Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
“It’s because you want to make someone happy that you can keep going, even when it’s hard.”
Gojo has a problem. Well, it’s more like he has several problems. Near the start of “Are These Your Girlfriend’s?”, My Dress-Up Darling‘s fourth episode, Gojo’s grandfather takes a nasty fall. It’s not bad enough that he needs to spend weeks recovering in the hospital, but his adult children temporarily take him in to care for him while he heals up. This puts Gojo, already short on time to finish Marin’s costume, in a bind. Oh, and midterms are coming up. Someone visiting from France wants to visit his and his grandfather’s doll shop on super short notice. It’s all just quite a lot.
This is probably the most relatable Gojo has ever been, at least to me. Yeah buddy, I let stresses pile up on top of each other until I feel like I’m physically going to sink into the floor, too. I feel you.
These things stack on top of each other until Gojo is little more than a ball of anxiety. He works himself to the bone on all of this; the outfit, taking care of his grandfather, the exams, etc. Frankly he overworks himself, to the point where I wondered if Dress-Up Darling‘s sharp turn into the dramatic signaled some sort of permanent tonal shift for the anime.
It doesn’t, which is perhaps for the best. Gojo is able to pull through by remembering some words of wisdom his grandfather once offered about why he’s able to paint Hina Dolls every day. By the episode’s final act, Marin’s outfit is done.
The real irony is that he needn’t have rushed. The entire “deadline” has stemmed from a misunderstanding; Marin simply mentioned a cosplay event that was happening, not one she intended to participate in. But, despite the fact that the two swap phone numbers in this episode, Gojo never thinks to ask for clarity. He works himself ragged for, basically, no reason!
That might sound like a criticism of the episode, but it isn’t. It’s very easy to get wrapped up in things you think you have to do in this manner, especially for a teenager whose brain is probably boiling over with feelings he doesn’t fully understand at this point. So yes, when he collapses on his floor crying that he’s a failure because he can’t seem to get all this shit done on time? That’s the dash of realism something like My Dress-Up Darling needs to feel like it has real emotional stakes. The poor guy is pitiable, here. He’s arguably acting pretty stupidly, too, but he never feels like he’s doing something incomprehensible. It makes a perfect, sad sort of sense.
All of this, to Gojo, becomes worth it. Because in spite of the misunderstanding, Marin is genuinely very happy to have the outfit finished, and her happiness informs his. And hey, for what it’s worth, she does look pretty good in it.
-Listens to The Cure Once- Two weeks later:
This is probably the most genuine connection they’ve yet had in the series, and I think this is the first time I’ve really bought them as having romantic chemistry as opposed to a simple friendship based on some shared interests. She’s angry at herself for the misunderstanding, a little mad at him for overworking himself so hard, but also truly, genuinely happy that she has this wonderful gift that Gojo’s made for her, now. There’s a real potpourri of emotion going on in just this single sequence and it’s to both the original mangaka’s credit (Shinichi Fukuda) and to Hina Sukuda’s performance that it all comes across so well.
All this is also the first time that My Dress-Up Darling‘s slowball pace has entirely made sense. Giving this whole episode its own…well, episode, makes it feel complete in a way it probably wouldn’t if it were splitting time with, say, another 15 minutes full of Marin in a bikini.
In the end, the payoff is Marin dressed in her Shizuku outfit and the two of them–a near-ecstatic Marin and a deeply exhausted but still enthused Gojo–geeking out about how great she looks. That’s a fun end to what is certainly Dress-Up Darling‘s most involved, and frankly, best episode so far. I would like the series to eventually dive into the roots of Gojo’s workaholic and perfectionist tendencies. Whether or not it ever will is another question, but there’s only one way to find out.
Until next week, anime fans.
Bonus Nowa Screencap:
Egregious Horny Score: This one’s a solid 1/5. It’s not like there’s no fanservice here, but it’s pretty tame compared to other episodes and it’s entirely restricted to the last couple minutes when the big emotional beats are firmly over.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
If you’re looking for the ingredients of a classic adventure story, they are there in Sabikui Bisco. That’s more evident in the third and most recent episode (“Tag Team”) than it has been. This is probably the weakest episode of the series so far, but it’s good enough that the very term “weakest” feels a bit too harsh. There’s a lot of promise, here, but also some notable room for improvement.
So Bisco fails to take the hat trick. Still, it’s a solid episode. We’re introduced to a couple key points here. The main one is that the mushrooms that we’ve so far been led to believe spread the Rusting sickness actually feed off of it and can thus cure it. This has interesting implications for Bisco’s wider world. Almost everyone thinks the mushrooms cause Rust. The episode opens with a loudspeaker announcement warning the residents of Imihama City to avoid inhaling spores, and elsewhere another character calls the fact that mushrooms create Rust “common sense.”
This is framed as a simple misunderstanding; people assume that mushrooms cause Rust because they grow where it’s found. But I would not be surprised if it later turned out that someone was lying about something for some ulterior motive. It would slot in well with Sabikui Bisco‘s more ambitious storytelling aims.
About the less ambitious ones, though. As foreshadowed at the end of last week’s episode, Bisco and Pawoo* get into it here, and while their actual fight is pretty good, this is where some cracks start showing.
Sabikui Bisco is, at the end of the day, a shonen series. And while it’s not universal, that does tend to imply certain things. One of them is what I will call a, I don’t know, casual sexism tax? Bisco remarks on Pawoo’s looks some three or four times during their fight, and while his internal monologue and later actions imply he doesn’t “really” believe any of the things he says, they’re still kind of shitty. This is the guy we’re supposed to be rooting for, mind you, so comments like this coming out of his mouth unchallenged reflects pretty poorly on the series at large.
Worse, at the end of the fight (which Pawoo only loses because Bisco snipes her with an arrow tipped with some kind of knock-out poison), she’s left behind in the City Watch’s care while Bisco and Milo set off on their journey. (Which, we’ll get back to that momentarily.) Effectively, this writes her out of the series for the time being. I don’t really want to add Sabikui Bisco to the long, long list of otherwise solid action anime that treat their female characters like trash, but this is not a terrific start. A kinda-goofy “sexy” outfit is one thing. This is quite another.
At the very least, the fight itself is pretty good. One can’t say that Bisco wins too easily. Pawoo is the uber-serious shoot-first-ask-questions-later type, so she doesn’t buy any of Bisco’s talk about mushrooms healing the Rust. She does nearly beat the hell out of him, though, which is pretty great. There’s also some truly weird set dressing going on here. Why does their fight at one point pivot to being on top of a huge bowling pin inexplicably in the middle of Imihama? Who knows! It definitely rules, though. Moreso when Pawoo shatters the thing and there’s an audible “bowling strike” sound effect.
You might say Pawoo has no time for games.
There’s also some brief but fun color commentary from recurring secondary character Chiroru Oochagama. (Miyu Tomita, probably best known as the lead character, Riko, in Made in Abyss.) Her cowardly put-upon minion vibe makes her great for this sort of thing, and I hope she never stops doing it.
