Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
Pervy lesbian girlfailure seeks to join the power armor-clad alien defense force / idol agency for the space colony she lives in, despite her vast, galloping incompetence in every relevant field. Need I say more?
I mean, I literally do, but if you wanted a concise pitch for alice gear aegis Expansion you could do way worse. I jokingly called this show “Bocchi the Mech” to some of my friends as I was watching the first episode, and that’s not entirely accurate—Nodoka (Miyari Nemoto), our lead, is way more together than Bocchi ever was. Also, this show isn’t quite as good as BTR yet—but it does a good enough job of summing the whole thing up. Nodoka is a fangirl of Actresses, idols / mecha musume-style battle girls who defend her planet from alien invaders. She desperately wants to be an Actress, so she can fight alongside her favorite of them all, Yotsuyu (Manami Numakura), who she is ludicrously, obviously gay for. Unfortunately, she’s been ruled unfit to pilot a Gear—the Actresses’ equipment—via a computerized test. Initially it seems like there’s not much to be done about that, but we’ll circle back around to that point.
First, let’s hone in on the name of these battle armor units. Yeah, they just straight up are called Gears. I’m not going to sit here and say that Alice Gear is a front-to-back rip of Symphogear, because it isn’t, but the influence is obvious. Symphogear is one of my favorite anime of all time, despite some flaws, so one might expect that I’d be very harsh on Alice Gear because of this. To be honest, though, there are much worse things to try to be than Symphogear. Assault Lily Bouquet managed to make it work, so there’s no reason this couldn’t, too, but the actual fighting part of the genre seems fairly incidental to Alice Gear, (despite a very strong opening action sequence, only killed a little bit by some harsh screen-dimming) which instead traffics mainly in zany character comedy, at least so far. One might be more inclined to think of it as something of a parody of this kind of show. Again, a solid idea.
Much of this first episode is basically a single long training montage. Yotsuyu (and some of the other girls) get the notion that if they can build Nodoka’s stamina, she might be able to pass the test. Thus, a parade of ridiculous things like having her balance books on her head while walking on a narrow bridge over a river filled with alligators, practice asking people to please buy idol tickets while wearing heavy cartoony balls-and-chains, etc.
Not all of these jokes work; there is a particularly unfunny bit where one of the characters dons A Certain Kind of Military Uniform to show that she’s going hardass mode. (Maybe rethink that one, guys.) But a lot of them do, and Nodoka’s sheer shameless infatuation with Yotsuyu is fairly endearing. Not even the presence of old-school romcom cliches like high-pressure nosebleeds can kill it.
There’s an interesting little twist at the end, indicating that there might be a little more to this show than just jokes. Time will tell, but I do hope we get to see Nodoka fight at least a few times.
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, Mastodon, or Anilist, 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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
If you’re out of the Virtual Youtuber loop, it is probably difficult to comprehend what went on with Kizuna AI. I am, myself, only marginally invested in the medium these days, so I will disclose right off the top that I’m no expert. But I am something of a fiend for entertainment industry stories, and AI has a pretty great one. By most counts, she was the person who actually coined the term “Virtual Youtuber,” and later its abbreviation VTuber.
So you can thank / blame her, in at least some sense, for all those 3D-rigged anime girls taking over your Twitter timeline over the past half-decade. She is, in a way, her medium’s Elvis Presley. She didn’t invent the whole thing by any means, but she was among the first to take it mainstream, and that popularity has endured globally even as she’s gained real competition in the form of later arrivals, like the vast rosters of the Hololive or Nijisanji agencies. (She was, to provide some sense of numerical scale, the second VTuber to reach the 3,000,000 subscribers milestone. The only VTuber who beat her to that mark was Hololive EN’s sharkgirl star Gawr Gura. Gura has quite the story in her own right, but that’s a shark tale for another time.)
The history of her actual presence on Youtube (and the internet more generally) is odd and full of twists; from her channel relaunching with multiple Kizuna AIs all voiced by different people, her rig-actress Kasuga Nozomi becoming one of the few people of her stature to ever publicly admit to voicing their associated VTuber and gaining some creative control over the character, and so on, she’s had quite the ride, culminating in a semi-retirement—an “indefinite hiatus”—early last year.
All of that context is important because without knowing who Kizuna AI is and what she did, you can’t really know whatKizuna no Alleleis trying to do. She’s the first character we see on-screen, not traditionally animated but in a reality show-esque confession cam segment where she enthuses about the fictional Lapin d’Or award, which she’s just won, and the series opens with a full-on music video by her. She is not the main character of this story, but she is an important, looming background presence. She is also, we find out from another confession cam segment from a different character, missing. Virtual Youtubing’s first great star has vanished.
At first, all of this seems like it might be only marginally relevant. The real star of our story here is Miracle (Ayumi Hinohara), herself an aspiring Virtual Youtuber, attending an academy(!) for the same, and with big dreams of one day measuring up to her idol—I’m sure you can guess who that is—despite being, at present, a total unknown. It is, basically, a pretty standard idol anime plot with the word “idol” swapped out for “VTuber.” Some of the specifics are a little unusual, but for a minute, this seems to be walking a tried-and-true route. Hell, the protagonists even do a variant on the Liella “throwing a star shape with their hands” thing in the OP.
It quickly becomes clear though that if this is trying to be a “normal” idol anime with just some different seasoning than the norm, it’s only doing a so-so job of it. Throughout the first episode, the entire series demonstrates a spacey, loopy energy that doesn’t really mesh well with those sorts of narrative goals. Miracle is a decent protagonist in theory, but she seems to spend more time talking about Kizuna AI than she does about herself, and it makes her feel more like a fan of VTubers than an aspiring one. Speaking from personal experience; there is a huge difference, and because so much of an idol anime’s success hinges on we, the audience, being able to “buy in” to these characters and their ambitions, the fact that I found myself bouncing pretty hard off of Miracle this early on is a bad sign. There is also a particularly odd aside where she gets lost in a greenhouse on her way to class and has tea with a character we haven’t really been properly introduced to yet. What that is about is anyone’s guess.
And then there’s the class itself; a dry, all-talking affair where we’re yet again doled out exposition about Kizuna AI as she lived her life in this fictional setting. (She won the Lapin d’Or award five years in a row, which is certainly impressive in-context, but feels so much less interesting than the actual story of the real person. The series also goes with the conceit that Kizuna actually is an artificial intelligence, which has always been her character gimmick as a VTuber, but for some reason not even making a token acknowledgement that there was a real person involved irks me. But, to be fair, this might become a plot point later on.) We’re also told about (but not introduced to) her counterpart Ada, who has won several years since AI disappeared, and who several of the students in this VTubing class vocally express a preference for. Clearly, this is our heel, although the fact that it’s directly pointed out that she only appeared in the years following AI’s disappearance makes me wonder if she isn’t just Kizuna AI herself under a new name and rig. (Consequently, I wouldn’t be too shocked if the entire anime was a promotional vehicle for exactly that.)
