Category: anime

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: BUILD DIVIDE: CODE BLACK Deals its First Hand Face-Down

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.

You would have to be a very specific kind of person to prioritize watching Build Divide: Code Black over most of what’s airing this season.

The very first thing to know is this. Build Divide is based on a trading card game. The second thing to know is that said game appears to be paper-only. (I cursorily googled to try to find a digital client, official or otherwise, and had no luck.) The third thing to know is that this anime is produced by the famously spotty LIDEN FILMS, who seem to have picked up a weird habit of working on things with “Code Black” as a subtitle, following their excursion into Cells At Work: Code Black earlier this year.

So right off the top; you must ask yourself if you want to watch a decent but certainly not amazing-looking anime for a card game that you’re probably, just speaking statistically, never going to get to play. Oh, and it’s two cours. That’s a lot to ask upfront. There are a number of anime airing right now, both better and worse than this, that simply don’t demand you to care about quite this many things. To put it in video game critic journalist terms, I would not say that Build Divide: Code Black “respects your time.” Just from a practical point of view, no matter how good or bad the series up being, that is a pretty hefty disadvantage to have to overcome.

Normally I’d here segue into telling you what the show is actually is about, but the plot details we get here are hilariously sparse. Beating the local big kahuna at a card game lets you get a wish granted. Our female lead (Sakura Banka) has a wish she wants granted. Our male lead (Teruto Kurabe) doesn’t but is preternaturally good at TCGs. Also he has amnesia. There’s your plot beats, all of them, as laid out in the anime’s first 20-odd minutes. So we can safely toss this into the “ignore” pile, right?

Well, for many people, probably. The issue, at least for me, with writing Build Divide off is that while the first episode certainly didn’t wow me the way some have this season, it did leave an impression. Make no mistake; this is a very weird show, at least when measured against the general seasonal anime cycle.

With very few exceptions all the cards are represented by anime girls, by the way. If you were curious.

The obvious thing to try to do when your anime is based on a TCG is to have one character explain the basic rules concepts to another. If you don’t do that, you’re generally in subversive, dark-take-on-the-genre territory, and there aren’t a lot of anime that fit that bill. (I challenge anyone to name one that isn’t Wixoss.) So what do we make of what Build Divide does, where the rules are explained, but only very generally and briefly, to Teruto by Sakura? Halfway through their obligatory match in this episode, Teruto’s amnesia begins to crack and the entire thing turns into a long chain of complicated effect combos. Some of it is quite neat to look at, certainly, but there is no way that we, the audience, could possibly have any context for this.

Is that incompetence? Is it on purpose? If so, why? The odd writing applies to the entire episode, but is most obvious here, where the cliché plot beats of this sort of episode are reduced to almost impressionistic abstraction despite the workaday visual style. There’s a lot of cool imagery, including a recurring casino motif, and the episode is visually-speaking oddly moody in spots, taking place as it does entirely at night. There’s also the random aside where we learn that the cards of the game can somehow be used “outside of battle” to….cast spells, essentially? But none of this seems to really convey anything. It’s very hard to know if Build Divide knows what it’s doing.

And what do we make of Teruto himself? It’s not rare for this kind of thing to feature a protagonist who is, sometimes literally supernaturally, Just That Good at card games. Putting him in an admittedly stylish but still very peculiar bunny hoodie is a less common step, to say the least. Maybe this is how the Build Divide franchise plans to challenge Yu-Gi-Oh! By swapping gaudy hairstyles for weird hoodies. Oh, and he has a strange obsession with bread. Which includes at one point praying for a bear-shaped pastry that fell on the floor because it’s “dead.”

Maybe this is the season where writers finally learn that the way to make your stock brown-haired lead interesting is to just make him a total weirdo.

If it sounds like I just have no idea what to make of this series so far, it’s because I don’t. Build Divide: Code Black just doesn’t give us enough to go on. It’s a question mark both within its genre–a genre that itself is generally more associated with children’s anime, which this solidly isn’t–and within the broader season at large. It’s certainly interesting, but whether or not it will live up to its potential is a question that it is far too early to answer.

Grade: 6♦
The Takeaway: Look, on this one specifically you probably shouldn’t listen to me. I don’t even know if I’m going to watch more of it or not.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: PLATINUM END Makes Moral Bankruptcy Fun!

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

Let’s get one thing clear straight away; suicide is not a funny topic. It’s a very serious mental health crisis that has been, and continues to be, a defining issue for the modern age. But that doesn’t mean that all fiction that deals with suicide necessarily treats it with due gravitas. Sometimes, the result is, if only in a deeply uncomfortable sort of way, unintentionally funny. Sometimes the result is Platinum End.

Toss any notions of a piece of art “earning it” or not out the window. Platinum End resoundingly does not. What we have here is a naked power / revenge fantasy about a suicidal, depressed teenager (that’d be Mirai, our lead) that goes in some truly weird directions in the meager 22 minutes of its opening episode. The very first thing that actually happens in the anime is that he tosses himself off a skyscraper. In a more serious story this would feel bad to watch. But Platinum End‘s opening minutes are so po-facedly stoic that they’re difficult to take seriously.