Intercut with all of this is Milo healing up Bisco’s mentor, Jabi. He eventually recovers enough that, when the time comes for Milo and Bisco to split at episode’s end, it’s he who stays behind to provide a distraction. (At least Pawoo will have some company in Good Characters Temporarily Absent From The Show Jail.)
As for where Bisco and Milo are actually going, it turns out that the “Rust-Eater” alluded to in the series’ alternate English title is, in fact, a mushroom. One that can heal just about anything, including Jabi’s (and presumably Pawoo’s) particularly bad Rust infection, which will eventually claim both of their lives if it’s not treated.
It’s worth noting in the latter case that Milo does give her some of the same injection that fixed up Jabi, but that the mushroom is still being sought out at all implies that this is only a temporary solution. Also, there is a bit where Milo gives a very long, heartfelt, tearful goodbye to his unconscious sister while saccharine music swells. The entire time, Bisco impatiently taps his foot in the background and then tells him off when he’s done. It’s pretty funny.
So, there you have it, Bisco and Milo exiting Imihama and setting out on an epic quest to get a special mushroom. Complete with all the fightbro homoeroticism so common to this sort of anime.
It’s classic stuff, and despite my criticisms of the episode’s handling of Pawoo I did enjoy it overall. (Time will tell if that continues to be the case, but here’s hoping.) There’s a post-credits scene here where Milo and Bisco come across a “war memorial,” a temple made out of and absolutely covered in ancient, rusting war machines. It promptly comes to life when they attempt to stop there for the evening. Thus, cliffhangers beget cliffhangers, and the adventure continues.
Until next week, anime fans.
*Official sources seem to disagree on whether her name should be romanized as Pawoo or just Paw. Because of how these things work, neither is exactly wrong, and they’re pronounced the same way. But the official subtitles use “Pawoo”, so it’s what I’ll be using from here on out.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Hello anime fans! What a week it’s been over here! Commissions, seasonals getting better or worse, schedule shakeups, and more. There’s a lot to talk about, so I won’t waste any more of your time. Let’s dive in.
Seasonal Anime
CUE!
Maybe it’s a good thing that I stopped doing weeklies on this show? This episode, only CUE!‘s third, really meanders. That’s not inherently a problem given that the show is slated for two cours, but it does raise some possible problems going forward.
To put it very briefly; there is now an idol anime happening within CUE! Almost literally, even. We’re formally introduced to another “unit” of four characters this episode. We met one of them–Yuki Tendou–last week, but the other three have basically been background characters before now. These are Airi Eniwa (Mayu Iizuka, in her first major role), Yuzuha Kujo, (Manatsu Murakami, also voicing the lead in the deeply creepy Akebi’s School Uniform this season) and Chisa Akagawa (Satsuki Miyahara, another member of DIALOGUE+).
Yuzuha, Airi, Chisa, and Yuki, from left to right.
The four of them volunteer for a project AiRBLUE is considering picking up; a four-piece idol unit called Project Vogel. Which itself seems to be…honestly it’s not entirely clear? They’re playing characters who have designs and such, we even see said designs, which implies that this is a VTuber thing or is itself an idol anime of some sort? But no one ever actually explicitly says either, it’s just referred to as “a project.” It’s a little confusing.
It may not matter, because on top of everything else, this project is being crowdfunded on what looks like Kickstarter. Someone even explicitly points out that the project has only 52 backers at the moment. Which, to give the show due credit, is pretty funny.
This could all conceivably be pretty interesting, and it might even become so at some point, but there’s a lot of daylight between then and now. Because of the team of four we’re introduced to here, three are just not compelling characters. In contrast with Haruna (still our ostensible lead) and her genuinely endearing everywoman charm, they barely even qualify as caricatures. Only one rises above the level of a complete cardboard cutout.
That’d be Yuki, the only one of the four with some actual spark. She wants to land a role in something as quickly as possible because her dad might be forcing her out of the business to work in the family restaurant, and she’s willing to take a gamble on Vogel Project being something she can do. It’s basic, but that’s a real character motivation, which is more than the other three get. Also, she has an exclamatory catchphrase that gets subtitled as “D’oh!” for some reason, which is fun.
Airi has perhaps a dozen lines this episode and more than half of them have to be variants on “I’m sorry.” There’s also a bizarre dialogue gimmick where she says vaguely rude things and then justifies them as being things her horoscope told her to do? She’s honestly pretty annoying! And Mayu Iizuka’s all-nose vocal performance does not help. Yuzuha “wants to make precious memories.” Chisa is “the serious one.” We don’t get to learn much about those two beyond that. Their introductory scene drags like hell and it’s easily the worst part of the show so far, across all three of its episodes.
These are issues that a series could fix with time and development, but it’s a bad first impression to make for what is presumably going to end up becoming a major part of the cast. Why do an introdump like this if you’re going to make the characters seem so dull? It’s worth remembering here that CUE! exists partly to promote a mobile game. No one is going to roll the gacha for characters this boring. (The show’s character designs tending toward the pedestrian certainly doesn’t help either. Though within the context of CUE! as fiction, it does make the designs of the various shows within the show pop more.)
In more interesting territory, Maika and some of the other girls learn that they’ve landed a role in Bloom Ball. I’m pleasantly surprised that the zany sports anime-within-an-anime seems like it’s going to continue to be relevant. Haruna doesn’t get a major part, although she’s penned in to attend the first recording session anyway. Because you see, she’s got a role as “Student A.” It’s something?
Of all of CUE!‘s characters, I actually probably like Haruna the most. It’s a little disappointing to see her performance from last episode lead to a result that is, basically, a joke at her expense. I do still intend to keep up with CUE, but I can’t pretend that this episode isn’t fairly disappointing. Time will tell if this goes down as merely a rough patch or the point where the series just falls apart.
Tokyo 24th Ward
Normally I don’t cover anime in back-to-back Frontline Reports. (That’s what the dedicated weekly columns are for.) Nonetheless, I felt like I should take some time to appreciate the fact that Tokyo 24th Ward has appreciably improved from its snoozefest of a second episode last week to its third this week. Hopefully signing that the first episode will be more indicative of the show’s overall direction than the second.
Very briefly; the Gourmet Fest alluded to last week happens here, and Kaba, the event’s organizer, foils the scheme by a rival restaurant to win by cheating. All of this is fairly humdrum, though thankfully the production picks back up here (the pop-ins are back! Hooray!)
I would’ve written the episode off as just okay were it not for the fact that we get another one of those bonkers ghost phone calls here. The second half of the episode, which this kicks off, seems more indicative of where Tokyo 24th wants to go from here.
This time the disaster is a sudden tornado (!) striking the festival. Once again, it’s presented as a sideways variant on the trolley problem; choose to save Group X or Group Y, but not both. This time, though, our heroes don’t coordinate before moving out to enact their grand shonen-y rescue plans. As a result, things go badly, and for the second time, “RGB” fail to save everyone. One of those who loses his life is Kaba himself, marking the genuinely shocking removal of a character who had up to this point been a fairly major supporting player.