The real disappointment here though is Miracle’s performance for the class. The notion of shooting these performances in a similar rigged 3D CGI fashion as the one in the opening is solid, but they do need to actually be good. Unfortunately, despite the show attempting to sell it as a big moment, Miracle’s performance in this episode is incredibly lackluster, with passable but dispassionate singing and weak choreography. The song itself is fine, but she has no real charisma with which to sell it, and compared to Kizuna AI’s performance at the top of the episode, it’s just a colossal letdown. Bizarrely, when Miracle reappears in a post-credits sequence to wave us off for the week, she seems much more chipper, and consequently, much more interesting to watch, if only for those 30 or so seconds. It’s strange that she has a kind of upbeat charm there that’s missing from the actual show. Perhaps it can be pinned on the fact that this is Ayumi Hinohara’s first anime role, but the writing doesn’t give her much to work with either. If she could somehow bridge the gap between who she is in the actual anime and who she is in that closing segment, the series might become properly worth watching.
Even then, there are a few more interesting moments before the first episode closes. After her performance, which most of the class hails as Super Impressive, Miracle gets overconfident and shoots a collab request to one of her classmates that she admires, only to get turned down near-instantly with a literal big fat “NO.” There isn’t a ton of humor in Kizuna no Allele, but what little there is is effectively deployed.
Then there’s the utterly confounding final scene, where Miracle comforts herself by watching the Kizuna AI video from the start of the episode, only to have a voice in her head—who might actually be AI? It’s not clear—speak to her and deploy a shining portal, which she then steps through to find….a mostly empty grassy field with a little virtual avatar of a green baby taking a nap. It’s very odd, the kind of oddness that it’s hard to do on purpose. That sense of lackadaisical WTF-ery might be what saves Kizuna no Allele, since the chops to be engaging as an idol series just aren’t there yet. Who can say? This is a strange one.
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, Mastodon, or Anilist, 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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
Let me say it again, if you didn’t happen to check out the Spring Let’s Watch poll article. Heavenly Delusion (officially just Tengoku Daimakyo on Disney+, as the streaming service has chosen to forego the existing English title of the series for some reason)—both that it exists at all and that we’re able to sit here and talk about it—is pretty remarkable. The original manga is the still-ongoing project of Masakazu Ishiguro, of And Yet The Town Moves fame. These are very very different properties—And Yet The Town Moves was an often-surreal comedy series, something that does not describe Heavenly Delusion at all—but if you squint, you can spot a few similarities. Some are obvious, like Ishiguro’s general character design sensibilities—natural hair tones, round faces, a certain specific sort of facial proportioning—or the timbre of some of the moments of genuine comedy in this opening episode, of which there are a surprising amount. Less obvious is the sheer sense of tactility that Ishiguro, and the staff of the anime, bring to Heavenly Delusion‘s setting. For lack of a better term, this show’s world—a post-apocalyptic landscape overrun with vegetation and unease—feels real. There is a grounded feeling to even the more fantastical elements.
The plot itself is actually rather simple, so far. Maru (Gen Satou) and Kiriko (Sayaka Senbongi) wander what was once Japan in the wake of some society-destroying disaster known only by the maddeningly vague name of “The Collapse.” Kiriko has been hired as a “bodyguard” of sorts, by somebody, in order to escort Maru to his destination, a place that both characters are short on details about, but they know is called “Heaven.” Along the way, Kiriko hopes to find two men who she keeps photos of sealed in a plastic baggy. Their relationship to each other—and to Kiriko—unknowable at this early point in time.
At the same time, somewhere else, a sealed-off facility hosts an entire generation of children who know nothing of the outside world but seem to be cared for in relative comfort. One of the children there, Mimihime (Misato Fukuen), wonders of the world outside the dome, telling her friend Tokio (Hibiku Yamamura) that she dreams of it, and that in her dreams, a person outside the dome looks just like Tokio. The latter mentions this notion to the facility’s mysterious administrator, who all-too-happily tells them that life outside the facility’s walls is a hellish, unforgiving struggle. Given some of the other things we see in this episode, and regardless of whatever else she’s up to, she might not be wrong.
Most of the opening episode focuses on Maru and Kiriko, who have a sibling-esque relationship complete with plenty of affectionate bickering despite not actually being related at all, as Kiriko points out. You’ll forgive me for talking around the episode’s events in general instead of addressing all of them individually—this is a busy first episode, albeit not in a bad way—but the two do go through some pretty intense stuff here, and how they handle it raises tons of questions. Kiriko has some kind of laser gun* and Maru seems to be capable of some truly bone-cracking martial arts that makes one wonder why he needs protection in the first place.
Even more bizarre are the man-eating monsters that seem to stalk the world’s nights. Something very bad clearly happened here, and this episode does a dizzyingly excellent job of hooking you in by making you wonder what that could’ve been.
On top of that, the production is just absolutely top-shelf stuff. If that seems like a rather unromantic statement given everything else I’ve said, know that this is only because I don’t really think I can compete with just posting screencaps for this particular part of the show. Look at this!
I’m very cynical about tierlist-bro descriptors like “movie quality visuals” but if people resort to terms like that to describe this show I don’t really blame them, Production I.G. have done an absolutely stunning job, and it’s good to see something carrying the torch for truly wonderful TV anime visuals after the finale of Trigun Stampede last week.
So what to make of this thing, all told? Well, it’s firing on basically every available cylinder. Sometimes there are no nits to pick or further points to raise. If anything, I’m even impressed with how Disney+ are handling the show, which is not something I expected to be saying even a week ago. (Last year they sidelined the intermittently-brilliant Summertime Render by simply not releasing it until months after it concluded. I’m still salty about that.) As far as opening episodes go, this is basically perfect, a gorgeous adaptation of already well-loved source material. You can’t go wrong here; 10/10, no notes.
*In part, I think this is actually a reference to And Yet The Town Moves, which to my recollection featured a similar weapon in a gag plot, but I assume there is some in-universe explanation for it as well.
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, Mastodon, or Anilist, 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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
If you’re the sort that craves a truly classic premise, try this one on for size; disgraced ninja threatened with execution is offered amnesty if he can find the Elixir of Life, hidden somewhere on a mysterious island that may or may not be one of the Buddhist Pure Lands. The specifics here are, of course, very culturally Japanese, but the core of that idea is universal. Death is the ultimate equalizer after all, and despite many attempts over the centuries, no one has truly figured out how to escape the Reaper’s long reach. Certainly, the topic preoccupied the minds of those in the late Edo period in which the show takes place as much as it does today. It’s a fairly universal point of fixation.
Some, of course, claim to not fear death at all. Such is the case with Gabimaru (Chiaki Kobayashi), protagonist of Hell’s Paradise and star of this season’s opening anime.* All told, it’s an extremely promising one. It’s also remarkably slow for such a thing, but that’s not a complaint. Despite being a MAPPA-produced shonen adaptation, Hell’s Paradise knows better than to overplay its hand at this early juncture, and there’s a deliberateness to this opening act. This is the sort of story that wants us to know the why before the what. Episode one is, thus, mostly an examination of Gabimaru’s motives and how he comes to reckon himself with them.
