Category: Let’s Watch

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Let’s Watch SPY X FAMILY Episode 2 – Secure a Wife

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

What’s the hardest thing an international superspy has to do over the course of their career? Raising a child, as we learned last week. But “finding a wife” is a close second, and that’s the next step of Loid Forger’s mission. And so, it is also the second episode of Spy x Family.

Enter Yor Briar (Saori Hayami, whose clear, bell-like timbre really adds a lot to the character), a mild-mannered civil servant with a younger brother in the state police. She works a rather unfulfilling-seeming job with a bunch of catty coworkers who seem to hate her mostly because she’s pretty. Also, because this is Spy x Family, she’s an assassin who works for the government. Her code name is “Thorn Princess.” This, objectively, is sick as hell.

You really do not know the restraint it takes to not caption every image of Yor with thirsty screaming.

Yor’s an interesting one. Essentially, she’s the old “prim and proper lady” anime trope welded to the apparent incongruity of, you know, having been born and raised as a super-assassin by some kind of government program. (We don’t get many details here, and I suspect we won’t for a long time. Wouldn’t it be funny if it were the same program that Anya came from?) As with Loid and Anya, the show draws amusing connections between these seemingly unrelated things; you could easily say that Yor is simply every definition of the word “cleaner” rolled into one.

She’s also quite likable. Personality-wise, Yor is actually pretty forthright most of the time, and her difficulty with understanding social cues—including her coworkers’ attempts to get a rise out of her—and self-consciousness about not being “normal” seem to both mark her out as some sort of neurodivergent. (You will pry this scrap of representation, intentional or not, from my cold, dead hands.) In any case, she gets talked into attending a party over the coming weekend by some of those rude coworkers. Worse, when talking with her aforementioned overprotective younger brother in state sec, Yuri (Kenshou Ono), she lies to him, telling him she has a boyfriend who’ll be at said party. Suddenly, Yor Briar needs a bf stat. And that is where our other lead comes in.

Loid has become desperate enough to find a suitable wife for the academy interview that he’s resorted to having his infobroker Frankie (Hiroyuki Yoshino) run paperwork on every single woman in the city. (In literally any other context this’d be absurdly creepy. It still kind of is, but, y’know, spies.) He needn’t really have bothered, though, because when he runs into Yor at a tailor—she ripped her dress when doing some assassin stuff, you see—it’s love at mutual convenience. (Loid also finds himself flummoxed that Yor is able to accidentally sneak up on him, initially blaming it on “dropping his guard.” I wonder if he ever catches on?) That and Anya playing the pintsized wingman in order to get the two talking.

The party itself has to wait, though, because even with their alliance of convenience worked out, Loid has another assignment on top of Operation Strix; breaking up an art smuggling ring. This actually makes him late to the party, and Yor has to endure the frankly horrifying prospect of being at a couples’ party alone. This is where she spends some time fixating on how she isn’t “normal.” The party seems to wash out as this happens, with Yor being only dimly aware of her coworkers increasingly blatant badmouthing until one of them—-named Camille—literally gets right in her face.

It is at that moment that Loid arrives, bleeding from the forehead, with a flimsy excuse about “one of his patients” acting up. Camille promptly loses her shit over the prospect of Yor having such a hot boyfriend (I think Loid is like a 7 myself but I’m not the one being asked, here) and embarrasses herself by trying to mess up her dress, only for her brilliant plan of “accidentally” dropping food on her to backfire spectacularly. Loid sticks up for Yor as Camille continues to berate her, in a moment that’s very touching (although like a lot of such things it loses some of its power in the retelling.) The two ditch the party not long after, but not before Loid mistakenly refers to himself as Yor’s husband instead of simply her fiance or boyfriend.