A willingness to buck expectations now, while we’re still rather early in Tokyo 24th‘s run, is a good sign. I legitimately felt for Kaba’s daughter, Kozue, previously traumatized by the fire catastrophe we learned about back in episode one. Here, on her first day out of the house in who knows how long, she’s caught in a tornado and loses her father. That’s just awful, and all the melodramatic touches in the world–Kozue sheds a tear as her father’s ripped away by the tornado, which mixes with one of his own!–can’t entirely blunt that sense of loss.
But if anyone had the absurd worry that Tokyo 24th was going to get too serious, the episode ends with the reveal that somehow, this fucking guy was behind the tornado.
And just like that, our little superhero team suddenly has a proper nemesis.
I don’t know where Tokyo 24th goes from here, but that’s an exciting feeling. I am sure it will appear in this column again.
Elsewhere on MPA
It’s been a productive week here on the site.
(Review) Pompo: The Cinéphile– One of two commissions I finished this week. I don’t love Pompo but it’s a pretty solid movie and it probably deserves more love than it’s gotten from western audiences. Check it out sometime, won’t you?
(Review) SCHOOL-LIVE! / Gakkou Gurashi – I think I’ve basically exhausted all I have to say about mid-’10s cult classic Gakkou Gurashi. I really loved this series despite a few problems and it’s probably the most an anime has made me cry since, what, A Place Further Than The Universe, maybe? There’s a reason this one has stuck around.
And that’s about all for this week. I’ll see you tomorrow for more Sabikui Bisco, 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 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Key to understanding My Dress-Up Darling is that Gojo and Marin, our leads, are both incredibly awkward people. “Then Why Don’t We?” opens with Gojo having a, shall we say, rather involved dream starring his new bestie. Understandably he feels nervous and even a bit guilty about it. Less understandably, he tries to avoid Marin for most of the day because of it.
Dress-Up Darling has this issue wherein the leads’ awkwardness, especially Gojo’s, can be either endearing or incredibly annoying, and the line between the two is dental floss-thin. This entire segment is thankfully pretty brief, but for the first third or so of the episode, which it takes up, I wanted to strangle Gojo. I don’t believe in any silly gender essentialist nonsense like the man “having a responsibility” to confess or whatever, but he makes someone he already considers a friend feel pretty bad because of his own insecurity, and that just sucks.
On the plus side, hey, the girl with the two-tone hair puts in another appearance! She introduces herself as Nowa (Larissa Tago Takeda, who has a string of support roles like this under her belt and is also an illustrator, among other things.) and she and Marin’s other gal friends do little to help the situation.
She also refers to lollipops as “suckers,” but that’s fine. Character flaws are important.
Things are better elsewhere in the episode, and the whole misunderstanding (if you can even call it that) resolves itself pretty quickly.
Much of “Then Why Don’t We?” is shopping montage, which sounds dull on paper but is spiced up here by Gojo and Marin’s common ground; their love of fashion. It can be easy to forget from moment to moment that Gojo is a near-prodigal designer, and Marin is duly impressed by the incredibly elaborate design drawing he’s made for her cosplay outfit. (The fact that the subtitlers went through the trouble of actually translating his notes deserves praise here. They clearly care a lot about the series.)
The two hit up a fabric shop and a wig store, and Gojo’s eye for detail helps bring the outfit to life, much to Marin’s delight. The joy is infectious, and My Dress-Up Darling remains at its best when it’s geeking out over cosplay minutiae.
This is the face of a woman about to drop $200 on a wig.
They also make their way to a lingerie store, which results in predictable Gojo awkwardness. Less predictable is how they discuss the H-game character this outfit they’re making is based on. No one around them, of course, has the context for understanding the conversation, so people…get the wrong idea. It’s pretty amusing.
Later, Marin geeks out even more about cosplay stuff; flipping through her phone and showing off photos of cosplayers she likes. She gives us this bit of truth and wisdom.
Do not ever forget that Marin is a bi icon.
Other than a brief flashback where Gojo explains that he has difficulty calling these pics of cosplayers truly beautiful–his standard for such things is his dolls, of course–there isn’t much more to the episode. Gojo finds out he has two weeks to finish this outfit which sure doesn’t seem like a lot of time to me, but what would I know?
“Then Why Don’t We?” is a very low-key episode of an already pretty low-key show. The production remains compelling; Marin gets a lot of great expressions here, and the music is frankly so bouncy that it skips into a Hallmark-y light music register that doesn’t quite match the episode’s tone. (It’s fun, regardless.) All told, this is a decidedly minor beat in the story of My Dress-Up Darling.
Even that in mind, it’s a worthwhile one, mostly for the mutual geeking out that Marin and Gojo get, which remains their strongest point of chemistry. I will say though, hopefully we actually get to see Marin’s finished cosplay next week. In terms of pace, there’s a fine distinction between easygoing and languid.
And as a bonus, the Egregious Horny Score, back by inexplicable popular demand: 2/5
Until next week, 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 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 contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Rumi. Thank you for your support.
“Yuki’s pretty amazing. With her around, we can always pick ourselves back up.
No matter what.”
The real giveaway is in the soundtrack. The canned, cheery music so common to the school life comedy genre drops out and is replaced by dead silence and howling wind. That’s the first real clue that something isn’t as it seems. Others arrive in carefully orchestrated, almost subliminal drips. A shot of a seemingly normal school hallway with the windows broken, students who seem rooted to their classrooms, and a vague sense of unease that surrounds the actions of every character but one.
By now, the twist at the end of the first episode of SCHOOL-LIVE! (Gakkou Gurashi domestically, and throughout the rest of this piece) is so well known that its reputation precedes the series itself. This is no comedy. A zombie apocalypse is upon the state-of-the-art school building that our four main characters, out of necessity, make their home. Possibly the whole world, too. That first episode is a masterful little clockwork of suspense building, but if the show’s entire legacy were staked on shock value alone, it would not survive in the popular conscience nearly seven years after it premiered. 33 other TV anime served as Gakkou Gurashi‘s co-seasonals in the summer of 2015. Of those, about a dozen persist in the collective cultural imagination. A work’s quality cannot be judged alone on whether or not people remember it, but it’s truly rare for something without some kind of spark to it to persist for that long. Gakkou Gurashi tapped into something. But what?
My pet theory is that as early as its second episode, Gakkou Gurashi draws on a deep, yawning sadness that resonates with those young enough to relate directly to the show’s cast on up. The melancholy, the anxiety, and the outright dread that come with knowing that who you are now is not who you always will be is deeply rooted in modern culture. If not a universal fear, it’s at least up there. Apocalypse fiction is an extremely direct expression of that worry, and after Gakkou Gurashi rips the Band-Aid off at the end of its first episode, it keeps hammering that button, and it’s never less than effective. Just last year, overlooked OVA Alice in Deadly School succeeded in doing much the same with some of the same methods.
Gakkou Gurashi pulling that same trick for a good five hours could conceivably become a slog. But it never does, because there is some sincere levity cut with all this tension; lighthearted moments colored by the characters’ friendships-of-necessity, or when the series indulges in traditional school life anime tropes, even sometimes in the panic-giggles induced by some of its dark comedy. But all of that only serves to ratchet the tension back up when things get more serious again. This is a show that leaves you with a gnawing fear in your stomach between episodes. There’s a rawness to it.
