations of the games blended in. The idea is pretty simple; in theory, you’re making a fresh, original take on something people already love. This has a lot of precedent in anime, and it’s part of how things like Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood happen. But if I Choose You! was meant to draw new people into the Pokémon ecosystem, it is woefully unfit for the task.

If we wanted to look at it cynically, we could call I Choose You! an excuse for a parade of references to and evocations of prior Pokémon media. The vast majority of these are from the original anime, and most are beat-for-beat recreations of certain plot points from early in its run. There’s the introduction where protagonist Ash Ketchum / Satoshi (Sarah Natochenny / Rica Matsumoto) oversleeps and gets an unruly Pikachu (Kate Bristol / Ikue Ohtani) as his partner, the escape from the flock of Spearow that he accidentally aggravates early on, Ash sighting a Ho-oh in the sky after beginning his journey, finding a Charmander abandoned by its previous owner in the rain, his Butterfree departing to find a mate. ETC.

We’ll get to some of the shortcomings of this approach momentarily, but, to dial back the grumpy-old-woman-ism for a moment, it is at least a pretty solid effort. The first season of the anime was hardly bad looking, but the updated scenes here do look nice as well. Even if the iffy blending of the 2D and 3D animation dates the film even now, just five years after its release.

Where things begin to become muddled is the film’s original plot, which forms about 2/3rds of its runtime. In the original anime, when Ash saw Ho-oh, it was a mysterious and tantalizing glance at a world beyond the Kanto region and beyond the original 151 Pokémon. Here, it serves to kick off the story, and because we’ve long known what Ho-oh is, it feels substantially less special despite the film’s efforts to sell it as otherwise. The legendary bird bestows a (or rather, The) Rainbow Feather upon Ash. This apparently makes him a hero. The Rainbow Hero. And entitles him to meet Ho-oh at some point down the line. And also maybe means he’s the chosen one or something.

If this seems rather vague, it feels so in the film as well. An issue here is that there are actually multiple plots, of which this whole journey to find Ho-oh is just one. Another revolves around Charmander’s original trainer, Cross (a character made for the film, voiced by Billy Bob Thompson in English and Ryōta Ōsaka in Japanese.) Cross is in the typical mold of the “trainer who values raw strength over ideas like the power of friendship and properly bonding with your Pokémon.” He is much like Gary (who he rather strongly resembles aside from his truly absurd crossed bangs.) Or Paul. Or any number of similar characters that have populated the franchise over the years. It’s a solid, homegrown archetype. And true enough, it is very easy to dislike Cross here, but he never really does much other than beat Ash in battle and insult him a bunch.

And if you’re prepared to hold abandoning his Charmander against him, the film is not on your side there, as he and Ash reconcile at I Choose You!‘s conclusion without much fanfare, and he’s shown to have truly bonded to his main Pokémon, a Midnight-form Lycanroc. (Said Lycanroc is, puzzlingly, one of just two Alolan Pokémon in the film, despite it being made during the Gen VII era.)

And in conjunction with these two stories, there is also the issue of Marshadow, a Gen VII mythic Pokémon. The film was presumably intended at least in part to promote it, but despite this, Marshadow’s plot is the least developed of all of these. It follows Ash around, inflicts a bizarre nightmare of a world without Pokémon (imagine that) on him, and does other generally “Ghost Pokémon-y” things, but its motives are never established beyond very vague terms as some kind of spiritual counterpart to Ho-oh, and it simply disappears at the film’s end.

Combined, these three plots make the film pretty darn incoherent. It holds up just fine on a moment-to-moment basis. As mentioned, I Choose You! looks quite good and is competently directed and such, but it has a real identity problem. It wants to be a retelling of the first season, but it also wants to be fresh, so it brings in new characters like Verity / Makoto (Suzy Myers / Shiori Sato) and Sorrel (David Oliver Nelson / Kanata Hongō) as substitutes for Brock and Misty.