This has repercussions almost immediately. The two end up having to flee from the art smuggling ring, who are still pursuing Loid. (He reassures Yor that these are still his patients. Hilariously, she completely buys it.) While they’re escaping, Yor, now genuinely lovestruck, manages to straight-up propose to Loid mid-chase scene. It’s genuinely sweet, and it’s one of the year’s best love scenes so far. Loid literally puts a ring on her finger behind a dumpster. The direction is just incredible.

And on that note, episode two more or less ends, with the imposing family interview for the academy being the obvious next obstacle for our cast to conquer. Until then, anime fans.

Oh, but before we leave for the week, the show’s absolute monster of an OP is worth highlighting. The song is pretty great in of itself, but the visuals are something else. I look forward to enjoying it every week as I continue covering the series.

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

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

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Let’s Watch SPY X FAMILY Episode 1 – “Operation Strix”

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

“Papa is a huge liar. But he’s such a cool liar!”

His codename is “Twilight,” alias Loid Forger (Takuya Eguchi). His real name unknown and unknowable. He is a spy; an international man of mystery. A shadow, a whisper. No one knows his name. In what is not said to be but clearly is the cold war, a certain nation stands divided in two. There, Loid is deployed for the commencement of “Operation Strix,” his toughest assignment yet. What could possibly challenge this earl of espionage? This master of manipulation?

Well, domestic life, for one. Loid’s assignment: find a wife and adopt a child, blend in as seamlessly as possible, and send said child to a prestigious private academy to get close to one of the nation’s top political leaders, a man of near-paranoiac caution who rarely makes himself available except at events for that very school. So begins SPY x FAMILY, Wit Studio and CloverWorks‘ adaption of the wildly successful Shonen Jump manga. So also begins our second Let’s Watch column of the season. We’re in for a ride, folks. Strap in.

For Loid, the first order of business is procuring a child. Time is of the essence, so doing so the—ahem—traditional way is out of the question. As such, the first major undertaking our big heroic superspy sets out on in SPY x FAMILY is a trip to a run-down, skeevy orphanage. There, he adopts Anya (Atsumi Tanezaki), a six-year-old girl with a very cute hair style.

Seriously though what ARE those things on her head? Antennae?

She’s also telepathic, which leads to quite a few shenanigans. Namely; it takes Anya only a few moments to learn that Loid is a spy, being able to read his mind and all. This creates a fun dynamic wherein Loid thinks he has to hide his profession from Anya, who knows what he’s thinking at all times anyway, but who in turn also hides the fact that she knows what Loid really is. The implicit comedic observation that SPY x FAMILY makes here is that children, like spies, have thought processes that are pretty incomprehensible to the rest of us.

Anya is also afraid of what might happen if Loid finds out she can read minds. We’re told upfront that she’s been adopted and then returned to the orphanage four times before. This is a cloud that hangs over all of Loid and Anya’s interactions and provides an interesting shade to even Anya’s silliest antics. Her deep and abiding love of peanuts, for example. (Atsumi Tanezaki also deserves some real credit here for lending a believably childish air to her vocal tics.)

SPY x FAMILY is not a drama, really. But you could make the case for “dramedy,” perhaps, if heavier on the “edy” side. It has the good sense to cut its comedic side with more tonally complex moments, creating an actual emotional core as opposed to just a parade of gags. Anya fucking around with Loid’s spy equipment is funny. Her then panicking, wondering if she’ll be sent back to the orphanage if he finds out, and flashing back to her days as “Subject 7” in the facility she was born in? That’s sad. And like any good dramedy, SPY x FAMILY can juxtapose these polar opposites without making either feel out of place. This is, after all, a little girl that we’re talking about. Kids do think like that, and Anya’s been through more than most.

That’s not to say that all of this totally works. Later in the episode, after a great action sequence where Loid rescues Anya from the direct result of said equipment-fuck-arounding, he engages in a bit of self-lionizing, and we get some rather leaden backstory. This comes too early and too unearned to really hit the way the show seems to want it to. (This is to say nothing of it bumping up against the fact that, you know, real spies are generally not great people. SPY x FAMILY generally renders the profession too ridiculous to feel like it’s glorifying it, but it does occasionally come close.) Thankfully, it’s brief, and not enough to seriously ding the episode in any real way.

