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Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 3

The middle-top of the list, where we run into more things that I more like than don’t like but which may or may not have various caveats and so on and so forth. This was the hardest part to have anything interesting to say about, can you tell? As with Part 2, most of these shows could be arranged in any order and I’d have no real complaints. Honestly, plenty could also switch places with those in Part 2 as well. Perhaps I’m just too easy to please?

Make sure you hit up the Intro post if you’re new here, so you can read Parts 1 and 2 before this. Anyhow, on with the list.

#9: Kakushigoto

Months on from its ending, and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Kakushigoto. (My opinion on it has admittedly muted a bit from when it ended and I originally reviewed it, though not by too much.) Two shows for the price of one, is one way to look at it. On the outside, Kakushigoto is a goofy slice of life comedy about a bumbling father who draws dirty gag manga for a living and is absolutely desperate to keep his young daughter from learning that fact. On the inside, it’s an oddly melancholy examination of what we lose when we grow up. Somewhere in there is a pretty compelling defense of manga as a medium itself. There’s a lot going on here, and not all of it works.

So what does work? Well, the comedy in this thing is mostly pretty damn funny. There are a few notable places where it’s really not (a bizarre Desi stereotype character being the most egregious) but in general when Kakushigoto sticks to the inherently amusing dynamic between Kakushi (the aforementioned father) and Hime (the daughter) it’s really charming and hilarious. A lot of the bits here are standard slice of life fare bent just enough by the father/daughter relationship to feel fresh again. Some–such as Kakushi’s ongoing feud with an annoying editor–rely a bit more on industry inside baseball, but those are generally pretty good too.

And then there’s the frame story, which is in many ways a different beast entirely, and deals with Hime at age sixteen, after her father has, as we eventually find out, suffered an accident that renders him amnesiac. With the benefit of hindsight I think Kakushigoto would’ve benefited from leaning more into this side of its story. (And there’s a theatrical recut of the series scheduled to premiere next year, so perhaps it eventually will.) In its best moments, the frame story taps into a universal, melancholic summertime nostalgia, and if I seem to have less than might be expected to say on Kakushigoto it’s only because that kind of ephemerality speaks for itself. There’s a lot to like about a series that revolves around familial ties and the passing of the artistic torch from one generation to the next. And Kakushigoto also certainly holds a special place for having perhaps the most memorable ED of the year. Putting an entire generation onto Japanese pop godfather Eiichi Ohtaki is no small feat.

#8: Assault Lily Bouquet

Assault Lily Bouquet is a lot of things. It’s kind of a mess, for one. For another, it’s an entry in a sub-strain of the battle girl genre with some not-entirely-flattering unifying characteristics. Like Katana Maidens, The Girl in Twilight, and Granbelm before it, Assault Lily Bouquet leans heavily on proper nouns and invented terminology. It is extremely coy, often directly toying with audience expectations, sometimes to its own detriment. It’s also stuffed to the gills with tonal back-and-forth, often yoyoing between the comedic, the tense, the saucy, and the genuinely romantic at the drop of a hat. This all could rightly be called a lack of focus. There is indeed a part of me that intensely wanted to dismiss Assault Lily Bouquet as a series that didn’t know what it wanted to do and wouldn’t know how to do it if it did. To a very limited extent, I actually still kind of think that’s true.

Some of this isn’t the fault of the anime itself. Picking up a pre-premiere hype train comes with a lot of expectations. That Assault Lily Bouquet picked up the nickname “SHAFTogear” off the strength of just some teaser trailers may well have put it at an unfair disadvantage. Indeed, Symphogear this is not. (It is an obvious acolyte of that series, but that’s the norm for the genre nowadays.) If you’re inclined to drop an anime off the back of things like a surface-level ridiculousness and the aforementioned lack of focus, Assault Lily Bouquet will not make it difficult for you to do that.

But, here’s the thing. Two things, even. First; Assault Lily Bouquet has some of the best single episodes of the year, from a long, summer-drenched slow-burner centering around ramune soda to a peppy uptempo miniature school festival arc, the series is definitely at its best when it channels all of its energy into doing one specific thing. Second; there’s the finale.

Assault Lily Bouquet‘s overarching plot is….strange. It’s mostly delivered in fairly dry expository dialogue between four characters who otherwise don’t matter much. As mentioned, it leans really heavily on a lot of corny terminology. (Terrible idea; make a drinking game based on how often the phrase “Rare Skill” is used. You’ll be out like a light by episode four.) And what exactly it’s trying to say is fairly inscrutable until the very end of the series. Assault Lily Bouquet‘s core thesis is an unfortunate combination of under-articulated for most of the series and unusually complicated.

In general, the show explores shades of love, loss, feelings of inadequacy, how they might be overcome, etc. How people move on from relationships that have been broken and how they form new ones from the ashes of the old. Along the way, it briefly touches on how male-dominated infrastructures fear powerful women, militarism, and even environmentalism. To say you have to squint to see a lot of this is putting it mildly, Assault Lily Bouquet is maybe the most tongue-tied anime of 2020.

Still, at the end of the day it’s just really hard for me to dislike an anime that ends with two girls in love fighting a giant monster. Has it done before? Yes. Will it be done again? Certainly. But as the battle girl genre continues to grow and multiply, I find myself compelled to defend basically every one of them, because I really do just love them all that much. It’s perhaps my favorite modern genre of TV anime.

Time will tell what, if anything, is in store for the future of Assault Lily Bouquet. The success of the wider Assault Lily franchise which started life as the rare modern TV cartoon directly based on a toyline and now includes this anime, a manga, and a mobile game is probably what will dictate if we ever see Riri and Yuyu again. But I hope we do, Bouquet can dress it up in terms like “Schutzengel” and “Schild” to duck conservative watchdogs and add an air of chuuni-ness to things all it wants, but I know a power couple when I see one.

#7: Sleepy Princess in The Demon Castle

Sometimes, all a comedy anime needs to succeed is to take a truly silly premise and run with it. Thus is the case with Sleepy Princess in The Demon Castle, one of the year’s premiere entries in a sort-of genre I like to call “idiots in a jar”. In an “idiots in a jar” series, all you need is some exceptionally dense characters and a reason for them to interact. Sleepy Princess has the titular princess, the Demon King who’s kidnapped her and is imprisoning her in his castle, and the latter’s horde of minions. And the reason? Well, hostage she might be, but our heroine needs a good night’s sleep. Preferably a fantastic night’s sleep, since there’s not much else to do in the Demon Castle.

And the rest….just sort of flows out from there. The specific parody fantasyland that Sleepy Princess takes place in has in many ways become a sort of cliche setting in its own right nowadays, and comedy anime like this have become more common than the action fantasy anime they once spoofed. Yet, Sleepy Princess‘s implacable-yet-lazy lead works well with its silly and often surprisingly inventive fantasy world. From monsters like Quilladillo and a man made of scissors to item designs that would fit in only the silliest D&D campaign, Sleepy Princess has a knack for invoking its fantasy trappings precisely when they add an extra kick to the joke. All this makes it stand out above many recent anime that are trying to do similar things. And it all feels very well-crafted and deliberate.

There’s also a certain coziness to the series, fitting for an anime about sleep. The Princess’ relationship to her ostensible captors grows closer over its twelve episodes, capping with the finale, which is open enough to leave the prospect of a second season tantalizingly probable. In fact, as far as shows that are simple, warm joy from start to finish, Sleepy Princess really only has one contender from 2020….

#6: My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My Next Life As A Villainess is a magic trick. It’s an isekai series, it’s a harem series, and it’s one of the many 2020 anime that are a blast to speed through in a few evenings. Even having seen it, Villainess (also known semi-officially as OtomeFlag and Bakarina. This is the series with the most titles on the list, certainly) doesn’t feel like it should work. Die-and-reincarnate isekai premises are, appropriately, done to death, and the harem genre has arguably never had a good reputation. Yet, by simple virtue of having a likable female lead, and the small-stakes character writing victories that follow, Villainess manages to turn lead into gold. (And its maddeningly catchy, genre-unto-itself opening theme doesn’t hurt.)

The anime centers around the titular Katarina Claes and her life after she’s reborn into the world of an Otome game. This would be easy to milk for cheap drama, but Villainess is unconcerned with such things. Instead, to avoid the fate of her game counterpart, Katarina aims to be the nicest person possible. By dint of just being an irrepressible ray of sunshine, every single one of her game equivalent’s rivals end up falling for her. As a result; Claes can certainly claim the largest bisexual harem of any anime protagonist of the past year.