But those few minutes are not what we’re here to talk about. Because then, as Mirai falls, he is rescued by an angel, and everything goes topsy-turvy. Over the course of some amount of minutes, this angel, Nasse, quickly explains that she’s rescued Mirai in order to save him from depression by way of giving him superpowers; the ability to mind-control people and angel wings that let him fly super-quickly, respectively. Somewhere in here is an out of place but genuinely touching sequence where Mirai learns to fly. It is quickly brushed away by other things.

For example; Nasse is kind of incredibly evil.

Nonbinary people are presumably safe from its effects.

If Nasse were not part of this show, it would be unwatchable. If Mirai did everything he does in this episode–and trust me, we’ll get to that–of his own accord, he’d be an utterly wretched protagonist. But Nasse, an incarnation of a truly basic joke (“she looks all cute and such, but she’s actually horrible!”), makes Platinum End tick. At least on some level. Almost from the moment she and Mirai meet, she’s all bad suggestions all the time, like a reverse guilty conscience. She’s the devil on your shoulder disguised as an angel; and surprise, you don’t have an actual angel. She is, in the purest sense of the word, incredible.

Were the show solely Nasse encouraging Mirai to do awful things, it might be legitimately great. It’s unfortunately forced to settle for merely funny-bad because of what those awful things actually are, and because of Mirai’s motive for going along with them.

You see, Mirai’s backstory is that when he was seven years old, his entire family died because someone planted a bomb in their car. He was taken in by his aunt and uncle, who proceeded to abuse him all the time….And that’s basically all we get. This isn’t to say that there aren’t real people in situations this bad, because there certainly are, but it all feels so perfunctory that it’s hard to get any emotion out of it. Panic laughter, perhaps, but that’s all.

My life was Angel Beats! levels of sad so now I’m moping on a Mayan temple.

Nasse ends up informing Mirai that the bomb in said car was planted by his adoptive family. Understandably both suspicious and furious, he confronts his aunt, who he uses his “red arrow” of mind-control powers on. Things get out of hand; she tries to seduce him (ew), and when his uncle barges into the room, Mirai screams that the both of them should just die. Since his aunt is under his mind control spell, she promptly stabs herself in the neck and bleeds everywhere. It’s astoundingly tasteless and, in more than one sense, pretty gross!

The thing is, the episode more or less just ends there, but not without dropping one more twist. There’s a cut to a few days afterward where Mirai is hiding out in a hotel. And here is where we learn–in a setup shamelessly nicked from The Future Diary and, honestly, probably many other stories too–that twelve other people in Mirai’s situation have been chosen as “God candidates.” One of them will eventually replace God. Who is quite strongly implied to be The Christian God, based on what we see of him. Now we don’t get the rules for this particular contest just yet, but it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that this is a death game setup, especially as Nasse cheerfully informs Mirai that he has “the White Arrow”, too. Essentially a beam of light that lets him kill anyone instantly.

Pshaw! Who’s ever heard of such a thing?

The very last thing we see is one of the other candidates, dressed up in an off-brand Kamen Rider outfit, scream that he’s a hero of justice while he impales a different candidate with his own white arrow. Perhaps this fellow (who has a full rainbow of the power-containing colored bands that Mirai has only three of) is our main antagonist. It’s too early to say for sure.

And with all of that finally out of the way, Platinum End‘s first episode, well, ends.

I don’t find myself at a genuine loss for words very often. What the hell do you say about this kind of thing? It certainly isn’t good, not in any traditional sense. And while the first episode is far better than, say, the 3D CG ten-car pileup of Tesla Note‘s, it really doesn’t mark this down as a must-watch.

But, I know myself, and I know the modern seasonal anime landscape. This is one of Those anime. Your Detectives, your High-Rise Invasions, your Gleipnirs and such. And here I go, marching right into Hell’s mouth yet again. I really, truly, do not know what’s good for me. Expect Platinum End to return on this blog, even though it probably doesn’t deserve to.

What a world!

Grade: D
The Takeaway: Unless you’re as fascinated with true schlock as I am, you should probably not watch this. But if you are, this is conversely almost a must-watch. Keep possible triggers in mind though, even this first episode has quite a bit of astoundingly insensitive material on self-harm, suicide, spousal and familial abuse, and depression. I understand the impulse to watch garbage better than most; but do so responsibly, friends!

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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Going Way, Way Down in SAKUGAN

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.

What happened to this season?! Several days of premieres of shows that were outright bad, questionable on a premise level, or mixed experiences at best might’ve lead anyone to conclude we were in for a weak season. But between takt op.Destiny, the still-airing The Heike Story, now, Sakugan, it may be lining up as the year’s strongest.

That’s a big call, and it’s not one I’m willing to make with total confidence. There are definitely ways Sakugan could “go wrong”, as we’ll get to, but it’s off to a hell of a start. The two are hard to compare, but while it’s less of a well-oiled machine than takt op, it’s looser and lets itself sprawl a bit more in its opening episode. That’s neither a strength nor a weakness, merely a difference, and time alone will tell which approach is more effective in the long term.

So what’s it about? Well, the very short version is we’ve got your sort of underground post-apocalypse-y setting here. It will garner comparisons to Made in Abyss and last year’s surprise near-masterpiece DECA-DENCE on setting alone and they’re not entirely inaccurate ones. Our protagonists live in an underground colony called Pinyin, connected to a network of others via a tunnel system, and with vast areas of uncharted land in-between. Those who explore those areas, and confront the dangers within them, namely the monstrous kaiju that infest them, are mech-piloting adventurers called Markers.