How does Hell’s Paradise get there? Well, we open on an executioner repeatedly trying and failing to behead our protagonist. His sword simply breaks against the young man’s neck. This is Gabimaru, disgraced shinobi, captured and hauled before a magistrate and condemned to death. As the magistrate’s executioners repeatedly try and fail to kill him—first by beheading, then by burning at the stake, then by tearing apart with bulls, and then finally by dousing him in burning oil—is someone who claims, again and again throughout this first episode, to not be attached to this thing we call life. Honestly, combined with the nearly documentarian narrator, it becomes pretty clear from the word ‘go’ that, in addition to anything else, there’s a surprising amount of grim humor in Hell’s Paradise.
That claim to have accepted his impending death is what’s most important here, though. Gabimaru is lying.
Serving as a counterweight to Gabimaru is Yamada Asaemon Sagiri (Yumiri Hanamori), an executioner and “sword-tester” who seems to directly serve the shogunate itself. Sagiri spends most of this first episode in a detached and observational mode. She grills Gabimaru about various things, scribbling notes down in a small book she keeps on hand. Two points stand out here. One; the village of Iwagakure, a shinobi enclave that Gabimaru was raised in from a very young age, and two, the daughter of said village’s chieftain, who is also Gabimaru’s wife. It is for the sake of his wife—who, despite their arranged marriage, he loves very much, as shown in some genuinely super endearing flashbacks—that Gabimaru clings to his own life. It is also for her sake that, when Sagiri offers a way out of being executed, Gabimaru accepts.
Gabimaru cuts an interesting figure across this first episode in general; he seems very fatalistic, but that’s clearly also at least in part a cover for how badly he misses his wife and, perhaps, some deeper traumas. When recounting how he was apprehended by the Iwagakure shinobi, Gabimaru leaves out the part where he resisted so stubbornly that he took out twenty men before eventually being captured. There is definitely some level of self-serving memory going on here; no one accidentally kills twenty people, but whether it’s to keep Sagiri in the dark, as part of an internal attempt to reconcile himself with his wife’s wishes for a peaceful and ordinary life, or some other option, isn’t yet entirely clear.
Nonetheless, Sagiri offers him a pardon from the shogunate itself, offered on just one condition; he must go to a recently-discovered mysterious island, which may itself be a Pure Land, far past Ryukyu, and recover the Elixir of Life. In doing so, he’s competing with a number of other condemned criminals, each of whom also seek the Elixir on behalf of the shogunate. Essentially, Hell’s Paradise seems to be setting up a death game scenario here, though I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more to it than that. (Sagiri also assures Gabimaru that his wife is allegedly still alive and patiently waiting for him back at Iwagakure village. This screams “bait” to me. I would not be shocked if there was a plot twist of some kind that hinges on that particular detail.)
There’s a little bit of Capital-A Action sprinkled in here too; a pretty great bit where Sagiri proves that she could kill Gabimaru, even if he resisted with his various ninja techniques, and makes the ludicrously badass claim that her sword’s reflection shows the true inner nature of the people she executes. She and Gabimaru have a nicely-choreographed fight before she eventually offers him the pardon, and when they both have to escape the angry troops of the magistrate, Gabimaru deploys a proper jutsu for the first time in the series, lighting himself on fire in the process. (Ninja Bullshit will always be cool to me. I had a brief Naruto phase in middle school and that was more than enough to rearrange my brain in that regard.)
And in the episode’s closing minutes we get some truly gnarly shots of what happened to the first expedition to this “Pure Land”; they came back to Japan’s shores in wooden boats, dead, bodies overgrown with flowers, and their faces contorted into a ghoulish smile. That’s one hell of a hook to get you to tune in next week
I can imagine, in theory, someone being perhaps disappointed that the first episode of Hell’s Paradise doesn’t lay all its bells and whistles on the table right away. But personally, I’m finding this slower approach pretty captivating. The show is not, at least not yet, a full-fire storm of blood and adrenaline. It’s a creeping, almost nocturnal dread, not unlike the fear of death itself.
*Heavenly Delusion, which I will also be covering for a first impressions article, technically premiered about an hour earlier.
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, Mastodon, or Anilist, 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.
One thousand two hundred and thirty-two. That’s how many episodes, in sum total, the original Japanese run of the entire Pokémon anime has. The episode that aired just two days ago, “The Rainbow & The Pokémon Master”, is the 1,232nd. I’m not trying to wow you with sheer numbers here—although if I were, just for reference, that’s about 400 more episodes than The Simpsons, perhaps the only American cartoon with an episode count in even the same ballpark—but I am trying to make a point. 1,232 episodes over the course of 26 years is a truly stunning achievement. Even if the show were utterly unremarkable in content, that would be worth commenting on.
But we’re not here to evaluate quality today. That’d be pretty much impossible for Pokémon, something that has sunk its fangs into my psyche as much as it has any other Millennial of a certain age and disposition. When I started watching the Pokémon anime—and really, that is how pretty much everyone still refers to it, as either just “the cartoon” or, if they’re slightly more of a weeb, “the anime”—I was a literal child. It was one of the first cartoons period I was ever invested in, long before I had any idea that cartoons from different parts of the world could be meaningfully different, Pokémon, when I first got into it as a child, offered me something very different from any cartoon I’d seen before.
My experience with TV had been very limited up to that point. I grew up in a fairly religious household where things like television were considered distractions and possible corrupting influences. We only got a TV in our house at all in the year 2000, and my grandmother had to do some convincing to convince my mom to pick up cable. It was a tiny hand-me-down thing with a fuzzy picture. Nonetheless, the Pokémon cartoon became important to me. How could it not? I was six years old, and here was this thing chucking all these crazy monster designs at me, and telling me that a young kid Just Like Me (more or less), could have adventures, make friends, and that there was a world outside of the town you grow up in.
I won’t pretend I’ve religiously followed the series in the 23 years since then. (Has anybody? I think even those who’ve seen all the episodes are more likely to have marathoned it in chunks, but maybe I’m underestimating the true Pokemaniacs out there.) But Pokémon has remained part of my life. I’m neurodivergent, and it was, to my recollection, my second total special interest after dinosaurs (I had a big, illustrated encyclopedia of dinosaurs. Wish I still had that thing!), and it’s remained enough of a hobby that I preordered Pokémon Violet. (I also play a fair few Pokémon ROMHacks, but we’re getting into hobbies-within-hobbies at that point) It’s stayed both a part of the cultural conversation and a part of my life, so seeing it finally end as of this 11-episode “postscript” season, after Ash has finally won a championship, feels not so much bad or good, but rather just surreal. I remember the news taking a while to really process for me. As in: “what do you mean the Pokémon anime is ending?” If it feels like the end of an era, it very much is. There will continue to be aPokémon anime; two new protagonists are slated to start their own journey in just a few weeks, but the Pokémon anime that stars Ash—Satoshi in the original JP—is now officially over. That’s nuts. And I have thought about whether I wanted to even write anything about it, because on some level “that’s nuts” is all you can really say, but not writing anything would be even crazier. This series has been a part of my life since I could read. I have to say something, right?