What takes Villainess beyond being just cute is a running through-line about relationships that persist across lifetimes. The show heavily hints at, and eventually outright reveals, that Katarina’s friend (and one of the many, many people crushing hard on her) Sophia is herself the reincarnation of one of Katarina’s classmates and close friends. Is this entire subplot super sappy? Absolutely, but I’m a sucker for this stuff, “I Entered A Dangerous Dungeon….”, in which we learn of Sophia and Katarina’s past relationship was one of my favorite episodes of the year, and sticks with me even now.

And I wasn’t the only one so taken with the show, evidently. A second season has been definitively confirmed to be on the way. My hope? Only that Katarina continues breaking the harem genre over her knee like a twig.

That’s all for the (slightly abbreviated) Part 3. See you tomorrow for the Top 5 in Part 4!

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

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

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Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 2

The middle parts of a list are always the weirdest ones to figure out. Not hardest, that’s the very top, but the weirdest, definitely. Because you end up asking yourself to compare shows that are incredibly dissimilar and that you like about equally. By the way; if you’re new here, you’ll want to check out the Introduction first, and read Part 1 before hitting this up.

Frankly, every entry on this part of the list could probably be freely swapped with each other and I’d have very few complaints. Still, all of these anime are ones that I think did more right than wrong and in some cases I think they did a few specific things very well. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

#14: Wave, Listen To Me!

Whatever else you may say about it, never accuse Wave, Listen To Me! of following trends. Very briefly, Wave is about a loud-mouthed restaurant worker who ends up getting her own graveyard-shift radio show hosting gig at the local station. Without a doubt, it’s one of the more singular premises of the year.

Does it live up to the potential in that premise? Well, yes and no. Like its seasonal contemporary Gleipnir, Wave has a tendency to get in its own way. When the series allows Minare, our heroine, to do her job and let loose with the full force of her personality in the radio booth, it’s amazing. Lead voice actress Riho Sugiyama is as important to Wave‘s general composition as anyone else, and with an actress less capable of fully embodying Minare’s spirit the show would fall apart.

So it’s rather frustrating that it sometimes does anyway. Much of Wave is about Minare’s off-air life. Sometimes these stories work and sometimes they don’t, generally following the pattern that whenever Minare feels like the butt of a joke, they’re not very good. Making things worse is an abundance of off-color-in-a-bad-way humor, most notably about a half-dozen gay jokes that feel woefully forced. Wave is perhaps the anime from 2020 that I’m the most internally divided on. Its highs are high, its lows are low. It ends on a pretty good note, and I’m hoping against hope for a followup. I’d like to see Minare given the opportunity to do more.

#13: BRAND NEW ANIMAL

This was the first of several anime on this list where I had the visceral reaction of “wait, that aired this year?” But yes, this Yoh Yoshinari-directed, Kazuki Nakashima-written synthwave-colored furry urban fantasy series was a product of 2020. BRAND NEW ANIMAL occupies a weird place on this list, in the wider cultural zeitgeist, and for me personally. I actually really quite liked this show, so why isn’t it higher on the list?

Well, to a point, most of Nakashima’s anime scripts are….well, “similar” would be the generous way of putting it. Most of his scripts center around ideological conflicts between the individualistic and the communal and tend to end with both sides coming together to fight a common foe. That last bit has often (and not incorrectly) been flagged as a weakness, with his scripts’ formulaic story beats, and a corresponding lack of nuance, as the other main problem. These are fair criticisms, but I’d argue that what Nakashima’s writing lacks in its ability to propose solutions the world’s problems more specific than “come together”, it makes up for in its faith that we, in fact, can come together.

But of course Nakashima is a scriptwriter and an anime’s script is nothing without, well, the anime. Yoshinari and his team turn in an aesthetic feast with BRAND NEW ANIMAL. I mentioned synthwave earlier, but the blue and pink shadows often do bring that specific subgenre to mind. The fluid, popping animation that defines the best parts of the TRIGGER back-catalog and, because of the distinctly fuzzy cast, a wonderful array of animal-person designs are present too, they really tie the whole thing together.

Ultimately I suppose my main issue with BRAND NEW ANIMAL is simply that it isn’t either a bit longer or a bit more focused. For how clumsy it occasionally is, BNA does sometimes step into surprisingly sharp social commentary (“Dolphin Daydream”‘s jabs at fairweather allies and the harm they cause sticks out most clearly to me), but just as often its swings go wide. It’s an uneven experience, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it the whole way through and would instantly hop on any further material in the show’s universe.

In lieu of that….maybe greenlight two cours next time? Please?

#12: Dorohedoro

You know what I’ve always thought was an underrated quality? Knowing exactly what you want to do and just doing it. That’s about how I’d describe Dorohedoro, an adaption of Q. Hayashida‘s long-running bizarro seinen. It’s one of the better things Netflix has thrown money at in 2020 (other highlights include listfellow BRAND NEW ANIMAL and The Great Pretender, which is only not here because I haven’t watched the final arc), but much more importantly it’s a really good piece of genre fiction in a genre that doesn’t get a lot of rep in mainstream TV anime.

And that genre is….weird splatterpunk grungy fantasy I guess? If Dorohedoro feels hard to put in a box it’s only because seinen anime are fairly rare. But there’s still definitely something unique about a series whose main selling point is that it’s the adventures of a big lizard-headed guy on a quest to find out who turned him into a big lizard-headed guy, and his companion, an equally-buff woman who’s also a master gyoza chef.

Dorohedoro cruises by on its stylish ultraviolence, colorful cast, and its truly weird setting. The only real reason it’s not higher up on the list is that the manga is even stranger and the anime adapts only a pretty small part of it. Dorohedoro is an anime with basically no problems, but its strengths only go so far. It’s definitely worth checking out, but make sure you hit up the source material at some point, too.

#11: Princess Connect! Re:Dive

Breaking news: local action-comedy-fantasy isekai Princess Connect! Re:Dive makes the rest of those obsolete; KonoSuba found weeping in a trashed hotel room. OK, that’s a wild exaggeration, but you have to give it up for something as unassuming as PriConne managing to do so much with so little. This is a series in which the main character is effectively mute, and he still has more personality than your average Protagonist-kun.

I don’t think anyone would deign to call PriConne laser-focused, exactly, but the unifying element, weirdly enough, is cooking. Female lead and secret actual protagonist Princess Pecorine’s food obsession provides a tie-line through the series. It’s more than just comedic (though it’s certainly that, too), as the comfort of a shared meal comes to represent the family ties that Pecorine has lost. The other two primary protagonists have their own things going on, with Karyl’s secret double-agent status being the runner up as far as which is most interesting.

Did I mention this thing looks great, too? That’s not always a given for seasonals, although mobage adaptions seem to have slightly better luck than most. Princess Connect! Re:Dive features some of the most purely flashy animation of the entire year. Something that is downright impressive for a series that really did kinda seem to come from nowhere.

Honestly the only reason it isn’t even higher on the list is because of its fairly limited ambitions, which is really only a flaw in the most abstract sense. And with a second season on the way that seems poised to put focus on the dimension-spanning plot that lurks in PriConne’s background, it may not remain a criticism that’s true for very long. Don’t be surprised if this thing’s second season ends up a good five or ten places higher next year.

#10: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Gaiden

Yeah, this is another one that feels like it aired a lifetime ago.

Magia Record is a curious thing that seems like it was made for nobody. But I actually think, in this odd little anime’s case, that that’s not just a positive, but most of the reason it’s good. Magia Record is a spinoff / possibly-a-sequel-it’s-kind-of-hard-to-say of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, one of the most important, widely acclaimed, and successful anime of the 2010s. To say it has big shoes to fill would be a massive understatement. Indeed, MagiReco entered to no small amount of skepticism. Being a spinoff of a spinoff (it’s based on a mobile game), a lot of folks were of the opinion that the series was little more than a soulless, hollow cash-grab. But if Magia Record is a cash grab, it’s a fucking weird one.

In fairly sharp contrast to its illustrious predecessor, Magia Record explores some four or five largely unrelated miniature arcs over the course of its run. (Almost all of which concern various supernatural rumors. Something the series seems to have inherited from a different SHAFT property; Bakemonogatari.) This structure is deeply interesting to me, because it seems to me that Magia Record is of the opinion that Madoka Magica’s intangibles; its themes, aesthetics, the way it explores its parent genre, and so on have been so thoroughly strip-mined by other anime that engaging with them is no longer a goal it wants to pursue. Instead, Magia Record seems to treat itself first and foremost as a vehicle for expanding the pure text of the Madoka series. It’s a book of “Madoka stories” before it’s anything else.