And about those Markers; our lead here is nine-year-old Memenpuu.

She is a child genius, has apparently graduated college(!) and has her own job(!!). She wants nothing more than to be a Marker. She is opposed here by her father, our other lead, Gagumber.

The two’s opposed but charming dynamic carries the bulk of the episode, and there’s some really great character animation sprinkled in here. Things get more serious as the episode marches on, with Memenpuu receiving a mysterious package in the mail that contains a photograph of an equally-mysterious white tower stretching into the sky that she’s had recurring dreams about. Even stranger, the package is signed as being from the mythical Marker Urorop, and contains what appears to be a map. Gagumber and Memenpuu’s relationship takes on more serious, strained shapes here, but things remain largely lighthearted for most of the episode.

Indeed, this all seems to be setting up a charming, fun-filled adventure. And Sakugan hammers that idea home enough times over the course of this episode that the astute might start to get suspicious. So it’s here that we have to talk about the elephant in the room, because as it turns out, those suspicions are very well-founded.

In the episode’s final third or so, Pinyin is attacked. A kaiju somehow breaks into the city and wreaks havoc, the local militia try futilely to fend it off. There’s a pretty excellently-animated sequence wherein Gagumber, Memenpuu, and secondary character Lynda all flee from the kaiju’s wrath. Any levity this might imply is immediately dashed when Lynda and her own father, Walsh, hop in a mecha to attempt to fend the creature off, and are almost immediately killed.

On paper this doesn’t sound so bad, but Lynda and Walsh serve as a secondary duo throughout the entire episode, so it’s clearly intended to be a shot across the heart. It works, too. Even setting aside my own reaction, one can easily find folks all across social media already mourning the characters.

This ties back into Sakugan‘s already-evident main theme; what can the older generation do for their children? When they want to strike out on their own, as Memenpuu does here, even after seeing her friend and that friend’s father incinerated before her very eyes, what can their parents do to support them? Sakugan offers no simple answers, at least not yet, but it is worth knowing what kind of anime this is going to be. Because the answer seems to involve fewer fun-filled adventures and more painful coming-of-age than one might initially assume.

Which, to be clear, is fine! Sakugan does all of this quite well. It’s legitimately a very good first episode. But speaking only for myself, I know I tend to fall off of these sorts of anime rather quickly. Something about the darkness that tends to shade these sort of tales just bounces off my sensibilities. So how likely I, personally, am to stay on board will depend on what we get aside from the trauma and crushed dreams. The first episode is willing to display a lot of character, but the question of how much of that is a feint remains an open one until the second premieres.

All this said; what I think is not always what people in general will think. So while my own opinion of Sakugan has yet to fully take shape, this is absolutely going to be one to look out for in a more general sense. Keep digging, genius girl. You might just find gold.

Grade: A-
The Takeaway: If you’re not innately put off by the prospect of seeing a very young character put through the emotional wringer, this is worth following. If you highly value that kind of story, you should definitely be following it.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: TAKT OP.DESTINY is The Season’s First Must-Watch

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. GIFs in this article appear courtesy of Sakugabooru.

It starts with a “once upon a time” and ends on a moonlit stretch of highway. In-between? Pleas for human connection scrawled on pianos, mask-wearing monsters that take the shape of apes and giant insects, switched-off jukeboxes that populate lonely diners, and the Great American West stretching into an endless horizon. Welcome to a world without music and the story of those trying to bring it back. This is takt op.Destiny.

Can I level with you, readers? I don’t get to write things like that paragraph up there often enough. In pop cultural criticism you’re generally expected to get to the point. I have no problem with getting to the point, but it’s a truly rare treat to be able to put the long and short of it in the title. You need to watch takt. op Destiny if you have even the slightest interest in following seasonal anime. The End.

But of course you probably want to hear why, and that’s fair enough. But it’s hard to know where to start when everything about a series’ first episode clicks into place this well. Do we start with the impactful, engaging animation? It defines not only the episode’s two bone-crackingly excellent fight scenes but also numerous little fun character moments too plentiful to count. The visuals in general are just gorgeous.

Shot through the heart, and you’re to blame.

Maybe the worldbuilding? The tantalizing glimpses of the backstory we get here are intriguing; built on the backs of typical tropes but presented with enough style that they feel fresh. One night long ago mystical stones rained from the sky and brought the humanoid weapons known as Musicarts to the world. Another night, long after that, another shower of stones brought a great evil. Somewhere in here there are the music-hating D2s, monsters that hunt down and snuff out music wherever they hear it. This world’s silence is the presumable wake of their actions.

In the sky, with diamonds.

What about the character writing? What initially seems like it might be the bud of a tedious harem setup quickly proves itself to be a fun dynamic I might compare to a trio of siblings who don’t quite get along. Takt, our eponymous lead, is no mere audience stand-in, he’s a music-obsessed weirdo. He’s mother-fucking funny.

I wish you would step back from that ledge my friend.

