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 🙂
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.
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.
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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!
The people behind CUE! likely don’t know–or care–about this, but the show’s very premise is a particular form of critic bait. That’s part of why I liked it so much last week, and that’s why I’m taking a very real risk by committing to covering its entire run week-by-week here. (24 episodes is a lot for this sort of column! Who knows what could happen!) But I have faith in the series, and that “critic bait” nature is some amount of why.
TV Anime is a pulp medium, and pulp media are inherently built on standard character archetypes and story beats. This is not a good or bad thing, it’s just a fact. CUE!, with its story centered around voice actors, highlights those tropes by its very nature. In our second episode, “Their Respective Colors”, the girls of the AiRBLUE Voice Talent Agency tackle their first real audition, putting their full weight into embodying those character archetypes. But what makes CUE! fascinating from a critical point of view is that the AiRBLUE girls, being anime characters themselves, also embody different character archetypes. The entire series, if sufficiently abstracted, can thus be thought of as these archetypes interpreting each other. Just on its own, that’s very interesting.
But of course, it’s also quite a lot of heady material to get into over CUE!, an anime series primarily about cute girls doing their best to voice other cute girls. The audition–which takes up the entirety of this episode–works on a lot of levels. On the one hand it is very much all that I said above, but it’s also just a lot of fun, which is arguably more important. Before I get into anything more specific, I should point out how absurd it is that CUE! is able to inject so much personality into a given episode despite its fairly workaday production. We don’t get nearly as many of the cut-asides where our characters imagine themselves as literally embodying the roles they play here, so the actual voice acting itself is left to pick up a lot of the slack. It manages it. And from my point of view, the second episode, even moreso than the first, proves that this anime has real legs.
So! The audition. Last week I mentioned that Bloom Ball–the show-within-a-show that’s the focus here–looked like a magical girl anime. It is…not that. (Although you maybe could argue it’s a battle girl series.) It’s some sort of hot-blooded sports anime shonen thing that frankly looks way better than most actual shonen anime. (Am I saying that because of its all-female cast? Maybe.)
As mentioned, the actual episode consists almost entirely of auditions. Enough care is taken to make sure that things do feel genuinely tense. AiRBLUE are the last agency auditioning, and in contrast to everyone else, they’re woefully inexperienced. The voice director (an everyman type in a pink polo) is very clearly a bit done with all of this. The author of the original Bloom Ball manga, a woman named Kei, has actually fallen asleep in her chair from consulting on so many auditions.
I have seen so many manga and anime depict mangaka exactly like this–dark-haired women who are visibly not getting enough sleep–that I have come to believe the entire manga industry is sustained by people of that specific description.
Nobody really expects AiRBLUE to make much of themselves here, and several members of the agency, including our protagonist Haruna, (Yurina Uchiyama, part of the idol group DIALOGUE+ in her first major VA role) aren’t actually familiar with the manga. (They’re given some time to read a bit of it and go over some reference sheets to pick a character to audition, but it doesn’t seem like the individual tryouts take very long. My impression is that Haruna, who eventually auditions last, got maybe an hour or two at most?)
The pressure is palpable, and CUE! really makes you feel that tension, here, with nothing more than some closeups and other clever “camera angle” tricks. This is an actual audition, none of these girls were prepared for it, and some of them don’t even know what Bloom Ball really is. It’s an unenviable position.
And yet, in the face of all this, our girls make a good show of it anyway. Most try out for the role of Bloom Ball‘s main character. We see most of these only in passing, with the most attention being given to Yuki Tendou’s (Ayaka Takamura, also a member of DIALOGUE+) take.
Yuki’s read is hyperactive and energetic, but it’s notable that she doesn’t get one of those fancy cut-asides. We also see Haruna’s fast friend Maika (Nene Hieda, whose most recent role I’m familiar with was Miyako in Warlords of Sigrdrifa) give her take on Ball Bloom’s secondary protagonist. A fun nod to her own status as Haruna’s best bud in this series, but not one that necessarily indicates she’s great for the role. Maika’s read is boisterous and hot-blooded, an ill fit for a blue-color-schemed deuteragonist whose role in her home series is clearly “the logical one.” This is yet another example of how CUE! toys around with character tropes, and the interesting mismatch here highlights the differences between Maika and the role she’s chosen to play. Although it’s worth noting that the mangaka seems to find her take on the character interesting, at the very least.