None of this would mean much if the show’s characters weren’t compelling. But each of them is. The titular School Life Club are a fantastic cast. We have Yuki (Inori Minase, who, among many other things, later appeared in Girls’ Last Tour as Chito), Kurumi (Ari Ozawa, who last year played Elisha in BACK ARROW), Yuuri (Mao Ichimichi, notable for voicing Pecorine in Princess Connect! Re:Dive this very season), and Miki (Rie Takahashi, who just a year after this series aired would land the role of Megumin in Konosuba), their teacher and club advisor, Sakura, AKA Megu (Ai Kayano. Perhaps you know her as Kirika from Symphogear?), and finally their cute little corgi, Taroumaru. (Emiri Katou, voice of Kyuubey.)
These characters largely defy easy archetype pigeonholing, but I’ll be as snappy as I can. Yuki, the heart and soul of the group, is burying repressed traumatic memories under her happy-go-lucky outer shell and spends much of the series knee-deep in delusion. Kurumi is the tough one; by necessity, not choice, and wields a gardening shovel she uses to fight off zombies when necessary. She also has what looks to my armchair-seated eye like an untreated case of PTSD. When it flares up, colors wash out in real time and her heartbeat is turned way up in the audio. Yuuri is the “club president,” and the older sister sort. She takes care of the planning and tries her best to keep everyone else in line. Beneath that facade, it’s her who cracks the worst when push comes to shove. (No one can bottle all that responsibility alone, Yuuri.)
Miki, rescued from a nearby mall, is the most reclusive of the four and takes some time to adjust to the others’ personalities. Megu tries very hard to be the best teacher to her remaining students she can be. Taroumaru is a good boy, as all dogs are.
The show’s structure is fairly simple for most of its runtime. The School Life Club must attend to some task, either something fairly serious like a supply run or some whim of Yuki’s. They do it, and along the way fun is had while, simultaneously, the knowledge that this can’t last forever looms large. It’s a difficult dichotomy to make work, but Gakkou Gurashi manages it, and it’s the show’s main strength.
One of the traits that separates art that is merely very good from that which is great is, in my mind, applicability. A story’s ability to resonate beyond the context in which it was originally written. In the seven years since Gakkou Gurashi first aired, the global climate crisis has escalated to the point of emergency. To the extent that even talking about it in contexts like this can feel like a cliché. Gakkou Gurashi so expertly plays that single chord of apocalyptic despair that when it strikes a nerve, the resonance is as deep and dark as an abandoned well. The “zombies” (or whatever they are) are a formality; they’re everyone who’s not looking out for us, either by malice or by being beaten down by the weight of it all. Our collective abusers and our fellow victims united into a single shambling mass of consumptive darkness.
This is to say nothing of any number of other global crises to which one could easily apply the zombie apocalypse metaphor. Some of the writing in the series would seem rather on-the-nose if it were penned today.
It’s pure projection, of course. But in hindsight, it certainly can feel like the “zombie fiction” boom that Gakkou Gurashi came about at the end of was prescient; the skeletal hand of the Grim Reaper knocking on our collective door. Going about our daily lives in spite of it all, we can all feel like Yukis in our own way. If she’s delusional, maybe she’s no more so than we are.
Perhaps that’s a bit heady, and one would prefer to look at Gakkou Gurashi as an outgrowth of or reaction to the school life genre. The endless everyday that defines that sort of work turned vile and strangling. Consequently, I sometimes see Gakkou Gurashi spoken about as though it is a singular, weird blip in modern TV anime history. I have seen it referred to as an attack on (or worse, a “deconstruction of”) that genre, and I’ve seen it criticized as being all shock value. (And to avoid seeming like I’m talking strictly about other people, I naively believed some of this myself when the series was new. It is a part of why it’s taken me so long to watch it.)
For my money, none of these things could be further from the truth. Gakkou Gurashi is a comparatively early example of a strain of anime that would come to define some of the very best of the 2010s. “Post”-school life work like A Place Further Than the Universe, O Maidens in Your Savage Season!, and even Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! It is distinguished from these far more grounded stylistic cousins by its apocalyptic setting. But if one views the slice of life genre as an organic, living thing, one can imagine Gakkou Gurashi as a sort of evolutionary defense mechanism. A warning: “Our daily lives are under threat, here are the stakes.” (If you wanted to, you could also probably draw a line backwards connecting it to other fare that combined a high school setting with supernatural elements and a broadly similar tone space. Say, Angel Beats!)
With all this in mind, Gakkou Gurashi is not without light. The School Life Club’s rare excursions outside their school, while dangerous, contain moments of joy and human connection they would never have if they stayed locked up. This is how they meet Miki in a flashback that spans most of episodes four and five. The original School Life Club trio is able to liberate Miki from her comparative isolation. Miki’s own history with her friend / maybe-more Kei–who struck out on her own out of frustration sometime before the events of those episodes–serves to frame all this. Both Miki and Kei eventually choose freedom over isolation, but because they don’t do so together, they lose each other. It’s a complicated tangle of cutting loss and the balm of simple contact, and it’s remarkable how well Gakkou Gurashi can walk that tightrope, and how well it continues to walk it as the series goes on. Nothing is without sacrifice, but at the same time, it tells us, no situation is truly hopeless, either. This is, I would in fact argue, Gakkou Gurashi‘s core thesis.
This is best expressed with Yuki. Yuki is, by any conventional definition, extremely mentally unwell. But while Gakkou Gurashi sometimes seems like it might play this for shock, it never really does aside from arguably that first episode swerve. Everyone who actually gets to know Yuki–including Miki, who is initially extremely offput by her mannerisms–finds her a necessary ball of joy in a world that sorely needs it. Her friends in the club indulge her tendencies where they’re harmless and curb them on the occasion they cause real trouble.
She is never treated as lesser than any of the other characters simply because she has specific needs, and when at the series’ end she becomes more lucid it feels less like some part of her is being erased and more that she has simply grown as a person. She confronts a truth she’s been hiding from; the fact that Megu sacrificed her life to save the School Life Club some time ago, and reconciles with the state of the world in general. A lesser “zombie apocalypse survivors” sort of story would frame her as a burden. But Gakkou Gurashi never even suggests it. The one and only time she ever voices the concern that she might be weighing the others down, she’s immediately corrected by all present. Yuki is a symbol of a hope placed not on some distant Other coming to the rescue, but in each other, a slice of life lead girl slipping that genre’s bounds to become, in her own way, a genuine hero.
In general, the girls’ relationships with each other feel as authentic as any friendship from a “normal” slice of life series. And that’s the thing, despite what it may be easy to assume, Gakkou Gurashi still is a slice of life series. Decent chunks of even very serious episodes are spent on fairly mundane activities. Some whole episodes are devoted to them, such as when the club gets the idea to send out letter balloons in episode seven. Or episode nine, where Gakkou Gurashi manages the impressively absurd feat of squeezing an egregious pool episode into its remaining runtime, complete, at least in the fansub I watched, with a random reference to the then-recent Kill la Kill. (It’s easily the least essential episode of the whole show, but even something that nakedly cliche is a welcome breather between what comes before and after.)