Then let me say this; if the miniseries’ purpose was to kick shots of pure nostalgia right into my brain, it worked splendidly, and the last episode might be the purest example of that in the whole show. There are a lot of one more‘s in this episode. One more time where Brock gets all lovesick and then gets reprimanded by his Croagunk, one more Team Rocket scheme to snatch Pikachu, one more example of Ash bonding with a Pokémon he just met (it’s a Charmander here; Professor Oak has a new round of trainers to give starter Pokémon to, don’t you know?), etc. If you wanted to be cynical you could describe it as box-ticking. But honestly, there’s so much obvious affection in every frame of this anime that I really find it hard to summon up such a criticism. Toward the end of the episode, Ash’s Pidgeot, the second Pokémon he ever caught, returns to his team, and it’s such a hugely obvious nostalgia play that I started tearing up. I am not immune to affection from giant birds.
In general, they cram quite a few Pokémon into this episode, actually, although I’m sure some will nitpick some omissions. (The big surprise to me is that Ash’s Charizard doesn’t show up for even a split second. When a scene briefly calls for a big draconic flier, his much more recently-acquired Dragonite does the job instead. I’m not complaining, but it is slightly surprising!)
What took me from having watery eyes to full-on bawling was the final scene, where Ash and Pikachu—plus a bunch of Kanto wildlife—take refuge under a tree as a storm passes overhead. This too is a callback; you’ll remember that the very first arc of the series involved Ash biking through a thunderstorm as he tried to protect Pikachu from a flock of Spearows. More than just a reference, though, it’s a meaningful inversion. Back then, the Pokémon were hostile. Here, everything is peaceful and serene; Ash may not consider himself a Pokemon master yet, but in spite of the endless “eternal 11 year old” jokes, he’s clearly grown, and the show itself reflects that.
Not long after, Ash and Pikachu set off again, but this time, we don’t follow along. Our journey together ends here.
But, like I said near the top of this article, this isn’t really the end. The show itself acknowledges that; the retro “To Be Continued…!” text that’s closed out each episode of the miniseries says something a little different here, and really, can you argue with it?
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, Mastodon, Anilist, or Tumblrand 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 again, folks! I think most of you know how this works at this point, so I’ll justlink the survey immediately, but if you’re new around here or would like a primer, let me briefly explain. Even returning voters might want to give this a read first, though, since I’ve changed the selection process a teensy bit this year, and, as you can see, there’s a bit more than just a call to vote this season.
Every season (with the notable exception of this past season for Various Reasons), I cover one or two anime on a week-by-week basis here on Magic Planet Anime as they air. I like to leave the selection of at least one of those anime to You, The Reader. In the survey linked above, you can vote for any number of the anime from the upcoming—and absolutely packed—season. This season, though, I trimmed the list of candidates somewhat, restricting it to a narrower selection of 18 shows I have an at least marginal interest in, in addition to the usual exclusions of second seasons of things I haven’t seen, and so on. (Marginal Service isn’t here, funnily enough. I wasn’t impressed by the trailer and while it’s the sort of thing I might check in on anyway in a slower season, this is not a slower season.) I did however leave an “Other” field with a customizable response, so if you’re really dead set on getting me to watch Summoned To Another World For a Second Time or what have you, you can at least try to rally 30 of your closest friends to get it to win out.
This season, since things have been quiet here lately, I wanted to be a bit more thorough than I usually am. Since this coming season is so packed, it helps to have some idea of what these candidate shows actually are. Why don’t we run down the list here, so we can get a sense of the shows in question? Hell, I’ll link the trailers too.
Oshi no Ko
Right off the top, this is the big one. Every season has a few high-profile manga adaptations. In 2023’s Spring season, this is probably the highest profile. Superstar status is pretty fitting for Oshi no Ko, though; the series is a dark, incisive examination of the underbelly of the entertainment industry. If you’re like me and your main complaint with a lot of idol anime is the lack of proverbial blood on the stage, you absolutely need to watch this; it’s some real “the spotlights here can burn holes through the stage” shit. There’s just one catch; the show also has a completely absurd shock value high-premise, one the triple-length first episode will explore in detail. A lot of people aren’t super keen on that part of the series, but I have to admire the incredible power play of putting out a 90 minute first episode in this anime season. That takes some serious confidence.
I have to be honest, this is easily my most anticipated show of the season personally, and I will probably cover it at least occasionally regardless, but I’m really pulling for this, specifically, to win the poll. I even cheated a little bit, using its romaji title, which encases the show’s name in square brackets, to boot it to the top of the list. You can’t be afraid to get a little underhanded in the entertainment industry, folks! Did I mention the manga is written by Aka Akasaka, of Kaguya-sama: Love is War! fame? And illustrated by Scum’s Wish mangaka Mengo Yokoyari? Also that much of the Doga Kobo team who did the gorgeous Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie adaptation from last year are on this? I’m just saying, I think we’ve got a star in the making here. Check out the very much not fooling anybody trailer below, which mostly tries to present the series as a zany comedy.
alice gear aegis Expansion
Here’s a weird one for you. Is it an idol anime? A battle girl series? Both? Neither? I’m going with “CUE! with power armor” at the moment, but that’s admittedly only so much of a description. I’ll confess that I mostly chucked alice gear aegis Expansion—which is apparently capitalized like That—onto the list because it seems to at least be within the rough ballpark of the battle girl genre, and those are pretty hard to screw up. Even when they’re bad, they’re usually at least funny-bad.
Of course, I’m well aware that by saying that I’m practically jinxing myself. But hey, I’d still be willing to give it a shot, even if it does turn sour. Also, it’s based on a video game I’ve never heard of? So that’s cool. Check out the weirdly rambly, somewhat inscrutable trailer below.
The Blue Orchestra
Let’s say pop stardom isn’t your thing but you still want to see me cover an anime about music this year. If that admittedly narrow description applies to you, you might want to cast a ballot for Blue Orchestra. I’ll be honest – I don’t know a ton about the manga this is adapted from, aside from the fact that it’s well-liked. The trailer, in all its CGI band glory, tries to give the idol anime treatment to something decidedly more down-to-earth and personal. Will it work? I’m interested to find out. Check out the trailer below, and make an amusing mental note of how similar the protagonist looks to Ishigami from Kaguya-sama: Love is War!
Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story – Season 2
Birdie Wing is just one of those things; you either get it or you don’t. The first season of the Golf Girls Story aired about a year ago to sudden cult fandom, as the series’ combination of strong lesbian undertones, hilariously over-the-top interpretation of golf, and more than a little no-shit social commentary were weaved together surprisingly well. But, the outwardly ridiculous bit of Birdie Wing is over, and I’m admittedly interested to see if the show can keep its pace up in its second half, as the golf mafia and life-or-death stakes are replaced with more mundane golf tournaments and interpersonal drama.