The episode ends with Anya successfully passing the exam to get into the private school that forms the crux of Loid’s mission. Perhaps more importantly; it ends with Anya snuggling up to her adopted dad on a couch (and him slightly freaking out about it. He fell asleep in front of someone! That’s a huge no-no for a spy). Then things, as they always do, hit a slight snag.

But we’ll discuss the full implications of that next week. See you then, anime fans.

Oh, I think I already have, episode title. I think I already have.

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

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

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Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 1

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

Kaguya-sama: Love is War! returns like it never left at all. Mercifully, unlike the second season, 2020’s Love is War?, the third is marked by an actual, distinct subtitle: -Ultra Romantic-. The first episode is, of course, excellent, and we’ll get to the how’s and why’s of that momentarily. First though, it feels right to simply appreciate the familiarity, here. Speaking just for myself, with as much of a gamble that any given anime season can be, it’s nice to have one or two things that you’re pretty damn sure are going to be great.

Eventually, this season will likely delve into the more dramatic parts of Kaguya-sama‘s storyline to an even greater degree than the second season did. I’m not sure what the reception will be–like many popular romcoms, Kaguya‘s wide popularity does not always shield it from backlash–but for now, it’s simply nice to have it around again. Since the second season concluded, the only real drop of Love is War! we’ve gotten was a short OVA from last year, which, frankly, is best left unremembered.

It’s natural to wonder, all this in mind, how something this widely anticipated marks its dramatic return, and the answer is very simple.

One of the characters completely embarrasses herself in a very funny way.

Keep an eye on the camel, it will be relevant momentarily.

Miko Iino (Miyu Tomita) and Yuu Ishigami (Ryouta Suzuki) are perhaps Love is War!‘s second-most important pair of characters, after the leads. -Ultra Romantic- chooses to open on a somewhat lowkey note by focusing on the two of them for the episode’s first “short.” (If you’ve forgotten; Kaguya-sama tends to divide its episodes, with only rare exceptions, into three “chunks” of about equal length.) The core premise with this one is very simple. Have you ever accidentally left your headphones slightly unplugged? Especially while listening to music you don’t necessarily want others to know you listen to? No? Just watch this short, then. It encapsulates the feeling of total, day-ruining embarrassment perfectly.

Miko sits down to study after chewing Ishigami out for not doing the same. Her case here is actually worse, because what she’s listening to isn’t music at all. It’s ambient sounds. First, fairly normal (soft rain noises). Then, somewhat odd (the sounds of a construction site). Then definitely odd (the loud braying calls of a camel). And finally, outright embarrassing (ASMR recordings of a bunch of “heartthrobs” telling the listener that she’s a good girl and is doing her best).

Dissecting humor like this tends to kill it, so it’s not nearly as funny in the retelling. But Love is War!‘s ability to simply ramp up a joke like this is easy to underappreciate. The final blow comes when the rest of the student council returns. Ishigami–in-line with his habit of falling on the sword for others, no matter how trivial the reason–then deliberately leaves his music leaking for all to hear. (The track must be heard to be believed. Its lyrics consist entirely of “moe moe kyun kyun.”) Only for Miko to then scold him, talk about how embarrassed she is for him, and then promptly not realize that her phone is also still leaking audio.

Fatality.

The second segment is more frantic and uptempo. Love is War! has repeatedly used a trick of directing comedic scenes revolving around misunderstandings–or the leads’ attempts to get each other to confess their feelings–like high-suspense thrillers. The approach makes its triumphant return here, as the technological inexperience of title character Kaguya Shinomiya (Aoi Koga) ensnares her in a trap laid by the greatest adversary of any modern woman. No, not her love interest / rival Miyuki Shirogane (Makoto Furukawa). I’m talking, of course, about read notifications. Kaguya leaves Miyuki on read because she’s just so happy to have gotten a text from him. Miyuki can see the notification but, obviously, not her reason for doing this. He is a bit panicked.