In its final stretch, the girls of the School Life Club are thrust into crisis. Zombies break through the school’s barriers. Kurumi gets bit. It’s bad. If Gakkou Gurashi were the shock schlock people (including my younger self) have mistaken it for at times, it would be very easy for the series to end on a down note to be “shocking.” Instead, we get a miracle. Yuki gets the idea to dismiss the zombie horde via the school PA. Improbably, it works.
The scene falls apart in the retelling, but in the moment, it’s magical. There are losses (poor Taroumaru really looks like he’s going to pull through, but he doesn’t), but the School Life Club carry on. Maybe all of this is helped somewhat by the fact that I binged the entire series in only two sittings. Maybe it is also helped by my new HRT regimen making me even more vulnerable to sappy bullshit than I already was. But I like to think I’d have bawled like a baby regardless. The show is as good at tugging your heartstrings as it is inspiring dread. Not many anime can claim that.
Gakkou Gurashi can get away with that heartstring-pulling because by the time it happens, we’ve already spent some five hours with these characters. We have seen them not just survive but thrive in a world that has well and truly gone to shit.
And that difference, the distinction between simply surviving and truly living, is what that line in the maddeningly catchy OP theme means. “We have dreams like we’re supposed to.” Different dreams, maybe, than the ones we had when we were younger, but dreams, nonetheless. Gakkou Gurashi‘s final shot is the School Life Club, having held for themselves a “graduation ceremony” now that hiding out in the school is no longer tenable, flying down the empty highway in Megu’s old car, seeking to link up with other possible survivors. The city they drive through is in ruins, but there’s barely a hint of melancholy. The future is theirs to seize.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
We’re in new territory for this site.
I am a lot of things as a critic. But I would not say I’m exactly a savvy predictor of an anime’s success or positive acclaim. Sometimes I stick to my guns in spite of public consensus, sometimes I do not. I went over the long and short of this in another postearlier today, but the very short version is this; the previous series I’d picked up as a weekly is just not working out. Instead, you get Sabikui Bisco every week going forward.
I’m going to go ahead and assume that if you’re reading this, you’re fine with that.
This column arrives rather late (and a bit short compared to my usual) as a result of this schedule shakeup, but I do intend to pick up episode 3 on Monday, so we’ll have to really haul ass through episode 2 here. But I’m fine with that. Do you know why? Because Sabikui Bisco is an utterly unhinged box of delights, and writing about it is fun.
If you don’t like my “rapturous praise” mode of writing you can go ahead and skip this column. I have nothing but good things to say about Bisco.
This week’s episode focuses more on the redheaded title character than the feminine Milo, who we got to know last week. We learn how he ended up in the city and that the reason he sought Milo out is because his traveling companion and mentor, an old man named Jabi (Shirou Saitou, who seems to play roles almost exclusively in this vein and has done so since he made his VA debut in 1996. He was also Jake in the Japanese dub of Adventure Time, isn’t that fun?), was injured by an attacking bounty hunter looking to take Bisco in. Now, that’s a fairly normal shonen plot beat. Less normal is the fact that the bounty hunter’s method of attack was “giant snail fighter jet.” Similar weaponization of animal life occurs throughout this episode and, I imagine, will continue to be a motif seen throughout the show.
One could speculate on the possible thematic implications of a world so war-torn that even ordinary fauna have been turned into weapons. But this early on, the sheer cool factor has yet to wear off. We’ll get there, and so will Bisco itself, presumably. Right now, the feel of the ride is what matters most. The episode ends with the promise of an impending duel between Bisco and Paw, who currently thinks (correctly) that Bisco blew up her brother’s hospital and possibly (incorrectly) that he’s killed him. This promises to be one of the most stylish fights of the season, and you’ll have to forgive me if I take this opportunity to again remind everyone that Paw is just an absolutely untouchable character.
I wish she’d look at me like that.🥺
So that’s the Cliff’s Notes for our second episode. I’m glossing over more than I’d like to here because I’m pressed for time. I almost didn’t even get to mention the fun little character aside where the aforementioned plane-owning bounty hunter grovels for her life at the feet of the villainous prefectural governor we met last episode. How he tosses her a pistol and tells her she’s still under contract, and how he offhandedly mentions that Bisco’s attack on the city has ruined his plan to host a totally sweet sci-fi movie marathon.
You know he’s a villain because he watches the Star Wars movies in chronological order.
Nonetheless, I hope I’ve impressed upon you how wonderfully bonkers the world of Bisco is. If you’re reading this, I assume you’re already onboard the mushroom hype train. If not, there’s plenty of time to climb on.
Until episode 3, 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 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 is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Hi folks. As is often the case with these short little update articles, this is more of a PSA than an article per se.
I’ll cut straight to the point: no one but me is watching CUE! I have spent some time going over the metrics and it simply isn’t pulling crowds. Not just here, it doesn’t really seem to be doing well anywhere. It’s a non-entity on reddit, Twitter, etc. The Internet simply does not care about this show.
Which is a shame, because I genuinely like the show. But it now being three weeks into the season I have to ask myself if I like it enough to cover it weekly for two entire cours when almost no one is reading what I write about it. The answer there is a firm “no.” I do what I do out of love, but I must make some sacrifices for practicality. It is just not sensible from any point of view to continue to devote this much of my time to covering CUE!
So here’s what’s going to change, in the briefest terms I can put it.
Weekly Let’s Watches of CUE! will stop.
Consequently, CUE! will become a show I cover occasionally on The Frontline Report.
Sabikui Bisco will be taking its spot as a weekly. I really like it, and it’s getting enough positive buzz that I’m confident my columns on it will be more widely-read than those on CUE!
There will be a short Let’s Watch post–my first for the series–on episode 2 later today. Regular coverage will pick up when the series’ next episode releases on Monday.
Because this will shuffle around my work schedule, The Frontline Report will release on Tuesdays for the remainder of this season, in order to keep all my publishing days in a row. Starting with the upcoming edition of the column, which will now be released on the 25th. (The day that the Frontline Report is released depends on a lot of factors, but one of them is what’s most convenient for me. If I’m publishing something on Sunday and Monday already, then Tuesday is the natural fit.) Update: None of this is true! I misremembered what day My Dress-Up Darling comes out on. They will remain a Sunday feature for the remainder of the season.
I suspect most of you will be neutral on or happy with this change. For anyone who did enjoy my coverage of CUE!, I’m sorry that this has happened. I try to avoid switching things up like this in the middle of a season if I can help it, but, well, see my prior point about practicality. I hope you’ll look forward to its appearances in The Frontline Report, at least.
For the rest of you, I hope you enjoy the Sabikui Bisco coverage as much as I enjoy the series itself. I’ll see you later today with the Let’s Watch column.
This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by The Mugcord Discord Server. Thank you for your support.
Who are movies made for?
The pop media machine is, by all accounts, an absolutely insane thing to spend your life involved with. Across all media, all over the world, the roiling mass that is the entertainment industry stamps out new books, albums, television shows, and, of course, movies. This complex, if working in its most cynical mode, can produce truly horrible works of profound soullessness. At its best, though, it can allow work that is beautiful, brilliant, and life-affirming to reach a mass audience. Pompo: The Cinéphile, the first theatrical release from Studio CLAP, is neither of these things, but it’s closer to the latter than the former. Being a movie about movies, that’s a good thing.
