Category: anime

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Becoming The Battle Girl: How The 2010s Transformed The Magic in Magical Girl Anime

Genre. “A kind of story.” Something that separates one group of narratives from another. Genres are tricky, malleable, slippery things. Outside the focus of this blog, there are terms like lit fic, slipstream, neo noir, dungeonpunk, and dozens and dozens of others, broader or narrower, over the entire range of fiction and analysis of that fiction. Sometimes a marketing tool, sometimes a fandom in-group identifier, sometimes an after-the-fact grouping to tie together similarities in disparate stories.

Cure Moonlight, Heartcatch Precure

When I first became interested in anime as a medium I ran into the term “sekai-kei”, or “world story”. A style of anime in which the relationships between two people are tied directly to global or even universal-scale problems, and often directly equated. Nowadays, the term is widely decried as a nonsensical westernism (if you google it, the first two results are TVTropes, not exactly a reputable source, a clone site of the same, and an article decrying it as “horseshit”, in that order.) It’s yet another example of how hard defining genre in anime can be, especially from what is fundamentally an outsider’s point of view here in the Anglosphere.

Another genre that is often mixed up in heated debate is that of the Magical Girl, specifically because it is among the hardest to define concretely. Stories commonly accepted as being part of the Magical Girl genre; say foundational text Himitsu no Akko-chan, and something like Sailor Moon, are quite distinct from each other. Thematic ties are the main binder here, as are certain aesthetic choices. The trials that young girls face as they grow up are, broadly, the key element. There is also a degree of demographic assignment here. Most Magical Girl stories have historically been for young women.

Homura and Madoka, Puella Magi Madoka Magica The Movie Pt. III: Rebellion

But defining the genre even in the very loose terms I just did is controversial. (Sometimes extremely so.) Less because of what it includes and more because of what it excludes. Puella Magi Madoka Magica hangs like a grim specter over the genre’s modern form, the oft-decried “dark Magical Girl” style is frequently accused of missing “the point” of the entire thing. (As if whole genres ever have single “points”.) But fair enough; some of Madoka‘s least imitators are widely considered to be….well, not very good. And as someone who is on record as thinking Magical Girl Spec. Ops. Asuka is the worst TV anime made in recent memory, I can at least understand the viewpoint.

Things become even more complex the farther from the latter-day “magical warrior” model we venture, as we’ll get to. The broader a view we take, the clearer it becomes that there is a space of overlap between “proper” / “pure” / whatever term you care to use Magical Girls and….something else, something slightly different. Something that has, to my knowledge, so far existed without a name. But if we gave it a name, what would be a good choice?

As it often does in life, manga has the answer.
(Yuuko and Momo, The Demon Girl Next Door)

The panel above is from a fan translation of The Demon Girl Next Door. It’s not really an example of the genre as I’ll shortly attempt to define it, but the name is catchy and it’s indicative. They’re girls, they battle. “Just Battle Girl things” indeed.

Like all art, what I’ll be terming “battle girl anime” here comes from a fairly long tradition. In this case, I would say that it unites–not necessarily intentionally–two diffuse strains of anime that were originally only loosely related. With the important caveats that I am not a historian of the medium, and that I will only attempt to comment at length on anime I’ve actually seen at least some of, I think I can draw a line from the early 2000s, where I believe this genre’s origins lie, to the present day.

Cure Black and Cure White, Futari wa Precure promotional art

One half of the Battle Girl genre’s parentage is fairly clear. 2004 saw the premiere of Futari wa Precure, a Magical Girl series that synthesized thematic elements taken from more traditional stories in the genre with visual and aesthetic choices drawn from tokusatsu, including Toei’s own Super Sentai series. Precure has had a massively successful long run in its home country. New Precure series are still produced today, even into this very anime season, where they are often held up as the only “traditional” Magical Girl anime still airing. Precure has also been quite influential in a way that is frankly self-evident, almost any Japanese Magical Girl parody of the past 15 years goes to Pretty Cure before it touches on anything else. That alone speaks volumes. Precure is not the only series on this side of the battle girl genre’s heritage, but it’s by far the most important, and the most obvious.

Masane Amaha, Witchblade

On the other side, we have a tradition that is both more obscure and in the eyes of many, less respectable, that of the Battle Vixen genre. The slightly different name gives the key distinction away; while modern Battle Girl anime are certainly capable of having leery cameras or the like, a vast majority of Battle Vixen anime were ecchi series. Fanservice–“cheesecake” as it was often called back then–was a core part of the appeal. The anime Battle Vixens (or Ikki Tousen in its home country) that gives its name to the genre, aired just a year before Pretty Cure. It too has been fairly successful domestically, for an ecchi, at least, and got a fair amount of sequels. The most recent, the Western Wolves OVA, airing just two years ago in 2019.

Although the franchise lacks Precure‘s broad appeal for fairly obvious reasons, it is certainly something that left an impression on the otaku of the aughts, whether positive or negative.

This two-prong approach is a simplification; we are neglecting the fair amount of Magical Girl anime made for adults before this, including the seminal Cutie Honey. We’re neglecting the related “mecha musume” term, which refers to something more specific and not necessarily narrative (and also refers to a kind of model kit), and several other things. Nonetheless, the close chronological proximity of the two anime I mentioned above, and the general climate that surrounds them, makes me think that these are, if not “the catalysts”, at least some of the catalysts. The New ’10s saw several events that allowed these styles to mix together; it’s here where we bring up Puella Magi Madoka Magica again. While it was hardly the first magical girl series for adults (or indeed the first one to be “dark”), what it was was massively popular, carving out a new audience for people who wanted stories that featured girls in colorful costumes kicking ass but weren’t necessarily predisposed to seek out stories with the themes most Magical Girl anime traffic in. (Or even, indeed, necessarily Madoka‘s own themes.) Combined with anime’s resurgence in the Anglosphere in the age of streaming, and you have an audience that is eager for stories “like this”. Even if what “like this” is was not quite a definite thing yet.

