Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.
Magic Planet Anime posts will be extremely irregular for the foreseeable future. See this post for details.
Since we last spoke about Lycoris Recoil, the series has undergone a radical shift in scale and focus. We saw the opening moves of this maneuver back in episode 7, but by now the show has mostly disregarded any direct “nitty gritty” political engagement. There are two things LycoReco cares about right now: mapping out the long arc of Chisato’s short life, and broad, philosophical questions of destiny and free will. Even though the show’s actual setting and characters have not changed much, we’re still a very long way from the montage of high schoolers capping people from the premiere.
We’ve known for a while that Chisato has an artificial heart, some future-tech thing that doesn’t actually beat, and which is essentially irreplaceable. So it wasn’t that surprising when, a few weeks ago, a minor villain posing as a nurse injected our protagonist with some knock-out serum or another and performed some impromptu surgery. The result was hardware lockout; no one can tinker with Chisato’s heart anymore, and that includes recharging it.
She has two months left to live.
Chisato’s life has the ring of true tragedy. Raised as a child soldier but addled with an incurable heart disease, she was singled out by the mysterious Shinji Yoshimatsu as a “genius” of killing, the primary skill of all Lycorii, and given her artificial heart with the understanding that she would use this gift to become an even deadlier assassin. Even with this in mind, we learn, it was doubtful she’d live past 18. Of course, for the purposes of being a deadly teenage supercop, that’s perfectly fine; Lycorii are discharged at 18 anyway.
The entire universe of Lycoris Recoil is aligned against Chisato; the “nurse” who’s pulled the plug on her heart is one of Yoshimatsu’s people, an obvious attempt to gain leverage on her to get her to return to her alleged true calling as an assassin, her former superior at the DA is not much better, giving her back a camera she’d confiscated some time ago to try to nudge her back into DA service. And of course, there’s her heart problems themselves, a natural ailment that the artificial heart has provided only a temporary reprieve from.
Chisato rarely shows any direct concern over any of this, and frankly she’s remarkably unflappable in the face of her imminent demise, but that’s precisely part of what makes her character arc so effective. Fearing death, at least a little bit, is normal. Staring unblinking into its face as you know it’s creeping ever closer, that’s another thing entirely. The ability to do that only comes from having spent the better part of your life in a seriously bad place. Even with all she very obviously cares for—Takina, the cafe’, Mika, etc.—she seems to have accepted this as inevitable from day one. It’s heartbreaking.
Yet, when, in episode 10 (the most recent), she finds out who exactly is responsible for all of that hardship, she holds no ill will toward him at all. She’s not really even mad at Mika for keeping this secret from her this entire time! Instead, she reiterates that she sees the two of them as her fathers, and when, in the episode’s final minutes, we learn that Shinji’s being held hostage by Majima and Robota, she doesn’t hesitate to spend a day of her rapidly-shrinking lifespan trying to rescue him. (The actual hostage rescue itself being territory for next week, we must assume.)
Chisato is, at the end of the day, an incredibly strong character. Not just strong in the usual anime sense, and not just strong as in “well-written,” but possessing of a vast moral strength, too. It’s hard to know whether to take her insistence that she hear all of the terrible things Shinji’s said about her in person as an incredible capacity for forgiveness, a denial that she’s been lied to at all, or both. But all signs point to her being very much aware of her own mortality, her ability to do all of this in spite of that awareness is both admirable and more than a little terrifying. Hers is a blitheness that hides a deep pain, something we really don’t get to actually see for ourselves directly.
While this is very much Chisato’s show, it’d be a mistake to not mention that the rest of Lycoris Recoil‘s cast has continued to be great, too. Mika’s deep and very much justified regret over his role in concealing the truth from Chisato rounds out his character in an excellent way.
Takina, in the meantime, has had to deal with the impending loss of her best friend (or “best friend.” I leave that distinction up to you, shippers), perhaps the first person she’s ever truly connected to, while also, in a twist of dramatic irony, being given exactly what she initially wanted; a trip back to the DA. She and Chisato are apart for episode 10, which while sad, does give her a few moments to truly shine on her own, and her single-minded focus on trying to somehow help Chisato is very grounded and relatable, despite the fantastical stakes. (This could also be said of Mika, actually. I am sure there is at least one father watching this show who absolutely cried his eyes out this past episode.)
The only real weak spot is Majima, who’s taken the main villain role in this last arc of the show. As a cartoonish caricature of an anarchist in a world built on some already-iffy foundational principles, he is probably the only genuine weak link in Lycoris Recoil‘s character roster and embodies most of the show’s remaining shortcomings. Still, he’s at least entertaining at this point, with his utterly ludicrous plot of “hide a thousand guns all over Tokyo and let carnage ensue naturally from there” being, all at once, a decent piece of commentary, comically stupid on its face, and weirdly lazy, as far as big endgame villain schemes go. But at this point, that’s expected of LycoReco, a show that is built on contradictions top to bottom.
The plot itself has taken an all-action movie tropes twist—again—as we ride into the final few weeks. A dying Chisato prepares to rescue Shinji while Takina and the other DA Lycorii try to deal with Majima running circles around them. Much is up in the air, and it’s impossible to exactly call where it all will land.
For any flaws it could be said to have, there is absolutely no denying that, as Lycoris Recoil nears its end, it remains an absolutely fascinating show, forever pulling in all directions and only recently settling into a groove that seems to truly suit it. (No one would call the show’s early episodes bad, I don’t think, but things have definitely improved.) The last bullets are in the chamber; gun cocked, but not fired.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.
Magic Planet Anime posts will be extremely irregular for the foreseeable future. See this post for details.
Call of The Night is a show about living outside of social norms. It has been basically since day 1. Modern vampire stories lend themselves particularly well to this sort of thing, and that might be why the glove fits Call of The Night so well. But whatever the reason, it’s difficult to read the show’s tale of complex nocturnal relationships as being about anything else.
For Ko, vampirism has always represented an ideal exit strategy from the expectations of diurnal society. Vampires do not have to go to school, and since they (presumably, here as in most fiction) live very long lives, there is no need to truly manage one’s time wisely. After all, there can’t be any future problems looming over your head if “the future” never really comes.
In its past few episodes, Call of The Night has raised the obvious counterpoint to this idea; what about the vampires’ own social norms?
Recent episodes have established that as Ko is to humanity, Nazuna is to vampiredom. Nazuna is, in her own way, a social outcast as well. She’s apparently never turned another person, she’s unwilling to seduce people in order to do that, and in general she simply doesn’t seem to get along with the other vampires we’re introduced to very well. In fact, one could easily argue that Nazuna is more of an outcast than Ko is; at least Ko’s classmates seem to like him. The other vampires only just tolerate Nazuna, and that’s after learning about her and Ko’s unique situation. Before that point, one of those vampires, Kikyo Seri (Haruka Tomatsu), actually tries to kill her—and Ko, for knowing too much about vampires—marking the first genuine threat in the entire story.
Things work themselves out, sort of, but we also learn that Ko only has a year to become a vampire before being turned becomes impossible. “Failing to qualify,” as one of the other vampires puts it. What was once a choice has now been turned into a requirement, and worse, one with a time limit. The other vampires do not explicitly tell Ko that they’ll kill him if he can’t manage to turn in that time, but all evidence points to this, since then he’d be a human who knows too much about them with no way of turning into one himself. Once again, Ko finds himself up against a societal wall; expectations imposed, with consequences if they’re not met. (Rather severe ones, I must say.)
This, understandably, makes Ko anxious. Since now he feels like he needs to fall in love with Nazuna rather than just wanting to. He even tries taking her on a date, at Seri’s suggestion, but it pretty quickly falls to pieces.
Ladies, has your man ever left you feeling like this?
Things are only salvaged when Nazuna lifts him into the night once again; trying to fit anyone else’s ideas of what their relationship should be inevitably fails. It’s only on their own terms do Nazuna and Ko truly work together, not just as a couple but even just as friends.
All this said then, the question asks itself; is becoming a vampire really all it’s cracked up to be? Nazuna certainly doesn’t think so, and there is some implication that Seri may not, either. But there’s also a lingering hint that Ko may not have to face this looming problem alone.
In the most recent episode, 8, we’re also introduced to Mahiru (Kenshou Ono). Mahiru is a jovial, all-around friendly sort of guy. Ko really seems to like him, arguably to the point of a crush, and he makes a good first impression.
(I think every middle and high school has at least one guy like this. In my high school it was a stoner dude who was extremely tall. His name was Mitch, and I hope he’s doing well nowadays.) We find out, though, that Mahiru has also been seeing someone after dark, with the broad implication that he, too, may be in love with a vampire.
It seems like that for all Ko has used nighttime as an escape, his problems are not content to stay out of the shadows. As always, I am intrigued to see where the series goes from here, as it enters its final stretch.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
“Idols don’t ‘do the right thing.’ They do what they want.”
I’m breaking a personal rule with this one. Generally speaking, I don’t really like to compare currently-airing anime. Especially not if the main reason they’re being compared is that they share a genre. In my view, people generally vastly overstate the importance of genre and tend to use what should be a guideline as a box to lump dissimilar things together. Or worse, to rag on something for not fitting a particular, narrow ideal of what something in a given genre “should” be. Comparing seasonal anime on the basis of their genre alone is usually pretty basic and uninteresting.
Yet, something about the idol genre specifically reignites an old fire of partisan fandom within me. I latch on to favorites pretty hard, and even I’m sometimes at a loss as to succinctly explain why, both in terms of individual characters and—as this column will go into—entire shows themselves.
So today, I’m letting myself do something I normally wouldn’t; I am comparing two things that I fully acknowledge have little business being compared. Those things being the second season of Love Live! Superstar, about the idol group Liella, and new girl on the block SHINEPOST, about the idol group TiNgS.