Another key part of Love is War!‘s appeal is that it understands how to involve the foibles of modern life in its scenarios. Many anime only touch on technology briefly, but this entire segment rests on a social stress stemming entirely from what is supposed to be a convenient feature of instant messaging platforms (LINE here, rather than iMessage itself) but, is more often than not, a total headache. On the character side of things, there’s also Kaguya’s far more tech-savvy maid Ai Hayasaka (Yumiri Hanamori), who could explain all this to Kaguya, but opts not to. Hayasaka has long served as something of a stand-in for the section of the audience that wishes Kaguya and Miyuki would just knock it off and kiss already. It’s hard to imagine that fact not playing some role in her decision to not bother here. Even so, for the second time in the episode, second-hand embarrassment plays a big role.

The whole thing is resolved with a lie and minimal social casualties, but not before Hayasaka gets hit with quite the death glare.

Continuing the escalation, the third segment is the goofiest of all. The impetus? An arm-wrestling tournament, started by Chika Fujiwara (Konomi Kohara), but certainly not ended by her.

This is probably the short with the least to talk about, which is a shame because in spite of the lack of any pesky things like “emotional resonance” or “forward narrative development”, it’s pretty fucking funny. It’s also the most visually engaging of the three, integrating a grab-bag of visual tropes from fighting games and shonen anime (especially Dragonball Z). Conceptually, rendering something ridiculous by welding it to shonen tropes is nothing new. (Hell, Birdie Wing did it only a couple days ago.) But as it has in prior seasons, what sets Love is War! apart is sheer commitment to the bit. We even get a battle shonen-esque vaguely plausible-sounding explanation for our protagonist’s extraordinary abilities. Kaguya wins the tournament. Why? Well, she’s in the archery club and bow drawstrings are heavy, helpfully illustrated by a cute callback to season two’s OP.

It’s hard to be too surprised when the entire thing caps off with what I’m fairly sure is a Cho Aniki reference after Kaguya wins. Why wouldn’t it? The show’s grip on reality is loose at the best of times, and when it goes headlong into full surreal comedy mode it feels like it can do just about anything and have it make sense. A giant pile of muscle men, why not?

Sadly, not everything is entirely smooth sailing. While the actual show remains as great to look at as ever, this is the second romcom this season to be afflicted by a pretty bad case of subpar typesetting. The translation is as good as it’s ever been, but there is enough text on screen that plain multi-tracking (one up top and the other on the bottom) just doesn’t cut it anymore. I will still be covering the anime weekly as it releases officially, but if the more patient among you were inclined to wait for fansubs I would completely understand.

As for this episode? It’s a solid return for the series. Some might take issue with the series not launching right back into The Heavy Stuff ™, but we’ll get there soon enough. In the meantime, I can again speak only for myself, but I’m happy to just be along for the ride.

Ah, and since I like to make a habit of including a small something extra for folks who make it all the way to the end of the column, please enjoy this Bonus Hayasaka Screencap. A recurring feature from this point forward.

I’m sure some of you will be looking forward to that.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 12 – “Bow and Arrow Duo” (SEASON FINALE)

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

Well folks, here we are. I always meet the end of each season with a certain air of cleaning out the cobwebs. Maybe that just speaks to my impatience and love of novelty (after all, the many shows that will come out next season remain nothing but a sparkle of infinite possibility until they actually air.) Still, more than usual, I am glad to put this one in the books. I haven’t started watching episode twelve of Sabikui Bisco as I type this, but the show has not exactly wowed me over the last third or so of its run, and whatever I end up thinking of the finale, I can’t really change that. On the other hand, I don’t want to go into it with clouded eyes, either. Judging something before I watch it is bad form.