When familiar elements do show up, the context is altered, strange, and unfamiliar. Not unlike what the original Madoka did with many trappings of the magical warrior subgenre in the first place. The original Puella Magi are the most obvious example; Mami reappears, but as a villain. Kyoko dips in and out of the show’s narrative, and is markedly absent for the finale. Sayaka is only present for the finale. Madoka herself appears only in a brief flashback. Homura is not even mentioned; a ghost among ghosts.

So those “Madoka stories”, where Magia Record seems most like a “normal” magical girl series, become the show’s lifeblood. They definitely have their ups and downs, and the best of the lot are front-loaded. (Rena’s arc, an examination of a truly deep-seated self-loathing, might be the overall peak of the series.) But that it is so disconnected from what the fanbase in general “wants” from a Madoka series is absolutely fascinating to me, and I like it for that reason. This interpretation of MagiReco is controversial (I have seen many who simply read its structure as inept), but I stand by it. A second season is in the wings that promises a return to a broader, overarching narrative. More than any other anime on this list, I have absolutely no idea what to expect from MagiReco, and I love it for that.

And that’s humble Part 2. Tomorrow we get into the top ten, uh, nine, so I’ll see you then for Part 3.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 1

It’s always a weird thing to have to write about why you didn’t like something. I’m a big believer in the idea that positive criticism is both more important and more difficult than negative. Yet, the format of the list means that we’re starting with several anime that I consider the very worst of the year (and indeed these first two entries are….not what I’d call favorites, we’ll put it that way). It admittedly makes me a bit nervous, because negativity is not my preferred mode of criticism.

Yet, at the same time. I think that even bad anime can expand one’s frame of reference and provide interesting insights into the medium in general. My hope is that this first part of the list does the same for you.

#20: The Day I Became A God

As I write this, it’s been about half an hour since I finished The Day I Became A God. This is the second-to-last anime I needed to finish for this list (the entire thing, all four parts), and I really, genuinely did not think I’d be adding something this far down this late in the game. I have to rewrite the opening sentence of my next entry, which in its current draft now-falsely claims that it is the only anime on this list to make me genuinely angry. That’s no longer true! Frankly, The Day I Became A God‘s final three episodes are so far and away the worst television period that I have watched this year that it’s made me see every subsequent entry on this list in a better light.

To talk about the latest from Jun Maeda and his colleagues at Key, we need to talk about how it starts. Because understanding how The Day I Became A God transforms from a pretty solid slice of life comedy with a supernatural edge into one of the most galling, maudlin, hacky attempts at a make-you-cri-everytiem love story that I have ever seen requires understanding how we got here. Or rather how we didn’t.

The Day I Became A God concerns Hina, alias Odin. It feels like a lifetime ago that the character was introduced to us as a blithe esper with the power to know anything. The first two thirds of the series chiefly concern her adventures with Youta, the inoffensively bland everydude protagonist. They do fun things like cheat at mahjong and help a ramen restaurant turn its fortunes around. It’s hardly groundbreaking, but it’s good fun, and if that were what we were discussing here this series would be assured a comfortable spot somewhere in this list’s mid-section with all the other solid genre anime.

Jun Maeda’s signature as a writer–so I’m told, anyway–is to build up the relationship between the characters and you, the audience, with this kind of every day life fun. Then, near the series’ end, some sort of Sword of Damocles will drop, the drama will hit, and tears will flow. Indeed, I knew this going in to The Day I Became A God, and am familiar with the device from the only other work of his I’ve seen–Angel Beats!, an anime I actually like quite a lot. The show even appears to foreshadow this; the anime’s other core premise is that Hina can sense that the world will end in thirty days.

So, fair play, right? Why am I mad?

If only this show dealt with something as interesting as apocalypse. Instead, for its final third, through a series of plot contortions so mind-bogglingly ridiculous that I will not recount them here, Hina is abducted by a shadowy government organization and has the source of her powers, a machine in her brain, removed. It’s revealed to us that, actually, Hina was severely physically and mentally disabled this entire time. (Because of a fictional Anime Illness, of course. God forbid you give your disabled characters any actual condition.) It was only the sci-fi magic of the machine that was allowing her to do what she did with Youta and friends, in addition to being the source of her omniscience. Are you crying yet?

The Day I Became A God‘s final three episodes are not just bad, they’re slimy. I actively felt repulsed by 11 and 12 especially. I absolutely loathe calling things “cringey”, but I physically winced at the screen during scenes in which (through another series of plot contortions) Youta, woefully-unqualified, tries to return her to his home where she lived for most of the series by posing as a physical therapist. These episodes go through great pains to portray Hina as pitiable because she is largely nonverbal and physically handicapped. In a particularly insidious twist, the show frames Youta’s generally ridiculous actions as being somehow, secretly, what Hina “wants”. It is a framing that cannot help but feel gross, ableist, and exploitative.

The finale, in which her actual doctor lets her return with Youta and the gang watches a student film they shot during the series’ first half (pointedly, when Hina was still verbal and able-bodied), feels like having this nonsense rubbed in your face. One has to go back a solid ten years, to 2010’s Occult Academy, to find a series that suffers a drop in writing quality this precipitous in its final 90 minutes. Even then, I think this example is genuinely worse.

I am left to wonder; who is this for? I make no secret of the fact that I am a massive sap, but the tearful reunions in the final episode of The Day I Became A God did absolutely nothing for me. My eyes remained dry, my fingers drummed in irritation on my desk, and I could only feel relief that the show was over.

Maeda has said he intended to create “the saddest anime ever” with this series. The only thing he succeeded at was making one that is profoundly frustrating, disappointing, objectionable, and, frankly, insulting to its audience. I considered cutting this series some slack with its placement here; after all, those first two thirds do still exist. But I actually think that they make the finale even worse. By the end of The Day I Became A God, all of my goodwill and any endearment I felt toward any of its characters had been sandblasted away by one of the most colossally inept TV anime endings in recent memory. All involved can–and should–do better.

#19: Sing “Yesterday” For Me

The operative word for Sing “Yesterday” For Me is “unfortunate”. This is another one with a promising start that slowly careens into an unsatisfying finish. It’s not quite a worst-case scenario for adapting old material into new anime, but it’s close.

But let’s start with the positives, because despite what that sentiment might imply, I can easily imagine why people who aren’t me might like the series. “Yesterday”‘s earthy, grounded visual style and accompanying soundtrack give it an aesthetic sense that is a genuine treat. Plus, it helps make the show’s slow narrative go down more easily than it might otherwise. It also has its moments of self-awareness, such as in an episode about a photographer whose obsession with one of the female leads, high school girl Haru, parallels protagonist Uozumi’s own.

So what’s wrong with it? Nothing and everything.

“Yesterday”‘s entire premise rubs me the wrong way. What is markedly worse is that through no one’s fault but my own, it took me the entire length of the series to realize this. (You can find material on this very blog where I praise the series, in fact.) Saying I have something of an irrational grudge against this anime wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“Yesterday” is ostensibly the story of the aforementioned Rikuo Uozumi, a young adult working a dead-end job, and two potential love interests; Haru Nonaka and a former classmate who is now a teacher, Shinako Morinome. To its credit, both Haru and Shinako feel like fully-fledged characters. While their relationship (or lack thereof) with Uozumi does dominate their arcs, it dominates the entire plot, so that only makes sense. The real issue is pretty simple; Uozumi is a college graduate, and while Shinako is his age, Haru is a narratively-convenient eighteen. After much hemming and hawwing over the course of the series, Uozumi and Haru kiss in the final episode. Roll credits.

Fundamentally, even if you don’t find age gaps creepy, the way Uozumi treats Haru until the closing fifteen or so minutes of the final episode gives every indication that he’s going to end up with Shinako, despite what is framed as a somewhat childish fixation on Haru. But if this were merely a case of bait-and-switch or of one’s preferred Best Girl not winning, it’d be a minor gripe at most. The back half of the show’s final episode throws everything the narrative has been building toward wildly out of whack. The series’ real, actual problem then, is that like so many romance anime, it ends where it should begin.

The idea of a college grad who is finally starting to pursue his photography dreams after waking up from the torpor of the layabout life while having to juggle a relationship with someone years younger than him is wildly interesting. It’s also arguably super weird, but that’s an angle a story can work with. Why does Sing “Yesterday” For Me take so long to get to what is by far the most interesting development in its story, and then just end?

There are no answers, at least none for me. I have spoken to others who enjoyed the series and a common view I find is that the series is about building up to lifechanging moments, to sudden pivot points from which there is no return. More power to the folks who can find it in them to read the series this way, but I cannot. Thinking back, I find myself craving a more properly developed drama. I can only consider “Yesterday” a disappointment.