That brings us to the third piece of the puzzle; Symphogear.

Hibiki Tachibana, Symphogear

The timeline hyper-compresses here, and I suspect that if one were to look at the actual movement of staff and so on, one would find many people influencing each other, rather than a simple case of cause and effect. Still, I would fairly confidently point to Symphogear as the first “true and proper” modern Battle Girl anime. Its protagonists function like Precure-style Magical Girls, but its writing gestures to themes that are somewhat broader than the Magical Girl genre’s usual concerns, flattening out the more specific bent of its parent genre to examine more general oppressive systems. And in the case of Symphogear specifically; propose that only full-hearted love and honest communication can save us. Something still very much rooted in the Magical Girl style. (This is a very inconsequential sidenote, but I’d argue this puts Symphogear among the “closest” to a traditional Magical Girl series, out of those we’re discussing here.)

Black Rock Shooter TV anime promotional art.

I cannot definitively prove that Symphogear‘s success inspired imitators–and indeed, there were other shows at the time working in broadly similar territory, such as the 2012 Black Rock Shooter anime–but the genre explodes from here. Not for nothing did the aforementioned Assault Lily Bouquet pick up the pre-air hype train nickname “SHAFTogear”. Anime fans can already recognize this genre, even if they don’t quite have a name for it yet.

So we can somewhat confidently identify where Battle Girl anime come from, but what are they? What separates a Battle Girl anime from a Magical Girl anime? What separates one from a show that simply has a female lead in an action-focused role? Knowing what we do about their lineage, we can make a few specific qualifying points. Things that separate a Battle Girl anime from its closest cousins.

  1. A Battle Girl anime must have an entirely female, or at least femme-presenting, core cast, consisting of at least two, roughly equally-important, characters.¹
  2. A Battle Girl anime must be primarily an action series, whose lead characters must possess some kind of special powers, exceptional weaponry, or both.
  3. A Battle Girl series cannot be an ecchi series. It may have such elements, but they cannot be the core appeal.
  4. Finally, as a more conditional fourth point: A Battle Girl series often features a theme related to breaking out of, subverting, repairing, or escaping an oppressive system.

Caveats abound, of course, and like any genre classification, much of this will come down to personal interpretation. (There is no objectivity in the arts, after all.) But I believe these four points are what separate Battle Girls from their closest relatives.

With all this in mind, it is perhaps best to define the Battle Girl genre as more of a super-genre–a broad storytelling space that more specific genres can exist within, or overlap with. It would be hard indeed to disqualify Precure itself, for example. And while the third point disqualifies some of the genre’s own ancestors, there are at least a few borderline cases. (I am thinking here of the uniquely frustrating VividRed Operation, mostly.) There is also room for a conversation about whether vehicles count as “special powers or exceptional weaponry”. If they do, we could possibly rope in series like The Magnificent Kotobuki and Warlords of Sigrdrifa as well.

AKB0048 Promotional art.

There is also plenty of overlap with other genres; Symphogear itself has some DNA from idol anime, and fellow Satelight Inc. production AKB0048 merges the two even more closely. I would also argue that say, Kill la Kill is either just barely or just barely not a Battle Girl series. It would have to come down to how much weight one wishes to place on both the ecchi elements and the male characters.

So, if the genre is so broad, and is nebulous at the edges, why impose it at all? Well, in part, I do genuinely think that all of these anime existing within the same roughly ten year span cannot be entirely coincidental. But more importantly I think it’s genuinely really important to spotlight anime that have all- or mostly-female casts². There is still a widely-held assumption in Anglophone anime fan spaces that women only watch certain kinds of anime. Certainly they don’t care for action anime with lots of punching and shouting.

The truth of the matter is that women love fantasy and sci-fi action as much as anyone else. It is no coincidence that both Precure specifically and the Battle Girl genre in general have a sizable following among female otaku. The genre is also not a marker of quality of course; none is. I’d call myself an easy mark for it, but upon reviewing what series I considered to be or not be Battle Girl anime, I certainly came up with some that I do not like. And quite a few more that I’m more mixed on.

Hiyori and Kanami, Katana Maidens promotional art

With all of the above in mind, I came up with a list of anime from the last ten or so years I’d consider to belong to the genre. It is not exhaustive, and this is not really a “recommended viewing” list, either, but I feel that simply lining the names up in a column speaks for itself.

  • AKB0048
  • Assault Lily Bouquet
  • BLACKFOX
  • Black Rock Shooter (2012)
  • Flip Flappers
  • Granbelm
  • Katana Maidens: Toji no Miko
  • Princess Principal
  • RELEASE THE SPYCE
  • Revue Starlight
  • Symphogear
  • The Girl in Twilight
  • Wonder Egg Priority

I think this is sizable evidence that this is, indeed, “a thing” on at least some level. And this grouping leaves out some series I am personally on the fence on some of which I’ve already discussed, such as the aforementioned Kill la Kill, as well as things like Day Break Illusion and any number of other “dark Magical Girl anime” that could conceivably be counted in the genre but which, if so, form a distinct enough subgroup that they are a topic worthy of more specific discussion. I’ve also left out some anime that I’m reasonably sure likely qualify but that I have not seen myself, such as Yuuki Yuuna is A Hero and Battle Girl High School (no relation). There is also The Rolling Girls, a series that is definitely speaking some of the same language as these anime, but whose rejection of traditional heroism and odd structure prevent me from feeling comfortable listing it here.

Ai, Wonder Egg Priority

And even within this group, there’s a noticeable sub-category consisting of Flip Flappers, Wonder Egg Priority, and arguably Revue Starlight. These three have a more surreal presentation and somewhat different themes than their compatriots. I am not sure I’d be comfortable calling this its own “lineage”, exactly, due to its small size, but it may be the budding seeds of one.