Without further ado then, let’s hop on the crab and find out; can Sabikui Bisco nail the landing, totally saving the show just in the nick of time?

Well, in short, no. But! It does make a pretty good show of trying, and that counts for something.

The actual plot here is dead simple. Bisco, in revived-mushroom-super-saiyan form (reborn “as a god” I believe is how Jabi puts it) has to take down Kurokawa. Who, we here find out, has not turned into the Tetsujin giant so much as he’s “piloting” it. And when Bisco can take down the Tetsujin’s armored form we’ve been following for the past few episodes in just a couple shots, surprise, it has a second form. Tirol helpfully explains that they can’t just kill it while it’s like this, because if they do it’ll self-destruct and take out nearby Imihama along with it. So the only solution? Taking out the pilot.

Our heroes’ plan to do this is also pretty straightforward. Step 1. Have Pawoo break the giant’s helmet with her pole. Step 2. Have Bisco snipe Kurokawa’s sort-of still alive body from the head of the giant. The show spices this up in a few ways; mostly by giving everyone some delightful banter. Pawoo in particular shows a lot of personality here. She also starts gunning pretty damn aggressively for Bisco! Which, me being me, you might assume I’d complain about. But honestly, “warrior woman who aggressively steals a kiss from the guy she’s into” is about the only way they’ve depicted Pawoo that actually makes the pairing make some sense. (And hey, he does offer her “anything she wants” if she comes back alive.) This is the most chemistry they’ve ever had. It only took, you know, 11 and a half episodes.

She even brags about it to Bisco’s surrogate dad afterwards! I would’ve liked to see more of this brash, charmingly arrogant side of Pawoo. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to.

The actual execution of the plan goes from A to B to C so quickly that it almost feels perfunctory. Pawoo bonks the giant, the giant’s mask breaks, revealing just how ugly the damn thing actually is.

It’s like if you tried to sculpt an ugly infant from cherry Jell-o.

Kurokawa and Bisco get into it a little bit, and then Milo once again overtakes his sister in the “getting with Bisco” department as he helps Bisco line up the all-important pilot snipe. The power of homoeroticism saves the day, and Kurokawa goes down in one.

And that’s honestly kind of it! We do get some additional stuff throughout the remainder of the episode. Bisco and Milo get a nice moment where they just chill on the bed of giant mushrooms that’s sprung up in the wake of the battle, and the last 10-ish minutes of the episode are a montage showing everyone’s rust infections being cured. (Bisco is now 100% Rust-Eater Mushroom by volume. How does that work? How does anything in a shonen work! Who cares?) This includes Pawoo! Who looked beautiful with her rust scarring and looks just as beautiful without it.

There’s a timeskip, and sometime later we get a fun closing scene where Bisco has to once again pass through the government gate from episode one, this time with Milo in tow. I’m fond of this whole bit, especially Milo also getting a wanted poster where he’s branded the “Man-Eating Panda.” Oh, and the very last interesting worldbuilding tidbit is something we see via a TV. Imihama has a new, political firebrand of a governor who’s done radical things like condemn the persecution of the mushroom-keepers and even declared independence from whatever’s left of the Japanese government. That governor? Pawoo, who–and you’ll have to forgive me here–looks fine as hell in a suit.

And on that victory for WLW everywhere, Sabikui Bisco ends. I didn’t dislike this episode, but from basically every perspective it really felt to me like the show started running out of steam by its end. And as nice as some parts of this episode were, it didn’t really change that. I have rarely seen a series so thoroughly tie up its own premise by the end of its first season. Even many original anime leave a bit more to the imagination than this. One could call that a strength, I guess, but to me it mostly feels weird. Especially since there actually is a sequel to the manga.