#18: The God of High School

I’m genuinely not trying to be meanspirited with these first few entries, because I fully acknowledge that making any anime requires an immense amount of talent from many people all working in concert. It’s a process I could never be involved with and I do genuinely respect anyone in the industry grind, no matter what the end result is.

So with all that said; what on earth do you say about something like The God of High School? The God of High School is not really what I’d call a bad anime, and despite its abundance of hyper-compressed shonen cliche I’d say it’s still fun enough on a moment to moment basis. But it really is the sort of series that one struggles to describe not because it’s particularly inscrutable but because anything you could say about it also applies to many other, better-known (and just better) anime. For instance; I could tell you that it’s a tournament arc-heavy series where the protagonist lacks much characterization beyond a desire to fight and is loosely based on Sun Wukong, but you might then assume I’m talking about Dragon Ball Z. Other aspects of the series similarly feel so heavily indebted to its predecessors that saying anything positive (or even neutral) about it that couldn’t easily be mistaken as praise for Dragon Ball or Bleach or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure or almost any other shonen series is extraordinarily difficult.

The issue is just that The God of High School feels very much like what it is, which is an animated adaption of a webcomic written by a shonen junkie. Consequently, while it’s fun in the places where it truly lets itself cut loose (such as the more out-there fight scenes), it feels dreadfully anonymous much of the rest of the time, and even when it is firing on all cylinders the breakneck pace of the adaption means it’s generally for only a couple minutes at a time. There are worse things to be than a decent way to burn six hours, but as it further recedes into the rearview I’ve come to realize I cannot imagine I’ll ever watch even a second of it again. And more than any other show on this list, I can even less imagine what a diehard fan of The God of High School would look like. If this is more indicative of the quality of what’s to be produced under the Crunchyroll Originals banner than a certain other Webtoon adaption that shows up elsewhere on this list, that is really not a great sign for future CR Original material. I would like to think it’s an outlier.

#17: 22/7

Maybe it’s unfair to call 22/7 disappointing. Yet, looking back on it a few months removed from its airing that’s the adjective that first springs to mind. 22/7 seemed poised to offer something interrogative and worthy of thought; early episodes gave the impression of building up to some kind of grand reveal, positioning the series as something of a would-be Madoka for the idol girl group anime genre. Whether through deliberate misdirection or just too-high expectations on some part of its audience, it never got there. Instead, as weeks stretched into months, it simply gradually ran out of steam until limping across the finish line at the end of its season.

Even setting that aside though, 22/7‘s command of character writing is pretty limited. Every character arc is hamstrung by the show’s bizarre editing, which likes to cut backward and forward, interweaving flashbacks with scenes of the present day. It seems likely that this is supposed to draw a deliberate contrast; how our idols got from where they were to where they are. Instead, it generally makes episodes thematically and tonally incoherent. Even the best of them (such as Jun’s focus episode) are often hamstrung by dicey writing. At its worst, as in episodes revolving around more minor and frankly less-interesting characters like Reika, it hauls in hoary sexist ideas of what an idol should be that feel stuck in the ’80s. It’s impossible to prove that these somehow stem from the involvement of industry oldguardsman Yasushi Akimoto, but his presence in the background of the series’ production does not incline me to charitable interpretations of the 22/7‘s flaws.

The show does have its positives, of course. It’s generally nicely-animated and sometimes well-directed, especially in the case of the aforementioned Jun episode, and it has solid character interactions even if the arcs are not particularly strong. But I think if 22/7 the series survives in the collective cultural conscience at all, it won’t be through the lens of the show itself. 22/7 is also an actual idol group, and their music ranges from solid to, at its best, fantastic. The melodramatic cloud of black smoke they turned in for the show’s opening theme–a cheery number about how life is hard and no one understands each other called “Muzui” or “It’s Difficult”–remains one of my favorite pop songs of 2020, and I found myself returning to it many times over the course of this difficult year. Far more time than I ever spent appreciating the series it’s a theme to. 22/7 the group have a bright future. 22/7 the anime is best left in the past.

#16: Burn The Witch

Burn The Witch is a weird one, for one several reasons. It’s not a TV series, for one thing (the only such entry on this list), and it’s in the odd position of being the adaption of just the first few chapters of its source material. Something that would likely have never happened were the writer of said source material not Tite Kubo. The man most famous for the polarizing–but undeniably very successful–Bleach. Burn The Witch has a lot of things going for it. It’s animated by Studio Colorido, and being made as a three-episode special means that it’s never less than great to look at, and the fights in particular here are superb. The worldbuilding is goofy but in a fun sort of way; you know that things are off to a good start when we get a made-up statistic about dragon-related deaths in London right off the top. Our two protagonists, Noel and Ninny, are also quite fun to follow, each in their own way. Even the show’s magic system is a good time, more anime could stand to experiment with goofy horn-guns as their weapons of choice.

So all that said, why isn’t this higher up (or, well, lower down, one supposes) on the list? Well, not to repeat myself, but Burn The Witch has a man-shaped millstone hanging around its neck.

It’s really hard to overstate how much of a problem male lead Balgo Parks is, as a character. He’s sexist, he’s obnoxious and he’s everywhere. He completely kills the fun any time he’s on-screen, and he’s on-screen all the time. It’s a terrible, terrible problem for an otherwise solid OVA to have, because every second he’s there he’s cutting into the actually enjoyable parts of it, and ultimately, he ruins it. Time will tell if this applies to any further adaptions of Burn The Witch we get (and it’d be surprising if we didn’t get at least a season or two of a TV series), but I certainly hope it doesn’t.

#15: Gleipnir

Grisly, grody, sometimes flat-out exploitative seinen adaption that’s a mess from top to bottom. I feel like if I were a more “respectable” commentator on the medium I’d hate this show. But I’m not, so I don’t. I wouldn’t say I like it either, exactly, but it’s definitely the entry in this part of the list I have the most nice things to say about.

Gleipnir‘s been a part of my life for an unusually long time compared to the rest of the entries on this list. I first read the manga (which I markedly did not care for) back in 2017. When I heard of an anime adaption premiering this year I was curious to see if it’d be improved at all by the change in medium, and, admittedly, I was hoping that if it didn’t, it’d at least be a fun thing to riff on with friends.

To a point, that is exactly what I got. Gleipnir‘s idiosyncrasies too often fall on the bad side of good taste for me to really call it great. There are too many offputting shots of the show’s female lead in her underwear covered in fluid, weird problematic or just straight-up uncomfortable elements (a centipede demon from the show’s 2/3rds mark springs to mind as an example) for that to be the case. And its male lead is the kind of shonen-protagonist-but-edgier that just doesn’t leave you with a ton to work with most of the time.

But nonetheless, there’s just something about this series. Maybe it’s the surprisingly good action direction and atmosphere, which is certainly a credit to both director Kazuhiro Yoneda and his team at PINE JAM in general. The man has episode direction credits on the grandfather of 2010s trainwreck anime; Code Geass R2. While I can’t prove that the experience somehow uniquely equipped him to deal with Gleipnir‘s ridiculously up and down source material, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Over the course of its single cour Gleipnir manages to, in spots, eke out some surprisingly affecting character writing, has a downright haunting final few episodes, and, as mentioned, some great fight scenes. An example in the final episode might still be one of my favorites of the year as it unites both the show’s literal reality and its thematic core of relying on others to compensate for your weaknesses and confronting your demons in a way that it otherwise struggles to articulate. Gleipnir‘s central issue is its tendency to get in its own way, but that’s hardly a rare problem for the medium.

I don’t know if a second season would fix (or even mitigate) that problem, but Gleipnir is the only anime in this part of the list where if one were released I’d be interested in watching it. That must count for something, surely.

And thus we finish the “unpleasant but necessary” part of the list. Still, even among these unlucky few there is not a single one among them I actually regret watching, not even The Day I Became A God. I have said many times that part of what draws me to anime as a medium is its infinite capacity for surprise. That surprise is not always pleasant! But you take the bad with the good.

Speaking of the good, I will see you in Part 2 when it goes live. Happy Holidays!

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

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

Posted on in anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Introduction

Before I start, let’s take a moment to breathe.

What a year it’s been, am I right or am I right?

I think I speak for a lot of my readerbase when I say that 2020 has been the most taxing, challenging, and just flat-out exhausting year of our lives. Finding the time and energy to devote to experiencing, thinking about, and talking about art this year was not always easy. But by the same token, I’d say that a lot of the reason I’m handling it as decently as I am is because of said art. This is hardly unique to me; many critics, commentators, bloggers, and journalists have spoken about the importance of their medium(s) of choice this year.