Ah, who am I kidding? It’s probably still going to be crazy as hell. Check out the trailer and it’s intoxicatingly chipper soundtrack below.
Dead Mount Death Play
Here’s the sum total of what I know about Dead Mount Death Play: 1. the manga was written by the Baccano! guy, 2. it’s a two-cour anime, which is noteworthy here because almost everything else on this list either is the second cour of something or is only one cour long, as far as we know. 3. it’s an isekai? Or something? It’s tagged as an isekai on sites like AniList and MyAnimeList anyway, and that gnarly skeleton monster from the trailer sure looks like something out of an isekai.
Beyond that, I really have no idea what to make of this thing. (I have to admit with some embarrassment that I missed the Baccano and Durarara hype trains back when those anime were an active, going concern.) But that’s precisely why it’s interesting! The trailer, which I will direct you to below, offers tantalizing glimpses of mystery and violence soundtracked to a nice minimal piano piece. Also, check out that girl with the glasses. Any time a girl with glasses gets to cause violence a show is at least going to be decent, don’t you think?
Otaku Elf
Otaku Elf!
Otaku elf.
An elf who is an otaku.
An elf who primarily enjoys pop culture media from Japan.
An otaku elf, if you would.
This really seems like it should be one of those “the title says it all” affairs, and it mostly does seem to be shaping up that way, but aside from the fact that I am willing to watch anything that reaches for this particular kind of comedic vibe—check out that shot in the trailer of the titular elf being flanked by a pair of actual-ass Red Bull cans while some shoujo stuff happens—there’s also a hint of an actual story here, something that might dig into why this particular stock fantasy character is such an otaku, maybe? This is one that I’ll probably cover at least a few times even if it totally washes out in the poll. I can’t stay away from something with this much 2006 energy. Check it out in the trailer below, but watch out for that incredibly catchy theme tune.
Jigokuraku: Hell’s Paradise
I have to give Hell’s Paradise—or Jigokuraku? I’m not sure what’s going on with the English name situation for this one—a very important award here; most bitchin’ trailer. This shouldn’t be confused with best trailer, those are different things, even if this one is pretty great. But if you’re like me and you need a “completely crazy action anime” quota filled each season and feel a little unsatisfied when it’s not met, you’re going to love this one. This is one of the anime on this list I knew the least about when I checked out its trailer (the third of three, apparently, in fact), but it’s now up there as one of my most anticipated shows of the season. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? I don’t know much about Buddhism, but despite the series taking place in a Buddhist hell, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a huge obstacle; anybody could pop for this.
Check out the trailer below, and be prepared for the needlessly hard soundtrack to kick in about halfway through.
TOO CUTE CRISIS!
You know what’s missing from anime these days? Aliens. The Invaders from last year’s Teppen!!!!!!! made an admirable go of it, but they were only a pretty small part of a large ensemble cast. Here, with TOO CUTE CRISIS!, the aliens are the majority. But if that does nothing for you, the sheer stupidity of the comedy on display here should. Sure, the aliens try to destroy the Earth but can’t bring themselves to do it because cats are really cute. Why not? Check out the extremely fuwa fuwa trailer below, where I believe the lead character compares cuteness to a black hole.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury – Part 2
Look, I’m not going to pretend anyone needs me to explain Gundam to them in 2023, especially not the second half of this Gundam, which is interesting and important in all sorts of ways. I’ll be totally honest, I was actually kind of hesitant to even put The Witch From Mercury on the poll, because I don’t know if I’m totally up to the task of covering a Gundam anime week by week. Nonetheless, if you all should find it in your hearts to assign it to me, I will do my very best. That’s about all I have to say on this one.
Check out the trailer, full of blood, iron, and drama, below.
Insomniacs after school
Figure this one out; after years of being quite possibly the least impressive anime studio regularly making shows on its own two legs, Liden Films have managed to really turn things around over the past few. Between Insomniacs after school here and last year’s excellent Call of The Night adaptation, they might even be establishing something like a studio specialty.
Far from a re-tread, though, Insomniacs after school promises a kind of dusky romantic magic all its own, charged not with danger like Call of the Night’s, but with a galactic, midnight sweetness. The real highlights here are the shots in the trailer that nail this home; a shrine gate against the night sky, our two leads prancing through a dreamlike reflection of the Milky Way itself. You can check out the dizzyingly romantic trailer for yourself below.
Kizuna no Allele
Every year, there are a few anime that I treat less on the terms they probably want to be taken on and more as….mysteries to be solved, perhaps? Sometimes it just isn’t totally clear what a show is trying to do. Kizuna no Allele is one of those.
At first glance, Allele seems like a fairly standard idol anime with a virtual twist, with a color-coded cast of candy-haired girls who want to put on their first concert and become big stars and so on. What makes Allele odd are its ties to real-world VTuber Kizuna Ai, whose level of involvement in the project is fairly unclear at this point and who haunts the trailer (which you can check out below. Are you sick of me saying that yet?) like a ghost. That, plus some of the more surreal stuff in said trailer (what’s up with that room with the metal box in it?) make this an odd one. Airing in the same season as Oshi no Ko might sap this thing’s chances of getting a real fanbase, at least in the west (even if Oshi no Ko is only an “idol anime” in a fairly broad sense), but I am nonetheless somewhat intrigued by it.
Oh, also, the main girl’s name is Miracle. I’m not clear on if that’s her VTuber name or what, but I just think that’s funny.
Mahou Shojo Magical Destroyers
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; in the grim darkness of the near future, nerd shit is outlawed by an oppressive government, and it’s up to a ragtag band of otaku heroes to save the day. No, I’m not describing Rumble Garanndoll, though I could be. It and Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers here are bedfellows as part of the niche self-aware otaku action-comedy genre. I’m kind of a sucker for these things and I like them more than I probably should, but even with that in mind, Magical Destroyers here is shaping up to be a strong example of the form, even if hiding the fact that you have a male lead until fairly late in the PR cycle does scan as a bit disingenuous.
If there’s a real star here, it’s Red Anarchy, the crimson-haired mahou who, in the trailer, is rocking a black t-shirt with the word “RAGE” written across it in all caps. And yes, that is Ai Fairouz you hear, staking out the exact middle ground between her voices for Power and Cure Summer with laser precision. What a talent.
A Galaxy Next Door
Remember a few entries up where I mentioned all the space imagery in Insomniacs after school? Well, here we have an anime that is bold enough to ask, what if there literally was A Galaxy Next Door?
I’ll be upfront about it, this is another one that I don’t know a ton about, but the premise of a mysterious otherworldly woman turning an everyman lead’s life upside down does appeal to me when it’s done right, and the hints of the literally supernatural going on here sweeten the deal. This looks like it could be low-stakes fun, and in a season this busy, sometimes that’s a nice thing to have.