And then we get to Haruna’s tryout. Haruna initially auditions for, again, the lead role. She’s pretty good at it too, only fumbling once when she knocks her script into the microphone (illustrated by a very funny cut-aside where she is Bloom Ball‘s lead…and then falls over with a loud conk sound. It’s very shonen slapstick.)
If her audition ended here this would be something of an anti-climax. So, CUE! employs another clever trick here. Haruna’s performance as her initial choice is solid, but the mangaka hears something else in her read, and asks if she can record lines for a different character. One who–in the very brief time we get to know her–seems even more boisterous and hot-blooded than Bloom Ball‘s lead. (Bloom Ball seems like a very good series. Were it real, I would probably love Kuwai here.)
She then does it again, having Haruna read lines for a third role as well. The other AiRBLUE girls in the casting room are a bit shocked to see this all happen, and it’s even directly called out as rare. (In fact, I was a bit worried it’d be milked for cheap melodrama, but there’s no sign of that so far. AiRBLUE’s girls are professionals!)
This all has the effect of making Haruna seem like a voice acting wunderkind. To be fair, her own VA is pretty damn good (and again, I just love the fact that Haruna is voiced by someone in her own first major VA role. That’s just perfect.) But this would not work nearly as well without the mangaka seizing upon Haruna’s first performance. It’s a trick to convince us that Haruna’s an amazing talent just waiting to be discovered, and it works. That kind of thing is why CUE! is so entertaining, and it’s a general presentational technique I hope the show keeps up as it rolls on.
Haruna and Makai end the episode by hitting a cafe to relax and reflect. Two of the other girls from AiRBLUE, Honoka Tsukii (Yuuna Ogata, who previously played Gloria in the Pokemon: Twilight Wings ONA) and Shiho “just Shiho, please” Kano (Kyouka Moriya, whose sole other role was as Hemo Midori in 2020’s Dropout Idol Fruit Tart), chat them up as the four unwind and discuss a first day’s work well done. It’s a low-key ending to a fairly exciting episode. I look forward to many more like it in the weeks ahead as we get to better know not just Haruna and Makai, but Honoka, Shiho, and the other girls of AiRBLUE as well.
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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.
This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
Over the past decade, an artistic movement has emerged in anime that values perseverance and centers the stories of young women. If this movement has a name–or is even a cogent scene as opposed to a simple undercurrent–I am unaware of it. But one would have to be fairly oblivious to not at least feel it in the air. Artiswitch was not the most prominent example of this lineage to come out last year, but with the benefit of hindsight, it might be one of the best. And it’s certainly among the most inventive. My only regret with this series is that I didn’t cover it when it was new. (I actually didn’t plan to cover it at all, assuming I’d have nothing of note to say about it. Arguably I still don’t, but, hey, these things have a way of sneaking up on you.)
In terms of “literal plot,” there isn’t much to Artiswitch. Our protagonist, Nina (Utano Aoi, in what appears to be her first-ever anime role), is a witch who maintains a mysterious shop somewhere in Harajuku, Tokyo. Customers find their way to the shop, and when they leave, they take with them an item that changes their lives.
This premise is not a unique one, and in particular fans of forever-underrated CLAMP classic xxxHOLIC will find the general idea familiar, but Artiswitch’s format (a series of shorts, only totaling to about 45 minutes in all) prevents it from preoccupying itself with the sort of sprawling story that that series eventually develops. Instead, we get a lot of symbolism, compelling imagery, and sharp direction. Artiswitch is all mood and atmosphere. Which isn’t to say there are no points being made here, but anyone who requires their anime to have an easily decipherable linear Point A–>Point B plot should check out now.
The first two episodes establish the format. A customer (a tomboyish athlete in the first episode, and a shy, follow-the-leader sort of girl in episode 1 and 2 respectively) makes their way to Nina’s shop. They pick up an item, prompting the witch to deliver her catchphrase (“would you like to peer deeper?”), and from there things dissolve into full-on music video territory.