Cossette, his Musicart companion, is a wonderful little gremlinoid who treats the humans she’s supposed to protect (including Takt) with a vague disdain and cares more about stuffing her mouth with food and killing as many D2s as possible than she does anything else.

Sugar sugar, oh honey honey.

And finally there’s Anna, the put-upon responsible “oldest sister” of the three, in at least a figurative sense. She spends most of the episode either chest-puffingly exasperated with the other two’s antics, or driving her car to and fro to get them out of trouble.

The three just work together to a rare degree. On their own, any one of these would be an alright character. In concert, they’re a riot. It’s a wonderful thing to watch all this unfold.

Takt’s first action in the episode is to park himself at an abandoned piano. An object evidently so unfamiliar to the general populace of the town he’s in that the younger kids present don’t actually know what it is. As he begins playing, conjuring a wonderful, warm cloud of ivory tones, a D2 is summoned by the sound and comes running. We meet Cossette seconds later, who enters the series by drop-kicking the masked gorilla demon dead in the face. Takt then explodes his arm into rose petals, in one of the most wonderfully camp touches I’ve ever seen in anything, which somehow allows Cossette to assume a more powerful, magical girl-esque form. She tosses Takt a baton. He “conducts”, which, through whatever means, allows Cossette to produce a sword that also has a laser cannon in it, which she uses to shoot the D2 dead.

This is all, it should go without further saying, ridiculous, awesome, campy, silly, and wonderful. The entire sequence is the platonic ideal of action anime as a genre boiled down to sixty seconds of perfection.

I will avoid recapping the remainder of the episode in detail. The specifics we get are pretty minimal; our characters are headed to New York, there’s interesting little bits of backstory speckled throughout.

You say New York, New York is dangerous.

But the main focus remains on the spectacle, because as pure spectacle, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Will it ever transcend pure spectacle? That’s the natural question that some may pose as a follow-up. And I do think it’s a valid one, but, at the risk of sounding reductionist, when there is this much sheer, obvious joy in the art, I am not sure there is much to transcend. Beyond even that argument, though, there really is something to the presented idea of art as a necessary salve in a world that has lost its appreciation for it. Whether takt op.Destiny will ever explore that is another question, but I certainly hope it does. Perhaps I’m over-optimistic, but this feels like the start of something big.

Grade: A+
The Takeaway: If you have any interest in following action anime as a genre or seasonal anime as a format, you should be watching this.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

SEASONAL FIRST IMPRESSIONS: Amou Shiiba is Wanted Dead or Alive in AMAIM WARRIOR AT THE BORDERLINE

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.

Or: Teenage Boy is Accused of Terrorism, Becomes Actual Terrorist in Response.

AMAIM Warrior at The Borderline (known more succinctly as Kyoukai Senki in its native Japanese) is a bit of a tricky one, so let’s get the simple stuff out of the way first. Point one: this is a mecha anime and the mecha are traditionally animated instead of 3D. That alone is going to be enough for some to hop on board. Point two: it’s a production by Sunrise Beyond, a subsidiary of Sunrise proper whose work outside of this show consists almost entirely of various Gundam spinoffs. Point three: Hey! The show looks pretty good, at least so far. The mecha are the obvious highlights, but in general its vision of an occupied near-future Japan comes across pretty well, and that’s worth noting.

The complicated stuff comes from that last part. AMAIM takes place in the 2060s, after vaguely-described internal problems lead to Japan being divvied up, late Qin Dynasty-style, into a number of foreign-administered extraterritorial zones. And friends, let me just say, yours truly is not an expert on history, contemporary politics, or anything of the sort, so the fact that I even have to entertain this notion hurts me deeply. But, well, the setup does seem kind of….conservative fever dream-y?

Say, in the same way that something like Red Dawn was for us here in the US of A in the ’80s.

Haha. Oh boy.

Were it only established in the opening narration, it would be easy enough to write off as a stock setup. But this comes up over and over again throughout the first episode–indeed, the main antagonists are some of said foreign military occupiers. It is they who falsely accuse protagonist Amou Shiiba of conspiracy to commit terrorism and it is they who he eventually fights against. The regime–whoever they may be, their nationality is not explicitly identified here and the one time we see flags they’re all stand-ins–is unambiguously depicted as brutal, petty, and evil.

Now, all this said. Does that immediately discount AMAIM? I wouldn’t say so. Even if you’re not simply willing to write all this off, it’s not terribly hard to figure out why there might be some Japanese resentment about foreign military presence. And perhaps interpreting all of this so literally is a mistake anyway; there are (tragically) lots of places on Earth where this kind of thing happens. It is easy to imagine simply relocating this sort of incident at home to make it more immediately relatable for domestic audiences. So, while the overtone is there at first glance, I think it irresponsible of me to hold on to my knee-jerk reaction.

But admittedly! For as much as I do try to always hold myself to the standard of taking everything on its own terms. If AMAIM weren’t so tightly-plotted, I might’ve been less charitable. The story here is quite streamlined, and there are really only two important characters in the first episode; Amou himself, and GAI, an autonomous artificial intelligence that he, no joke, finds in a box in the woods.

Me when I run out of Arizona Tea.