All these caveats to say; I am under no illusion that I have “solved” any kind of “problem” here. Artistic frameworks–very much including genre–are imposed, they do not naturally exist. This is as true for the Battle Girl genre as anything else. What I do think I’ve done, though, is hopefully given a new lens through which we can analyze and think about these stories. I think art should be understood based on what it is trying to do. And I do think, at least to some extent, that framing shows like Symphogear, or Wonder Egg Priority, or Granbelm or any number of others as “Magical Girl Anime” harms understanding them more than it helps. Not because the Magical Girl genre is some exclusive sacred club (or indeed something to be shunned or avoided), but because the aims of the works are different. Different things exist for different people. That is not just something to tolerate; it’s worth celebrating.

I acknowledge that this framework I’ve devised is an incomplete one; my own relative neophytism is surely depriving me of at least some knowledge that would further flesh it out. (I have not even mentioned Mai-HiME, because I’ve never seen it, but I am near-positive that it factors in here somehow.) But that, in of itself, is a beautiful thing. If I have done something even akin to laying a single brick in what will one day become a building, it’s been worth the time, the words, and the thought.

As for the future of this genre-space, who can say? Wonder Egg Priority remains excellent, but time alone will tell if these anime continue to be made or if they will end up as a hallmark of the still, in the grand scheme of things, only-just-over 2010s.

Personally? I know what I’m hoping for.

1: There is some flexibility here. Male characters are still allowed in the periphery; as antagonists or as supporting characters like love interests or mentors, but they cannot be the main focus, and they should not have strong relationships with other male characters. The clause that there must be at least two characters is to distinguish these series from a not-closely-related group that star a lone, often wandering heroine.

2: It’s inarguably even more important to spotlight those that have many female staff, but that is another conversation, and is outside the scope of this article.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work for The Geek Girl Authority.

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) To The OTHERSIDE PICNIC and Back Again

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

What to make of Otherside Picnic? Named after a famous Russian novel to which it bears little resemblance, and drawing on a twenty year tradition of Japanese “net lore” for its inspiration, one might initially peg Otherside Picnic as a fairly heady, intellectual kind of horror story. But while it’s certainly creepy enough in its most unsettling moments to earn the genre tag, it’d be a mistake to box this one in as being solely for those with an SCP Foundation addiction.

A more proper indicator of where Otherside Picnic is coming from might actually be its opening theme. A rollicking, adventurous pop-rock tune with a romantic slant from accomplished anisongsters CHiCO with Honeyworks. Otherside isn’t not a horror series, but it’s important to consider what else it is; an adventure anime, and also a show with some pretty prolific lesbian subtext. It’s not at all dour, is what I’m getting at.

Instead, Otherside is a surprisingly breezy watch. It’s the story of Sorawo, a depressed college student who, through her vast knowledge of online urban legends, wanders through a gateway to another world; the titular otherside. When we meet her, she’s lying flat on her back in a puddle, pursued by a mind-invading monster known as a kunekune¹, and about to accept her imminent death. What, or rather who, saves her is a gun-toting Canadian-Japanese woman named Toriko, who she quite quickly develops a very obvious crush on.

Like, very obvious.

Otherside Picnic follows the two, as they grow closer, make trips to and from the Otherside, and contend with the many strange creatures that live there. Sorawo often gives a brief rundown of what these things are, which is helpful if you, like me, only have a pretty limited knowledge of Japanese creepypastas. The “net legend” angle is a big part of the setting’s appeal, so if the idea of even something as out there as the bizarre and disturbingly violent “monkey train dream” getting a nod appeals to you, the series is a must-watch.

Really, I was surprised at how much I liked Otherside Picnic in general. Horror isn’t really my genre, but Sorawo is just the right kind of relatable reserved nerd. (Although I will admit, the one thing the series is missing from the light novels is her delightfully gay inner monologues about how attractive she finds Toriko.) Her character arc over the course of the series is fairly simple, as she starts out as said reserved nerd and by the final episode, having along the way developed what are essentially magic powers, and having been through so much with Toriko is, well, decidedly no longer that.

On a less literal level, the series also hums a simple theme of the importance of finding people who you just vibe with. In the finale, this is all but stated outright, as Sorawo and Toriko both recount how the other saved them. It gives Otherside Picnic a point, adding some substance to its afternoon anime binge-friendly nature.

Much of the rest of the fun of the series comes from setting details or technical aspects. The monster design is quite strong, and combined with the often surprisingly good animation², this carries the series’ weaker episodes. There’s also quite a few running sub-plots tucked in to the show’s single cour. These range from fairly serious (a lost group of US Marines who the pair eventually rescue), to clear set-up for seasons yet to come (Sorawo’s apparent and only briefly touched-on ability to not-quite mind control people, the late-game introduction of minor character Akari), to the just plain odd (there’s an episode about cats who are ninjas) or funny (the pair accidentally buy a multi-purpose miniature harvester on a drunken spending binge at one point).

It’s hard to imagine that Otherside Picnic will exactly change anyone’s life, but like last year’s Dorohedoro, it’s strong genre fare in a genre that is under-represented in mainstream TV anime. That it is perhaps only the second-best anime of the Spring 2021 season to revolve around a heterochromiac who travels to an otherworld that also has a lot of queer subtext speaks more to the strength of the competition than it does any problems with Otherside. This is a series I could see getting sequel seasons for years, frankly, as there is a lot of unadapted material and a lot of mysteries left unexplored. Perhaps if we’re lucky, that will be the anime’s eventual fate. Either way, there’s a lot to love about a brief trip to the Otherside.

1: The subtitles somewhat astoundingly refer to these things as “wiggle-waggles”, which is pretty damn funny.

2: Surprising because this is a LIDENFILMS production. I’m not an expert on the company by any means, but what I’ve seen from them has traditionally had outright bad animation. While the CGI used for some distance shots won’t impress anyone anytime soon, I was pleasantly surprised by how good it looked at other times.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work for The Geek Girl Authority.