Quite literally, since these segments, which take up the middle third of each episode, are set to songs and feature little to no dialogue. Going into detail about each of these would be tantamount to spoiling the series, but the first episode’s already gorgeous conceit of the tomboy Haruka rediscovering her repressed feminine side by donning fire-red lipstick and dress is where things start. They ramp up exponentially from there, with the remaining episodes serving to twist the formula in various ways.
The most notable deviations here are the final two. But simply explaining what happens would feel like trying to strangle the life out of the series. It’s less a “what” and more a “how.” When Nina meets a maybe-nemesis in the form of a gothic lolita with ambiguous motives and a habit of, ahem, raining on other folks’ parades, things become less straightforward, and it’s around here where I feel like simply recapping the literal events of the series would be doing it a disservice.
Artiswitch clearly has a lot on its mind, and were I forced to come up with a single flaw I thought were present in the series, it might be a lack of clarity. But at the same time, that feels fundamentally misguided.
And it would require ignoring the final episode, where Nina’s wish-granting capabilities are turned back on themselves, and it is she who must dive into her own mind. We see why she entered this magical line of work to begin with, and the sight of her past self comforting her present with the affirmation that she is moving forward and is doing her best, despite her own doubts, is why I decided to write this short review in the first place.
Fundamentally, art resonates with its audience based on shared thoughts, experiences, and feelings. Those things change from person to person, but taking special note of when a series has successfully struck a chord with me is the entire reason I write at all. Leaving Artiswitch un-commented-upon just didn’t feel right. I have to confess, I am in fact worried about doing this series justice while simultaneously trying to avoid pinning it to a corkboard like a dead butterfly.
But I probably shouldn’t be so concerned. It flits and flies free. On a practical level, I am excited to see what director Kazuma Ikeda (who seems to have an extensive background in design, something that really shines through here) does next. But beyond that, this is the sort of thing people will keep discovering as the years roll by, and even now the comments sections below each episode are crowded with testimonials, in a plethora of languages, from those to whom the series already clearly means quite a lot. The shop stands waiting, all one needs to do is step inside.
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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.
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.
A sickness called the Rust. Forbidden mushrooms that offer toxic euphoria. A desert with iron sand and the foggy streets of the sin city beyond it. Those streets crawl with the sick and dying, hucksters, hookers, butchers, and a doctor with a heart of gold. This is Sabikui Bisco, one of the season’s most singular offerings.
Bisco is absolutely suffused with atmosphere, and it’s tempting to spend the entire article talking about that instead of the actual story (which is only in its very early stages anyway.) But we should at least touch on that before we get into what this thing is actually about. Despite a fairly modest production from an animation point of view, the visuals on this thing are beyond engrossing. (The series comes to us from the brand-new studio OZ. This is, as far as I can tell, their first-ever production.) Almost everything in the city itself is lit with a neon undertone that really sells the whole “Las Vegas of post-apoc Japan” vibe. The character designs, similarly, really pop, and there’s a lot to love about them. Even minor characters get to look good.
But yes, about that “post-apoc Japan” bit. Bisco takes place in a world overrun with something called The Rusty Wind. It makes people sick, and eventually kills them. Also factoring in are a group of people who have some sort of supernatural control over those mushrooms I mentioned before, The Mushroomkeepers. I am quite sure that before watching this episode I had never heard the phrase “mushroom terrorist” in my entire life. Having now seen it, I’ve heard it several times. Most people don’t seem to like the Mushroomkeepers, and while it’s too early to draw clean good guy / bad guy lines (if that’s something this series ever wants to do at all), it’s not hard to get why. Most Mushroomkeeper activity seems to consist of causing huge colonies of tree-sized caps to sprout in places, which causes a lot of damage. One of our protagonists, the titular Bisco (that’s the wild-eyed redhead on the cover. Played here by Ryouta Suzuki, probably best known to readers here as Ishigami from Kaguya-sama: Love is War!) is a Mushroomkeeper. Apparently quite an infamous one. We’re made aware of his legend in this utterly brilliant exchange from the episode’s opening minutes.
Bisco himself doesn’t do a ton in this first episode. What he does do is quite impactful and sets the whole plot in motion, but we’ll circle back around to that. Let’s talk about our other protagonist first.