It wants to actively tug on your nostalgia strings, so as aforementioned it recreates some scenes from the first season of the anime verbatim. But it also needs to promote Marshadow, so that’s in there too. On the whole, the film feels decidedly random, more like a long, glossed-up episode of the TV anime itself than a proper movie. It never quite seems to know what it wants to focus on, so it ends up focusing on nothing.

And even some of that randomness isn’t borne out well. Verity, for instance, seems like she’s going to get a proper subplot about some issue she has with her mother (who looks an awful lot like Sinnoh champion Cynthia), which would at least be something. But this development is quietly dropped until the very end of the film, where she simply offhandedly mentions that she feels like visiting home for the first time in a while, resolving that particular subplot in an unceremonious finger snap. Likewise, Sorrel’s only real depth is brought in when he abruptly brings up a depressing anecdote about how his childhood Luxray wrapped around him to save him from the cold when he was lost in a blizzard, only to die in the process. This is used to illustrate a vague point about how sometimes “departing with Pokémon” is necessary, and is meant to foreshadow Ash’s Butterfree departing. But these are wildly different situations, and the film’s attempt to draw parallels between them is just one instance of its broad, scattershot plotting making the entire thing feel strangely half-baked.

Overall, I Choose You! relies heavily on the viewer having already very much “bought in” to Pokémon as a franchise, given the huge amount of pre-existing knowledge it attempts to cash in on to get you to care about any of this stuff. Consequently, it is totally unsuitable as anyone’s first introduction to the series. (If such a person exists, spare a thought for them.) What prevents it from totally failing as a project in a more general sense is that it is pretty good at nailing the very basic building blocks of “being a Pokémon movie.”

Anyone to whom the series’ quirks are more endearing than grating will probably be more forgiving than I’ve been here. And I must admit that while I was actively watching it, I was more caught up those basic building blocks. I enjoyed the small appearances from personal favorite Pokémon–Pinsir, Paris, and even a very brief cameo from the underrated Gen V Pokémon Gothitelle, among others–and the movie’s colorful visuals and solid fight choreography carry it enough to at the very least make it not a slog. It’s a brisk film and has the good sense to end around the 90-minute mark. (Pompo would be thrilled.) Its overall highlights? Likely the showdowns between Ash’s Charmeleon (and later Charizard, of course) and Cross’s Incineroar. I might also count Ash’s Marshadow-inflicted nightmare, which lends a nice bit of spooky, almost denpa energy to an otherwise fairly inconsequential run near the film’s middle.

I Choose You! is, thus, not a bad movie. But it does feel pretty pointless. I’ve never counted myself among the skeptical crowd with regard to Pokémon. I still play and enjoy the mainline games, and while I haven’t followed the TV anime regularly since I was a child, I will occasionally watch a stray episode or three, and am almost always delighted by them. But if one wanted to paint The Pokémon Company as nothing but a soulless machine that prints money on the back of, alternatingly, kid appeal designs and pure nostalgia-baiting, you could certainly pick worse places to start than here. I Choose You! feels like it exists for no reason beyond an imagined mandate for More Pokémon Stuff.

But it did, at least, get this fourth fork of major Pokémon continuities off the ground. As of 2022, when I’m writing this, 3 of the 4 most recent films in the Pokémon franchise were set there, the only exception being the all-CGI remake of Mewtwo Strikes Back. So, despite my complaints, it seems to have certainly found some sort of audience. Perhaps that’s all it was truly intended to do.

I can’t find it in myself to actually dislike this film. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s visually competent. Maybe it’s pure nostalgia. Maybe it’s both! Regardless, while I Choose You! is certainly not the highlight of the series, it is at least entertainingly nostalgic enough in spots. If that’s all you want out of Pokémon, the movie will suit you just fine. But it still feels frustratingly half-committed to its core idea of being a new take on the old Pokémon formula, so don’t expect anything more than that.

^{A second small note: Yes, this is the second “monthly” movies column to come out in March. The Yoyo to Nene review was supposed to come out in late February, but things happened. Y’all know how it is.}

Posted on March 11, 2022March 11, 2022 in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) Six Minutes of Madness in THE IDOLM@STER CINDERELLA GIRLS: SPIN-OFF!