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) Everywhere and Nowhere in SIMOUN

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 S.F. Sorrow. Many thanks, as always.

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

The gender binary works for almost no person on Earth. The national war machines of the world, even fewer. In the abstract sense; Simoun is about this simple pair of facts, and how they relate to the broader systems that define our lives. Moreover, it is about how those systems can be dealt with; through adaption, rejection, self-sacrifice, self-love, and self-knowledge.

It’s possible I’m betraying a small reference pool here, but I find Simoun a true original. I’m guilty of overusing terms like “unusual” and I call enough anime “a bit of a weird one” that you could conceivably make a drinking game out of it while reading my blog. But qualifiers like “a bit” are unnecessary here. I don’t think I’ve seen much else even remotely like Simoun. Frankly, I struggle for reference points. “A shoujo-inflected political war drama with gender identity issues” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. And indeed, Simoun is defined by some very unusual stylistic tentpoles.

We have here a deliberately slow and ponderous pace, sketchbook fantasy architecture, a decidedly odd setting with flying vehicles rendered in airbrushed mid-aughts CGI (the titular simouns themselves), and a surprisingly complex….well, complex of fantastic gender roles and associated dynamics. All this is soundtracked, naturally, with a combination of very of-its-time canned breaks and four-on-the-floor rhythms, and a shocking amount of violins. It’s a lot to take in.

At its heart, Simoun is both the story of its cast, all of whom are young girls in a military unit called the Chor Tempest, and how they are affected both by the social systems that they live in and each other. If that sounds a bit heady, that’s because Simoun itself often leans that way. This is a show with a lot on its mind, and it spends all twenty-six of its episodes pouring it out.

Getting into the nitty-gritty of what Simoun is about requires first explaining a facet of its worldbuilding. Though I called the show’s protagonists “young girls” in the previous paragraph, that’s not actually entirely correct. Simoun‘s cast consists mostly of young people belonging to a social caste of their country, The Theocracy of Simulacrum, called sibyllae (singular: sibylla) who are perhaps best thought of as being a kind of nonbinary, although even this is, admittedly, a simplification. Sibyllae pilot the titular simouns, both as ritual instruments in their role as priestesses and as weapons of war in an ongoing conflict with first one and then two other powers; the Archipelago of Argentum and The Plumbum Highlands. Two pilots occupy each simoun, in a bond called a “pair” that is both tactical and emotional. Sometimes merely friendly, other times romantic. On a few occasions it’s even adversarial.

Once they reach maturity, sibyllae (and indeed, all of Simulacrum’s citizens) are expected to retire from their role and visit a magic fountain, where they will choose to either become male or “remain” (the terminology is somewhat odd, but can probably be chalked up to the age of the series) female. Alternately, if they are uncommitted, they can have the fountain itself (via its representative, a priestess figure named Onashia) choose for them. Much ceremony surrounds this, and the reasons individual sibyllae give for their choice varies wildly; some want to remain with their simoun pair or some other romantic interest and thus choose to become male, others seek specific jobs more associated with one gender than another, and so on.

In the series’ second episode, a sibylla named Elly has the fountain choose her gender for her. We don’t see much, but we learn as she does that she is to become male. Almost immediately, she cries out in anguish and breaks down crying. A lack of commitment on the part of someone who is still essentially a child is punished by being forced into a role that does not fit her and that she is not happy with. To say it’s “hard to watch” is an understatement. It’s horrifying. And it’s one Simoun calls back to more than once over the course of its run. It is the first major indication that all of these invented systemics are buildup to a real core, not just aesthetics or aimless experimentation.

The sibyllae occupy a role that has no direct, obvious real-world counterpart, which has the benefit of halting any preconceived notions on the part of the viewer. Any notions that do form will be quickly picked apart by the characters themselves. Almost to a one, every character in the show has a distinct opinion of the syballae, none moreso than the pilots themselves. Some see the sibyllae primarily as priestesses and lament the combat role they’ve had to take up in wartime. For others, such as Mamina, it’s the entire point; a chance to prove oneself and rise above one’s station. Others still, such as Aeru, who is probably the closest thing Simoun has to a proper protagonist, primarily serve in order to avoid the inevitability of the fountain.

Some are just as lost as the audience; Neviril, around whom much of the series revolves, is engaged with a desperate search for purpose after the loss of her partner in the first episode. This is all without even mentioning the complex and thorny dynamic of having a bunch of children who are essentially miko pilot the simoun themselves. Given that the vehicles are, when deployed at their full strength, functionally magical nuclear bombers. These are just some of the many issues that Simoun picks at numerous times over the course of its run.

It’s unsurprising then that tonally, Simoun is iron and rain. The foggy atmosphere tints the deep regret, unrequited love, and crises of faith that permeate the series. As it progresses, conflicting ideals of religious and noble duty clash with those of militaristic nationalism, the individuals that espouse these ideas caught in between. Simoun is heavy as lead. This is not a show you watch for fun.

This means that the show does have a few, not weaknesses exactly, but quirks. The way it handles big emotional moments is almost more reminiscent of dramatic theater than anything else. But make no mistake, that stately sense of gravitas is absolutely capable of sending chills up the spines of the unprepared. It’s a trait the series shares with some other big-picture war dramas, your Gundams and such, making it the thing that most easily places Simoun within the obvious broader context of its medium.

As for actual weaknesses, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Simoun something of a slog. It’s not pointless, which is what that term usually implies, but it is definitely not anyone’s idea of a breezy watch. There are very few moments of emotional catharsis or even many pleasant interludes during the entire run of the show, these only really coming to fruition in Simoun‘s final half dozen episodes. It works well with the series’ thematic core, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach on a moment to moment basis and I must confess my millennial ADHD brain found itself struggling to keep my attention focused on the screen at times. It’s almost impressive, given that Simoun is only a fairly short 26 episodes. Simoun also looks very much of its time. I grew to appreciate its mid-2000s charm over the course of watching it, but I would be unsurprised if others were less charitable.