Amou near-literally falls into the cockpit of his AMAIM (yes, that’s what the mecha are called here, hence the title of the show.) Something called out as rare in the present day, where most are apparently remote-controlled. A night scavenging mecha parts in the woods makes him a suspect for the local occupiers, and the plot thus kicks off when he ends up having to rescue his friends from them. He ends the episode a wanted man, leaving the whole thing on a cliffhanger.

Amou is easy to root for, as a vaguely-depressed seeming kid bummed out by the state of the world who finally has a purpose. It’s decent stuff. I just wish I less felt the need to couch it in so many caveats and disclaimers. But one should always be willing to turn the critical lens inward. Maybe all this says more about me than it does about the series.

Honestly, I’ve said all I’ve said, but it’s just fun to see traditionally-animated mecha in a mainstream TV anime in 2021. (Even if I was never really against CGI, myself. SSSS.DYNAZENON remains one of the year’s best anime, for my money.)

More than most anime I’ve covered on this column, what you get AMAIM is going to depend on what you put in. Does even the vaguest scent of possibly-conservative politics put you off? You’ll want to keep far away. Are you willing to power through almost anything as long as it’ll draw a robot in two dimensions instead of three? Well, I’ve got your anime of the season. For everyone else, I think simply giving the first episode a spin to try it out is the right call, assuming mecha anime appeal to you at all.

Grade: Wow! Cool Robot!
The Takeaway: If you’re into mecha, at least give the first episode a shot. If you’re put off by the possible undertones, I’m certainly not going to blame you, but I do think it’s at least worth giving a chance.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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


Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Spooky Season is Here, and So is MIERUKO-CHAN

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.

Of the semi-common genre hybrids, the horror-comedy is one of the weirder ones. Horror relies on disquieting the viewer. Comedy relies on making them laugh. They’re not quite opposites, but they’re close, so striking the right balance is the key when trying to do both in alteration.

Well? Have you?

Mieruko-chan does a pretty good job of it. Although to tell the truth, I went into the anime skeptical. Mieruko-chan is an adaption of a pretty well-regarded manga, and said manga earns that regard. But simply by shuffling a few things around, the Mieruko-chan anime manages to keep things fresh even for those of us who’ve seen this particular story before. It’s an impressive trick, and it leads to one of the better premieres of the season so far, if not a flawless one. (We’ll get to the caveats in a minute.)

Mieruko-chan manages to hold out for an impressive 13 1/2 minutes before showing us anything indisputably out-of-the-ordinary. Before then, it’s all tension, cut with the occasional bit of comedy to keep the mood from becoming overtly oppressive; Mieruko-chan‘s goal is to keep you on your toes, not horrify you outright, and it’s very good at that.

A lot of the reprieve comes from Miko’s (left) interactions with her friend Hana (right). They have a very warm, believable friendship even here in the first episode.

Our main character is Miko (“Mieruko-chan” means something like “the girl who sees them”, it’s not her name). Miko sees dead people. Miko does not want to see dead people. Hence the conflict of the show. Or more thoroughly; as she goes about her daily life, Miko is often bothered by monstrous spirits. They ask her if she can see them and generally make her life miserable. The only saving grace she has here is that she’s in possession of an absolutely stone poker face, and the entities eventually leave her alone after she fails to react to them.

“Yo.”

To a point, the series (both in its original manga incarnation and here) is voyeuristic, a feeling certainly not diminished here by Studio Passione‘s “enhancements” to the material, which mostly consists of gratuitous T&A closeups. (Not that the manga was devoid of these, but the increase is noticeable.) What prevents any of this from feeling too gross is that Miko’s one weapon–her will–means she’s not totally defenseless. Admittedly, I’m going into this with some level of foreknowledge since I’ve read some of the manga. But Miko isn’t entirely a victim of circumstance, here, and she’s easy to root for because of that, even when her fear gets the better of her.

Visually, other than the aforementioned kinda-distasteful cheesecake, the series is pretty nice-looking. The entities themselves are what’s hit hardest by the transition to animation, as they don’t look quite as scary animated, but the sound work makes up for this. The synthesizer hums and throbs that make up the best horror soundtracks are well-represented here, along with judicious use of silence. It’s a nicely-produced affair, all around.

In general, if you can get past the aforementioned caveat, and you don’t feel so bad for Miko that you find the show hard to watch, give this a try. Mieruko-chan really seems like it’s going to be worth following.

Grade: B-
The Takeaway: Solidly-produced all around and with a novel premise, this one is worth picking up if you make a point of keeping up with seasonal anime. Its only real issue is the adaption’s insertion of some rather disruptive fanservice.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal Impressions: Romance and Rocket Ships in IRINA: THE VAMPIRE COSMONAUT

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

Let’s start with the obvious; what a title! In a time period where there are quite literally more anime being made per season than ever before, a series needs to do all it can to stand out. A novel premise is one way to do that, and Irina: The Vampire Cosmonaut, which is about basically exactly what that title implies, certainly delivers on that front.

The short version; some amount of years after the end of not-quite WW2, two nations, not-quite The United States (“Arnack”) and not-quite The Soviet Union (“Zirnitra”) are competing in a space race. In lieu of sending an actual human aboard a rocket, Zirnitra’s space program opts to use a vampire. Which, in the world of Irina, basically means a normal human but nocturnal and with pointy teeth. (The series goes out of its way to assure us that all the traditional vampire clichés are just myths. Which, in of itself, is something of a cliché by this point. But the point is made; it’s not a garlic and crucifixes sort of story. Fair enough.)