Pompo is a complicated and sometimes frustrating film, not a rare thing for art about art. It clearly has its heart in the right place, but there are a few key issues that prevent it from really rising to the level it clearly aspires to.
But before we examine Pompo in detail to hash out why that’s so, it would perhaps be best to take the measure of our cast. Starting with Pompo herself.
The eponymous Joelle D. “Pompo” Pomponette (Konomi Kohara, probably best known to readers of this blog as either Cure Milky from Star Twinkle Precure or Chika Fujiwara from Kaguya-sama: Love is War!) is not actually the main character of Pompo: The Cinéphile, but she is important. A filmmaking prodigy superproducer, Pompo has, at the time our story begins, funded a string of extremely cheesy but highly profitable B-Movies after being bequeathed a fortune from her grandfather, who is also a (retired) film producer. Pompo is a mercurial little ball of fairy dust, and she’s quite endearing.
Her movies seem pretty great.
She also has an intern / sort-of apprentice, Gene Fini (Hiroya Shimizu, in his first major anime role), who serves as our real main character. Gene, who looks like the concept of sleep deprivation given human form, serves as an embodiment of all of Pompo‘s big ideas about the purpose and nature of human artistic achievement.
Rounding this out is our secondary lead, Natalie Woodward (Rinka Ootani, also in her first major VA role), an aspiring actress who Pompo sees some potential in, and who eventually becomes the subject of a script she writes. She gets probably the least screentime of all the major characters, which is a bit of a shame, because her can-do attitude is charming. Importantly, she’s also taken under the wing of Mystia, a veteran actress (Ai Kakuma, who, among a number of other roles, was Aki-sensei in last year’s Sonny Boy).
The script written for her is quite important. Pompo pens it with Natalie and a retired, world-famous actor, one Martin Braddock (industry legend Akio Ōtsuka) in mind. She doesn’t want to direct this film, though. That falls to Gene.
All of these characters are fun, including Gene, who avoids most of the pitfalls associated with being a slightly dull male lead. He falls backwards into directing a huge movie and initially he is left wondering why, exactly, he’s agreeing to all this. But subtle-unsubtle tricks like his pondering who–if he had to pick one person–he would shoot the move for, and the scene going out of focus except for Pompo in the background, better explain his feelings than he himself can.
But yes, this script of Pompo’s forms the film-within-a-film Meister, about a disaffected, jaded former musician regaining his love for music after he meets a young girl in Switzerland. The shooting of Meister, consequently, is the backbone of Pompo‘s plot. There isn’t much in the way of traditional conflict in this part of the film, as Gene’s struggle to form his own directorial vision takes up the bulk of the screentime. This treats us to engaging details that draw attention to the serendipitous side of the filmmaking process. Say, one of Meister‘s scenes changing mid-shoot because a fog bank rolls in, or the cast collectively coming up with an entire extra scene in order to take advantage of a chance rainstorm.
This is all visually lovely too, and Pompo deserves serious credit for its utterly gorgeous backgrounds, which really capture the serene majesty of the Swiss alps. Or, both earlier and later in the film, the hustle and bustle of Hollywood. (Sorry, “Nyallywood.”)
Indeed, speaking purely from the visual angle, Pompo is downright fantastic. It’s edited like a whirlwind and is just about allergic to regular scene transitions, subbing in unusual ones whenever it can. (It’s particularly fond of a three-part punch-in effect, which frames both the departing and arriving scene in interesting fashion.) Very little of Pompo is content to frame a shot simply. Not when there’s some unusual, stylish angle it can use instead.
There are also some cool scene tricks, my personal favorite being the way it sometimes frames a character reflecting on a conversation as said conversation playing out on a film screen while the character “watches” the memory. A motif of film reels, both literal and symbolic, also runs through movie, giving it an extra bit of visual continuity. Similarly, characters’ eyes literally glow when they’re displaying passion or raw talent.
Despite the film’s own focus on live action material, there is also the feel of a great anime film here, too. The animation is highly expressive, with Pompo herself getting a lot of the best cuts. She will literally bounce into a room, inflate like a balloon when complaining about how movies over 90 minutes are “bloated,” and her Play-Doh ball of a face gives us the movie’s best expressions.
Once we move away from production strengths though, things get more complicated. The characters and visual style are great, and it’s because of the film’s brisk pace none of that wears out its welcome. But we at some point need to discuss what Pompo: The Cinéphile is actually about, and it’s here that things get a little dicey.
You see, Gene’s movie eventually runs into production issues because of Gene himself. He spends weeks editing it but just can’t seem to make it his own. (This, as Pompo itself points out, is why directors rarely edit their own movies.) Eventually, he decides that he needs to shoot an additional scene. Pompo is not happy about this! An additional scene this far after shooting has wrapped is a huge undertaking. She rightly raises the objection that it requires a lot of expense, it requires getting the cast and crew back together, and so on. Gene is undeterred, and Pompo eventually caves, causing the movie to miss an initial premiere. In turn, this causes a number of important financial backers to withdraw their support.
This problem is eventually rectified by the intervention of minor character Alan Gardner (Ryuuichi Kijima, active in the industry since 2007, and for whom playing roles like this seems to be a recurring thing) who convinces the massive bank he works for to finance the movie. It’s a truly ridiculous sequence of events that involves, among other things, giving a financial presentation while secretly livestreaming said presentation, his own efforts to interview Meister‘s entire cast and crew, and also-secretly setting up a Kickstarter for all of this.
It’s ridiculous, and if it involved anything but a bunch of bankers, I’d probably like it a bit more for that very reason. I do still respect the sheer audacity of dropping this into your movie about why movies are important, but it does not fit at all.
When all this financing (complete with a documentary on the making of the film!) is still not enough, Gene ends up in the hospital from overwork, and it’s here where Pompo truly hits a wall. Overwork is an utterly massive problem in the entertainment industry, especially the anime industry. While I have no reason to believe that Studio CLAP is guilty of the same practices as some of its contemporaries simply because it’s an anime studio, the result of this whole development being Gene ripping out his IV and dragging himself back to the editing room with everyone’s only-slightly-reluctant support just scans as a little weird. And maybe more than a little tone-deaf. It’s even weirder when Gene starts ranting about the things he’s sacrificed to make his great film. In a scene that is supposed to be uplifting, it instead feels like the ravings of someone who desperately needs to be pulled away from his work for a while.
This is all even odder when considering Meister. In that film-within-a-film, that very same stepping away is what allows the main character, Dalbert, to regain his own love of music. Indeed, he rediscovers a love of life itself in the mountains of Switzerland when he meets Lily (Natalie’s character). Gene has no comparable experience, because he’s new to the industry, and by his own admission, his life has been rather uneventful.
Gene and Dalbert are not similar characters, despite the film’s heavy-handed attempts to conflate them. It’s a truly strange note for an otherwise good movie to stake its emotional climax on, and it doesn’t do much to convey the film’s intended thesis of art as a universal conduit for human empathy and resonance. Consequently, when the final scene hits and Meister sweeps the “Nyacademy Awards,” it comes across as masturbatory and unearned.