Milo “Panda” Nekoyanagi (Natsuki Hanae, easily best known as the lead, Tanjirou, in Demon Slayer) is a feminine-looking doctor with a heart of gold who appears to quite literally treat his patients out of a brothel. He seems like a genuinely very nice man, as demonstrated by his habit of giving away treatment (both for Rust and a number of other things) for free. He also collects illegal mushrooms, hoping to synthesize a permanent cure for the disease from them. There’s a personal investment here, as his sister Paw, the city’s guard captain (Reina Kondou, who given that she was also Nikaido in the Dorohedoro anime, seems to be building a niche for herself voicing dangerous women in weird science fantasy settings) is also ill with the disease.
Milo also has one other connection we should discuss. That with the prefectural governor, Kurokawa. (Kenjirou Tsuda, an industry veteran most famous as Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! Though I’d be remiss to not also mention his roles as The Giraffe from Revue Starlight and the talking dog Yamabiko from Sonny Boy.) Kurokawa does not seem to be a nice man, and in his first on-screen appearance tries to bully Milo into abandoning his sister so he can offer his services to the prefecture’s rich elite instead.
His attempt at a verbal beatdown is interrupted, though, by Bisco, who for reasons currently unknown to us, lets loose a mushroom colony in the middle of the city. Utter chaos ensues, with Paw dawning her guard uniform to go stop him despite Milo’s pleas. (And if I may, she looks amazing while doing it, too.)
I try to keep obvious thirsting over anime girls to a minimum on this site, but you’ll have to pardon me here, I have a type.
Paw actually knocks Milo out, but, unfazed, the good doctor simply slinks into his laboratory to continue his work. That, of course, is when Bisco inexplicably shows up behind him, and the episode ends there, with our two leads meeting face to face for the first time.
A lot about Sabikui Bisco reminds one of Dorohedoro, but beyond that I struggle for reference points. (And even in that context, Bisco is very much its own thing.) This is absolutely one to keep an eye on, we might be looking at the start of something big. Even if not, it promises to be intriguing.
Grade: A- The Takeaway: If you have the time, give the first episode of this a watch. It’s interesting.
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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.
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.
We’ve got something of a first for this blog on our hands with this one. Almost two years ago, I (very briefly) gave my impressions of the first season of Princess Connect Re:Dive. Now, here in 2022, we’re met with season 2. It both feels like far too much time has passed and almost none at all, but that’s the 2020’s for ya.
Season 1 was an out-of-nowhere hit. Far more than just a promotional tool for a then-languishing mobile game, Priconne had a real sense of lived-in coziness to its slice-of-life escapades. Toward the end of the season, when things took a turn for the somewhat more dramatic, it was able to cash in that goodwill and pull off one of the more surprising turns of 2020, hinting at a greater storyline lurking in the background behind all the warm character dynamics and JRPG fantasy aesthetics without losing sight of those merits. That’s a hard thing to pull off, and even if its second season were to totally tank, Priconne would deserve praise on that first season alone.
Thankfully, things seem to be pointing toward season 2 being just as good, if not better. The opening here is just spectacular, with a wide shot of the city that the Gourmet Guild call home that manages to instill it with a sense of genuine gravitas. Having a bespoke studio (CygamesPictures) certainly seems to have its benefits.
If you’ve forgotten the show’s central character dynamic, this first episode is quick to remind you. The curious and gentle Kokkoro (played by Miku Itou, a fairly prolific actress best known to readers of this blog astakt op. Destiny‘s Titan.) is handed a mysterious map that may or may not lead the way to a “legendary seasoning” called the Drops of the Sea. The bold and rambunctious Princess Pecorine (Mao Ichimichi, also widely traveled but probably best known as Iris from Fire Force.) declares that this is a journey the Gourmet Guild simply must embark on immediately.
The fussy and high-strung Karyl (Rika Tachibana, this seems to be her most well-known role.) objects to the prospect of leaving the warm and cozy guild home to go on what might well be a wild goose chase. She is shouted down by the other two reminding her that the guild motto is to seek all the world’s tasty foods. Our ostensible protagonist Yuuki (Atsushi Abe, the most tenured VA among Priconne’s main four, with roles going all the way back to a main role in 2007’s Shugo Chara!), as is his wont, just kind of rolls with the down-shouting. Outvoted 3-to-1, the Guild thus embark on a quest full of adventure and hijinks.