But come on! How can I not? We have here two idol anime airing in the same season, appealing to the same groups of people, but with wildly different approaches. One operating from within the established Love Live franchise, and the other, a punchy outsider that evokes 2011’s seminal The Idolmaster. (Bonus points; Superstar is from the long-established Sunrise, and SHINEPOST comes to us from the still relatively young Studio KAI, perhaps best known at this point for the second season of Pretty Derby and last year’s Super Cub. They’re also working on the excellent Fuuto PI this season as well.) One is pure fluff; sunny, goofy, and, in its best moments, purehearted and warm. The other is a down-to-earth look at idols as players in the idol industry, focusing on ground-level character dynamics and getting into the heads of its significantly smaller cast.
So here we go; two idol anime, two very different takes on what that phrase even means in 2022. We will look at them one at a time, and then consider how we might use the knowledge of what each is doing to look ahead into the future.
We’ll start with SHINEPOST, the one I prefer by a fair bit. TiNgS were introduced to the world with their trailer PV toward the end of last year, and it (and the accompanying song, the scintillating banger “Be Your Light!!”), immediately hooked me.
SHINEPOST is a scrappy little anime, one that seemingly rather few people in the Anglosphere are watching. But for my money, it outstrips Superstar in a few respects; it’s more ambitious, and the particular suite of emotions on display here resonates with me more. I don’t think SHINEPOST is a “better” show in any absolute sense—I rarely think of anime in that way, and Superstar has its merits too, as we’ll get to—but it’s easily the one that’s captured more of my heart.
Part of that, I think, comes down to the fact that SHINEPOST has what is for me more relatable character writing. Particularly in the form of Kyouka Tamaki (Moeko Kanisawa, lead for the real-life idol group ≠ME). Kyouka does fall within a firmly established character archetype; she’s straightlaced, serious, a good student, and considers herself very ordinary. She turns to idol work out of a desperate desire to be special, to mean something to somebody as more than just another person. The devil’s in the details here; Kyouka’s desperation to be noticed also gives rise to a farily pronounced self-loathing streak. See, for instance, the way that she convinces herself that she’s not “really” talented in the weeks following a performance of a new song, in which she sang lead, gone awry. Throughout the show’s second major arc, she tries to settle for less, only for that to end up making her feel worse. It’s a punch to the gut. She reaches her lowest point when she slips into a McDonald’s incognito, hoping—and then actively fantasizing—that one of the other patrons will recognize her. It is, and I mean this with no malice in my heart whatsoever, truly pathetic, in the most profound sense of that term. I have been this person; lots of people have been this person, seeking petty validation from random strangers, only then to feel even worse when we don’t get it. It is a truly miserable feeling, the sort of thing that can swallow a performer’s psyche whole if left unchecked.
But SHINEPOST is not a show that wallows in these kinds of things. The point, after all, of showing you what this kind of character is like in the dark is to then lift them out of that darkness. Kyouka’s manager—an important character in his own right—is able to convince her that actively wanting to be special, that selfishly, shamelessly wanting to feel, even if just for a moment, like the center of someone’s universe, is not just okay but is expected of her. That’s where this column’s header quote comes from; and it’s one that will stick with me for a while. Sure enough, when she’s able to get out of her own head and adopt the mentality of just letting herself honestly want what she wants, she absolutely aces the next performance of her song. In doing so, she shoots her biggest fan, the one person to whom Kyouka really is so much more than just another face in the crowd, through the heart. She straight up faints; it’s hard to blame her.
Granted, this is just one particular arc. (Not even the most recent one, as Rio, the spunky short girl of the group, is the star of the current arc.) But it’s illustrative of SHINEPOST‘s character writing strengths, which make the series feel far more grounded than Superstar despite its rather weird high premise. (Would you believe something this good is being sold on the premise that the idol group’s manager can tell when people are lying? He’s a good character and all, but it’s a downright bizarre thing to hook your whole show on.)
Speaking of, let’s pivot to Superstar. Comparing the shows along a character writing axis in particular is rather unfair. After all; the Love Live series has never dealt with the ‘industry’ side of the idol industry, preferring to bubble its wholly fictional school idol concept off from real world concerns, which severely curtails the possibility of any kind of industry drama plotlines. (This despite the fact that, of course, any of the actual idols who voice the Love Live girls are industry professionals who’ve generally had to work very hard to get where they are, but that’s a conversation for another day.) Inherently, this isn’t a huge problem, and a different Love Live series, last season’s followup to Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, managed to turn that lack of serious engagement with what being an idol means ‘in the real world’ into a strength. Nijigasaki envisions, essentially, a utopia, where the distinction between idol and fan is nearly nonexistent and not only can everyone be an idol, but everyone should at least give it a shot. It has a particular kind of rare fervor that you don’t see in most of its peers over on the sunny optimism side of the idol anime spectrum.
Superstar, meanwhile, has what one could easily argue are higher stakes; its main cast are trying to win the titular Love Live. This is, in theory, a fertile ground for, if not the same kind of character drama as SHINEPOST‘s, at least something in the same general ballpark. Instead, though, most of Superstar‘s best episodes, especially here in its second season, have been a lot sillier than the looming presence of any serious competition would imply. One of season 2’s biggest developments so far is Liella expanding to eight (and eventually nine, although we’re not there yet) members. Two of those members, the stoic oddball Shiki Wakana (Wakana Ookuma), and the willful idol otaku Mei Yoneme (Akane Yabushima), recently got an episode all their own.
Shiki and Mei seen here in their natural states of “looking kinda stoned” and “being flustered and embarrassed.”
And while there was some focus on the twos’ relationship with each other (which goes past “best friends” all the way into borderline homoromantic, a plus for some viewers, certainly), the episode was mostly about wacky misunderstandings. It was a very good episode about wacky misunderstandings, but this, and similar examples throughout the series so far have made Superstar feel like a bit of a lightweight in comparison. Cheerful, fun, amusing, but not anything more than that.
Part of this, I think, comes down to Superstar‘s idols themselves. Liella are not by any means a bad group, and I’d put them on par with SHINEPOST‘s TiNgS in a vacuum, but none of its members come close to the sheer magnetism of, say, Nijigasaki‘s Setsuna Yuki or Lanzhu Zhong. You really need a certain level of camp to elevate this sort of story beyond the merely pleasant. And unfortunately, while there is camp and theatricality present in Love Live! Superstar, it’s mostly not from Liella themselves.
Let’s talk about Wien Margarete (Yuina). Or Vienna Margaret, depending on whose subtitles you’re looking at.
Introduced in Superstar‘s third episode as a rival not just for Liella on the whole but for center Kanon Shibuya (Sayuri Date) specifically, she actually hasn’t appeared in person in the two episodes since. She almost doesn’t need to; Wien has an absolutely electric magnetism that, honestly, none of the Liella girls can really match. What you have here is perhaps the classic problem of simply making the antagonist too cool. (And make no mistake, with her sneering dismissal of Liella and the entire Love Live competition, Wien is absolutely a villain, in as much as Love Live ever has those. Kanon frankly even seems a bit scared of her, despite the fact that Wien is literally a middle schooler.)
Granted, if a middle schooler with lavender hair started showing up outside my house to tell me how bad I was at singing, I might be scared of her too.
But at the same time, I’m unwilling to slam Superstar too hard over this. It is entirely possible that in the season’s back half the rest of Liella will rise to the occasion. Their actual talent, both in-universe and, outside of it, that of their voice actresses, is not remotely the problem, it’s just that you can’t beat crazy shit like glowing butterflies, iron clockwork, and a gothic lolita dress adorned with black feathers by being a pretty good idol group. (And honestly the show itself seems to be on my side here; go watch that clip and look at how Liella react to her. Those are the faces of girls who know they’re outclassed.)
Perhaps, then, Liella will meet that challenge at some point. As it stands, they just don’t have this kind of theatricality, but seeing the group transform into the sort of people who could pull that off would be very much worth watching. (If, still, an entirely different universe than what SHINEPOST is doing.)
In a sense, and to return back to our opening question, this is really less a criticism of Superstar and more of an open query. Now that this genre is entering its second full decade of being among the most successful and popular anime subgenres, where is it going? There’s a lot I haven’t touched on here, outside just these two shows. Right now, Waccha Primagi, a children’s anime that blends the idol and magical girl genres has been unwilling to let the possible outbreak of a war between humans and magic users—after the local Beyonce stand-in ascended to divinity and became an angry Sun God, naturally—interfere with its once-an-episode CGI idol performances. Last season, there was Healer Girl, which I would not really call an idol anime, but its dynamic approach to music certainly borrows something from the genre, and which it spun into hallucinatory dream sequences of rare beauty. And this very season, there are a few idol anime I simply haven’t seen; namely League of Nations Air Force Aviation Magic Band Luminous Witches, whose full English title is an absolute joy to have to copy and paste every time and which is a spinoff of the polarizing Strike Witches series, and Phantom of the Idol, which simply by starring a male lead, is already so far removed from almost everything else on this page that it’s almost another conversation entirely.
Perhaps, then, trying to say much about what idol anime will look like next year, in 5 years, in 10, is foolish in the first place. Writing this piece has been an exercise in perspective. Always a valuable thing, and I hope you’ve found reading it interesting as well.
Nonetheless, the fact remains. Whether the rest of the ’20s brings us more stories of passion and drama within the idol industry, and whatever twists they may have, more sunlit visions of a world where anyone and everyone can become the performer they’ve always dreamed of being, or something in between or even farther afield, the idol genre does not look like it’s going anywhere any time soon. People love pop music, and they love pop stars. That much seems unlikely to change.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
I really did not think I’d ever be writing about this show again. I didn’t make a secret of the fact that I wasn’t super impressed by RWBY: ICE QUEENDOM‘s premiere. When discussing that first episode, I called the show a mess. In that context, I meant it negatively; a slapdash, hacky story given a wildly uneven production that felt like it was being carried on the backs of individual boarders and animators rather than being directed with any strong sense of purpose. I stand by those statements as they hold to episodes 1-3, which together made up the series premiere on Crunchyroll, and they might still hold true going forward, but we’re not here to talk about any past or future episodes of this show. Not today. Today, here, in the very first of the new Anime Orbit columns, I’d like to talk about episode 4, the first new episode since the series began its normal weekly airing schedule.