To that end, rather than simply doing a Top 5, or a “Best and Worst”. I decided I would rank the anime I’ve seen in 2020, from worst to best. I’ve only seen twenty shows this year, which is not that many, in the grand scheme of things. But it’s enough that writing just one article was…not feasible, and as such, this post here will link to the four articles constituting the four parts of the list. Why worst to best? Well, I think it makes for a better dramatic arc, mostly. But also because even the shows I liked the least this year played a part in helping me keep myself together. It’s not an exaggeration to say that anime has helped my emotional state this year more than it ever has in my life.

I tried not to sweat the minutiae of placement too much; while last and first place are definitely where they belong, some stretches in the middle are occupied by shows that I’d say I liked about equally. So it goes!

Not present are non-serial anime (with apologies to music videos like “Ruru’s Suicide Show“ and “Study Me“ and shorts like Puparia) and, obviously, things I didn’t see or didn’t finish. (Which, those range from Akudama Drive to Healin’ Good Precure and everything in-between.) What it does include are 21 20* shows that, despite everything, I believe all have some merit, and are all worth talking about. Some of these writeups are short, a few are very long, some are more informal, and for others I endeavored to look at them through a more focused lens. Some lean heavily on personal experience, others, uh, don’t. Variety is the spice of life.

And of course, we’re required to use terms like “worst” and “best” because for a critic it is generally expected that one use the language of objectivity. I don’t really believe in that in the arts, and I don’t think most of my readerbase does either, but I feel the need to clear up any possible misconception nonetheless. This whole list is, obviously, of course, only my own opinions, thoughts, and observations. As says the disclaimer at the bottom of every Magic Planet Anime article.

But enough beating around the bush. Here is the list, divided into four parts for your reading pleasure. In order to stagger things out (and because I’m not done with some of the writeups on some of the better anime here), I’ll be rolling out one part per day over the next several days, starting with Part 1 today (December 27th, if you’re reading this in the future). Hopefully I will be able to finish by the new year! I hope, also, that you find some tiny crumb of insight, interest, or just plain enjoyment from these walls of words.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4

*I made an embarassing fencepost error when writing up the list, which is why not all four parts of the list have five entries each. I think it’s been fixed now. Whoops.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) Sakae Esuno Has a BIG ORDER

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

What is a “bad anime”, exactly? If it’s an anime that fails at being something it’s trying to be, I find it difficult to stick the label on Big Order. Because on the one hand, the 2016 manga adaption seems to know exactly what it wants to be. On the other hand, maybe a “bad anime” is an anime whose very aims are somehow defective. Being a case where “what it wants to be” is arguably somewhere between “bad for the medium” and “reprehensible”, Big Order‘s a bit of a hard one to evaluate. Too beholden to a wide slate of action-anime cliches to be truly unique. Too weird to be rightly called generic. Big Order largely succeeds in its aims, but that very same success makes the series impossible to defend. Speaking less roundaboutly; this show sucks and you probably shouldn’t watch it unless you have a fascination with shows that suck.

Very broadly, Big Order is about people who have superpowers based on “wishes” they had at the time a disaster called The Great Destruction (yes, really) hit, circa ten in-show years ago. This ostensibly-kinda-interesting premise means very little, because in practice these powers–called Orders–can just kind of Do Whatever in all but a few cases. Our protagonist is Eiji Hoshimiya, a chuuni’s dream. In a more self-aware show, the similarity of his first name to the word “edgy” might be deliberate. Eiji accidentally killed billions-with-a-B people when he got his Order, causing the Great Destruction in the first place.

If that seems like an odd fit for a protagonist, it’s here where we have to break out our critical lens. Because very little about Big Order makes much literal sense, and internal logic phases in and out at the story’s whim. However, considered through the prism of a wish-fulfillment fantasy for the stereotyped ideal anime-watcher (that is to say, a young straight man), everything clicks into place perfectly. In this way, Big Order is a bad anime, but an excellent peek into the mind of the kind of person who thinks good anime begins with Code Geass and ends with Darling in The FranXX. Which is to say it is also a ten-car-pileup of barely-disguised fetish plots, some more objectionable than others. A large chunk of Big Order revolves around Eiji’s desire to save his sister from her Incurable Anime Disease. If you guessed that they’re also hot for each other, put your chip on your bad anime bingo card.

Along its ten episodes, Big Order manages to hit stops that include Eiji accidentally (but only temporarily!) impregnating a girl by touching her fake bunny ears.

This is a real screencap.

There’s also a man with a sword that can cut through time and space. A final episode plastered with an awful-looking monochrome filter in what I dearly hope is not a misguided attempt to homage Gunbuster. And the entire character arc of Rin; who enters the series in episode one trying to murder Eiji for killing her parents, and by the tenth minute of episode two has been mind controlled by Eiji’s ill-defined powers and wants to hatefuck him. I’m not normally this crass when writing on this blog, but no other language exists for Big Order. It is a crass anime.

This is to say nothing of the anime’s ugly thematic heart. Much ink has been spilled over the otaku persecution complex, a phenomenon that has given us many of the worst light novels, manga, and anime of recent years. It feels fair to say that it’d be hard to top Big Order, though. Eiji’s responsibility for the Great Destruction becomes public knowledge early on, and by consequence, the entire world hates him. Combined with his near-omnipotent powers and you have a character who has both the ability and moral license to do whatever he wants. He uses it, too. The above example with Rin is just one of several. The show’s entire premise reeks of repressed straightboy nerd “I’ll show them for making fun of me!” rage. This kind of dynamic has sexist echoes throughout the entirety of art, and it’s certainly no knock on anyone if they’re plainly sick of it.

You are at this point probably not surprised by there being a harem in this show.

Yet, I remained strangely fascinated with the show as I watched. All of this would ruin Big Order if there were anything to ruin. What prevents Big Order from falling into the lowest rung of mainstream TV anime is that it is a bizarre combination of astoundingly incompetent, yet tightly-edited. Things just kind of happen, but often in very entertaining ways. Episode four remains the show’s most infamous, featuring the aforementioned plot point of ear-pregnancy combined with Eiji and co. running to and ‘fro throughout a war-torn city and trying to come up with a way to stop it from being nuked. The entire series is this level of unintentionally hilarious. In a more self-aware show, it would seem deliberate, but Big Order‘s full-tilt commitment to its own inane thematic core makes it impossible to believe it’s anything but accidental. In this way, the show is enjoyable if you like seeing an anime fall apart at the seams when its premise and plot are put under the slightest bit of scrutiny. For whatever reason, I kind of do.

On the whole, Big Order is the rare series I’d say has fully earned the term “guilty pleasure”. It’s a kind of bitterly ironic that despite Big Order being a financial flop, the only project animating studio Asread has worked on recently is the similarly-reviled Arifutera. I’d say “you reap what you sow”, but the complex dynamics of how a studio picks up a show to work on render that moot. Besides, no one deserves to work on Big Order-quality projects forever, it’s simply too cruel.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Other Posts, Reviews

(REVIEW) RURU’S SUICIDE SHOW ON A LIVESTREAM

How the hell do you review a music video? Even as someone who really loves animated music videos, it seems impossible, and before I saw the MV accompanying Shinsei Kamattechan’s “Ruru’s Suicide Show On a Livestream” I’d have had no motivation to try. Yet, like many commentators on the arts, I have a weakness for taking wild swings at the zeitgeist. Sometimes, even if only for yourself, you come across a singular piece of art that seems to just click things into place. Seems to “get it” in a way that most do not. The “Ruru’s Suicide Show” MV premiered all the way back in early January, just eight days into what would become what is unquestionably the darkest year for the world-at-large that I have ever lived through. 2020 finally winds down in just over a month as I’m penning this, and I think I can safely say that somehow, no other anime anything this year captured the unique mixture of toxic, spiraling misery, delirious, denialistic euphoria, and the tragic endpoint of both quite like this song and this video.

All of this, I must imagine, is very much accidental. Perhaps it’s unique to me, even, and given that the video with its scant runtime of just four minutes sits atop this article, perhaps you’ve watched the whole thing and are feeling very confused as to what I’m on about. But, as I write this the video sits at over fourteen million views, far more than any other music video ever associated with a Shinsei Kamattechan song. It makes sense; the band are immensely talented and wildly creative, but they’re definitely niche despite being signed to a major label (Warner Japan, via their Unbonde sublabel). Lead vocalist Noko is an acquired taste, (I’m not even sure if that’s them on “Ruru’s Suicide Show”. It doesn’t entirely sound like them, but their voice is very flexible, so who knows.) and the band in general are no one’s idea of a shiny-polished pop group.