Surely there are no shady, immoral reasons for this.

Our actual lead is not Irina, the titular vampire, herself, but rather her caretaker, a training program flunky named Lev.

This is Lev. He’s pleasant enough.

It’s here I should point out; this thing is tagged with the Romance genre on every site I can find it listed on, and between Lev, Irina herself, and Lev’s assistant, Anna, there is absolutely the possibility for this to descend into mediocre harem hell. However, I prefer to assume an anime is going to become the best version of itself. What would that look like for Irina?

Well, the show’s strengths are evident even this early on. While none of the characters strike as super complex (at least not yet), the important ones feel well-thought-out. Lev is trying to reconcile having to give up on his own dream of cosmonauthood with his new responsibility taking care of Irina. Irina is all too happy to tell every human in earshot that she hates them, which is evidently a defense mechanism from being treated like an object her entire life. (That’s not me reading into the series; the latter is obvious from visual cues and the former is explicitly pointed out a number of times.)

There’s not a ton going on, so far, but the promise is there. The early scenes especially seem to hint at something deeper going on, with context-free flashes of Irina clutching a necklace, which she still has in the present, in the midst of a snowstorm. And in the political undertones of her involvement in the spaceflight program in the first place.

Really, for this sort of thing, “promise” is enough. It’s distinct enough that it can coast by on potential, at least for now. Irina is not going to be most peoples’ premiere of the season, but you could do far, far worse. And who knows? We might be talking about it in far grander terms six weeks from now.

Grade: C+
The Takeaway: Keep an eye on this one. Consider picking it up if you want an additional show and the novel combination of sci-fi and romance genres with a dash of horror appeals to you. Otherwise, maybe hold off until it gets some more positive word-of-mouth.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [10/3/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture. Expect some degree of spoilers for the covered shows.

One season ends and another begins, the world turns here on Magic Planet Anime.

The Heike Story

Japan races toward war. The third episode of The Heike Story only reinforces what we’ve known from day one, but it’s the method that really sticks out here. We know the character of Lord Saiko, for instance, for mere minutes. But he is the first to speak truth to power in opposing Shigemori’s father, Lord Kiyomori. For his defiance, he is beheaded, in a brilliant cut–in every sense of that word–that flickers from the falling of the sword to a flower landing in water. Elsewhere, archers fire at warrior monks and pierce portable shrines in the process, telling us that even already, nothing is truly sacred in the power struggle that’s about to ensue.

Biwa sees the bloodshed ahead, as Shigemori prepares to attack his own father to stop his power-hungry madness, but seems powerless to stop it. Only time will tell if that’s truly so. There is little in the way of embellishment to say about Heike Story, it simply is a gripping period piece drama.

Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid S

In a meta sense, it’s not that strange that a show like this remains somewhat controversial. “Be yourself, ignore what society tells you” is about as close as Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid ever gets to a proper theme, and it certainly follows its own advice, for better or worse. But while it’s no philosophical treatise, the writing can be surprisingly characterful when it remembers to get out of its own way. Dragon Maid S actually ended a bit ago now, but I only watched the final two episodes this past week, and that’s definitely true of both of them, especially the actual finale with its festivals and faux wedding ceremony. It re-centers the focus on Kobayashi and Tohru themselves, making for the series’ strongest showing since, well, the last time I covered it on this column.

But Dragon Maid‘s thesis of ethical hedonism aside, the real story here in the long run remains the triumphant return of Kyoto Animation. I won’t drag the point out; all twelve episodes of the show look amazing, and while what they’ve been through will probably weigh heavy over the anime landscape for a long time, it’s just really good to have them back. See you all for 20th Century Electric Catalogue?

Elsewhere on MPA

I debuted my Seasonal First Impressions column this past week (which you’re going to be seeing more of literally today if everything goes as planned), but I’ve also put up a review, another episode of KeyFrames Forgotten I’m rather proud of, and just in general am keeping a decent clip of things. Remember to toss me some coins in the footer if you’ve liked anything I’ve written this week and are able to!

Seasonal First Impressions: SELECTION PROJECT – The season gets off to a truly “and the crowd goes mild”-style start with an idol anime that left me very, very nonplussed. It’s annoying to dislike something because it’s simply “not doing anything new”, and I wouldn’t even say I do dislike Selection Project per se, there’s just not much to it at the moment, which is unfortunate.

(REVIEW) The Far Side of Summer, SONNY BOY, and Me – Sonny Boy is one of those anime that’s going to be rolling around in my noggin for years. I don’t think I’m as huge as a fan as many of the show’s biggest defenders, but that’s splitting hairs. Immaculately produced, uncommonly nuanced, and contemplative to its core, Sonny Boy is a show we’re going to be hearing about for a long time.

KeyFrames Forgotten Episode 3 – WINDY TALES – Hey you, reading this right now, listen to our podcast about Windy Tales! The show is good and the podcast episode is also good! I don’t hear people discuss Windy Tales much anymore, and I’m not sure why? It’s a lovely little thing.

See you on the next, 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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: SELECTION PROJECT

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.