Because 4 is something else entirely. To really just lay the matter on the table; it’s really good. In a way that feels a whole universe removed from what Ice Queendom had been doing up until this point. The actual plot here is very simple—one of the ‘Nightmare Grimms’ introduced in episode 3 gets its hooks into Weiss, and it’s up to Ruby to rescue her from the confines of the resulting dream-prison—but the way its presented is another beast entirely. If nothing else, Ice Queendom deserves some sort of “most improved” award here. This is lightyears ahead of what the first three episodes were doing, both in terms of visuals and, to an admittedly lesser extent, writing.
When we were introduced to the Nightmare Grimms concept (not a name explicitly given to them in-dialogue, but I can think of nothing else to call them), the first person they afflicted was Jaune. Who is, just speaking honestly, not a character who particularly endeared himself to me when he first showed up a few episodes ago. Jaune’s mental world was also not terribly interesting, to my recollection.
No one could make the same criticism of Weiss’. Her inner world is an absurdist dystopia monitored by living propaganda posters of her father Jacques and robots that greet each other with a bizarre salute of “Big Nicholas!”. It’s a massive walled factory town surrounded by blizzard-stricken bluffs, allegedly part of a wider “Empire”, where it always snows. Huge trains made of ice run unknowable cargo in and out of the city, only to be set upon by White Fang-affiliated bandits. Everything here seems jumbled up in guilt, insecurity, paranoia, and inherited prejudice. It doesn’t make Weiss seem like a particularly great person—and it’s not like the show needed help in that regard—but for the first time, it makes her sympathetic.
This entire thing is still mess-y, mind you, and I doubt Ice Queendom is going to really reckon with the inherent problems at the core of the whole “Faunus” analogy, but you can consider episode 4 a study on the difference that the addition of a single Y can make. For certain, it holds your attention in a very immediate way; one more comparable to all those other great SHAFT shows than anything in the first three episodes.
Helping to build the dreamy atmosphere are lots of little details, like Ruby’s scythe-gun not working the same way it does in the real world because Weiss is mistaken about how it’s put together. (Weiss seems to be under the impression that the gun is on the handle, which isn’t true. The first time Ruby goes to fire it in the dreamworld, she hits one of the robots behind her because of this, accidentally firing it backwards.) The little dream-gadgets Ruby can use via a payment of magic coins connected to the mysterious witch-exorcist (Shion Zaiden, played by Hiroki Nanami. We met her in episode 3 as well) helping them try to pull Weiss out of this thing are great, too. Using the coins, she can conjure up phone booths to talk to Shion for advice, she can summon decoy “chibi” Rubies who run around and repeat various things she’s said, etc. It’s strange and fun in a way that’s just an absolute joy to watch.
This is RWBY Chibi, right?
It’s not all fun and games though. As mentioned, there’s a distinctly dystopian / authoritarian bent to Weiss’ dreamscape. Winter City is a cold, hostile place.
A place where Ruby learns about the horrors of capitalism.
Even the few seemingly-friendly faces that Ruby meets turn on her the instant she’s declared a “dummy” (which Weiss’ subconscious seems to use as a catchall for people who can’t be trusted) by the regime, and she’s spied on for much of her stay by Weiss’ brother Whitley….who is also a bat here. (It’s a dream, just roll with it.)
Perhaps the most revealing scenes are the ones from Weiss’ own perspective. She is the city’s dictator, and sure enough, her outfit here has her rocking a militaristic overcoat and shades, making her look like some cross between Douglas MacArthur and Esdeath from Akame ga Kill!
I couldn’t get any good stills of her with the sunglasses actually on. So, in order to preserve the hilarious reference above, I’m going to need you to just imagine them. Picture an old-school smoking pipe in her mouth while you’re at it, really complete the look.
But she’s as trapped by the long shadow of her father—and the ancestor to the both of them, the ‘Nicholas’ referred to in the robots’ salute—as anyone else. When she reads reports off of a giant computer screen in her castle at the center of the city, a massive hologram of her father appears on the ceiling to berate her for her many perceived failures. Most especially, of course, letting this “Ruby” girl run free. This is what leads to Ruby’s branding as a “dummy,” and sets up their actual confrontation at the end of the episode, which builds both on what’s established here and the friction we already know exists between the two of them. Their battle starts here, but doesn’t end, implying this intriguing arc will have at least one more episode.
It’s worth looking forward to. In addition to the many things about Weiss herself we learn, there’s no denying the sheer mood of this thing. Perhaps my favorite moment actually comes not from either Weiss or Ruby, but from Shion, who offers this very true and absolutely fascinating piece of advice when Ruby calls to ask for help, concerned that Weiss secretly hates her.
If it can keep delivering moments like that, and like the more openly bizarre turns in this episode, Ice Queendom will be worth keeping up with. It remains to be seen if this marks a new direction for the series or if this is merely an anomaly. But for the first time since the series premiered, I’m optimistic. You should be, too.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Hi folks, as is often the case with these short “site update” PSA things, I’ll keep this brief.
The very short version is that I will not be doing any Anime Orbit Weekly posts anymore, and will be replacing them with something else. If you don’t really care about my reasoning, you can stop reading now, I’ve gotten the most important thing across.
If you do care about my reasoning; the fact of the matter is just that AOW posts are not read by most people. They get absolutely miniscule numbers, a fact that is especially stark when weighed against my other posts. We’re talking around 1/4th of those that articles dedicated to a single show or topic get, sometimes less.
This makes sense, if you think about it. Articles about a single subject are much easier to tag, which leads to better SEO, which leads to more page hits. It’s as simple as that.
As for what I’ll be replacing them with, my current plan is to just occasionally do “seasonal check-ins” on anime I think are doing something interesting over the course of a given season or are just worth talking about in some other way. This will preserve the function of AOW but in a form that’s easier to navigate and is more likely to draw in new visitors.
I will probably give these columns their own dedicated space on the front page, and the Anime Orbit Weekly archive will either be deprecated entirely or moved to the very bottom of the Anime section. (Frankly, the archive is itself another factor here. It’s ugly and extremely laborious to update, which is why it’s months behind everything else on the site.)
I might still call these new articles “Anime Orbit” or something related (it’s a good name, and it’d be a shame to waste it), but I don’t want to make any hard commitments at this juncture.
That’s about all, anime fans. Hopefully this change will improve your reading experience here on Magic Planet Anime. Stay safe out there.
Hi folks. A bit low on energy as I write this, so I’ll just cut right to the chase for you. That’s the important part anyway, right?
Seasonal Anime
Birdie Wing
The news felt tragic when it was handed down. “Birdie Wing will have only 13 episodes.” These days, single cour anime are by far the norm, so it wasn’t too surprising to learn that Birdie Wing would have only a single episode more than the standard twelve. Still, for a show that seemed to be pivoting into ever-more absurd iterations on its central sport, it cannot help but be the tiniest bit disappointing. Part of me wanted Birdie Wing to run for dozens and dozens of episodes just to see how out there it could get.
On the other hand, this is the proverbial fire under Birdie Wing‘s ass. This week’s episode was the eleventh, putting the series just two away from completion. Every minute counts in a single cour anime, and never more so than in its final few episodes.
The question, then, that Birdie Wing asks you as it enters its finale, is how much can you care about golf? Not how much you do care about golf, mind you. I care about the actual sport very little and I’m sure the same is true of a fair number of people who are watching it. But like anything, Birdie Wing‘s first major obstacle to overcome as a story and a piece of entertainment is to make you care about it. It has a lot of tricks up its sleeve in that regard; Eve’s rainbow bullets, its plethora of absurd courses, the ludicrously high stakes involved in many of these matches, its once-present class commentary that seems to have largely just faded into the ether, etc. But at the end of the day, a key part of forcing your suspension of disbelief is to make you care about this thing you might otherwise not give a damn about. Birdie Wing, in what I think is probably its greatest overall strength, is really good at that. This time it uses a more conventional, though no less effective approach; a compelling but brief arc for a side character.
Part of this episode stars Kinue Jinguuji (Mai Nakahara). Jinguuji is the president of Eve’s adopted high school’s golf club, and over the course of the episode she puts Eve through some pretty intense training. (Yes, this episode is a Golf Training Arc. No one should be surprised by that at this point.)
One would correctly guess, then, that she’s a strong golfer herself. Over the course of this episode, Coach Amuro sets upon her the task of “polishing” Eve, who he describes as a diamond in the rough.
But, Birdie Wing makes a key distinction here. Jinguuji is a very good golfer; she has technique and intuitive course knowledge and all the sorts of things that make one actually good at the sport both within Birdie Wing and in real life. If this were Sorairo Utility, 2022’s other anime about girls golfing, she’d be the strongest player on the course by a mile.
But this is not that particular short, and it is also not real life. Jinguuji being a very good golfer is not enough to elevate her to main character status, something she is keenly aware of.
Instead, Jinguuji falls into the old archetype of someone who is deeply passionate about something, and is even quite skilled at it, but cannot compete with natural talent. This is a character type that has recurred many times throughout the course of the medium, usually in contexts far more “obviously” dramatic than this one. But Birdie Wing playing the trope completely straight, and managing to actually do so fairly successfully, is amazing. If it winked for even a moment, the illusion would collapse in a heap.
There is a real case to be made for Birdie Wing as a truly effective piece of camp theater, and arcs like Jinguuji’s (or earlier in the show; Rose Aleone’s) are great supporting arguments. Is it actually all that funny that Kinue literally breaks down and cries during her flashback because she can’t play golf anymore?
As a non-golfer, sure, it can seem silly. But in her own mind—and that of a sufficiently attuned viewer—it’s genuinely tragic that her dreams are forever beyond her reach. The episode’s very title is “No Matter How Tall a Weed Grows, It Will Never Reach the Sun”, a hard-truth proverb that some people are simply better than others at things for reasons well beyond anyone’s control. Wanting to do something is not the same as being good at it. It’s a tough lesson, and it’s not one everyone handles with terribly much grace.