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning. Given this item’s short length, I would strongly recommend watching it before reading this.

Sometimes you are really left with no choice but to try, probably in vain, to, if not properly review, at least talk about something.

I’ve done this before, and it’s always for very odd short-form animation projects. “Ruru’s Suicide Show on a Livestream” is a poignant miniature generational touchstone about the depths of despair one can become stuck in by mental illness. ENA is one of the most singular artistic achievements of the decade so far, and remains one of the very few non-anime cartoons I’ve ever written about here. Artiswitch is a uniquely artistic prism through which six different life stories are viewed. This is the exclusive club that gets a new member today.

THE IDOLM@STER CINDERALLA GIRLS: Spin-Off! The all-caps being their doing for once, not mine, is not any of those things. What it is, however, is six of the most utterly bugfuck minutes of animation ever put to the silver screen. Or whatever artistic turn of phrase we use for a computer screen, since something this beautifully batshit could only ever exist online. It truly defies description.

And really, what point is there in recapping what plot this thing has? You want a plot? Fuck you, you get a really cool chase sequence, some “trapped in the matrix” technobabble that vaguely implies Idolm@ster idols might all be robots or something, and Risa Matoba (Hana Tamegai), an obscure franchise character who has never had a main role in anything else, toting a pump shotgun that she uses to blast holographic cars.

Okay, fine. The “plot” is that a minivan full of lunatics rescue a young bride named Chitose Kurosaki (Kaoru Sakura) from a sham wedding. But they do that by kidnapping her. And the only reason the wedding is a sham is because Chitose’s husband doesn’t actually exist. They flee the scene, but are pursued by unmanned hot-rods with holographic tires. And then hot-rods that are manned, but only by android dummies toting rocket launchers.

It all caps with the “reveal” that the entire reality of the short is some bizarre VR future-nightmare. Nothing makes any goddamn sense. It’s amazing.

3DCGI is often criticized for looking stiff or primitive. But for the Reboot-esque virtual plaza that Spin-off! appears to take place in, that’s a benefit, not a detriment. Everything looks exactly as whacked-out as it should. The dialogue is delivered mile-a-minute, from a cadre of voice actresses who range from experienced to industry novices, but all of whom absolutely nail their performances here. And that’s good, because the dialogue forms a huge part of what makes this so damn weird. What does any of this mean? Why does its acknowledgement of its own nonsensicality somehow make it seem all the stranger?

This is to say nothing of the finale, where what few rails remain are so thoroughly disintegrated that the entire thing watches like being struck by lightning. You could put this on one of the Genius Party compilations and no one would bat an eye. Our girls escape their reality itself, their van hitting warp speed as they “clip out of existence” and into a new world. Our own, maybe?

Is there an explanation for any of this? Is there some deeper meaning? Or is it just a full-on defacement of its parent franchise? A hastily-scrawled WTF-bomb left on The Idolm@ster‘s doorstep, with the full knowledge that it’s still one of the most popular idol series around? Risa’s bizarre crack about “not getting updates” might be some sort of meta-joke about her character card in the game all of these characters are from. But beyond that, it’s a baffler.

Well, one very limited kind of explanation can be found, not in the short itself but in the credits. Spin-off! is one of just two full projects to have been directed by one Naoki Yoshibe. (So far, anyway.) The other? Another bizarre web anime; The Missing 8, which, incredibly, I have actually covered on this site before.

While it’s impossible to prove that Yoshibe is “the reason” this short is so out there (scriptwriter Nanami Higuchi, who has also contributed to some TRIGGER anime, likely had a role in that, too. Perhaps we can thank them for the short’s shockingly tight, playful banter dialogue, which shines through despite all the surreality), it does provide, at least, some kind of reference point. Even if Spin-off! and The Missing 8 are pretty distinct forms of weird internet animation. (If I would compare this stylistically to anything, it might be the particularly far end of [adult swim]’s “is this deep or just stoner comedy” school. Off The Air, eat your heart out.)

Beyond that, what else is there to say? The net is vast and infinite. God bless every inch of it that produces wonderful nonsense like this.