Skip & Loafer
Three words I will never truly tire of no matter how old I get: coming of age! I don’t know what it is, but there’s a certain brand of summery, glinting story about the ups and downs of youth that just hooks me right in almost every time. I feel like it’s been a while since we had a truly great anime of that sort. Was the last one still O’ Maidens in Your Savage Season? Possibly. It’s too early to call if Skip & Loafer will be great, but it’s shaping up to at least be pretty good, with its powerfully scrunkly lead and J-Rock soundtrack. I’m just very fond of this one, okay? I’m rooting for it like a parent for their kid during a baseball game.
Heavenly Delusion
Here’s a guy I bet most people were betting would never show up on this site again; Masakazu Ishiguro, once and future mangaka of And Yet The Town Moves, and the same for Heavenly Delusion, a series that is, in quite possibly all ways, absolutely nothing like And Yet The Town Moves.
Heavenly Delusion stands as a rare cult favorite manga getting an adaptation that seems like will actually elevate its already-impressive source material. I’ll admit to being only passingly familiar, but something like this—a fairly heady sci-fi seinen—getting an adaptation from Production I.G. of all people should be cause for celebration. I’ll admit that the trailer looks absolutely fantastic, beaming all the spec fic sci-fi specifics directly into your brain without wasting a second on belabored narration, and then cutting to the next while you’re still processing the first scene.
If I seem a little more muted on it than you might expect, given all that, that’d be because Heavenly Delusion is being brought over to the states by Disney+, and I do so hate the Mouse and his increasing investment in the medium I love. Last year, almost no one was able to watch Summertime Render, also a top-shelf adaptation of a cult favorite manga, and one of the year’s strongest anime overall, because Disney+ simply sat on it for months and then released it with no fanfare whatsoever a few months ago. I hope they don’t make the same mistake with Heavenly Delusion, but I have my doubts about whether they’ve learned any real lesson here. Disney seem to be in the anime streaming game more to deny rights to their competitors than they are out of any desire to actually let this stuff be seen by an anglophone audience. If that seems like a paranoiac reading of their actions, I encourage you look into their historical business practices.
Nonetheless, if it’s even possible to do so, I would love to cover the series. Time will tell if that’s doable. Check out the trailer and get combination hyped / irritated that we might not get to watch this for like 9 months with me below.
Yuri is My Job!
Another nefarious yuri! Yuri is My Job! is an interesting one, being a girls’ love series equipped with a pretty novel high premise. The gist is this; our lead gets roped into working at a character cafe` where, basically, the workers act as though they’re in a school setting. The sort one might find in ye olde Class-S stories, back in the day. I won’t spoil any further details, but you can intuit some of the metacommentary that might arise here from the setup alone, and the lead’s charmingly bitchy personality is the lemon in the confectionary that ties things together.
Admittedly, the anime’s soft, jelly candy art style is not the first choice I would’ve gone with to adapt this material (I might’ve advocated going full-on retro shoujo pastiche. Admittedly, that’d be quite effort-intensive), but the trailer makes it look pretty good in motion. To me, my fellow lesbians!
World Dai Star
Rounding things out, we’ve got another idol anime but actually it’s about acting sort of thing. This is another niche subgenre of anime that I’ve become a bit of a mark for over the past couple of years, although it’s definitely possible to do badly. (See CUE! How has that come up twice in this article?)
Will World Dai Star do it well? Honestly, this early on it’s kind of hard to say. I was drawn in by the colorful character designs (the handiwork of Fire Emblem and VTuber character designer Mika Pikazo), but the trailer itself has not given me much to work with other than pondering how I’d navigate the sight of anime girls doing what seems to be a stage version of Aladdin. I suppose we will leave that question for if the time comes.
Thus ends the list! If you haven’t already, go and vote for your favorites (remember you can vote for as many shows as you like) if these candidates. I should note that this season, I’m only running the poll until the end of this weekend. So, I will take the final tally sometime after Sunday ticks over into Monday.
I hope you’re all excited, I’ve missed writing for you guys, and it’s great to be back.
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, Mastodon, Anilist, or Tumblrand 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.
It’s not common, but it happens; an anime that is decidedly fine but not great will unexpectedly just tap into something: a raw vein of resonant or intense emotion, a particularly strong theme, an exceptionally charismatic character will appear, etc. In doing this, the show goes supernova, breaking itself out of whatever little genre-box it’s stuck in and becoming something pretty unique—or at least interesting—in the process. If not permanently, at least for a while. Thus, we have the anime adaptation of The Magical Revolution of The Reincarnated Princess & the Genius Young Lady, a series that has been on Magic Planet Anime before, though not actually in its anime form.
I haven’t covered the series’ anime adaptation until this point because, frankly, until today, I wasn’t terribly impressed with it. I fell off following the manga not long after writing that original Manga Shelf column. And since then, Magical Revolution—MagiRevo, to its friends—has stuck in my mind, certainly, but not been at the forefront of it. Its anime, in particular, I have been a bit down on; just by being an anime, it has the obvious baked-into-the-format disadvantage of simply being of fixed, linear length, meaning that the balancing act between the more lighthearted yuri elements of the series and the more serious, dramatic, and intrigue-driven plot of the series has not always been easy to keep up, given that it’s stripped of the flexibility presented by reading a manga nor novel at one’s own pace. Sometimes, it has felt like watching two anime glued together. But no longer! Over its past few episodes, MagiRevo has largely discarded any pretense of being light and fluffy and has dived headlong into some surprisingly big ideas. Any feeling of trying to split the difference is long in the rearview by now.
To very briefly get the uninitiated up to speed: after what I previously discussed in the Manga Shelf column, MagiRevo starts getting into the story of Anis’ (Sayaka Senbongi) brooding younger brother Algard (Shougo Sakata). It was clear from day one that Algard was up to something, but over the course of, in particular, episodes 8 and 9, the series paints a compelling portrait of a man who is deeply troubled by the feudal realities of the world he lives in, and who takes drastic steps in reaction to them. It’s not long before he’s literally ripping the magical power out of supporting character and basically-a-vampire Lainie (Hina Youmiya), leaving her for dead in the process, and attempting to stone-cold murder his sister to secure his ascension to the throne.
This goes poorly for Prince Al, who at this point has basically ruined his own life as part of this harebrained plot to get Anis out of the picture. The tragic thing is that his motives are quite sympathetic! We see him moved by the plight of the poor, and furious at how his fellow nobles turn up their noses at those commoners. But tragically, he has no real idea of how to turn that righteous indignation into an actual plan to fix things. He conflates these systemic issues with his own complicated jealousy of his sister, and throws any real shot at repairing the underlying problems of the show’s world away for petty score-settling. He is, honestly, pretty lucky to get out of the whole ordeal alive at the end of the arc. Although being exiled to the kingdom’s borderlands ensures he won’t be playing a major role in the plot again any time soon.
Look at how smug he is about it.
That exile creates a new problem, though. With Algard out of the picture, Anis is once again the kingdom’s only valid heir. Her father, Orphanse II, restores her hereditary rights, and Anis is suddenly faced with the prospect of being forced into a queenly role that she neither wants nor is suited for. Perhaps surprisingly, she accepts all of this without much of a fight, resigning herself to her “duty” to the kingdom and to the other nobles, in spite of the fact that it’s not what she wants and that she isn’t the right person for the job anyway.