Kinue at least, has found her answer. Unable to compete in the tournament (or by the sounds of it, much of any golf, at least for now), she passes her dream on to Eve and Aoi. I will fully admit that it’s strange to say this, but, as someone for whom criticism was perhaps a third or fourth-chosen life path, I actually related to this super hard, and I think Kinue might be my favorite member of Birdie Wing‘s secondary cast. In my mind, there is validity in seeking to uplift others’ dreams if you can’t truly attain your own.
Eve and Aoi have no such problems, of course, and inevitably, it’s them who are chosen to represent their high school in the doubles tournament. This, presumably, will form the show’s final arc.
Birdie Wing will not appear in this column again. I intend to review the series, and at this point I should focus as much on the big picture as I do individual episodes. But single cour though it is relegated to, Birdie Wing has been, and continues to be, an incredible ride, and I am happy to have gone on it with all of you.
Summer Time Rendering
There are a lot of things that are surprising about Summer Time Rendering. One is simply how popular it’s been despite the fact that a certain streaming service is still holding its English release in proverbial prison. Unofficial releases float around anyway, of course, and via a heavily-dialectical fansub (based on the manga’s translation), many people have found one of their Spring favorites regardless.
For me, Summer Time Rendering—unusually spelled name and all, it’s a pun—is a peculiar beast. Another, at least to me, is just how well-made it is. Maybe I’m just out of touch with the genre, but I feel like there aren’t many supernatural thrillers getting made anymore. Summer Time Render does not redefine the genre, but it’s a great take on it thusfar, leaning into the genre’s strong points and mostly (though not entirely) avoiding its pitfalls.
Since a fair chunk of people are waiting for the official release, I’m loathe to spoil too much about the series, even though certain aspects of it practically beg discussion (for example, walking “wow, that’s gender” tweet Ryuunosuke). The core point is that over the course of its run so far, Summer Time Render has managed to be both hair-stands-on-end spooky and one of the best action anime airing right now. That’s pretty impressive, although OLM rarely deliver anything but top-notch productions, so maybe I shouldn’t be so surprised.
The Executioner & Her Way of Life
I have to admit, I fell behind on The Executioner & Her Way of Life for a while, which is why it’s been a bit since it showed up here. I’m glad I caught up this week in time for the finale, though. (Which will have already aired by the time you read this, although I won’t be covering it, if I do, until next week. Lead times and all.)
Since we last spoke, Executioner has turned into a full-on horror film. That’s not to say that its isekai (and more generally, fantasy) trappings have gone anywhere, but it’s rapidly become clear that the world Executioner takes place in is, if anything, even more fucked up than we thought. For its tenth episode, Executioner gave a sensible motive to arc villain Manon Libelle (Manaka Iwami, just in case I forgot to credit her before). There, we learned that Flare killed her mother before telling her that she was not worth killing. Why? Well, despite her mother being a Lost One, Manon herself is just an ordinary girl, and there’s nothing taboo or forbidden about ordinary girls, no matter who their parents are. Quite rightly, this fucked Manon up—something she actually acknowledges, in what is either the show being a bit too clever or the character herself gussying up her own backstory—and her whole plot over the show’s second half has been driven by a desire to attract Menou’s attention so the executioner will kill her as well.
We’re not actually really here to talk about Manon, though. She dies in the second half of episode 10, and the mysterious mute girl we’ve been seeing occasionally for a while now (Anzu Haruno) formally takes over as the show’s main baddie. Her name is Pandaemonium, and she is fucking scary.
Not just because of the full-on gnarly body horror the show starts deploying as soon as she shows up, although that certainly helps. There’s some arcanobabble in here about how she can’t die because she uses herself as a sacrifice to resurrect herself, a sort of Magic The Gathering infinite loop combo as applied to some truly grisly storytelling. The real reason she’s frightening—at least to me—is her cavalier attitude toward all this. She cheerily introduces herself to Menou and starts announcing her summoning a horde of demons like she’s hosting a B-Movie marathon (a term she actually uses, which raises questions of its own). All the while twisting her own head off in a way that is, sincerely, super fucking grotesque.
But of course being introduced to this total horror villain who spouts blood and cheeky metatext in equal measure is just step one. Menou has to actually fight her, too. Episode 11 only deals in part, though, with that particular fateful encounter, because there are quite a few other things going on as well. As Menou—and eventually, Princess Ashuna, as well—fight off Pandaemonium, Akari encounters her, too. There is a lot of exposition, here. The key point is the revelation that, at least if Pandaemonium is to be believed, Akari cannot actually meaningfully change her fate. Even when Akari declares that she has no desire to return to Japan, Pandaemonium taunts that she’s failed to have Menou kill her every time so far for a reason. Someone, possibly Flare herself, is interfering.
Other things Pandaemonium says about her are similarly upsetting. Perhaps the most so is the notion that Akari’s lack of desire to return to Japan stems firstly from the fact that she can barely remember it anymore—using one’s Pure Concept powers erodes their soul, including their memories—and secondly from the fact that she wasn’t treated well there. (We see only a brief flash of her being bullied, but that’s really all the context we need.)
In a way, this is both a literal advancement of the plot, but also a step backward for Executioner. As a social outcast using the other world as a way to escape the life she once lead in her own, this recontextualizes Akari as very much a typical isekai protagonist, even if the specifics are different. I’m unwilling to call this a letdown, because it’s likely that this is on purpose on Executioner‘s part. And indeed, part of the point Pandaemonium makes—and she isn’t wrong, exactly, even if she’s only saying it to get under Akari’s skin—is that Akari’s actions are inherently selfish. No world, after all, exists for one person alone. But all this is a bit of a curveball as the show heads into its finale. I do wonder if it might end up with a pretty common fate for anime that adapt still-ongoing works; ending without resolving much of anything at all.
Still, there is only one way to find out. The finale awaits.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hi folks! I don’t have a ton to say up here today. I’ve been trying to get back into the swing of things while still dealing with a bunch of life stuff, so happy as I am that this week’s been devoid of interruptions so far, I don’t want to make any promises about what the immediate future looks like. (Down to whether or not I’ll be able to finally cover Healer Girl on time for once tomorrow. That’s a big We’ll See.)
But in any case, I’ve gotten a lot of writing done this week, and if you’re a devoted enough fan of the site to be reading this, sincerely thank you for reading so much of it. I’m quite proud of the column this week, and I think you’ll see why as you read on. Also! I don’t want to promise anything (see previous paragraph), but I might have a special project starting up this week. We’ll see which way the winds blow.
Seasonal Anime
Birdie Wing
With episode 8, Birdie Wing closed the door on its “golf underground” storyline. The consequences were real and, in their own way, dire, despite the show’s absurdity. Eve has fled Nafrece and can’t ever go back, mob boss Rose Aleon is dead, shot in the face by a vengeful rival mob in a truly, utterly, indescribable pastiche of proper gangster cinema that Birdie Wing somehow managed to pull off flawlessly. The aftermath didn’t seem to bother Birdie Wing though, the very last shots of that episode were of Eve being goofy on a plane, literally flying away from the poverty she was adopted into, her and her family reaping the spoils of her improbable golf skill. The latter by being safe from that very poverty, the former by going to Japan to pursue her Golf Waifu.
So, in a way, this represents more the beginning of something than the end. An even slightly more ordinary anime would transpose the order here; introduce Eve as an ordinary high school girl and then eventually build up to the climactic confrontation with the, ahem, Golf Mafia. But Birdie Wing is not a remotely ordinary anime, and so, at the end of episode 9 we see that she’s enrolled in a Golf School in Golf Japan to pursue a Golf Romantically Charged Shonen Rivalry with fellow Golf Lesbian, Aoi, the aforementioned Golf Waifu. All this sets in as the sound of Tsukuyomi‘s “Nightjar”—the show’s needlessly beautiful ED theme—fills the sky and a shot of a golf ball dissolving into a full moon hangs overhead. It’s nuts.
It is still hard to know exactly how to reconcile Birdie Wing‘s ridiculousness with its sincerity. It’s been nine weeks and I’m still processing it; a show that transmutes the world’s most boring sport into high camp shouldn’t work as well as Birdie Wing does. Especially now that the series has seemingly abandoned the class element that made the first arc something worth chewing on thematically. By all rights Birdie Wing should fall apart here. But if it ever will, it’s not this week. From here, we golf sublime. If anything, I want to take Birdie Wing even more at face value than I already was. It somehow completely buys its own hype.
The first six or so minutes of episode 9 don’t even feature Eve at all. Instead, we focus on a new character who we’ve only briefly seen before. This is Ichina Saotome (Saki Fujita), an Ordinary Golf Schoolgirl whose greatest desire in life is, no shit, to be a professional golf caddy. She says things like this.
Saotome makes a hell of a first impression; among other things she’s late for Golf School because she missed the Golf Bus. Readers who aren’t watching this series may wonder if me appending “golf” to the front of random nouns is some kind of running joke or if the show is actually like that, and I am delighted to tell those readers that it is, in fact, both. Saotome’s school has a prominent Golf Club (haha. golf club), it is very serious business, and one of its members is the other character we properly meet here, Haruka Misono (Rina Satou).
Any fear that all this might make Birdie Wing even marginally more normal is dashed by the fact that Eve greets the both of these girls by deliberately driving a ball between them as they talk in order to get their attention.
Her blunt attempts to get a meeting with Aoi are pretty funny, but not as funny as the fact that Eve can somehow speak Japanese, and even she doesn’t know how. In a show that bought in less to its ludicrousness, this would be an obvious joke. Here, I almost wonder if it’s not some kind of foreshadowing about things we’ll eventually learn about Eve’s pre-amnesia life. (It can be both, of course.)
Her ability to meet with Aoi is eventually staked on a golf game (of course) by the Golf Club’s president. She gets an obvious victory over Haruka, although it’s closer than one might assume, and I suspect the now-shattered first year might serve as yet another rival to Eve.
Meanwhile, Aoi’s reaction to meeting Eve again is this.
Golfing!