So those are the ups and downs. It is fair then to ask where all of this goes, and the truth is that Simoun‘s greatest strength is that by spending all of that time on worldbuilding and similar details, it earns an incredible amount of leeway to take the entire thing wherever it pleases. Simoun‘s true core thesis then, is wonderful. The series broadly rejects all notion of heroic narrative; the ostensible main military conflict fizzles out with four episodes left to go. Its’ finale is not about any grand confrontation, but about how the sibyllae who remain deal with the end of the war, and consequently the end of their special relevance to the Theocracy.

All of this is broadly a metaphor for coming of age. A thematic line that many anime explore, but Simoun‘s closest compatriot, at least from my own pool of knowledge, is none other than Revolutionary Girl Utena. The two share something that looks like fatalism from a distance but is both more practical and more resonant up close. Unlike many other anime, Simoun offers no dramatic moment of breaking the system. The system, in a way, wins, in that it continues to exist even after the war. The sibyllae’s own choices are where the revolution lies; for many, to go to the fountain, for one, to replace Onashia as its keeper, and for two, something far stranger, and not unlike Utena and Anthy’s great escape at the end of their own series’ film. It is a revolution not of the world, but the self.

One could argue that this thesis is incomplete, maybe even irresponsible. I would counter that no single work of art is obligated to depict all aspects of the human condition on its own. We need lovers as much as fighters, and Simoun is decidedly for the former. This school of thematic material lives on in anime to this very day for that exact reason.

For the flaws it admittedly does have, Simoun‘s final catharsis is wonderfully well-earned. The hours of our lives tick on, and somewhere far beyond them spin two eternal maidens, in a land of hope and dance.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Other Posts

Where The Wicked Shadow Grows: Compassion in Online Anime Fan Spaces

How do we keep ending up here?

This past week, the mass of loosely Japanese animation-related Twitter accounts broadly known as “AniTwitter” worked itself into a tizzy over an admittedly somewhat surface-level but harmless article on gaming website Polygon. That article’s author, Kambole Campbell, came under fire from anglosphere magical girl genre fans after the column (admittedly incorrectly) implied that Wonder Egg Priority was innovating in the genre space by dealing with the traumas of growing up.

To briefly satisfy the bloodhounds, yes, this is wrong. One need only to have seen the fairly recent-in-the-grand-scheme-of-things HeartCatch Precure to know that’s not true, and beyond that specific show or even the Pretty Cure franchise in general, the genre has been tackling this subject matter basically since its inception. I would argue that if Wonder Egg Priority makes a real innovation it’s merging that thematic core with an approach centered around surrealistic psychological imagery. Even there, it has forefathers. (That article also mentions Puella Magi Madoka Magica. It’s an obvious comparison, but not an incorrect one. And Madoka too has its own stylistic ancestors, of course, but this should go without saying, nothing exists in a vacuum.) Innovation is often only truly noticeable in hindsight anyway.

But Campbell’s minor error, mostly one of tone, doesn’t really matter here. And beyond the previous paragraph I don’t intend to much discuss the article itself at all, because I don’t think its content is terribly important to this issue. What’s been laid bare by this entire incident, which culminated in Campbell locking his twitter account and thus cutting off a vital source of networking for himself, is the truly dire state of anime fandom on social media.

This isn’t really surprising, if we stop to think about it. Broadly, the more niche a geeky interest is, the more intense its fans are. To abandon anime completely for a moment, look at the MCU. The cinematic universe’s most intense fans are not casual moviegoers, they’re the diehard core of Marvel comic fans for whom the films mark a public acceptance of what was for some time a rather obscure set of narratives. You go back fifteen years and much of the public at large doesn’t know who Marvel’s Thor is, much less the Guardians of The Galaxy.

So with this principal in mind, let’s apply it here. Anime as an entire medium is already a niche interest in the anglosphere, despite a resurgence in popular awareness over the last decade. Outside of mainstream TV shonen; the likes of say, My Hero Academia and a few other such properties whose merch you can find at your local Target, it is even moreso. It is not a surprise then that one of the most intense corners of online anime fan space is what might loosely be termed “magical girl twitter”. People whose passion for the genre runs wide and deep, not just Pretty Cure mega-fans (although those certainly exist), but folks whose knowledge extends back to the birth of the genre. Farther than mine, certainly.

In of itself, passion is a wonderful thing. I started this blog in part out of a desire to share my own. The issue arises when fans who share a niche interest go from appreciative to exclusionary and, in this case, to actively antagonistic. A freelance journalist’s Twitter account being locked is not a minor inconvenience, it is an active, tangible negative impact on their life. “Magical girl twitter”, as I’m calling it here, has harmed a person’s livelihood. Here in retaliation–deliberate or not–for a perceived lack of respect toward the genre and its traditions.

We have to be careful here, because wanting a journalist to be qualified is not inherently a bad thing. In an ideal world, anyone who wanted to pen an article about some anime they liked would have infinite time and resource to do so, and would always produce the absolute best material possible. We, of course, do not live in an ideal world. The pool of writers a website can draw on is limited. The combined frames of reference of those writers is limited. The amount of money a website is willing to pay those writers is limited. And so on, and so forth.

The reality thus is this. Most likely, Campbell’s article came into being because he saw the show, thought it ruled (which it does), and wanted to use the platform that Polygon gave him to hopefully spread the word. I have seen a lot of malice ascribed to his motives, and I find the conclusions many were willing to jump to somewhere between upsetting and just plain confusing. (I cannot count how many times I’ve seen the word “clickbait” over the last two days. Sidebar here: all journalism written on the internet is clickbait. Clicks are how we pay for, y’know, groceries and such.)

In some ways though, this is the logical endpoint of the mindset that any commentator on the medium must be This Qualified to write their work. As the traditional western otaku gatekeeping structures have broken down, anime has become more accessible to anglophone audiences than ever before. Thus, pure, experiential knowledge–How Much Anime You’ve Watched–has become the last refuge of those who think that the broadening scope of who is watching and enjoying anime is a bad thing.