There’s an element of sad irony here; Anis, a genius in what is basically her world’s version of a STEM field, can’t seem to quite pick apart the systemic issues that her brother could. (We don’t get a great sense of what Anis actually thinks of the whole socioeconomic setup of her kingdom. She clearly likes the commoners as people, but it’s not clear if she really understands what makes them commoners in the first place the same way her brother did.) Algard, of course, wasn’t smart enough to come up with a way to solve those issues. One gets the sense that if they had been working together from the start, things would be much more on-track at this point, but complex interpersonal problems have gotten in the way, and the situation, as it stands at the end of episode 10, is very complicated all around.
This leaves Euphie in quite the spot, too. Episode 10 does a wonderful job of capturing just how powerless Euphie feels to really help Anis in any meaningful way. The succession issue is her problem too, since she loves Anis—she actually explicitly says as much here for the first time, no subtext here—and can’t stand to see her making forced smiles through the whole process of preparing for queenship. (This seems to mostly involve winning over the country’s nobility, which, given what we’ve seen of them, and given that we already know that they hate Anis because she can’t do magic, would seem like profoundly thankless work even if the show didn’t outright say as much.) She eventually goes to curse scholar and only slightly toxic friend of Anis, Tilty (Yuu Sasahara), for advice, and Tilty eventually gets it out of her that it’s not just that Euphie can’t solve Anis’ problems, it’s that Anis’ problems are her own, given how close they are. It’s worth reiterating the feeling of powerlessness captured here; the inadequacy, the friction between Euphie’s own feelings and the outside world. It’s surprisingly intense stuff, especially given that it’s mostly conveyed solely through dialogue, which, it’s worth noting, is wonderfully voice-acted.
Between Euphie’s feelings, Anis’ situation, and Algard’s arc that led up to that situation, the show also does a pretty good job of exploring how the systems that create the upper classes tend to strip even those people they’re intended to privilege of genuine happiness. Every single one of these characters is a landed and titled noble, wealthy in ways that you or I cannot really imagine, and they are all absolutely fucking miserable. It takes a deft hand to make that kind of thing actually sympathetic.
All in all, MagiRevo has become dark, fascinating, and surprisingly heady for something that really seemed like it wasn’t going to ever amount to much more than a power fantasy. (A gay power fantasy, which is a thing worth having, but a power fantasy nonetheless.) Episode 10 leaves us with the introduction of a new character—the mysterious Lumi, whose spirit contracts may offer a way out of Anis’ situation, but there are clearly some strings attached we’re not totally privy to yet—and a lot of unanswered questions. And, hey, on top of all that, there’s also a pretty spectacular bit in episode 9 where the maid Ilia (Ai Kakuma) saves Lainie’s life by making out with her. That’s pretty great too.
Absolutely bitchin’.
There is still a very promising year ahead of us, as far as anime goes, so I don’t know how many people—myself included!—will really remember MagiRevo’s surprisingly strong turn here come December. (Honestly, even if it totally flames out in its final two episodes, having a strong middle section is noteworthy enough, given how many single cour anime manage to have a noticeably weak one.) And fans of the original light novels, or even just those who’ve kept up with the manga, won’t be as shocked, of course, but the raising-of-stakes here is pretty great all around, and it’s taken MagiRevo from a show that’s decidedly okay to one that’s absolutely worth keeping an eye on. In a season this quiet, things like this have a chance to stand out that they might not otherwise get, but even in a stronger season, something like this would be worth taking note of. Mark MagiRevo down for “most improved since its premiere.”
A Note: I have COVID-19 at the moment. I think I’m through the worst of the infection, but that’s why content has been so scarceon the site lately, and it will probably continue to be irregular at best for a while longer. Hoping to be fully recovered by the end of the season so I can get on top of next season’s premieres! But, I don’t want to promise anything. If you’d like to help, now more than ever, I would appreciate donations at the links below.
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, Mastodon, Anilist, or Tumblrand 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.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by @Yousorojisan. Thank you for your support.
“I guess if you have the full power of an anime studio behind you, you can shitpost as hard as you want.”
-Julian M., KeyFrames Forgotten cohost and personal friend.
What is it with short-form idol fiction, man? Last year, I briefly reviewed Idolmaster Spin-Off, which, like the subject of today’s review, is a completely incomprehensible piece of brain-zapping surrealism. Just yesterday I happened to read the deeply fucked up weird sci-fi high concept shock fiction body horror idol novella The Last & First Idol. Given the competition, the Love Live! Sunshine!! Special Movie is only the third or so craziest idol thing I’ve ever mentioned on this site, but it’s still pretty goddamn weird in a way that’s only really explicable by its origin as an April Fools’ prank.
What little premise there is goes like this; our sort-of protagonist Riko (Rikako Aida) falls asleep, and there, she dreams of herself and the rest of Love Live! Sunshine!! group Aquors as cute little puppets. They mime through a sequence of fairytales, beginning with The Three Little Pigs, the one among these that will be most recognizable to Anglophone audiences. The plot, such as it is, progresses in an economical but chaotic fashion. But of course, the actual narrative (itself fairly scant) is not the point here, this whole ordeal has more in common with [adult swim] shorts than it does anything else related to the Love Live! franchise, which is why we get things like a recurring antagonist in the form of a coelacanth puppet.
Things like this are, essentially, novelties. As such, it’s hard to grade them on a scale as is usually expected when writing some sort of review. I can tell you that the visuals are charmingly lo-fi even if the puppetry itself is rather amateurish, but that doesn’t really tell you much about the Special Movie itself, does it? Instead, I’d argue there are two angles to approach this short from.
The obvious tack is the aforementioned, where we view Special Movie as a piece of nonsense comedy. As far as such things go, it’s a solid execution of the idea, and you can find fellows for Special Movie among a particular strain of absurd, mostly half-length anime that have been a recurring fixture in TV anime for the better part of two decades (if you ever want to truly question your life I highly recommend the cranium-destroyingly insane Ai Mai Mi). It’s pretty fun in its own way, so full marks there.
The second and arguably more interesting angle, however, is to view this not as a primarily comedic endeavor but as one that performs a crucial function for an idol group. It conveys the personalities of its involved members extremely well; enough so that, despite not having seen the original Love Live! Sunshine!! (it wasn’t part of this commission, and as is often the case, I was assured I did not need to see it to understand this), I immediately clocked the personalities of all of this short’s major players. Granted, idol anime characters tend to be written in archetype, but this kind of thing, where characters get one or at most two short scenes to establish their personality before the plot moves on, are harder to pull off than one might think. With almost no prior knowledge of this particular part of the Love Live franchise, I nonetheless gleaned right away that Riko is the self-conscious straightman of the group, that Chika (Anju Inami) is the lovable goofball protagonist, and so on, and so forth. If we pretend for a moment that the Love Live characters are real people—and there is little reason not to when engaging in this sort of thought exercise—the short makes a lot of sense as an act of brand extension. You, if you’re reading this, presumably love these characters already. Why not watch them do something stupid for 15 minutes? What do you have to lose?