“Ruru’s Suicide Show” itself is the kind of song whose utility is difficult to put into words. It is based, albeit only loosely, on a very real tragedy involving a young girl named Roro that occurred some seven years ago*, which can make it seem odd, possibly even exploitative, to the uninitiated. More broadly, it taps into a long lineage of Japanese rock that I’m frankly a little unqualified to explore in-depth. (And it’s beyond the scope of this article anyway.) On a surface level, it isn’t hard to understand why a song about suicide would resonate in a particularly bleak year for the world, but I think dissecting our opening question of why specifically this requires digging a bit deeper than that.

Songs that are simply sad are one thing, “Ruru’s Suicide Show”‘s “trick”, such as it is, is relatively simple. Despite its bleak subject matter it is sonically upbeat. However, most songs like this rely on simple lyrical dissonance, the classic example over here in the US being OutKast’s “Hey Ya” (which itself is merely about heartbreak). “Ruru’s Suicide Show” goes well beyond that. Its relentlessly upbeat sound is pushed into the proverbial red, becoming first disquieting, then almost a kind of confrontational, and finally cathartic. “Ruru’s Suicide Show” is not a song for people who need a pick-me-up, it is a song one listens to so that they know that they aren’t the only person in the world who’s ever suffered like this. And whether or not “Ruru’s Suicide Show” is the sort of music that resonates with you can be correlated pretty well to whether you know what I mean when I say “like this.” It is a song for a very specific sort of person. That a major label–even an ‘indie’-focused subsidiary of one–would bankroll a video for this thing is nothing short of astounding.

And yet, there it sits. Fourteen million views and counting throughout the course of just one calendar year. Some of that popularity (like with many things nowadays) can be thanked to / blamed on TikTok, where the song caught on as something of a minor meme of all things. But while that might account for an initial spike in popularity it does not account for its continued success. And indeed if one visits the video’s comments section it is mostly people (fairly young ones, is my impression) defending the song, the video, the late Roro herself, and so on from being appropriated as a fad / fandom / meme / whatever term you care to use. These users, to whom the song clearly means as much as it does to me, demand that it, and its subject, be treated with respect.

I think some of this broad resonance may have to do with the elephant in the room. The music video itself, and how it welds to the song. Enhancing, as it does, every line with surreal, dire imagery that expertly conveys internal crisis through symbolic destruction of the outside world. And, sadly, the very literal destruction of the self.

Music videos, like other short-form projects, can be some of the “purest” animation imaginable, unbound by conventional narrative. Some months ago I compared Eureka Seven to a collage of images, but that’s often literally all music videos can afford to be, given their limited run-time. It’s no surprise then that “Ruru’s Suicide Show” is on the more surreal end as far as such things go. One can map out the broad story of the main character, but the real resonance lies in the details.

To state the obvious; the “Ruru’s Suicide Show” music video is gorgeous. Director Rabbit MACHINE has built up a body of music video and commercial work over the past decade or so, but it’s hard to imagine any of it could top this. There’s a particularly unnerving edge to the editing in this video. I imagine it’s an attempt to underscore the sharp distinction between the main character’s flights of fancy–often rendered in an even more cartoonish art style and depicting such feats as her miraculously ducking under and dodging a train–and the darker side of her psyche, including the suicidal ideation itself. To me, the grimmest shot in the entire short is a first-person aside where the “camera” is tossed into the path of a speeding train, presumably the Chuō Line mentioned in the lyrics.

Elsewhere; our protagonist laughs, lugs her stuffed rabbit around an unfriendly city, stands alone in a classroom, at one point in front of chalk drawings of butterfly wings and at another as the world outside explodes, is lost among a forest of nooses, envisions a rose blooming from her corpse, poses atop an ocean of (what else?) power lines, and pictures herself crawling into a coffin. She speaks of being bullied, of “building a gravestone” for herself on-camera. Finally, she laughs again, as she jumps.

Despite many of the details matching to the real tragedy alluded to in the song’s title, I don’t believe most of this is intended to be literal. Even the bleakest moments of the video are defined by a bright art style that does not lend itself to such interpretations. Our protagonist seems cast less as specifically Roro and more as an amalgamation of all who’ve taken their own life because they could see no other way out and were spurned there by the uncaring masses of the world. She wants to stop hurting, she wants to stop being lonely, she wants people to look at her. All of this is driven to its horrible endpoint.

Her look–downright stylish, if we’re being honest–might seem at odds with the core theme of the song and the video, but the same dynamic present between the music and the lyrics is repeated here. Her blonde hair, the pink smartphone taped to her face, the black lightning bolt hairclip providing a visual metaphor for the term denpa, all of it is intended to push past merely cute into a funhouse mirror reflection of getting lost in your own head. If you’re the sort who demands evidence of a mask slip, there is a literal one in the video, though only for the briefest moment.

We are clearly intended to both sympathize and empathize with the protagonist, but what happens to her is tragic, and here we have to return to the song itself again and more generally to Shinsei Kamattechan as musicians. I am admittedly a neophyte when it comes to the band’s discography, but I can tell (and have been told as much secondhand) that much of their work deals with alienation and a feeling of not belonging. Be that to some specific part of society or simply the world in general. It is an uncomfortable feeling, and one far more people have than I think many others may realize. It is no wonder so many of us want to be witches that talk to kittens, or aliens riding in a UFO. It is no wonder then again that so many of us come to eventually half-believe we really are. Checking each other, keeping each other in good spirits but away from the brink, is arguably the duty of those of us afflicted by mental illness. Because the consequences of dealing with this alienation alone, or with the toxic fake-help of bad actors, can be, as “Ruru’s Suicide Show” illustrates, tragic.

So the real power of “Ruru’s Suicide Show” is in melancholic solidarity. You are not alone, but giving in to this feeling will not end well. It’s also a plea for understanding; some of the lines spoken by the protagonist in the chorus could just as easily be said from a child to their parent, the so-simple-its-devastating “Mama please listen this isn’t a phase” foremost among them.

In this strength we find that “Ruru’s Suicide Show” is, in a peculiar way, a sort of two-way elegy. On the one hand it is a memorial to the titular Roro and many others like her. On the other; it is a prayer from those who did not make it for those who are still alive.

In my heart I am a worrywort. Any time I listen to this song I think about those people in the video’s comments, many of them obviously kids, and I hope that they’re okay. It’s naïve, but my hope is that by writing this, I am somehow doing some small portion of my part in the “duty” outlined above. To you, my limited audience, I simply want to reassure you, if you are reading this, you are still alive. For those who aren’t, the most we can do is to remember, and to eulogize.

Take care of yourself.

*The “Roro-chan Incident” as it’s come to be called is the sort of case where rumor and reality have bled together so much that it’s hard to know the truth of things. I will not deny that several times while writing this I did wonder if this song could be construed as exploitative. I have no real answer, the question of how much leeway a musician (or anyone) gets via artistic license is, as far as I am concerned, an unsettled one. Regardless, I find the song and video’s power impossible to deny.

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

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

Posted on in Uncategorized

Hiatus Notice [11/8/20]

Hi, as the title implies, Magic Planet Anime is going to go on hiatus for a while. To put it bluntly: I have an ear condition that’s started to act up in a notably serious way after quite some time of not doing so. I’m not really in a position where I can even comfortably watch much anime (or anything that requires any significant attention), much less meaningfully comment on it. I’m probably going to be effectively bedridden for at minimum a few days and possibly as much as a few weeks to months depending on what can be done with regard to treatment.

I hope you’ll all continue to follow the blog so you can be notified when I resume activities. In the meantime, my usual support links are in the footer below. Now more than ever I could use the financial support. If you want more immediate moment-to-moment updates, my twitter link is also in the footer. Thank you all for your continued support.

-Jane

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

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

Posted on in Manga, The Manga Shelf

The Manga Shelf: Something is Wrong in COCOON ENTWINED

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. 

It’s something of a minor media blogger faux pas to admit that you picked something up because it was recommended to you. Nonetheless, without a friend showing me this list of yuri manga recommendations, I doubt I ever would’ve even heard of Cocoon Entwined, much less so quickly become enraptured with it.

Cocoon Entwined is a hard thing to even describe. On the surface, it’s a fairly straightforward schoolgirl love triangle manga with a bizarre wrinkle in its setting (more on that in a moment). There are dozens of those, good and bad, up and down some fifty years of history in the medium. But just beneath that, it’s darker, stranger, and with more on its mind than one may initially assume. The blogger in the list I linked above describes it with the word “eerie”, and I can think of no better one. Cocoon Entwined‘s all-girl high school setting has the preserved delicacy of a butterfly pinned to a board under glass. Almost from its opening pages, there is the palpable sense that something about this entire setup is off.