Part of this is just a failure to understand a basic truth of art. No two people experience the same works in the same order or in the same way. One’s “experience of art” is wholly unique. Seeing, just as a vaguely-relevant example, Madoka Magica before Sailor Moon is different from seeing them in the reverse order. Seeing any entry in the storied Cutie Honey franchise before you saw either would influence your perception of both, and the same is true in whatever order you care to put these three examples in. This is part of why people simply disagree on interpretation and even just the quality of a given work in the first place.

Artistic canons, then, eventually arise from broadly agreed-upon interpretations or at least points from which interpretations may emerge. It’s important to acknowledge that they are not objective truths, but rather groups of shared experiences. Niche knowledge becomes codified by those who have the most of it, and a consequence of this is that some opinions become an easy way to identify someone as not being “in the know”. In the case of magical girl anime, almost anything that positions Madoka Magica and its imitators as diametrical opposites to older works in the genre is one of these. Sadly, it is then all too easy to think of the “not in the know” person as an outsider here to besmirch the good name of magical girl anime. (Or whatever else you care to name.)

I don’t think those making these assumptions have bad motives, to be clear. I have been on the receiving end of enough nightmarishly dull conversations about how Madoka Magica was the first thing to “deconstruct” magical girl anime that I can absolutely understand finding such talk infuriating. I too understand the impulse to correct someone when they seem to be buying into (or worse, spreading!) a badly-informed talking point. What I do think is bad is the actions that this attitude leads to if taken to an extreme. One Twitter account being locked is one thing, but the exclusionary attitude underlying much of the discourse here is the same mentality that, combined with a noxious cocktail of reactionary politics that is also very much present in some parts of the anime fandom, fueled the GamerGate fiasco a decade ago. No one should want more of that.

The people behind this specific incident likely had only the best of intentions; defending the reputation of the magical girl genre which is often unfairly maligned. But we must be mindful of how this interacts with the internet at large. It would not be difficult at all for a reactionary group to co-opt this sort of outrage flareup for their own ends. I think I speak for every rational anime fan when I say that that is firmly not what we want the future of our medium’s fan spaces to look like.

I look again to what the likely origins of Campbell’s article were; a simple attempt to put more people on to a series he thought was worth watching. Even if we take it as a given that he made mistakes in the process, did he actually do anything wrong? I would say not. Intent matters here. It is obvious from any even remotely considerate reading of the article that there was no active attempt to deceive, discredit, or defame anyone or anything. At its absolute worst, the article is maybe slightly shallow. Certainly, it’s nothing that warrants the hugely disproportionate negative response Campbell got on social media. Which, as we’ve gone over, is both personally damaging to the journalist and just unproductive in general.

So what is the best way to counteract potential bad information in a piece like this without causing its author harm? Speaking generally, I advocate response articles (something of a lost art, honestly) for this kind of thing. They are better for the productive purpose of educating and expanding the horizons of anime neophytes. Twitter threads if carefully maintained can also be a solid tool, but especially for owners of larger accounts, this risks accidentally painting a target on the author’s back. Care must be taken in general, as the goal of artistic commentary, and indeed, commentary on that commentary, should always be to foster greater understanding between people. Social media outrage, by contrast, has the exact opposite effect. It turns both fans and the journalists themselves away from the medium and from each other, something nobody should want.

I’ve confessed before that I loathe writing articles like this. They’re not any fun, I always feel like I’m scolding people, and they’re not even remotely indicative of my broader work. Yet, I sometimes feel obligated to. If I can leave even one person just slightly more considerate and constructive at the end of this article than they were at the beginning, it’s well worth it. And to head off at the pass any accusations of self-righteousness; it’s not like I’m immune to this either. I’m definitely as guilty of occasionally jumping down folks’ throats as anyone else. I think it’s important to recognize that it’s at best a bad habit and at worst an active detriment to the medium I love.

So please, let’s all try to be just a little nicer, more charitable, more compassionate to each other? The artists, fans, and writers of generations to come will thank us for it.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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

When The Rain Breaks in WONDER EGG PRIORITY

Note: This article contains discussion of suicide and other potentially upsetting subject matter. Reader discretion is advised.

They really just don’t make many like this.

When I first wrote about Wonder Egg Priority some six weeks ago, I said that the only real potentially bad thing about its first episode was how high it had set expectations. Five episodes later, the very notion seems quaint. Among a great majority of the people watching it, Wonder Egg Priority is a frontrunner for the coveted “anime of the season” badge. For a smaller, but still significant portion, it may well be much more than that.

But just gushing about the show’s quality would largely be relating things people already know. Likewise, critics smarter than myself have pointed out that despite definitely being unique in this season, Wonder Egg Priority does have several obvious ancestors. Most notably Kuniko Ikuhara‘s work and much of what it’s subsequently influenced (your Flip Flappers-es and your Revue Starlight-ses) on one hand, and on the other, the Kyoto Animation school of stylized life dramas. These two schools of creative work together inform both Wonder Egg‘s look and feel as well as its general ethos, which I think is where much of the interesting work remains to be done on our part as viewers.

With most anime–and indeed most serial fiction–you can generally “figure it out” fairly quickly. This isn’t a bad thing, a lot of fiction gets its very power from conveying resonant messages through combinations of classic tropes. (Which are, after all, classic for a reason.) What makes Wonder Egg Priority feel distinct is that it falls into a slightly different category that I am increasingly fond of; anime that can be treated like something of a thematic puzzle box. This has vexed some of the series’ own fans. When an in-series bit of gender essentialism by the shadowy Acca went immediately unchallenged, the viewer concern was enough that the show’s staff felt the need to address it on Twitter.