All of this leaves Pompo as, frankly, a mess, in thematic terms. Beginning with some weirdly cynical moralizing earlier in the film about how happy people are less creative and peaking with that fictional Oscar-sweep at its end. It almost makes Pompo seem like the victim of the very same conceptually fuzzy editing-room chop-jobbery that its final act depicts. Maybe it was! It’s hard to know.
Comparing the film with its source material, the still ongoing Pompo: The Cinéphilemanga, raises another possibility. One gets the sense that director Takayuki Hirao may have wanted to tell a more grandiose story than the one that the comparatively modest and more comedic manga presents. If so, this may be a simple case of a director being a poor match for the source material. It is possible to build a gripping story out of the rough struggle to make art that truly expresses oneself. But Pompo is not that story. Trying to force it to be such drags the film’s final act down quite a bit.
Does all this ruin the film? No, because it remains an engaging watch throughout on its production merits and because the characters are fun to keep up with. (Even at its very end, it pulls off the cute trick of itself sticking to Pompo’s 90 minute rule. Not counting credits, the film is exactly 90 minutes long.)
So, Pompo: The Cinéphile remains a perfectly enjoyable flick in spite of its issues. And I’m excited to see what Hirao will do in the future, if this is indicative of a visual style he intends to keep pursuing, especially if he’s given a more fitting story to work with. In general, this is a very promising start for CLAP, marking as it does their big international coming out party.
But all of this faffing about with the film’s message does kneecap Pompo as a coherent statement, firmly marking it as “just” a pretty good movie instead of a truly great one, which is a bit of a shame.
Still, there is a place for pretty good movies. As one, Pompo is certainly worthwhile. Don’t expect to add it to your classics shelf, but it’ll sit with the rest of your Blu-Ray collection just fine.
Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hello guys, gals, and nonbinary pals! I hope you’re all doing well out there. Premiere Season is basically over here at MPA, so I hope you’re enjoying my settling into a more relaxed seasonal groove.
I wanted to make a personal plea here before moving on to the (relatively short) FR writeup proper for this past week. Between the last Frontline Report and now, I have started HRT treatment, which, if you’re not familiar, is a crucial step of the transitioning process for most trans women. Why mention this on my anime blog? Two reasons; for one, I am hoping this treatment will lead to me being happier and healthier (I feel better about myself in general already, but that could be the placebo effect this early on.) For two, the more practical side of this is that I now have a medical bill–the cost of the HRT treatment–to pay every few months. It’s not a ton of money, averaging out to about $60 after the local clinic’s discount for low-income people, but it’s an added financial pressure.
On top of this, I’m hoping to get some other long-standing medical problems treated this calendar year (among them; I need new glasses and need a bad case of hearing loss in my right ear treated.) All of this to say that if you read my blog and can afford even occasional small donations, please please please consider donating to my Ko-Fi or becoming a Patreon patron. (I don’t currently offer any Patron bonuses because I frankly just don’t have enough of a subscription base. If I start to get more subscriptions over there, I will give it some thought.) I also offer review commissions; you can see my policies for review purchases, complete with a pricing chart, here.
I don’t really like to beat the “give me money” drum too hard. The primary reason I write anime criticism is because I enjoy it and find it personally important. But the monetary side of things really is what allows me to continue doing this, so thank you for bearing with me in this regard.
In any case, onto this week’s anime! The actual writing roundup is pretty short here, but I hope you’ll find these entries worthwhile.
Seasonal Anime
Ranking of Kings
As Ousama Ranking enters its second half, war clouds begin to blot out the sky. Recent episodes have made it clear that Miranjo’s machinations intend to drive the entire Kingdom of Bosse into ruin, not merely displace Bojji. We’ve explored everything from the depths of Daida’s own mind in the Twilight Zone-esque episode 11 to a small rogues’ gallery of evildoers in the more recent two episodes, which have kicked off the series’ second cour.
In the most recent episode, with said rogues’ gallery besieging the castle Bojji once called home, Queen Hilde’s retainer Dorshe ends up getting a lot of love. He puts up a hell of a fight, though the episode’s sinister ending makes it ambiguous as to whether or not he’s actually successfully protected his charge.
Equally emphasized here is the sinister and downright bizarre Ouken, the so-called “Sword King,” an effective force of sadistic nature who we know vanishingly little about. Save that Bojji musn’t be allowed to confront him directly, for some reason or another.
Ousama Ranking remains, really, almost too good for its own good. I can think of little better to tell you to do than to watch the series if you aren’t already, and to catch up if you’re a bit behind. It remains a wonderful thing to watch.
Tokyo 24th Ward
If you squint, you can see what Tokyo 24th Ward is trying to do with its second episode. The intent is two-fold; to show how our main group of protagonists came together as the “hero” unit they once were (and how they got the nickname “RGB” in the first place), and more abstractly, to demonstrate how past trauma can intrude on the present. Both ends are served by the episode frequently cutting to flashbacks, often in ways that don’t make it instantly obvious that they even are flashbacks. To Tokyo 24th‘s credit, this does give the episode a slightly hallucinatory quality. In all other respects though, this mostly renders the episode confusing, and serves to disguise the fact that very little is actually happening.
What the episode does have in spades is talking. There is a lot of exposition here; about our characters’ pasts and relationships to each other, about the history of the 24th Ward itself, about why certain characters act the way they do, about the upcoming “Gourmet Festival” in the Ward that may or may not become a major plot point, etc. etc. etc.
This is a classic example of the “show, don’t tell” maxim not being followed, and while there are no hard and fast rules in the arts, this is certainly an example of “tell” being done pretty badly. Add to this the fact that the episode’s production is overall lackluster (what happened to the pop-in technique the show used so liberally last week? It’s totally gone here!) and you have a recipe for an episode that is in all respects disappointing. Even the subtitles seem asleep at the wheel, which is hardly the series’ own fault, but it definitely doesn’t help. Winding, ramble-y phrasings abound, and there are a few straight-up errors too. (Although all this does produce a few funny lines.)
Mari, speaking of that image, also gets a little bit of character development here. Which is nice, even if it is buried in a pretty bad episode overall.
My hope is that this is a rough patch for Tokyo 24th and not the start of a full-on freefall, but I suppose time alone will tell.
Elsewhere on MPA
I have been busy recently! Here are some highlights from the past little while.
Way too many First Impressions articles to reasonably list all of them here.– I didn’t cover quite as much as I did last season, but I still wrote about 7 different broadcast anime and also an ONA, which I think is a pretty good spread. (Plus My Dress-Up Darling, which I didn’t technically write a “First Impressions” article on because I knew I was going to pick it up for weekly coverage, but is included in the list because, you know, reasons.) Some of these I quite liked, some I was mixed on, one I outright hated! Give the list a look if you’re wondering what to pick up this season.
(Review) The Magic of Artiswitch – I watched this fascinating little web series basically on a whim and reviewed it for much the same reason. It ended up becoming the 300th anime in any format I’ve logged on my Anilist profile, which I must say, I couldn’t be happier about. I don’t like calling things “hidden gems,” but I think the term applies here. Give this one a look.