On a more concrete level; the story is set in Hoshimiya Girls’ Academy, which is fairly typical for this genre with one very odd exception. Each student is expected to grow her hair out from the time she enters the school until she graduates. When she does, her hair is cut, and becomes material for the Academy’s uniforms. This central detail of the setting is going to be everyone’s first indicator that something is strange about this entire thing, and it comes up constantly.

Hair, in general, is a visual motif to the point of fixation throughout the manga. Mangaka Hara Yuriko excels at finely detailed linework, and puts it to use throughout in the depiction of long, lustrous locks. What might in other contexts come across as longing or romantic is often here tinged with unease, and at times even an implied lust.

The manga’s other signature trick is its unusual structure. Rather than linearly following a single story it cuts repeatedly backward and forward in time. Often, a character will be introduced as an upperclassman and the next chapter will be about her experiences as a first-year. It’s disorienting and occasionally even downright confusing, but this all feels very intentional. Cocoon Entwined seems to want to tell a story as much about the systems that shape women as it does about those women themselves.

Even before the manga begins to tip its hand a bit, everything about Cocoon Entwined just feels wrong. In the two volumes that are currently available in English, I would not define a single event that happens as being concretely “bad” in the usual sense. Nonetheless, reading Cocoon one cannot help but get the impression that they’re watching something that is on some level messed up, like seeing the inner workings of a cult. I made the mistake of initially reading it in the middle of the night and found myself legitimately creeped out. This unease–which has a heaviness to it that sharply contrasts with the delicate look of the manga itself–is in fact Cocoon‘s biggest point of interest. Which makes it a touch frustrating that it’s so hard to articulate. There are not many manga whose greatest strength is their ambiguity, but Cocoon may just be one.

In fact, reading the series I initially wondered if my assessment was off, and that perhaps this fairly straightforward girls’ love series was just being colored by my preexisting perceptions combining with the somewhat gothic art. It was only when the manga began to, in fleeting glimpses, offer a look at the dark heart of the academy that I was assured that no, this is all intentional.

I point to a few things here. One of the leads expresses her idea that the uniforms are suffocating. Indeed; there is a running tension between the uniforms, and hair in general, as a signifier of pretense, of airs put on, and so on, and kisses, only shown rarely, at distance, or fleetingly, as a symbol of something real, immediate, and honest. Something you take care of and cultivate vs. something you really can’t plan for at all. This tension between affectation and honesty bleeds into the literal plot by way of the already-complicated love “triangle”. (I count four people involved in one case and a separate, currently unrelated, one-sided affection. What shape this makes is left as an exercise to the reader.) Some characters seem to be lovestruck because they see a side to the objects of their affection that others don’t. Others are in love with the masks.

Furthermore, what is currently the most recent chapter ends on this bombshell of a cliffhanger, making the desire to “remove the uniform” extremely literal. It’s a gripping and intense expression of desire for emotional honesty, a demand to see behind that mask. One can only guess how it will turn out for our protagonists.

But even before this, one need only compare the scenes that take place within the Academy to those few that take place outside it. The Academy is always bathed in a soft glow, and the girls within it are delicate. The city, on the outside, bursts with chiaroscuro and full figures. That Yuriko manages to convey this drastic contrast so subtly is nothing short of remarkable.

Elsewhere, Norse Mythology makes an appearance as another thematic thread, but when The Norns–the three sisters who weave the Past, Present, and Future–are mentioned, the youngest of them is missing. The school, this seems to imply, is being kept in an eternal present that honors an endless past. The future is cut off and inaccessible to preserve a “perfect” now. It’s hard to say how literal any of this is, but when we’re introduced to thread catacombs full of spools of human hair, and mention is made that the most beautiful girl from every graduating class becomes “a part of the school forever”, it starts to feel pretty damn foreboding regardless.

It’s hard to know where any of this will ultimately end. Cocoon Entwined‘s mysterious nature makes it hard to predict much about its future direction with any certainty. But ultimately, that’s fine. Darkness this hauntingly heavy doesn’t come around very often.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes: Searching For Setsuna in Episode 3 of LOVE LIVE NIJIGASAKI HIGH SCHOOL IDOL CLUB

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

Disclaimer & Thanks: I am new to Love Live as a property and enlisted my good friend Heinzes to help me Love Live Fact Check this column. Thank you very much!

“There are school idols and they have their fans. Isn’t that more than enough?“

Let me let you in on a small secret. As a medium commentator of any sort: critic, blogger, video essayist, whatever. You tend to set little arbitrary rules for yourself. “I won’t review this until a week after I’ve watched it.” “I won’t score anything 10/10 unless I’ve seen it more than once.” Things like that. But sometimes you come across something that just hits you in such a way that’s so specifically your thing that these rules suddenly seem like they don’t matter, and that’s about when it’s time to break them. When I started Twenty Perfect Minutes my intent was to do it fairly infrequently and to showcase episodes of older anime. A few years old, at minimum.

Yet, here I am. Writing in late 2020 about an anime airing in late 2020. Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is the voluminously-titled most recent entry in the storied and frankly massive Love Live franchise. It is also not finished, and as such by writing this I very much risk making myself look like a fool come the end of the season. But if that is a risk, it’s one worth taking, because Nijigasaki‘s third episode is not just the best episode of the young season, it’s one of the strongest this year period.

It’s been a solid year for a lot of different kinds of anime, but very little has made me cry, and as someone who values high melodrama I do unashamedly check for that when mulling over how good I find a series overall. Nijigasaki arguably tossed its hat into the Anime of The Year conversation from the word “go”, but if there was any doubt, it should be cleared up by this episode; “Shouting Your Love”.

Before we can discuss “Shouting Your Love” though, we have to backtrack a bit, to that word “go”, and explain how we got here. First of all, let’s meet Yu.

No not You. Yu.

Yu is interesting. She feels simultaneously pretty typical for the genre but just enough to the left that it’s fresh. Yu begins the series as someone with a lot of passion searching for an outlet. She does not start as an idol (or even an idol fan). We get to see her fall in love with idol music in real time, as the opening half of the first episode is devoted almost entirely to this. And it’s back in that first episode where Nijigasaki pulls out its artistic ace in the hole.

Yu (and her friend Ayumu) happen to catch a public performance by a local idol, Setsuna. The song itself (“Chase!”) is a great slice of upbeat J-Pop if you’re into that sort of thing, but what really sells the scene is twofold. One is a number of close shots of Yu’s face, letting us see her reaction change moment to moment. The other is that we see Setsuna’s performance gradually shift from a simple depiction of what she is actually physically doing, to–at the exact moment that her music hits Yu in the heart–a music video-within-a-show. The stage erupts into fire; figurative passion transformed into literal flame. My understanding is that these inset MVs are not entirely new to Love Live as a franchise, but Nijigasaki‘s use of them feels deeply woven into the narrative. The show wouldn’t entirely work without them.

Yu’s journey starts here, her passion is ignited and it’s her drive that leads the plot forward from this point on. What is left largely unsaid in that first episode–and what brings us back to the third–is Setsuna‘s journey. The very short version is that Nijigasaki pulls off an elegant piece of narrative symmetry here: in the first episode Setsuna lights a fire in Yu’s heart, and Yu, in the third episode, rekindles the dying embers in Setsuna’s.

As this early part of the series has gone on, it’s established that “Setsuna Yuki” isn’t a real person. She’s the alter ego of Nana Nagakawa, the student council president of the titular Nijigasaki High. The performance that Yu and Ayumu witnessed was, in fact, her last and only. Some attention is even paid to the fact that Yu can’t find any other songs by her. (And real life is rife with examples of low-output musicians, from The New Radicals to Mr. Fantastik, so it’s quite a relatable experience.)

What would otherwise be a very straightforward plot detour is spun into a miniature epic through “Shouting Your Love”‘s framing. Nana’s true identity was revealed an episode prior. Here, we get to see her most “normal” side first. Despite her own misgivings about her role in the former Idol Club, she has many traits of a good leader that shine through even here. She seems to know almost every student by both name and educational track, and isn’t above doing dirty work herself. After an introductory sequence where Nana mulls over her decision to quit before deciding it’s for the best, the first thing we see her do is chase down a stray cat. It’s charming and sets the rest of the episode up nicely.

But while this fleshes out her character a bit, the real revealing turn is her initial encounter with Yu, who is idly playing “Chase!” to herself on a piano. Yu initially mistakes Nana for a fellow Setsuna fan, but Nana quickly rebuffs her. But as she does so, it becomes clear before long that Nana is less talking to Yu and more trying to justify her decision post-hoc to herself.