That kind of commitment to “getting things right” is commendable–and very rare–but I have to admit that a small part of me was a bit disappointed that they felt the need to do so. At the risk of coming across as something of an elitist; Wonder Egg Priority demands that you engage with it critically and intelligently. While it would be unfair to say that most anime don’t assume you’ll do that, Wonder Egg seems to be inclined to much less signposting than is the norm. Things as basic as character motivation are implied instead of outright stated, and much of the series operates on symbolic logic. This can make it hard to get your head around what exactly it’s trying to do, and lest I come across as thinking I’m smarter than everyone here, I will completely cop to the very real possibility that I also don’t understand the show. But, fittingly for its halfway point, I think Wonder Egg‘s sixth episode gives us some indication of where it will go next, and what it wants to accomplish by getting there. Some indication, but not a crystal clear one.

I’m sure, for instance, that someone out there has figured This out. Not me, though.

Wonder Egg Priority‘s subject matter has consistently been heavy. Suicide is baked into the series’ very premise, and its only through its absolutely wonderful visuals and sound that it avoids being a drag to watch. Along the way, abuse, familial conflict, sexual harassment, and a million other things have been dragged along for the ride. At the heart of this lies Ai Ohto, our protagonist. Her guilt over the suicide of her close friend Koito Nagase has driven much of her action throughout Wonder Egg Priority. So too has the repeated housecall visits of school teacher Shuichiro Sawaki. Sawaki is a figure it is very easy to read uncharitably.

He’s older than Ai but seems to have some kind of fixation on her, and several shots throughout the show frame him in a way that gives off a decidedly sinister air. In this very episode, he and Ai’s mother broach the subject of entering a relationship, and co-protagonist Rika openly speculates that he might be a sexual predator using that relationship to get closer to Ai. Neiru (another of the main four) meanwhile speculates that Ai’s frustrated feelings instead stem from the fact that she herself has feelings for Sawaki.

I don’t know what the “easy way out” of this particular knot of character relationships would be. What Wonder Egg puts forward is that Neiru is, if not right exactly, at least in the general ballpark. The episode, despite its sinister title, ends on a happy note, with literal clouds parting and sun shining down.

In any other series it would be quite easy to take this at face value, and that might well be what Wonder Egg is going for as well. Yet there remain lingering doubts simply due to the show’s nature, and I would not be surprised if they remain right up until the finale. For some (and I’m kind of including myself here), there will remain a suspicion, perhaps a fear, that the other shoe is about to drop, even if it never does. I’m sure, too, that others will forecast a worst-case scenario: “Oh god, they’re not going to have Ai hook up with her teacher, are they?”

I would love to refute “well no, of course they’re not. Have you seen this show? It’s too smart to do that.” And indeed, I think it’s extraordinarily unlikely. But, Wonder Egg Priority‘s very nature encourages these widely divergent readings, and I honestly think that’s part of what makes it so special.

In the opening minutes of the episode, there’s a title drop. It feels just a little tongue-in-cheek, but not so much so that it feels in any way insincere. What has me so enraptured with Wonder Egg Priority is that very sincerity. Despite its heavy themes and despite how it plays with audience expectations, nothing about it feels in any way false. Nothing feels contrived, overthought, or half-baked. It is what it wants to be. No more and no less.

What I will say, is that I tend to broadly divide all narrative art into two sweeping categories; the diagnostic and the idealistic. The former showcases and draws attention to the ills of the world. The latter presents a vision of the world as it should be. (Neither, it must be stressed, is any better than the other. Though I suspect the categories resonate more strongly with different people.) It’s usually not hard to drop an anime firmly in one bucket or the other despite many anime obviously doing at least a bit of both. With Wonder Egg Priority, I’ve been unable to place it firmly on either side. Certainly, it is keen to the problems of the world we live in, but the sheer sincerity of it all, and the weighty metaphors of eggshells and paint, seem to gesture at a brighter future.

Is this when the rain lets up, or merely a lull in the storm? Who, really, can say?

“Please let those kids find happiness.”

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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: You Really Need to See WONDER EGG PRIORITY

Note: This article contains discussion of suicide. Reader discretion is advised.

When Wonder Egg Priority was first announced last year, most attention went to its title, which undeniably is odd in a specific way that really catches the ear. Early trailers were sparse on much plot information. The (wholly incorrect) impression I got from the initial promotional materials was that this would be a youth drama of some kind, something in the vein of A Place Further Than The Universe or O Maidens In Your Savage Season. What Wonder Egg Priority actually is is still something of an open question, as we’ll get to. But its first episode “The Domain of Children” is perhaps the strongest original anime debut since Flip Flappers some five years ago. Wonder Egg is also similar to that series in some other ways, but we’ll get to that.

I normally like to kick off this sort of thing by explaining, broadly, what the series is about. That’s a bit hard for Wonder Egg Priority, so let’s instead tackle another aspect; the visuals. Wonder Egg Priority is the best-looking anime of the young year, and it has virtually no competition. CloverWorks make good-looking shows in general, but their collective talent pool has never done anything quite like this before.

The series’ backgrounds are rendered in hauntingly liminal laser-precision by what simply must be a crack CGI team. In the coming days you will probably see someone say that Wonder Egg Priority is denpa. There are a lot of reasons that this is true, but one is its recontextualization of a school building as a place of terror. Other anime have done this, but it’s been ages since I’ve seen it done so effectively. Every internal shot of the school looks like it’s had the air sucked out of it. Faceless figures stalk the hallways. When they attack, the windows are framed in paint-like blood.

Its characters are brought to vibrant life through gel-pen-esque digi-paint. Every single one shines. Main character Ai Ohto is the greatest triumph so far here; her oilslick hair, distinctive heterochromia (actually a plot point!), and yolk-yellow hoodie evoke the image of a cracked-open egg or a newborn chick depending on how she wears the hood. A cutesy nod to the show’s title and a nice bit of symbolism all in one.

May I offer you an egg in these trying times?