As a critic, it’s a terribly annoying thing to feel unsatisfied with a work that doesn’t actually do anything wrong. But, the profession’s one requirement is honesty. And I can genuinely say that I just can’t find it in me to care all that much about Selection Project.

Here’s the thing; not just anybody can make an idol anime. The genre is more brittle than I think many realize. One needs a strong, well-defined and delineated cast, strong writing, and of course good music to make a truly good idol anime. But on top of all that, we the audience need to have a desire to see the cast succeed. It’s hard enough to do that when the main characters are all part of the same idol group. Doing it while the cast are part of an X-Factor-style competition, as is the case here, feels borderline impossible.

Studio Doga Kobo have, of course, tried anyway. Selection Project‘s first episode, as I said, is not by any means bad, but something feels palpably missing from the whole affair. On a production level it’s certainly professional. The animation is clean and at times characterful, and the character designs are distinct from, at least, each other. Conversely though, they’re not terribly anything new overall. “Solid, but not amazing” is the operative phrase here.

Probably the most interesting shot in the episode is this neat bit that loosely evokes Abbey Road.

The opening here tries to tug at your heart strings from the top. We (very briefly) learn that our lead, Suzune, used to be hospital-bound and used the in-universe Selection Project show itself as a form of escapism. We even briefly see her watch her own favorite idol, Akari Amasawa, win the first season of the show. There’s clearly an intent to portray Akari’s music touching Suzune’s heart, and to pass that sensation along to the viewer, but something about it just fails to connect. Maybe it’s just that this entire scene is very short. Maybe it’s that the song, “Just One Yell”, sounds just enough like “Eat the Wind” by Yorushika (one of my favorite Japanese pop songs from last year) to be distracting. Maybe I’m just cynical. It’s hard to say.

Perhaps the issue is that from that opening scene, everything about Selection Project‘s first episode (with one minor exception, which we’ll get to) feels almost too neat. It has a near-mechanical predictability to it. Watching a fully-committed genre show tick along can absolutely be a good time, but generally they need to at least try to do something to set themselves apart from the pack. Selection Project airing in the same season as the still-ongoing current Love Live installment, and just days before the premiere of the premisewise-bonkers PRIDE OF ORANGE certainly does it no favors here. It is perhaps just a little too straightforward to truly stand out.

The way this most obviously plays out is with the characters. Suzune is a very standard main character for this genre; she’s earnest, hardworking, and passionate with light brown hair and a light, airy voice. Even in a trainwreck like say, last year’s crushingly disappointing 22/7, the main character was different enough from the ISO standard to be memorable. Suzune really isn’t. She looks like the lovechild of any number of idol anime protagonists. Her most distinguishing feature is probably that she has a ponytail, and while she’s certainly cute enough, that’s not really a great sign.

The other characters don’t fare much better. One we briefly meet, Nodoka, is defined solely by her love of sweets, after which she predictably voices a worry about the show having a “weight limit.” Another, Ao, is a sporty tomboy with short hair whose parents are gym freaks and whose one bit of characterization here is someone else telling her that she should be careful to not sweat too much, because her makeup might run. Probably the most notably distinct is the catgirl-inspired Shiori, who may have the unenviable task of carrying the series on her back if her costars don’t develop more interesting personalities soon.

Y’know, like, nya?

All of this would be easy enough to roll with if Selection Project gave you much of a reason to care about any of these people. And maybe it will, in the episodes to come, but Suzune’s general lack of any kind of hook is a much bigger problem. But, lest it come off like I’m being way too hard on this show, I will give it credit, because there is one trick that it pulls off toward the episode’s conclusion that points to some possible interesting developments.

As it’s her turn to sing “One More Yell” in order to try to pass the regional semi-final of the in-universe Selection Project series, Suzune falls to the ground and nearly faints. She actually loses the audition to her apparent friend Seira, who herself seems uncomfortable with winning. Now, Seira is not on Selection Project‘s poster art (which you can find all over the internet). So it seems likely that, some way or another, Seira is going to have to drop out or be disqualified, and Suzune will sneak in to the final round of the competition that way, the remainder of the show taking place there. But it at least shows some willingness to break with convention. The closing shot is her walking home alone with her rolling suitcase. It’s the only bit of Selection Project‘s desperate attempts to make you, dear viewer, Feel Things, that actually works.

There are a few other positives and things that are at least interesting to point out. For one, the show’s direction is quite nice. There are a number of fun visual tricks it uses throughout this episode to stay on the engaging side of the line. For another, there is a probably-deliberate overtone of weirdness baked in to the Selection Project series-within-a-series itself. There’s a brief moment of near-literally religious reverence for Akari, who we learn died in the car crash “at the height of her career” (the show’s words, not mine) some years ago.

Is she praying to the dead idol? Because that would make Suzune kind of awesome. If also very creepy.

And while he’s incredibly obnoxious, the show-within-a-show’s bear-like mascot character does inject some flavor into things. It makes things feel a little weird, and for a show that really needs something to stand out, weird is good.

So yes, it’s wholly possible that Selection Project will develop better character writing, or alternately will fly wildly off the handle and become at the very least, a compellingly strange show. But it’s far from a given, and for that reason I don’t think I could really recommend this series to anyone but idol genre diehards. But of course, the joy of seasonal anime is that the future stands unknown before us. Who knows, maybe I’ll be eating my words in only a few weeks’ time.