Ultimately, the episode ends as aforementioned. Eve enrolls in Aoi’s school—obvious fake name and all—to the admiring gay screams of literally her entire classroom. And, well, god knows where the plot goes from here. I half expect Birdie Wing to turn into Revolutionary Golf Utena. It wouldn’t be out of character.
One thing is certain, Birdie Wing‘s total commitment to itself, an almost defiant attitude of “yeah, this is the Symphogear of golf, what are you going to do about it?” It’s hard to imagine Birdie Wing ever falling off in a serious way if it keeps that attitude up. Personally, I’ve joined the camp who strongly hope that this thing has two cours (no episode count was ever announced). Mostly just because I want to see what other total nonsense the show can come up with, but also because in spite of my general loathing of golf as a sport and everything it represents, I do care about these characters! I’m not afraid to say so, either. Much like some of its spiritual predecessors, Birdie Wing wrings emotional resonance from high absurdity, and it does a damn good job of it, too. It takes flight against all odds, a fighter jet of pure self-confidence.
Oh, and also; there’s a scene in here where Aoi gets all embarrassed because Eve stepped out of one of the locker room showers without a towel on but is also obviously checking her out. That’s pretty fun, too.
Ah, the classic “peeking through the gaps in your fingers” technique.
ESTAB LIFE: Great Escape
Ten weeks after its premiere, it’s still kind of hard to believe that Estab Life exists. Watching it, the threat that it will just disappear like a mirage on the horizon if you blink too hard feels ever-present. Yet, here we are, episode 12 is finally available in the Anglosphere, and the show is officially over. Its finale provides a suitably action-packed, pulpy, dramatic, and just plain weird exit for a show whose very existence feels vaguely like a taunt against all pop-artistic norms, a trait it shares with some, but perhaps not enough anime. (The Rolling Girls, and Estab Life‘s own contemporary, the above-discussed Birdie Wing, are a few that are on my mind lately.)
In a way, though, Estab Life‘s finale is a logical conclusion. How does a show about helping people escape their life situations end? By evac’ing the guy behind the whole system in the first place. For their grand finale, the Extractors extract Mr. M himself, their mysterious benefactor who turned out to also be the equally-mysterious Manager running the cluster system to begin with. Along the way, we get some pretty cool action scenes, some character model reuse that is too neat for me to call out how obvious a time- and cost-saving measure it is, an explanation-of-sorts for how the world of Estab Life came to exist in the first place. It’s a lot!
The high-tech castle facility that the Extractors infiltrate here is probably the best environ the series has ever shown off at all. It fits the high tech aesthetic inherent to an all-3DCG series to a tee. All three of the main Extractors get good turns here, and it’s interesting to note that Feles and Equa spend most of the climax by themselves; Martes seemingly sacrifices herself by exploding into many mini-Marteses (Martesi?) to fend off a swarm of angry drones.
When they finally encounter The Manager, Equa and Feles get hit with a truckload of exposition, perhaps the only part of the episode that doesn’t entirely work. (Something about how his builders created him, a nigh-omniscient supercomputer, to develop a utopia, but this is an impossible task because the natures of different people conflict too much. Sure, fair enough I suppose.) What does work is that “Mr. M” wants out of his situation as much as anyone else the Extractors have ever spirited away. He reformats himself, becoming the second character in as many episodes to change their gender presentation; this time on screen.
I will not pretend to know what this says about the people who made Estab Life, but I will take the representation—intentional or not—regardless. Before that, The Manager turns into a giant Facebook like symbol in order to thumbprint the extraction document. This is art, folks; the world’s first CTTTF (Computer to Thumb to Female) transition.
Her new body and name in tow (now it’s just “M.” No “Mr.”), she helps the Extractors escape from the facility, and in the process, we get to see her mind control a bunch of drones. Also, Martes has a huge hammer now.
The post-credits scene shows the Extractors back at their usual job, getting ready to rescue a cameoing Hachiro, who is finally ready to leave his own situation. M, now with a new look, supports the team over smartphone, and the series ends on an open, exciting note.
Incredibly, this isn’t the end for Estab Life on the whole. A mobile game is in development—though god knows if we’ll ever see it over here, see the still-in-limbo takt op. Destiny game for an example of that whole mess—and a film called Revengers’ Road. But until we meet the Extractors again, this is an excellent farewell.
Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club – Season 2
“Don’t hide your brightness.”
At its core, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is an extremely simple anime. Almost everything it does is in service of its gleaming, utopian vision; a world where truly anyone can be a superstar, if only they wish to be. This is, I think, the Nijigasaki sub-franchise’s entire appeal, but it does leave only a fairly limited tract of ground on which to grow actual conflicts. One of the few that have come up over the second season is the friction between Lanzhu and the Idol Club themselves. Lanzhu’s solo performances have been a running background thread throughout the whole season, and her unwillingness to play ball with the Idol Club is one of the show’s few actual “unsolved problems,” as it were. In episode 9, the issue is laid to rest, in a decidedly Nijigasaki fashion.
We should talk at least briefly about Mia Taylor (Shuu Uchida), the American-born idol who serves as Lanzhu’s songwriter. The two are clearly close but exactly what their relationship is has been a little fuzzy, at least to me, up until this point. Likewise, I’ve personally had a little trouble connecting to Mia as a character. She’s rather arrogant, which is fine, but given that she herself doesn’t hasn’t sung up until this point (spoiler), it’s felt a little hollow to me, as opposed to Lanzhu’s very well-earned cockiness (which is itself a defense mechanism, but we’ll get to that).
Mia’s character is actually explored in detail for the first time here, and we learn that she feels the crushing weight of expectations from being in a legacy music family. The reason she doesn’t sing herself is that she’s afraid of not living up to those expectations, and in a flashback, a young Mia is literally drowned out by applause as she steps on stage to debut as a pianist before she can play even a single note. It’s effective stuff! And her dealing with her own issues helps Lanzhu deal with hers.
A line that comes up here is “as long as you desire to be a school idol, everyone will accept you.” This is, if generalized out, basically the entire thrust of the series. It’s a little awkward—at best—if applied to the real world, but within Nijigasaki‘s own unpoppable bubble universe, it makes perfect sense. All feelings spring from music, so there is no problem that music cannot solve.
So, when Mia performs her insert song, the entirely-in-English “stars we chase”, and it breaks down Lanzhu’s defenses and she is revealed as, at her core, a very lonely girl who struggles to empathize with or even understand other people, it makes an internal sense. Lanzhu is convinced not to leave Japan (which, yeah, that was her reaction to being shown up at the idol festival, to leave the country. Girl’s a bit dramatic!) and it’s strongly hinted at that this season, possibly even next episode, will see the debut of Lanzhu, Mia, and Shioriko’s unit. Personally, I cannot wait.
She said the line!
Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie
Until now, I’ve largely considered Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie a pretty good show. If I’d had to pick an operative adjective, “pleasant” would be it. Like a summer breeze or a sweet flower. Not something one is inclined to think about terribly deeply, but definitely a positive presence in one’s life.
But sometimes shows that are “just pretty good” get episodes that are much better than that. (Highlighting these was the original M.O. behind Twenty Perfect Minutes, although I abandoned that narrow premise fairly quickly.) Singling things out like this does always feel a little unfair to me, because it’s not like what Shikimori has been doing up to now has been at all bad, but it’s been fairly straightforward. Other than a certain sweetness and sentimentality, Shikimori-san has lacked terribly much emotional resonance. That’s not a flaw per se, but it’s notable absence.
This week’s episode, the show’s eighth, is a different story.
Last week we were introduced to supporting character Kamiya (Ayaka Fukuhara), a friend of Izumi’s from some time ago, and, as we then learned, also someone who harbors feelings for him. Kamiya, honestly, sort of seems like she’s in the wrong show, or maybe the wrong genre entirely. Reflecting on romantic feelings she now knows are hopeless, she imagines herself as an impostor Cinderella, with unfitting glass slipers and who never finds her Prince Charming. Near the episode’s midpoint, she says that some girls are inclined to wait for a savior on a white horse, and it’s pretty obvious that she’s talking about herself.
During these parts of the episode, the visuals take an overcast turn. Washed out and grey, reflective of Kamiya’s own feelings, and complimented by rain of a sort when she breaks down in Shikimori’s arms in the episode’s climax. It’s extremely dramatic, and even more notably so because this is still Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie that we’re talking about. You know, the silly gimmick romance anime where the whole plot is supposed to be that the girl with pink hair is “cool”? That one? Maybe it’s tragic, Doylistic destiny that she could never be the lead in this particular love story; her hair is a rainwater blue, after all. And the show isn’t called Kamiya Isn’t Just a Cutie.
There are solutions to this that could please all three people. Mostly those solutions involve the sort of honest communication that teenagers are unlikely to engage in, and concepts like polyamory that they are unlikely to know much about. Failed teenage romance is hardly the end of the world, but then again, when you are that age it certainly feels like it is. This episode resurrected in me feelings I have not properly contemplated in a long time; and I think everyone has those moments. What-could’ve-been’s that haunt the less-accessed corners of our mind like lonely ghosts.
As an icon of them, Kamiya slips through the school’s doors and between its classrooms, a tragic figure in a story that isn’t her own. There is warmth and humor and all of Shikimori‘s usual strengths throughout this episode too—this isn’t She, The Ultimate Weapon or anything—but in a way their presence just makes Kamiya’s story stand out all the more, a lone storm cloud in an otherwise blue sky.
The episode’s remainder focuses on Shikimori’s own dealing with these events. She gives Kamiya what comfort she can, and Kamiya makes a sort of peace with her situation. That, at least, is good, but even through all this, it’s never in question who the main character is, here.
It’s an impossibility, but I wish Kamiya happiness in life somewhere far removed from Izumi and somewhere far removed from both Shikimori and Shikimori. She deserves to be in a series that can accommodate her massive heart and her strength of emotion. She deserves an Utena or a Revue Starlight or at least a show that’s willing to do this sort of thing more often. But, of course, that’s silly. You can rerun the tape a thousand and one times, the footage on them will never change. She is Rosencranz or Guildenstern in a play that, as much positive as I’ve said about it, is certainly no Hamlet.