In a vacuum this is a pretty simple development. In the context of the rest of “Shouting Your Love” it helps Nana feel like someone legitimately going through a serious crisis of the self. The actual argument that broke up the Idol Club–something about passion vs. cuteness–is perhaps a bit underexplored, but the conflict it represents feels real. It’s clear to us the audience that Nana doesn’t really want this to be where her time as an idol ends, and she’s trying to convince herself more than anyone else. At one point she even sits down to watch a Youtube upload of her own performance; only to scroll down and realize that all the comments are asking fundamentally the same question: why did Setsuna quit?

You can read a lot into her internal monologue in this episode. And there may be more than one answer. Personally, it seems to me that she’s someone with a tendency to put what others expect of her before what she wants herself. It would fit with her demanding position on the student council, an aside remark by her mother about “mock exams”, and her decision to disband the club once she felt like she was getting in everyone else’s way. She even seems to think that she was holding them back from competing in the Love Live, the school idol “tournament” after which the entire franchise is named. And indeed, her final comments in that very monologue seem to frame things that way, with her justifying her decision as a sacrifice for the benefit of her friends, the new members of the club, and so on.

In fact on my first viewing of this episode I actually thought it might end there, because I wasn’t paying particularly much attention to how far along the video was. In the best way possible; “Shouting Your Love” is the rare anime episode that feels twice its length. The second half of the episode sees the newly-reformed School Idol Club briefly hijack the school announcement system to call Nana and “Setsuna” to the roof. (After a heartfelt meeting where they decide they want to try to get Nana back in the club, of course.)

Here, she has another talk with Yu, who at this point in the series seems like someone whose wildfire passion may well be contagious. Yu asks Nana to rejoin the club. Nana replies that she’ll hold everyone back from being able to compete at the Love Live, to which Yu says this.

And the facade of Nana as the dutiful student council president who always puts others before herself promptly snaps like a twig.

It’s hard to not just post screencaps of the entire conversation, which is so heartfelt that in places it borders on a confession scene (not the first like this that Yu’s been responsible for in Nijigasaki and I doubt it’ll be the last).

Shippers eat your heart out.

The important thing is that Yu’s words reach Nana, much like Setsuna’s song first reached Yu. In a stylish hairflip, Nana’s braids come undone, and Setsuna is reborn in an instant. Because this is an idol series–because this is Love Live, perhaps–she of course bursts into song. “DIVE!”, the insert song here, is a fist-pumping rocker whose “music video” weds the earlier fire theme of “Chase!” to an underwater aesthetic, laying Nana/Setsuna’s personality out in symbolic language as she, in the MV, breaks through a reflective underwater wall of ice, perhaps a visual metaphor for this rediscovery of what is, in my estimation, her real self.

But we can talk about symbolism and other such concerns all we like. The biggest thing I can say in the favor of “Shouting Your Love!” is that I’ve now watched the ending scene three times. And while it’s true I cried the first time, I think it’s even more impressive that I couldn’t stop myself from grinning ear to ear every single time. “Yu” is kind of brilliant as a character name, because while she is a character in her own right, when you’re watching the idol performances, you’re seeing them, essentially, as Yu sees them. If you open yourself to it, the passion of the series–the same passion I’ve talked about at length, here–can easily light your heart on fire as well.

It’s impossible to know if we’ll still be talking about Nijigasaki in these same terms in a few weeks. A lot can change over the course of an anime’s run, after all. But it’s hard to imagine a world where this episode ever feels less wonderful. To tell the truth, as someone who recently set music as a creative outlet aside, I can’t help but relate to Nana. But even more, I can’t help but relate to Yu, who seems just as star-struck by the wonder of art that I am in moments like….well, like “Shouting Your Love”.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

Weekly Writing Roundup – 10/17/20

Or “weekly livewatch writeup” as it might be more accurately titled. They’ve been taking up much of my writing time lately. Not a bad thing! But it has made doing other stuff a bit hard especially as I’ve been rather under the weather both physically and mentally for the past while. (This is why there was no roundup post last week and why my seasonal first impressions column did not materialize, for the record.)

To also clarify something else just to lay any possible suspicions to rest, I am still writing for The Geek Girl Authority. I’m just on a short hiatus and will likely resume work for them sometime around the middle of next month if everything goes according to plan. At worst, I will be picking my recap columns back up over there next season. Ironically, this season’s main problem has been that there is too much good stuff airing. It’s made knowing what to cover kind of impossible and as a result I have been….largely not covering anything at all. Not really a great approach, to be perfectly frank, but, well, see prior notes about being under the weather.

But enough beating around the bush (and beating myself up, that helps nobody), let’s get to what I have been doing recently.

Twitter “Live Watches”

This is where most of the Good Content ™ is this week.

ANOTHER (for #AniTwitWatches) [1, 2]: Something I am increasingly fond of is shows that I end up treating as kind of a puzzle while I watch them, trying to figure out what they’re going for, what they’re trying to say, and so on. ANOTHER (which may or may not actually be stylized that way, I’m not entirely clear) has been great in this regard. I’ve found myself turning over the series’ use of smalltown social dynamics to dive into the mechanics of “curses” really interesting. I’m still not entirely sure what point it’s trying to make with all this, but figuring that out is half the fun. Bonus: a genuinely freaky nightmare scene in episode 7.

Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha [1, 2]: Here’s my latest “watch a classic anime I haven’t seen yet” boondoggle following the completion of the Utena livewatch (see below). My thoughts on this show are a little mixed at the moment. I am really not fond of the vestiges of its origin as a spinoff of an eroge, there’s some inappropriate perviness in the camera and a few other things. Which I would perhaps mind less if the characters were not mostly children. Yuck. If you can get past that (and as always I don’t hold anything against people who can’t) there’s a solid–god forgive me for using this term–hype-driven magical girl anime in here. Lots of flashy lasers, fun henshin sequences, magical doodads, and snappy directing (which comes from a pre-SHAFT Akiyuki Shinbo. Something I am rather embarrassed to admit I didn’t actually pick up on until it was pointed out to me!)

I’m pretty confident the show will get better as it goes on and relies less on The Aforementioned Fanservice Stuff, and even in the couple episodes I’ve watched it’s already started to drop off (or at least refocus to Arf, who is an adult) as the storyline gets a bit more serious and the show introduces main antagonist Fate Testarossa*. My final “verdict” on it is a long way off yet, so we’ll see.

Revolutionary Girl Utena [1, 2, 3, 4]: I think Revolutionary Girl Utena might be one of my favorite anime ever. It’s a hard call to make. I only finished it recently and there’s so much going on in the show that I’ll probably be turning the symbolism over in my head for years. But it feels telling that despite the fact that I basically just finished it I already want to watch it again. That I have not reviewed it is indicative not of any deficiency on its part or a lack of anything to say on mine, but of my skills as a reviewer. I simply don’t know if I’m there yet. Although honestly it’s been consuming so much of my mental real estate that I’m tempted to try anyway.

But let me offer you this evidence: after several months of drawing the series out as long as I could, I banged out the rest (and the alternate take / sequel film The Adolescence of Utena) in just three days. I don’t think I’ve ever seen a series that’s captivating in this specific way before, and I’m not sure I ever will again. I love this show to pieces.

Sailor Moon: And firmly on the other end of the quality spectrum, at least right now, are these two frankly pretty bad episodes of Sailor Moon. Isolated, they’re merely subpar. Together, they’re insufferable, especially the first, a bizarre bout of (internalized?) misogyny that feels wildly out of place in a children’s series, even one of this vintage. Certainly in a mahou shoujo series. Easily bottom 5’ers, the both of them. Thankfully I believe the show returns to more well-regarded ground this coming week, and you take the good with the bad, so I think I will have kinder things to say in this space next week.

Other Thoughts N Such

As I briefly mentioned up top, there is too much good stuff airing this season. Do you like battle girl shows? Check out Assault Lily Bouquet and Warlords of Sigrdrifa. Idols? Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is incredible and maybe the single best thing airing in an insanely strong season. Even Jun Maeda of all people is here, responsible for the script on The Day I Became A God, a show whose first episode showed off an incredible amount of promise.

In the realm of things I’m not watching (but have heard a lot of good about), there’s solid action shonen (Jujutsu Kaisen), iyashikei (Sleepy Princess In The Demon Castle), an isekai where the main character wears a Lain-style bear suit (Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear), a traveler story (Elaina The Witch), and even an anime about rap battling boy band idols (the ambiently baffling HYPNOSISMIC -Division Rap Battle- Rhyme Anima). I feel like I’m basically advertising the season, but when there’s just this much stuff dropping it’s hard not to. Unless these somehow all manage to strongly disappoint I imagine people will be talking about this season for a long time.

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

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