We do get one hook here, aside from Imihama’s independence–and I imagine it’s what said manga follows up on–Bisco is now immortal because of his mushroom-fueled resurrection godhood whatever. He doesn’t really like that, and it’s on the note of trying to cure this particular condition that the story ends. So there clearly is some space for the story to continue, should Sabikui Bisco have done well enough to warrant that. Even so, we’re a far cry from where we were back in episode one, and while I always try to judge anime based on what they are, and not what they could’ve been, a part of me does miss the neon-streaked nocturnal urban ambience of the premiere. And on a different note entirely, the smaller-scale character-focused episodes that followed it.

There’s also the issue of this episode’s somewhat inconsistent art. There’s some stuff that looks really great, like when we see Bisco’s resurrection from his perspective in the episode’s opening minutes.

But a lot of the character art is spotty, and it brings down an otherwise solid finale somewhat. Even so, as a decent finish to a decent show, “Bow and Arrow Duo” does its job just fine. (And boy, am I conscious of the fact that I’m yo-yoing between positive and negative opinions a lot in this article.) The series’ final shot is a framed picture of Milo and Bisco, and I think that’s a nice image to end on.

And ordinarily, dear readers, this is where I’d tell you I’ll see you next season. That’s true as far as the Let’s Watch columns go. (I won’t even be announcing the winner of the Community Choice poll until this coming Saturday in the weekly Frontline Report column.) But the first show of what looks to be a very busy season actually premieres tomorrow. So, with that in mind, I’ll see you then, anime fans.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Surprise! Bisco wasn’t dead after all.

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

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

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

And also complaining about how slow trucks are.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

God, I wish that was me.

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

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

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

Attack on blightin’

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

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

There is a wrinkle in all this. Remember Tirol?

You know, the pink one.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 9 – “I Love You”

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

Milo isn’t actually dead. Are you surprised?

I, for one, wasn’t. Not that much, at least. As much as I mentioned last week that Sabikui Bisco actually killing off its lead would be a disaster, it bringing him back from the brink also feels more than a little hollow. Not the least of which is–you do heed the spoiler warnings at the tops of these articles, right?–that our other lead dies here, seemingly in a fashion that is a lot harder to write your way out of.

But we’ll get to all that. “I Love You” is actually, for the most part, a pretty good episode. Mostly because it plays to Sabikui Bisco‘s strengths–action sequences, weird worldbuilding, snappy dialogue, and colorful characters clashing with each other–but that central, ephemeral lack of a certain “something” is a problem. It’s been a minor one throughout the series, and although this is the best episode in a while, it’s also an episode that demonstrates why that’s so.

We open with Bisco nursing Milo back to health, in a scene that should be genuinely touching but mostly comes across as just sort of stupid. Here the two of you are, bonding over your blood brotherhood or your mutual homosexual tension or whatever this all is, and Milo says this.

It’s not an entirely serious offer and neither is the banter that follows, but the fact remains that this is a hilariously dumb thing to say in this situation. And look, I love Pawoo–I wouldn’t say she’s well-written, but that’s another matter–but why is the show pushing this as a thing? Even as an outside option? Pawoo and Bisco have negative chemistry. Unless I’m just forgetting something, they’ve interacted three times in the entire show. It’s only barely believable if it were simply that Bisco has a one-sided crush on Pawoo. It being mutual is just nuts.

And maybe it comes off like I’m nitpicking a minor exchange of dialogue that isn’t really supposed to be all that serious. Indeed, the show follows all that up with this exchange, which is genuinely very funny.

Ladies love a femboy with advanced medical knowledge.

But this problem of a tone that is simply fundamentally “off” remains an issue throughout the episode, even in its strongest moments.

It is worth giving those moments their due, though. Most of the episode revolves around Kurokawa revealing his insidious evil plan and being duly punished for it. Spoiler alert: he meets his end here, but not before getting in some very over-the-top villainous gloating. This is a space that Sabikui Bisco can work in.