Watching this episode, I was made truly, presently aware of Shikimori‘s shortcomings—or at least what is absent from it—for the first time. Paradoxically, I think that’s only made me like it more. But even so, I am not sure if I’d be more hurt if the show never returned to Kamiya’s issues or if it did so again. I suppose I will find out eventually.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hi friends, I’ll be brief. This AOW marks the start of what’s going to be a fairly spotty period for my writing for a while. Starting tomorrow I’m not sure how much of my regular weekly writing I’m going to be able to get done, I have some stuff going on at home, and unfortunately that takes priority over writing Takes about cartoons. (Trust me, I wish it didn’t.)
It won’t be a full-on hiatus because I will still try to put at least some of my usual articles up, if only intermittently and sometimes late. But do just expect turbulence in the weeks ahead. (Regrettably this also means that some fun bonus articles I wanted to write probably aren’t happening for a while. To say nothing of the commission I’ve been slowly working on for the past month.)
But for now, here’s some talk about the season’s two weirdest anime.
Birdie Wing
This week: Eve faces off against Rose Aleone.
Things start out in the pretty standard “shonen protagonist duking it out with their first true challenge” mold, and it’s pretty great. Eve breaks out her Rainbow Bullets. Rose using a “Bullet” shot of her own is given the same reaction that Cell got when he used the Kamehameha Wave. It’s ludicrous and wonderful, and that’s really only the start of the episode’s silliness. See; this is the first time Eve’s had a lengthy match with an opponent who’s actually on her caliber, and Birdie Wing absolutely milks that for all its worth. On a writing level, Eve and Rose have similar styles, so the two have a lot of great psychological interplay. A good sign of how in the weeds (in a good way) we are here is that Viper is the one that points all this out, via internal monologue. Witness her reaction to Eve being shaken after Rose pulls off a particularly impressive shot, for example.
Always a good sign when the chick named “Viper the Reaper” thinks you’re being a bit dramatic.
The underground transforming golf course returns here, repurposing the twisting and turning henshin sequence as stock footage in true anime fashion. Eve and Rose go shot-for-shot to the point that they end up tying eight holes in a row. Even Eve’s new trick—a proper slice shot taught to her by Aoi, who she has of course named it after—can’t break the tie.
Eve pulling out what is, to my knowledge, a pretty basic pro golfing technique, and it being treated as a huge reveal is amusing. But given everything else about Birdie Wing, it only barely registers as strange.
Indeed, we don’t actually see the match end here, as the episode ends on a cliffhanger after both Eve and Rose manage incredibly long drives down an extremely long course. Eve, of course, thinks of her family, which is nice but mostly reminds me that they seem to be pretty firmly relegated to a supporting role at this point. (If I have a single serious criticism of Birdie Wing, it’s that a show that cares about class this much—and this series, campy as it is, does care about class—really cannot excuse having its POC cast in such minor roles. I doubt anyone needs me to explain that class issues and race issues are inextricably connected.) It is worth noting that Eve’s old mentor, Leo Millafoden (Shuuichi Ikeda, yes, Char Aznable himself) does show up at Klein’s bar, which at least gives the family some screentime. His reasons for doing so are cryptic at this point, and he makes no direct contact with Eve over the course of the episode.
So, things seem like they’re about to close on a solid, exciting note with Eve and Rose neck in neck….and then in the post credits, this happens.
Yes, Rose golfs so fucking hard that her prosthetic arm flies off. And she screams in agony, because, you know, yeah.
I don’t know if that means Eve wins the match by default. You’d think it would, right? Her opponent’s sustained a serious injury. But Birdie Wing is so goddamn bonkers that it’s really hard to say.
Estab Life
In episode 10 of Estab Life, Equa, who’s been basically perfect at her job for the last nine episodes, is off her game. The girls’ normally bright, poppy designs are marred with grime, dust, and cuts. Their cafe, an island of stability in Estab Life‘s world gone mad, is shredded to mulch and rubble in only a few minutes. All of this is unsettling, given that even the darkest of Estab Life‘s previous episodes have ultimately left a lot of room for jokes, and it’s never felt like The Extractors were in serious danger. What happened? Estab Life‘s tenth episode swerves the series into tenser and more serious territory than any previous episode, and the Extractors are firmly on the back foot throughout.
The source of all this is that Equa’s precognitive powers—which the show nicknames ‘Fatal Luck’—have abruptly stopped working. At the same time, their home cluster undergoes an “update”, a process that normally involves fairly mundane things like fixing sewer lines or power grid issues. Here, it seems to mean that a target’s been painted on the Extractors’ backs. A few minutes into the episode, a comparatively sedate little anecdote where our heroines fail to acquire donuts from a donut shop is immediately pulverized to splinters as their home is invaded by the machine gun-equipped security drones that have been quite literally floating around for the entire series so far.
Their run through the underground of their home cluster is tense, and it’s seriously destabilizing to see Equa so unsure of herself and what to do. She even faces the challenge of performing her usual role in the team—wire cutting—without her abilities, and only gets it right by, presumably, sheer chance.
It’s not like the Extractors can exactly hide, either. The “update” that somehow disabled Equa’s powers has also led to the cluster hunting for the Extractors with what are pretty strongly implied to be shoot-on-sight orders. Equa has no real explanation for any of this; we learn here that the mysterious Manager who acts as an overall administrator for all of the clusters and the equally mysterious Mr. M who’s served as the girls’ anonymous benefactor are, in fact, one in the same. A piece of foreshadowing so obvious that I’m smacking myself on the forehead for having missed it. This leads to some tension after the girls escape to Akihabara, as Feles asks Equa point-blank if they’ve just been doing the Manager’s dirty work instead of helping people of their own free will. Equa denies anything of the sort, and Feles believes her, but at this stage in the game it has gotten hard to know what, really, to believe.
The episode ends on one hell of a cliffhanger, as the girls’ temporary hideout on an Akiba rooftop is discovered and then swarmed by security drones. The best thing about Estab Life has always been that it’s like very little else, and that continues to be true as it enters its final episodes, but more than ever I am a little worried for our girls. Who knows where this is all going?
And that about covers it for this week. I’ll be seeing you when and where I see you, anime fans. Take care.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
I’ll be frank with you all, anime fans. This week’s AOW is heavy on discussing the actual shows I watched and light on intro’s and outro’s. Hopefully that’s how you like it! Enjoy.
Birdie Wing
Is it completely wack to say that Birdie Wing clearly cares a lot about class? I was hesitant in making that claim strongly when the series started, but as it’s gone on, it’s become very clear that that coding is intentional. God bless it, Birdie Wing thinks it has things to say. Even wilder; it actually might?
Consider this; this episode features absolutely zero golf at all. Instead, it’s about the fact that the shop Eve and her, basically, family are living out of is getting bulldozed. The slum—the show’s word, not mine—is being forcibly redeveloped by a construction company with mob ties. Our protagonists can’t simply move, either, because the three orphans they’re looking after are illegal immigrants. They’d get deported.
There’s also the implication that Klein (the woman who owns said shop, if you’ve forgotten) and Lily might have to resort to prostitution to get by, something the episode also later implies that they’ve done before. It is an ugly, ugly thing for a show as high camp as Birdie Wing to get into, and by all rights the series should absolutely fall flat on its face here. Maybe if it had brought this up earlier, it would have, but Birdie Wing so clearly believes its own hype that it somehow works. Because of course, the only hope they have of getting out of this awful, awful situation is for Eve to golf them out of it.
This involves pitting Eve against Rose, the lesbian golf mob boss who served as her employer a scant two episodes back. What wasn’t obvious at the time is that the casino deed on-bet there included the land that Klein’s shop is built on. Effectively, this entire mess is Eve’s own fault, even if she couldn’t have known that at the time. She confronts Rose about this and the latter simply blows her off, I suspect this will prove to be a mistake for the golf capo, but time will tell.
Eve spends the rest of the episode training, with the help of none other than Viper, who also lost all her money on that same match two episodes back.
I have to admit, I didn’t really expect to see Viper again at all, but being demoted to comedy relief serves her well. (And even then, she’s able to seduce a rival mobster’s henchman into putting a good word in for Eve.) And somewhere in here we also learn that Eve has amnesia and doesn’t remember anything from before about four years ago. Also that her name is short for “Evangeline”, which, knowing this show, will be relevant somehow.
The whole casino situation will, of course, be eventually settled with ball chess, the sport of queens, with insanely high stakes. How else does anyone solve anything in the world of Birdie Wing?
I wonder how Aoi will eventually factor in here. She has plenty of time to show up, as we are, somehow, only six episodes into Birdie Wing. There is an entire second side of the mountain we haven’t seen here yet, and I cannot wait to take a tour of it.
Estab-Life
By their ninth episode, most single-cour anime are setting up their finale. That might be true of Estab-Life, but as always, the show is so deadpan that it’s a bit hard to tell. Nonetheless, this episode does give us probably the most information we’ve ever directly gotten about how the show’s weird world actually works.
The gist here is simple; the Extractors have to bust out the inmates of a cluster that serves as a massive super-prison. (In fact, it seems to be where all the criminals from all the clusters go, which is curious.)
The main obstacle their goal? The prison’s vastly unpleasant warden, a hulking cyborg-woman who is obsessed with using her inmates to build up power to confront “The Manager,” allegedly the name of the being who controls the Moderators and, thus, indirectly, all of the clusters themselves. She’s no match for the Extractors, though. Equa and co. undo her systemic oppression in the span of what seems like a single afternoon, in a scheme that involves Equa entering the horse race(?!) the cluster hosts and Martes swiping the warden’s key. When they finally break all the inmates out, the warden seemingly outright dies, a very literal case of an oppressor not outliving the system they’ve made.
In lieu of much closure, we get the notion that the Extractors are going to be “busy” from now on—fair, given the sheer amount of inmates our girls now have to escort to new clusters—and also this.
Your guess is as good as mine. I cannot wait to see where this goes.