Incidentally, it’s immediately notable that Yuuki can actually speak full sentences now. I don’t remember him having developed (or rather, regained) that ability during the first season, but that might just be my memory reducing him to an always-blithely-smiling caricature who tosses a thumbs up and a grin at basically every situation. In fairness, he still fits that description here, he’s just marginally wordier now.
But lest anyone think that any part of this might mean that Princess Connect has lost its comedic instincts, rest assured that it very much hasn’t. There’s a fun gag here early on where Yuuki briefly seems to have tamed some of the wild-eyed monster wolves that menace adventurers in the area, only for them to basically shout “sike!” and bite him on the arm.
The show’s sense of wonder is intact too. Much of this episode takes place in a forest that looks like a coral reef, complete with fish that swim in the sky. It’s pretty cool! Even if it turns out to be inhabited by fuzzy, poisonous mouth monsters.
The sheer amount of pure fun even in this first episode is pretty astounding. Along their quest, the Gourmet Guild help the ghost of an old adventurer move on into the next life and fly through the night sky in what looks like an ornithopter made of big leaves, straight into the eye of a storm. All of these would be large, multi-episode arcs for most anime, but Princess Connect is able to squeeze it all in its first episode back without it feeling strained. This is the rare half hour slot anime episode that feels twice its length in a good way. A lot happens.
All this to say, there’s really not anyone else doing fantasy adventure anime the way that Priconne is these days, in spite–or perhaps because of–its comedic bent. Yeah, their quest ends with something of an anticlimax (it turns out that they can’t get Drops of the Sea, normally shed by egg-laying giant sea turtles, because the only such turtle they can find is male. Whoops!) but the show’s whole point is that it’s the journey, not the destination. And if you don’t pick up on that yourself, the aforementioned ghost is more than happy to pontificate about it. It’s maybe the only scene in the entire episode that could use a little tightening up, but on the other hand, hasn’t Priconne earned a little self-indulgence? The time we spend with those we love is what’s truly important, and that’s a wonderful thesis for one of 2022’s most anticipated return shows to open on.
I’ve yet to decide on the second anime I’m going to be covering weekly for the winter 2022 season, but regardless of how it shows up, Princess Connect will be on this blog again. There are many more adventures with the Gourmet Guild ahead.
Grade: A+ The Takeaway: If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the Priconne IP. There’s literally no reason to not pick this up, if that’s the case. If you haven’t seen the first season, get on that! There’s plenty of time left to catch up and watch some of season 2 while it’s still airing.
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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.
Lush, rolling green hills. They’re such a piece of staple iconography for a certain genre of summery anime that it’s a bit of a meme in some circles. I don’t think the people behind Akebi’s Sailor Uniform would much care about that. “Irony” is a foreign word to the language this series speaks. It’s all do-your-best’s, believe-in-yourself’s, sunshine and shimmering water. Everyone in Akebi is constantly sort of half-blushing, and always looks like they might break into a grin at any moment. I think in western otakudom this school of anime filmography is more associated with theatrical movies than it is TV anime, but it’s the space Akebi works in, and it is perhaps best understood as trying to achieve that aesthetic. I would not say it succeeds, but it makes an admirable go of it. But before we get into minutiae like production, there are two things I need to disclose up front that may seem random at first, but I assure you both will be relevant.
I went to a Catholic School, and I absolutely hate the sound of people clipping their nails.
As you might guess, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform is about a schoolgirl. A girl entering a private middle school, in fact. This is Komichi Akebi. Our protagonist and, really, in this first episode, the only truly important character. (Voiced by Manatsu Murakami. This seems to be her first time in a leading role.) For reasons we have not been told yet (and which I am sure will be divulged to us at some point in a future episode), Komichi puts a whole lot of value in the idea of going to a fancy private academy and getting to wear a fancy sailor uniform.