Did I mention Shiori has a butler? Forget the whole idol competition, I want a show about these two.

Grade: C
The Takeaway: A pass for anyone but dyed-in-the-wool genre enthusiasts. Might be worth your time in a few weeks if it picks up some positive buzz.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) The Far End of Summer, SONNY BOY, and Me

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

“Rajdhani’s parrot laughs.”

Abstract art faces an inherent double standard. It must both earn its right to be non-literal in the first place, and is expected to eventually “make sense” to its audience. It’s an impossible task, to convey truths through symbolic language alone but to do so so clearly that it cannot be accused of pretension.

Sonny Boy has only just ended, so it is hard to say where, eventually, it will fall, in the public consciousness. Some abstract anime are eventually acclaimed as classics, others are derided as nonsense. Either way, the series stands as one of the most compelling of the year. Enough so that simply saying such can feel rote–or even worse, dogmatic. But sometimes the reason so many people think something is interesting is simply because it genuinely is. Sonny Boy stands as a rare moment where a truly out-there piece of art has managed to capture the imagination of the public at large. Even by itself, that is a huge achievement.

On a production level alone, Sonny Boy speaks for itself. Its character designs lean more realistic than most modern TV anime, making it immediately stand out, with characters being distinguished by face shapes and so on. Its backgrounds are painterly and convey, as needed, a sense of surreality or depict vivid, natural landscapes. Accompanying all this is a bold, sharp directorial approach that knows precisely when to fully cut loose, scored by a well-curated soundtrack of synthesizer pieces, indie rock, and, sometimes, dead silence. To some point, mentioning these things at all feels like box-ticking. It is obvious from watching even any few random minutes of the series that it looks and sounds fantastic. So the big question is not one of production then, it’s one of theme. What is Sonny Boy about?

In a very real sense; nothing less than our lost generation. Sonny Boy centers on a classroom of high schoolers sent, per their own words, “adrift.” References to The Drifting Classroom and Robinson Crusoe abound. The nature of the anomaly that shifts our cast from the mundanity of modern Japan into the chaotic randomness that is the Matroyshka Doll worlds-within-worlds land they end up in is never explained and is not really the point. Nor is the nature of the superpowers they get (no quirky name here, they’re just called “powers”) examined either. Sonny Boy is an exploration of what young people would do, given all the time in the universe to do it, and of the social systems that shape them into who they are.

Our ostensible main character is Nagara, a somewhat unassertive and otherwise unremarkable young man. But much of the cast get put under the microscope, always to interesting effect. Take for example Mizuho, whose principled nature clashes with the remnants of the student council. An entire early episode revolves around her unwillingness to apologize for a wrong she didn’t commit, and for this part of the series, Sonny Boy seems like it may conclude that any group of people, isolated and given enough time, will reinvent the worst aspects of the society they originally come from.

But, Sonny Boy abandons this comparatively straightforward, political strain of thought early on. (Consequently, there is a certain crowd who will be displeased that the show is not an effective handbook for revolution. So it goes.) As it marches through its twelve episodes, the series becomes increasingly big-picture and existential. Political themes give way to religious ones, which finally give way to the philosophical. So whatever one might think of Sonny Boy, they absolutely cannot fault it for lack of ambition.

Because our generation (Millennials, and, increasingly as they reach majority, “Gen Z” as well) is often derided as overgrown children rather than real adults, Sonny Boy earns its right to use an all-teen cast in this scenario even more than most would, given that it is us–the literally immature, and the spiritually immature–at whom Sonny Boy is directed. It feels deliberate that the only adults in the series are respectively an imposter playing at an authority they don’t truly possess (Ms. Aki) and someone so far removed and incomprehensible to the rest of the cast that they may as well be divinity (the Principal).

In this sense, Sonny Boy is that old metaphor, a ball of confusion. If it’s sometimes hard to tell quite what’s going on, well, it’s even harder to tell what’s going on in real life. I would say “especially when you’re young”, but it’s easy to argue that part of Sonny Boy‘s core thesis is that, in the grand scheme of things, we’re all young.

That, of course, could feel to some like a cop-out. One might want to know what all of this is building up to. And while the series certainly settles well into a role, in its midpoint, as a mint for surreal parables of the modern age, anyone wanting a broader, singular “point” might feel a little left in the cold.

If there is an overall message, it is what the character Rajdhani states in the penultimate episode and Nagara finally internalizes in the finale. The world–all worlds–are chaos in motion, “an endless exercise in vain effort”, as Rajdhani puts it. But in this seeming meaninglessness, there is beauty.

Call Sonny Boy, then, a treatise on optimistic nihilism. Life is, and then it isn’t. It is a hectic, meaningless thing, to hear Sonny Boy tell it. The other side of that, of course, is that that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

The final words of the series, spoken by Nagara, are “Our lives are only beginning. What lies ahead will take just a little bit longer.” It’s a simple, almost prayer-like coda to a series that is otherwise anything but. Yet, a truth is a truth. Like some of its peers that have aired this year and in the recent past, all Sonny Boy asks of us is to take care of one another and do our best. All we can do is make the most of what we have, and all we have is ourselves and each other.

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 Directory to browse by category.

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