The Executioner & Her Way of Life
It’s been a while since we last checked in on Executioner, and in that time the show has gotten very weird. Here’s the very short Cliff’s Notes version: Akari has, as we’ve long suspected, used her time travel powers to rewind time to the start of her and Menou’s journey at least a few times, possibly quite a few. A side effect of this is that there are now, essentially, two Akaris. There’s our Akari, who we’ve been following for the bulk of the show so far, and there’s Future Akari, a distant version of herself with immense accumulated knowledge from the repeated time loops and all sorts of traps and contingencies set up in case things go pear-shaped for her “normal” self (who we’ll here call Present Akari for simplicity’s sake.) She is entirely on board for having Menou kill her, but it has to be Menou specifically, and it has to be done properly. In however many loops she’s been through, that hasn’t happened.
Last week, Menou took down Archbishop Orwell, whose corrupt machinations form an entire subplot that the series has since largely left behind. What’s important to know is that she’s dead, and will (presumably) not be coming back.
In the two in-show weeks since then, Menou and Akari have set out on a pilgrimage to somewhere called The Sanctuary. Akari is under the impression that this place will take her in. It’s probably more likely that they’ll try to kill her in some inventive fashion, given that Menou is the one taking her there.
Along the way to this place, they stop at the Mediterranean-esque town of Libelle, which rests on the coast of a massive ocean dominated by one of the frequently-alluded-to Human Errors, a huge magical fogbank called The Pandemonium. The Pandemonium, we’re told, is a place you can easily enter but only leave with immense difficulty. If you’re here thinking that there must be something pretty deadly in there, and that this would be an ideal place for Menou to try killing Akari, you’re more on the ball than Menou herself is, as the idea doesn’t occur to her until Momo explicitly points it out. In general, this episode circles back several times to the idea that Menou isn’t as focused on killing Akari as she “should” be, and she herself starts to question if she’s hesitating or not.
But hold that thought, we’ll come back to it momentarily.
It is also worth explaining that Libelle is the home of a resistance movement of sorts called the Fourth, who at some point a few years ago openly rebelled against the three-caste system that defines much of Executioner’s world. They were beaten (by none other than Flare, of course), but the town remains a hotbed of these particular folks. Their acting leader, Manon (Manaka Iwami), is the daughter of the Count who originally led this movement in the first place, but its current leaders don’t really think of her as much but a naive child. She’s only about Akari and Menou’s own age, after all.
At the end of the episode, she’s shown luring a mute girl into an iron maiden and closing it. I frankly have no idea what that’s about, and it’s more than a little tasteless, but it does at least serve as a pretty stark demonstration that, yeah, this girl is scary in her own way.
As for Menou and Akari? Well, Menou does try ditching her in the Pandemonium—not before a fairly long, relaxed sequence where they go about town and take a bath together, but, you know, eventually. Perhaps predictably, it doesn’t work, and despite Future Akari’s cryptic comments during our brief time following her as she’s within the Pandemonium, something kills her (we don’t see what) and she immediately resurrects next to Menou like nothing ever happened.
I think it is fair to ask where exactly Executioner is going from here, and whether the show’s remaining 6 episodes are enough space to make the journey it wants to. But, Executioner has already changed quite a lot from its showstopping debut, so who’s really to say. The series itself seems dissatisfied with the natural conclusion of its storyline—Menou somehow successfully killing Akari—and I have the feeling that things are only going to get thornier from here on out.
Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club – Season 2
This will already be officially “last week’s episode” by the time you’re reading this, but I wanted to talk about the brilliant little conclusion to Setsuna’s arc in episode six of this season. One of the things I really like about what I’ve seen of Love Live—and especially Nijigasaki—is that it imagines a world where ordinary high schoolers are actually rewarded for pursuing their interests. (I’ve made this observation in pithy tweet form before.) Real high school clubs are mostly things of dry obligation. There are people who enjoy them, but that’s not really the point of them. They’re extensions of a school system that is designed to create good workers, not reward students for the things they love that are not “practical.” In the utopian Love Live universe, they’re the result of pure creative drive and passion. It is very much a fantasy, but it’s one that exists for a reason, and it’s not hard to figure out why it has such broad appeal. (Love Live of course is also popular for a plethora of other reasons, but we’re not talking about those here today.)
Setsuna has always been interesting to me within this context, because her central character conflict is that she feels caught between her love for the school idol club and her responsibility to the student council. Both of these are very important to her, and there have been several times throughout the series where the stress of having a full-on secret identity wears on her. Setsuna, the idol, has never been anything less than a magnetic presence. Nana Nakagawa, her “civilian” identity, is a different story. Nana the straightlaced student council president and Setsuna the school idol come into conflict here, as part of the ongoing storyline about setting up Nijigasaki’s cultural festival.
The short version is that scheduling conflicts lead to the possibility of having to push back the idol club’s activities, and this obviously causes her no small amount of distress. She blames herself, even when no one else does, and is fully willing to just cancel the whole thing. It takes some encouragement from the rest of the Idol Club for her to reconsider. (A solution is eventually found, and it involves teaming up with the school idol clubs of several other nearby schools, but no one said any of this would be simple.)
All this leads to the episode’s linchpin moment; Setsuna’s abandonment of her dual identity entirely. On-screen, in front of the whole school, she ditches her glasses and puts her hair up, a full Clark Kent-to-Superman transformation taking place in front of their very eyes. The shockwave of astonishment that reverberates throughout the school is palpable, and contagious. I have to give a special nod to Nana’s vice president here, who I like to think has a gay awakening in between her reaction to the reveal of Setsuna’s identity….
….and the end of the episode’s insert song a few minutes later, where the camera cuts to her again and she’s crying happy tears.
This week’s episode, on the other hand, centers around Shioriko Mifune. You probably know her as “the one with the little fang.”
Shioriko’s story is simpler than Setsuna’s but also a lot more grounded. Her older sister—Kaoruko Mifune, the very same ‘Mifune-sensei’ who’s now a student teacher in Yu’s music program—was part of her own school’s idol club. But, when the time came to aim for the Love Live that gives the franchise its name, her group couldn’t cut it. This has given Shioriko a pretty limited view of her own capabilities. The broad implication here is that Shioriko wants to be an idol, but doesn’t think she’d be any good at it, and thus limits herself to supporting roles.
To be honest, as someone who maintains a blog where I write about anime as an, oh, third or fourth passion in life following giving up on music and several other things, this actually cuts a little too close to home. So, I certainly sympathize with her, including her mild annoyance when the members of the idol club continue to push the issue.
Scroll down to find out how long this particular statement holds true.
But the fact remains that, throughout the episode, they do eventually manage to convince her to give this whole idol thing an earnest try. It would come across as a little hollow were it not for the fact that one of the people pushing her is her own older sister. Failing at something, she explains, is not the same as regretting it. Kaoruko was sad, certainly, to not be able to make it to the Love Live itself, but she doesn’t regret her time with the idol club. To be honest, and at the risk of embarrassing myself, it is the kind of thing that always hits me right in the heart. Simple, shining emotional messages like that are why Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is good in the first place.
More importantly for our heroines, it seems to be that revelation that gets Shioriko to swing the proverbial bat. The episode climaxes with her stepping alone onto a quiet stage and singing for an audience of no more than a dozen of her fellow idols. Nijigasaki, as always, takes the opportunity to bring her performance to life, her insert song “EMOTION” is a shining pop jewel of whirligig synth-flutes and reverbed finger snaps, the video a hushed collection of library rooms and clock motifs. (The latter may recall, for some viewers, Moeka Koizumi‘s other most famous role; Revue Starlight‘s Daiba Nana.)
The episode ends with her confirmation that after the festival, she’ll join the school idol club. But that feels almost like a formality, more than anything. For the few minutes she fills that empty stage with light, she’s as much an idol as anyone’s ever been.
The final shots of the episode are the rest of the idol club giving her a massive group hug as they welcome her aboard…while a certain someone looks on with what looks an awful lot to me like envy.
But I suppose that is a topic to be discussed next week.
Until then, that’s all for this one. This article is already running well late, so I hope you’ll forgive me if I just drop the embeds in the Elsewhere on MPA section below with no real elaboration.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hello, anime fans. I don’t have much to say to you this week. I hope you enjoy the writeups below. I had a lot of fun writing about Birdie Wing this week in particular.
Seasonal Anime
Birdie Wing -Golf Girls Story-
If you’re anything like me, you started watching Birdie Wing not because it’s particularly good, but because it’s fucking ridiculous. I am pleased to report that, after a somewhat disappointingly tame (but admirably lesbian) past two episodes, Birdie Wing not only gotten its groove back, it’s also reached utterly stunning new heights of absurdity.
The episode begins with Aoi’s tournament-winning putt being interrupted by a laser pointer to the eye from one of Rose’s lackies. On its own, this is a mildly amusing Dick Dastardly-esque turn. To say things escalate does not do justice to what eventually transpires here.
Post-tournament, Rose immediately calls in the favor she used to get Eve into the tournament in the first place. That favor? She has to win another underground golf game. But not just any underground golf game. Oh no, not just any by a long shot.
This episode’s plot goes so far into pure ridiculousness that I feel tired just typing about it. Things start at, for Birdie Wing at least, normal. The job Eve is called into handle is merely the way that a brewing mob war between Rose’s “patron” Catherine and one of her rivals is being resolved. When one realizes that the term “underground golf” is here meant literally—as in, the golf course is subterranean—they might think “wow, this is pretty absurd. Definitely more so than anything that’s happened in Birdie Wing so far.”
They might have a few seconds to hold on to that thought before Catherine pushes a button and the entire course begins transforming like Autobot City into Metroplex.
They have a “randomize golf course” button! A button to randomize the physical golf course! Like it’s Pokémon and they’re loading in a ROMHack! The terrain is ripped apart, a random little lake is drained, and it reconfigures into a new and novel shape. I am so utterly thrilled to live on the same planet as the person who dreamed up this beautiful spot of true-blue total nonsense. It’s awesome.