Let’s Watch CUE! Episode 2 – “Their Respective Colors” – First of all; yes, I did change how I format the titles for the Let’s Watch posts. Secondly; is it weird that CUE! might be my favorite thing airing right now? It’s not some grandiose production monster, but it has heart in a way I really like. Oddly, it reminds me of The Idolmaster. Maybe I only think that because of the huge cast? Regardless, it’s an entertaining show, and I already love rooting for Haruna, the protagonist, in her quest to become a great voice actress. I really want more people to pick this up. Consider making room for it in your schedule!
Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 2 – “Wanna Hurry Up, and Do It?”– Woof, that episode title. Pop culture critics like myself have in recent years picked up a habit of calling anything that remotely deals with anything adjacent to sex or sexuality “horny,” using it as a loosely-defined but vaguely positive adjective. I’m hesitant to apply the label to things, so when I say Dress-Up Darling is pretty horny, please know I’m not exaggerating for clicks. That said; I thought this week’s episode was pretty fun even if I can absolutely imagine all the cheesecake (remember that term?) putting someone off. I do agree with the general consensus in hoping the show moves in a direction a bit more narratively-focused soon. I’m not expecting this to turn into Evangelion or anything, but trading in some of the, ahem, “plot” for more actual plot would be nice.
(In spite of all this; Dress-Up Darling is not the horniest anime airing this season. That would be the hormonal anxiety nightmare that is World’s End Harem. I watched the first episode of that and, frankly, had no idea what to make of it. You’ll have to turn elsewhere if you want someone to cover that series I’m afraid.)
And that’ll about do it for this week’s content on the site. I’ll be seeing you all again pretty soon, have a good week, anime fans 🙂
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I’m revealing my age here, but humor me for a moment. Are you, dear readers, familiar with classic party rock track “Centerfold” by The J. Geils Band? (If not, Stereogum’s Tom Breihan, a critic I admire very much, wrote a pretty great article about it as part of his pretty great-in-general column The Number Ones. You can consider this a recommendation.)
That song is a boiling soup of emotion. The song’s narrator finds out his high school crush poses in an adult magazine now and he’s hit by some admixture of guilt and desire. “Centerfold” doesn’t sound guilty, though, it sounds celebratory, from its production to the nagging “nah-nah nah nah nah nahs” in the chorus. Any actual negative feelings in the song are washed away by its presentation. It all sounds like a good time, and because pop media’s presentation informs its message, it is a good time.
I bring this up because, in a very roundabout way, that’s also, in a very broad sense, sort of what I think of My Dress-Up Darling. The situation presented in its second episode, “Wanna Hurry Up, and Do It?”, would be, in a series that were even slightly more connected to the real world, appalling. Marin completes her strong-arming of Gojo into becoming her cosplay outfitter. Along the way, she both rambles at him about eroge games and eventually shows up at his house unannounced to make him take her measurements. (That’s what the episode title is referring to. What did you think it meant?) But the presentation sells it as a good time, at least in a comedy anime sort of way. Dress-Up Darling‘s second episode is almost all comedic, and it leans heavily into the series’ ecchi side. (If I’m giving every episode an Egregiously Horny Score out of 5, we can call this a solid 4.) Which isn’t to say it’s devoid of more substantial character moments, as there are a few, but let’s just say this is an episode where I had to be judicious about what to take a screencap of.
But let’s talk about our actual characters for a moment here, because it’s Marin who launches this whole sequence of events to begin with. One of the things that makes Marin seem like a real character as opposed to a cardboard cut-out is that she’s extremely assertive. Honestly a little too assertive, to the point of obliviousness, which is where a lot of the comedy here comes from. The episode opens immediately after the closing scene of last week’s, and it’s in the very same room where the two have basically just met that Marin goes into a bit more detail about this character she’s trying to cosplay. For one, her name is Shizuku-tan. She’s the gothic type.
At one point Marin refers to the chest area of Shizuka’s outfit as a “boob bag,” which gives My Dress-Up Darling the dubious honor of being the first anime I’ve ever seen use the term in-fiction.
For two, she’s from an erotic dating sim. Called…this.
(The title is immediately drawn attention to, of course.)
Gojo takes all this in with a disbelief that is pretty common among those who have just had their head dunked into the far side of otakudom. (I’m actually kinda with him here, I’ve never really understood the appeal of eroge either. Not out of any moral objection, I just can’t fathom being horny while gaming. They are mutually exclusive activities in my mind.)
Marin also repeatedly calls the series “epic,” which I’d say is only a bad pick because someone her age nowadays would probably say it’s “based” instead.
There’s also a pretty funny style cut where Gojo brings up that stuff like this tends to be 18+ and Marin, we’ll say, selectively declines to hear him.
It sounds–and is–simple, but a huge part of what makes this come across as funny instead of just weird is Gojo’s reactions. Over the course of the episode, they slowly ramp up from “in vague disbelief as to what he’s hearing” to “looks like he’s just survived a war.” I will cop to finding his increasing distress amusing.
That second reaction doesn’t come until the latter half of the episode. While Gojo does agree to help Marin with her outfits, he reasonably proposes that they should wait to do measurements until Monday, since by the time this episode starts it’s already quite late on a Friday evening.
Naturally, Marin shows up unannounced at his house the next day while his grandfather happens to be off running an errand. (She notes that she googled his last name and “doll shop” to find the address. That’s honestly kind of creepy! But hey, comedy anime.)
Sidenote: the fit is insane.
She barges in and shows herself around. This alone makes Gojo nervous, but it is absolutely nothing compared to the fact that–as Marin correctly points out–measurements are generally taken while the measure-ee is undressed. Of course, Marin is very cognizant of the fact that she can’t well strip down to her underwear in the house of a boy she only met a few days ago. That would be nuts!
A bikini though. That’s fine. Obviously.
There is going to be a whole section here where there are very few pictures of Marin and a whole lot of pictures of Gojo’s absolutely devastated facial expressions. You may thank / curse me for my modesty in the comments.
Maybe I’m a simpleton for still finding stuff like this funny over a decade into being an anime fan. I think I actually appreciate naked stupidity like this a bit more than I did when I was actually in the target audience for this series. But can you blame me, here? Look at Gojo, guy’s about to die.
Na na na na na na.
This particular visual dynamic–Marin doing something teasing and sexy and then Gojo reacting like he’s been stabbed in the gut–makes up most of the rest of the episode. It’ll wear thin if this is what the whole rest of the show is going to be like (I want the cosplay dates alluded to in the OP sequence, damn it!), but as a single episode thing? It’s pretty fun.
In spite of his own raging hormones, Gojo does successfully take Marin’s measurements. Marin herself even gets flustered at one point, in an amusing but also genuine and human moment. This episode was fine–if one has a high tolerance for H comedy, that is–but those moments of real connection between our two leads are where I think Dress-Up Darling is at its strongest. I hope we get more of them as the series rolls on.
But if not, hey, the sight of Gojo studying Slippery Girls 2 like he’s prepping for exams so he can get outfit references is pretty goddamn funny.
Godspeed, Gojo.
Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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