His plan, as he explains to a captive Jabi, is both simple in concept and hilariously stupid in execution. The natural Rust Wind doesn’t make quite enough people sick to keep his profits up, you see. His solution? Harvest the reactor unit inside one of the giant superweapons that blew Japan up in the first place–a Tetsujin, they’re called–and stick it in a bioengineered pink elephant. Have the elephant–sorry, the Ganesha Cannon–fire it wherever he wants, and let nature take its course by blowing the Rust Wind fallout all over the Japanese countryside.

Jabi also gets some incredibly raw dialogue in this scene, most notably when Kurokawa orders one of his henchmen to cut off his fingers so he can’t draw a bow anymore.

He doesn’t get the chance to show any of this off in-episode, because Bisco–who has been masquerading as one of said bodyguards throughout this entire sequence–sets to take him down once and for all.

This, too, is a space Sabikui Bisco can comfortably work in. The fights here are pretty great; we’ve got Kurokawa and Bisco themselves, fighting with both their lives on the line as the former has a total mental breakdown at his plans coming undone. Outside the facility they’re all in, we also get a quick cameo from Pawoo as she helps Jabi pummel a giant cyborg gorilla (?!) into submission, in what is somewhat-inexplicably probably the best-animated scene in the entire series thusfar.

It’s dope as hell so I’m not really complaining, just, what?

And when Bisco finally does take down Kurokawa, it’s incredibly satisfying. He even throws Kurokawa’s whole “evil badass who loves vintage pop culture” shtick back in his face as he dies. Which, by the way, happens when Bisco tackles him into an open pit of lava.

The whole thing is viscerally satisfying…except for the fact that Bisco dies, too. Shot dead by Milo, at his own request, since he’d rather have had his closest friend take his life than drown in the sea of molten Rust.

This, really, feels like it should be very affecting, but it’s here that we run headlong into the series’ shortcomings again. No matter how hard it tries, Sabikui Bisco just can’t pull off these huge emotional beats. When Milo takes Bisco out by sniping him, and declares that he loves him1, this should be a massive, intense moment. For me at least, it felt completely flat. Maybe even a bit unintentionally comedic. The longwinded speeches Bisco and Milo trade about how Bisco will always be with Milo and so on just land with a thud. It doesn’t work.

Why doesn’t it work? Maybe it’s because of all the show’s undercutting of its own central relationship. I’ve never really been clear on what Bisco and Milo actually mean to each other. They’re clearly close, but there are many, many different kinds of “close.” Are they close friends? Blood brothers? Gay for each other? Does Bisco consider Milo a sort of surrogate son, as one line in this episode suggests? Maybe all of these things, to some degree? It’s never really clear. I think part of this may be an issue of the compression of pacing inherent to anime adaptions, but there must have been a way to handle this in a fashion that made more sense.

I did see a few people around various social media haunts suggest that perhaps Milo loves Bisco in a romantic way but thinks Bisco is straight. Thus, half-jokingly trying to set Bisco up with his sister is a coping mechanism / something of an attempt to keep Bisco in his life. If this is true, I would say that Sabikui Bisco is simply not the sort of series that can sustain a relationship dynamic that complex. None of the fine shades of character detailing that would require are apparent in the text of the series. As such, Milo and Bisco’s relationship is pleasant, and they’re fun together, but defining it in any more certain terms is difficult because none of these pieces really fit together.

As for the actual final plot beat here, are Kurokawa and Bisco themselves actually dead? Probably, but it’s hard to put a definitive “yes” there, given that the series has proven willing to pull characters back to life. Still, it’d be one hell of a writing challenge to come up with a way for one or both of those characters to escape burning alive in a lava pit. That’s pretty definitively fatal.

There is of course, only one way to find out. Until next week, anime fans.

1: It’s worth noting that I believe the specific word here (aishiteru) usually has romantic connotations, but I may be mistaken.

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

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