And we haven’t even gotten to discuss Eve’s actual opponent yet. Meet Viper, or “Vipère” (Kaori Nazuka) as I will not be calling her because I don’t feel like pasting that accented E every time. Now, every important character in Birdie Wing is two things; one, obsessed with golf, and two, a lesbian. Viper adds a twist on the formula by being an evil golf lesbian, meaning that she’s uncomfortably pushy, wears a ton of perfume, and has a skimpy outfit. In any other show, I’d probably find this character, and her relentless advances on Eve (down to a wager wherein whoever loses has to do what the winner says for a whole day. Yikes.) rather off-putting.
Golfing!
I still kind of do, but it’s hard to entertain any thought of reality when the character in question is named Viper the Reaper. (Yes, she needs two menacing nicknames apparently.) And that she’s playing against our hero on a mighty morphin’ golf course that can bend into any shape its owner wants. I’m not a big advocate of the “turn your brain off” philosophy for campy bullshit—it’s not hard for something to be both entertainingly silly and meaningful—but in this particular case, it might help. If only to save yourself from psychic damage.
Oh, and I should also show you all her golf ball.
Of course there’s a two-headed snake stamped on it. Did you think there wouldn’t be? Have a little faith.
Viper cheats, of course. She’s the villain! Obviously, she cheats! But Eve is able to sniff out her strategy pretty quickly. Literally, because she cheats by having a perfume-scented tattoo that throws people off-balance just enough to disrupt their swings. She gets the perfume to diffuse by unzipping her top, which “explains” why she does that several times over the course of the episode. I want to really, really strongly stress that I am not making a word of this up. This happens. This is real. This is the actual plot of Birdie Wing.
The truly absurd thing is that there actually is a trickle of a genuine theme in here. Eve’s distaste for the bourgeois, despite playing perhaps the most rich-folk-only sport in the world, has become consistent enough that I’m convinced it’s part of the central point of the show. I sincerely hope that the series finale somehow involves Eve destroying golf as a concept and replacing it with something far better, more egalitarian, radical, and lesbian.
In any case, Eve wins after figuring Viper’s trick out, naturally, and her one order to Viper is for the evil snake golf lesbian to drive her to Nafrece Golf Course by 5am. So that she can meet Aoi for a final game before the latter goes back to Japan. (I neglected to mention that that’s a running B-plot throughout this episode. Can you blame me? There’s a lot going on.) She just barely misses Aoi, who is straight-up heartbroken. How do we know that? Well, Eve finds something on the golf course. I’ll let the series speak for itself here.
Golfing!
Even when Eve tries to prove that she got there by shooting golf balls at Aoi’s plane as it takes off, Aoi still screams and cries that she’s a liar. End episode, roll credits.
I’m tired of beating around the bush. There’s a lot of good to great stuff airing this season, but Birdie Wing might be the best. If it’s not, it’s at least in the conversation. What else is going this hard for so little reason right now? Nothing, and that’s why Birdie Wing can’t be beat.
The Executioner and Her Way of Life
Some anime’s strengths are subtle; their merits only become obvious either upon repeat viewings or prolonged contemplation. And then, on the other end of the scale, are those where just watching them can feel like repeated kicks to the ribs. Guess where The Executioner and Her Way of Life falls?
That breath-snatching immediacy is a very subjective thing, of course. But I feel it in a real and present way with Executioner. The most recent episode is, from start to finish, a slow-churning nausea in the stomach, the knowledge that something is about to go very awry, and then a chop to the throat when it finally does. Menou loses everything she’s held important, both new and old, in an instant, and the episode stops dead at the end of its run on what might be one of the most evil cliffhangers I’ve ever seen.
I don’t actually feel comfortable detailing the episode at length. I intend to cover the fallout of all this in more detail next week. For now, take this fiery impression as yet another recommendation to watch Executioner if you aren’t already.
Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club – Season 2
In which Karin and Ai try in vain to comfort a depressed girl.
I’m being flippant, but that really is what the plot of last week’s Nijigaskai High School Idol Club boils down to. One of Ai’s friends, recently recovered from some nonspecific long-term illness, is out and enjoying her freedom again. But oh, she’s sad because Ai’s become a successful singer while she was gone, and she feels left behind. Look: I’m sympathetic, I’m a blogger, I do not have an exciting life and I sometimes envy people who do more outwardly interesting things. That’s a valid feeling, and as a base for creating an interesting character, you could do some strong things with it.
The question is whether it works in the context of this show, as a mostly self-contained story that takes up the better part of its fourth episode. And the answer is no, because what this plays out as is everybody involved—Karin, Ai, Ai’s friend, whose name I have already forgotten—just kind of being a downer to each other for about 12 minutes. I could recap the specifics for you, but there’s really no point. None of this seems like it’s going to have a big impact on the series, none of it reveals anything new about Karin or Ai, and the girl in question is certainly not an interesting character on her own.
You have depression.
There’s also a bizarre B-plot wherein Ai tries to get Karin to form a group with her, which Karin initially doesn’t want to do. That seems like it might have lasting implications, and perhaps draws a parallel between Karin and Lanzhu. But it’s made a moot point at the end of the episode when they decide to group up anyway, under the pretense that they’re “rivals” on-stage, “competing with the same song.” That does not make any sense. You don’t need me to tell you that. It’s also totally unimpactful, since we only have known Karin feels this way for about half an episode by the time she changes her tune. Also; at one point, Karin tries to comfort Ai when her friend’s being down makes her consider quitting being an idol at all. Her approach here is hilariously dickish, and completely whiffs as an intended emotional moment.
Immediately after this scene Karin says that if Ai quits being an idol, she’ll steal all her fans, including her friend. This, somehow, is what gets Ai out of her funk. In a better context this could actually work. Here it mostly just seems like someone remembered they had to get these two on stage together by the end of the episode.
The good news is that the music itself is still there. The duo of Ai and Karin (yes, they team up anyway, despite all the talk. They even get some very sharp matching outfits) perform the insert song “Eternal Light” for the music video portion of the episode, under the name DiverDiva, and instantly it becomes pretty easy to forgive any missteps the show might be making. These, at least, are still consistent highlights, even if none have quite reached the highs of Setsuna’s total fucking barn-burner from season one yet.
For my money, if we want to indulge their “idol duo who are rivals” bit, Karin absolutely smokes Ai on the song. She just has the more powerful voice by a good margin and Ai’s admittedly dexterous rapping doesn’t really make up for that. But hey, I may be biased.
Eventually it all turns out fine, and Ai’s friend officially declares herself to be Ai’s fan also (which is a fucking weird thing to do, but whatever, it’s an idol series.) She redoubles her commitment to working overseas (in what capacity, we never learn), and says something about how Ai inspires her. That’s all fair enough, but we again run up against the problem of none of this seeming to much mean anything. Are we ever going to see this girl again? The last thing this show needs is more characters, especially if they’re totally extraneous.
After the credits roll, we’re quickly introduced to another new character who will presumably make her proper debut next week. She, though, is an actual idol—that’s not pointed out explicitly and, frankly, it doesn’t need to be, you can just tell from her two-tone hair and cocky attitude—and I feel like her contribution to the show will, by its end, massively dwarf that of Ai’s little friend here. (This is without mentioning other far more interesting running plot threads. Lanzhu’s inevitable upcoming face turn, Shioriko Mifune (Moeka Koizumi)’s likely eventually becoming an idol. ETC.)
Plot detours are normal for seasonal anime, so none of this spells the end for Nijigasaki as a series or even for this season of it specifically. I intend to find out today if this is merely a rough patch or the start of a recurring problem. (Nijigasaki actually airs on Saturdays, but, because of my schedule, I can rarely get to it earlier than Sunday evenings.)
Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie!
I won’t pretend I have a ton of value to say about Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie!, my obligatory after-the-season-starts pickup. It’s an entrant into the growing “romcom about a valid straight couple” genre, and one I like. It is, admittedly, a series of extremely limited ambitions. (Which only makes sense, given that it got its start as four-panel gimmick strips on Twitter.) But that actually works in Shikimori‘s favor, a lot of the time. The series is relentlessly pleasant enough that it almost operates on the same wavelength as an iyashikei anime. You turn it on, you enjoy the lovey-dovey vibes between main characters Izumi (Shuichirou Umeda) and the titular Shikimori (Saori Oonishi) for about 22 minutes, including whatever particular antics they get into this week (and there are certainly antics to be had), and then you turn it off. It’s not a particularly complicated show.
I mostly wanted to shout it out here for the most recent episode, which showcases two things I really like. One, and the more low-key of the two, is the show’s smart eye for set design. All of the places about town that our cast end up in feel tangible, yet nostalgic. The mall in particular is sure to trigger nostalgia for a lot of people.
Secondly, I really like the fact that every member of the cast seems to be casually bi. Izumi himself has mulled over the idea of his girlfriend as a boyfriend before, but this episode spotlights said bi vibes more directly with Nekozaki (Misato Matsuoka), who spends much of the flashback sequence she stars in freaking out over how hot she thinks Shikimori is.
And there’s a post-credits scene where Shikimori herself gets flustered by Izumi’s mom. (They take a cooking class together. It’s a long story.)
It’s very easy to be unkind to a romcom, as a queer critic. Especially one where the main couple are straight. And I have definitely seen my fair share that just make me want to puke. (An impression you could be forgiven for not getting from this blog, given that I don’t tend to write about anime I dislike and never finish.) But I do think that for what it’s trying to do—which is admittedly not much!—Shikimori is pretty good. My hope is that I can provide a bit of a counterbalance to the show’s small but definitely present antifandom. And if you’re not watching Shikimori, well, it’s a busy season so I certainly understand, but consider penciling it in if you want something to help you unwind.
Poor Ishigami can never seem to catch a break. I feel bad for the guy a lot of the time. Oh yeah; and the last part of the episode with Chika sleeping over at Kaguya’s place is great, too.
Fun fact: I believe this is the longest article title anything on this site has ever had. It’ll probably be a long while until something else breaks that record. Anyway, yeah, this manga is great. It’s got lesbians, cool fantasy nonsense, and swords. What else do you need?
And that’s all for this week, folks. See you tomorrow for the Healer Girl recap.
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