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, Mastodon, Anilist, or Tumblrand 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.
Revisiting Darling in the FranXX 5 Years Later is a podcast mini-series where I and Julian M. of THEM Anime Reviews discuss the rise and fall of the infamous TRIGGER/CloverWorks mecha series.
Due to the nature of this series, some of the material discussed is Not Safe For Work. Listen with discretion.
In the third part of our podcast mini-series, we cover Darling in the FranXX‘s strongest run of episodes yet. Hold on to that feeling, because it’s all downhill from here.
Listen below on Youtube.
Note: Due to persistent issues with Anchor, we are no longer offering an upload of the pure audio feed on their service, as of the time of this writing.
You can follow Jane on Twitterhereand Julian on Twitter here.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Josh. Thank you for your support.
This one’s tough, folks.
Surveying Patlabor: The Movie, now that I’ve finished it—and doing so in isolation, watching the slightly older Patlabor OVAs was not part of this commission, and I’m assured that they’re not necessarily to properly appreciate this film—feels like taking in a kingdom divided. On the one hand; I really do get why people love this movie. It is absolutely gorgeous, and when a certain kind of anime fan talks about the unimpeachable visual panache of 80s anime, how nothing looks “like that” anymore, it is stuff like this that they’re referring to. Watercolor-and-smoke sunsets, gleaming white structures that look like bleached Rubik’s cubes, piles of twisted metal and gunsmoke. Tokyo itself a dreamlike industrial purgatory. It feels so real you can practically smell the asphalt of the roads.
On the other hand…well, the property is called Mobile Police Patlabor. There is a bit of an elephant in this particular room, isn’t there? I put this one into what’s now a small pile of classic anime movies next to Paprika and the like. I love the visuals, I wish the thematics were better. There is no polite way to say this; this film is pretty brazen police apologia. I will avoid the question of whether it qualifies for the neologism “copaganda”, as that term greatly postdates the film and some would argue it’s a uniquely American phenomenon. But there is no getting around that Patlabor: The Movie follows a sci-fi twist on a fairly conventional “rogue hero cop (or in this case, a few of them) busts open a coverup” plot. It is a genuinely interesting and even enjoyable take on that format, and I would not accuse it of completely uncritical lionization, but we need to call this what it is. We are dealing with a piece of media about cops, and future or no, and that comes with some baggage.
But, let’s set that aside for now. It is fair to argue that not every piece of media ever made is obliged to be didactic, so let’s at least attempt to take Patlabor on its own terms.
The plot is thus; it is the then-future, now an alternate present, and mecha called Labors permeate everyday life. They are used as tools of the workforce, the military, and of course, illegally by the criminal element. It follows logically—at least, given a society broadly similar to our own—that they are, then, employed by law enforcement as well. Excepting a mysterious, alluring hallucination that forms the pre-credits act of the film where a man leaps off of an iron girder into the sea, we open on a land reclamation plot. Tokyo Bay itself is being drained away and dotted with artificial islands. (Shockingly, stopping whoever’s responsible from draining Tokyo Bay is not the plot of the movie.) The largest of these, a facility called the Ark, is the aforementioned bleached Rubik’s cube, a latticework of metal and computerstuff that maintains, repairs, and upgrades Labors. It is also home to a branch of the Tokyo Police Department, who serve as our protagonists. Over the film’s opening act it becomes clear that someone has slipped something sinister into a recent operating system upgrade for the Labors—everybody’s, not just the Tokyo PD’s—and it becomes the job of these cops (SV2, as the division is called), mostly but not exclusively our main protagonist Asuma Shinohara (Toshio Furukawa), to figure out what, precisely, is going on, and how to stop it.
As a combination near-future story of computer technology gone awry / police procedural, Patlabor: The Movie is pretty damn compelling. Asuma doesn’t have to carry the entire thing himself, as he’s backed up by a phalanx of strong supporting characters, my favorite of whom is the division captain Kiichi Gotou (Ryuusuke Oobayashi), who gets invested enough in the investigation that he threatens to lose himself in it. (One gets the sense that he appreciates the challenge. The disappointment is nearly audible in his voice when it turns out that Hoba E’ichi, the mastermind behind the entire plot, is already dead.)
The actual plotting is solid throughout as well. Hoba is a mysterious villain, largely absent from the actual narrative who nonetheless provides a compelling and sinister foil for our protagonists. Even earlier on, before the Hoba narrative entirely forms, there are interesting moments and setpieces, and the film never drags by any means. There are a number of large and small details throughout which provide a bit of extra gristle to chew on, as well. For example: the man in charge of Labor repairs aboard the Ark is a well-meaning but compromised sort who began his career as a truck repairman for the occupying Allied forces in the wake of WWII. We should also mention the detectives who hunt Hoba throughout the film, often engaging dialogue that stacks up into a dense membrane of allusions and concepts, including heaps of Biblical allusion, as these portions of Patlabor provide an almost dreamlike thread that weaves some of the otherwise disparate parts of the film together.
By the film’s climactic act, where Asuma and co. have heroically figured out the exact mechanism for Hoba’s nefarious system upgrade scheme, we move into a full-on assault for the action-packed finale. SV2 defeat the Labors, which go autonomously rogue as part of Hoba’s plans, and the already-dead programmer’s evil plot is foiled. It’s entertaining stuff.
Enough so that I feel like a bit of a killjoy that I can’t get over the fact that this thing is about cops heroically triumphing against all odds in the face of a coverup, plus general incompetence from other civil agencies.
In fact, Patlabor seems to say that cops don’t have enough leeway. In spite of an early scene where pigheaded bumbler Isao Oota (Michihiro Ikemizu) causes a ton of collateral damage by recklessly shooting off a freeze ray, there’s really not much in the way of even token criticism of the methods here, implicit or explicit. (And, it should be said, the fact that here-minor character Kanuka Clancy [You Inoue] is on loan from the NYPD feels weirdly prescient.) I have heard Patlabor previously described as a satire, and maybe that is true for the TV series or some other incarnation of the franchise, but it’s certainly not the case here. SV2 are presented in a fairly straightforward manner as, perhaps, flawed human beings, but still ones with the public’s best interests at heart.
Now, one might argue that the film really has no obligation to examine problems in policing. Maybe that is, in some abstract sense, true, and I cannot claim to have the full social context surrounding the film’s original release in late-80s Japan. But I do know that today, in 2023, it mostly just leaves me mildly disappointed. Even at the original time and place, it is difficult to imagine a different way to read what Patlabor puts down here. Maybe that is a failure of imagination on my part, but sitting here several days after I’ve finished the film and make some final touches on this review, I can’t come up with a more charitable read on the film, sans maybe as a goldmine for some truly haunting screencaps.
So don’t get me wrong, the Patlabor movie is not a bad film by any means, especially when taken as a film. But its thematic core leaves a lot to be desired, and while its craftsmanship and technical artistic value are undeniable, sometimes one does expect a little more than that.
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