On a basic level, I find this kind of hard to relate to, but going by their lavishly drawn house, Komichi’s family seem to be pretty well off. Maybe this is the kind of thing rich kids get really invested in? I went to a Catholic middle school, and my memories of getting the uniforms I needed are largely tied to the unpleasantly stale air inside every uniform shop I’ve ever been in. Maybe things are different in Japan, I don’t know. Komichi’s mother actually makes her uniform for her, which seems like an utterly absurd level of burden to put on the parent, here, but again, maybe this is just what rich families do. I wouldn’t know. She literally cries tears of joy when she finally gets it, which is honestly more funny than anything.
Being “unrelatable” is not a huge problem for popular art. I have never been imprisoned in a magical tower, but I like Tower of God just fine. I’ve never been a multi-millionaire, but I still listen to Rick Ross. That’s not the issue. But Akebi’s Sailor Uniform leans really hard on the–to the series, apparently self-evident–idea that sailor uniforms are near-religious symbols of prestige, class, coolness, and self-improvement. It is totally foreign to my experience, and for this reason and a number of others (which I’ll get to), my strongest impression of Akebi is not qualitative, it’s merely that this show is really freakin’ weird. Deceptively so, even, given its simple premise.
For example, the visual approach I mentioned in the opening paragraph? It actively works against the show. Akebi looks nice in a general sense, especially the backgrounds. But it doesn’t nail the look it seems to be going for, which has the effect of making everything look just a bit “off.” The characters themselves are hit hardest here, with their constant blushing and mix of old-school and contemporary design tropes making them look like stoned aliens in some cuts. The whole thing just feels strange.
The series’ take on Osamu Dezaki’s “postcard memory” technique dives full-on into the uncanny valley.
Maybe this is the lingering memory of Cocoon Entwined influencing my perception, but I almost expected something sinister to happen at some point over the course of this episode. Nothing ever does, and I don’t think it ever will, but the fact that I even entertained the possibility speaks to the series’ bizarre feel. Not helping things is the leering camera, which seems to treat Komichi herself with an almost fetishistic level of attention. Despite the fact that the show is, on a surface level, not as “horny” as the other series I covered today, I felt slightly uncomfortable way more often when watching it.
Some of this, admittedly, might be the point. But that “might” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
In the second half of the episode, Komichi learns that, somehow, she got the design for the uniform she was supposed to give her mother wrong. Sailor uniforms are what the girls at the academy wore when her mom went to school there, but nowadays they wear blazers. (Sidenote here; for my money the blazers look way nicer and also more comfortable, but that’s just me.) Improbably, the school’s principal lets her wear the old uniform anyway, even though it will make her stick out like a sore thumb. Komichi understandably worries about being bullied about this, because teenagers are assholes.*
The fact that this woman actually kinda looks like the (extremely mean) principal I had at school does make me wonder if some part of Akebi is meant to distress me specifically.
When she actually gets to school–very early, and way before most other students–she meets Erika Kizaki. (Played by Sora Amamiya, who has been in a bunch of things but most recently of note to readers of this blog, was Yachiyo in Magia Record.) Erika does not notice Komichi when she enters the room and continues obliviously going about her morning ritual. Which consists of clipping her toenails and then sniffing the clippers.
I really want to be clear that I am not taking anything out of context here.
What the fuck.
On this incredibly bizarre note, they strike up a friendship. It’s nice, I suppose? I can buy that they genuinely get along, at least, which is important. There’s little else to the episode, and Akebi ends by establishing itself as the rare anime where the main characters do not sit by the classroom window.
To some point, I think the characters’ general strangeness may be intentional. A “wow, look at all these weird girls finding friendship with each other. Isn’t that adorable?” sort of thing. And hey, I guess it is cute, in a way. But the show’s general feel–something I acknowledge is very much based on a lot of things that vary from person to person–make it feel almost unsettling.
To be quite honest, I have basically no idea what to make of Akebi. If any of this sounds interesting, maybe check it out. Or even if not, maybe check it out, maybe my entire perspective here is just wildly off-base. I don’t know. For me, the entire episode just gives me very strange vibes, and I do not think I will be watching more Akebi. I’m sure Komichi herself will be fine, but I have no real wish to follow her story.
Grade: Sixth The Takeaway: ???
*If you are a teenager, and not an asshole, I apologize for the generalization, but I’m speaking from experience here.
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