All this is a flowery way of saying Wonder Egg Priority looks amazing. I found myself absentmindedly tapping my “save frame as screenshot” key every few seconds. It is very rare that almost any given still from an episode could make a compelling screengrab, but it’s true here.

Four paragraphs about the looks and nary a hint of what the show’s actual subject matter is. As mentioned, explaining what happens in the first episode of Wonder Egg Priority is a bit difficult. The episode makes fairly heavy use of non-chronological order, and it becomes clear about a third of the way through that we’re dealing with a “real world / mental world” sort of divide. (Or at least something similar.)

The gist though is this; Ai is a hikkikimori. Why? It’s not directly spelled out for us, but we’re shown here that her only friend, a girl named Koito Nagase, threw herself from the rooftop of Ai’s high school. Which, yes, means you can add Wonder Egg Priority to the long list of anime that have a suicide in the first episode. A sad reflection of a despiriting reality.

Note also how the real world tends to be drawn in sepia and shadow. It’s not a happier place than the “Egg World”, but it is certainly more physical.

This heavy subject matter is contrasted by the series’ fantasy elements. Ai begins the show by coming into possession of a mysterious, titular “wonder egg”. The short version is that these allow her to enter….mental worlds? Afterlives? Other universes? It’s not totally clear, and rescue, or at least attempt to rescue, people from being pursued by mysterious, malevolent figures known as See-No-Evils. Ai’s only guidance here is offered by the apparent ghost of a beetle, a truly weird take on the “magical girl animal companion” trope if ever there was one. Towards the end of the episode, he implies but does not outright say that helping enough of these pursued people may somehow bring Nagase back.

He’s very trustworthy, I’m sure.

The details matter less than the emotional force. Ai is able to break through her own apathy (“pretending not to see”, as she, and others, phrase it) to help the person she needs to help, even before doing so to bring back her late companion enters the equation. The episode’s climactic emotional moment is hard to put into words. Basically; she goes full Pretty Cure on the See-No-Evils. It’s just, you know, much more violent and surreal. The lingering trauma of Ai losing her only friend, her own frustration with herself for failing to prevent it, her determination to never let it happen again, it all builds up to a single, powerful thwack. It’s the single most viscerally satisfying moment I’ve seen in an anime in ages.

And thus does the first episode of this denpa-action-mystery-fantasy-magical-girl??-thing come to a close.

Where does Wonder Egg Priority go from here? First episodes need to make a strong impression, and without a doubt this is the best I’ve seen so far this year. (With apologies to BACK ARROW, which must now settle for second place.) The simultaneous benefit and curse of having such a strong one is that now the expectations are sky-high.

Yet–and I of course could be wrong here–I just have a feeling about this one. While watching this episode I couldn’t help but tap on my desk excitedly, at the climactic scene above I whistled aloud, and my mind didn’t wander for even a second. Whether it will do all it strives to do is an open question, but we are unquestionably in for an absolutely wild twelve weeks. In the realm of anime, I can ask for nothing more.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 4

Before we get started, a brief reminder to check out the Introduction post and the previous 3 parts of the list before you read this one. Don’t wanna spoil yourself, y’know?

In any case; there were plenty of anime I liked in 2020, some of which I liked quite a lot. There were not nearly as many that I truly loved. But of those I did, they fall into one of two categories. Either they are sharp, questioning, and political. Or they are joyous reaffirmations of how art can affect us, and how it can carry us forward even through the darkest times of our lives. The two are dissimilar, but complimentary. The former is grounded in realism and the latter in escapism. They tend toward the pessimistic and optimistic, respectively. I think that reflects the character of the year–and I suppose, of myself–quite well. Hopefully you agree. On to the final five!

#5: DECA-DENCE

Not since Kill la Kill has a studio produced an original anime debut so immediately sharp and arresting. I have to admit, I turned that statement over in my head for literal days before committing to it, but it’s true. Nut Co. Ltd. have done TV anime before, but aside from an assist on the polarizing FLCL sequels, their most well-known work before Deca-Dence was The Saga of Tanya The Evil, which, whatever one may think about it, was a manga adaption that stuck fairly close to its origins.

Any flaws aside; Deca-Dence feels very much like a wholly-realized singular artistic vision, from start to finish. The sort that is fairly rare in commercial arts fields (which TV anime certainly is). What’s more, it is nakedly political, with a witheringly on-point cross-examination of the evils of capitalism and its dire endpoints as exemplified by its very setting; a post-apocalyptic world which is exploited as a “real life video game” by the ruling class. Which would maybe make it a slog if the show weren’t so damn fun. Visually, Deca-Dence pops with bright colors, steampunk-inspired machines, and a design sensibility for its robot characters that feels inherited from Kaiba, one of the all-time great anime of this sort. Narratively, there’s enough action and compelling character drama to keep things from getting stale or feeling preachy. Deca-Dence exists in solidarity, not on a pedestal.

The unified artistic vision that is largely a positive does, on the flipside, unfortunately mean that it has a few notable flaws. Its chief sin is a bait-and-switchy treatment of its two leads, which would be less of an issue if one were not a young girl and the other an older gruff man narratively empowered by her pain. It’s a mistake this kind of thing should be able to avoid, and that is primarily why it rounds out the bottom of the Top 5. So it goes.

Still, if Deca-Dence is any indication of what future Nut Co. productions, or those of director Yuzuru Tachikawa or writer Hiroshi Seko will be like, there’s a lot to look forward to.

#4: Kaguya-sama: Love is War?

For two years in a row; Kaguya-sama: Love is War! has been raising the bar for anime romcoms. What it may lack in innovation it more than makes up for in technique and heart, Love is War?, the confusingly-titled second season of the series, is top-to-bottom hilarious. Except of course, when it’s busy being surprisingly heavy instead.

It’s not entirely fair to put Love is War on a pedestal, but I really struggle to think of anything else in recent memory that works in this space so well. Original mangaka Aka Akasaka‘s technique of starting with a familiar archetype and then “filling them in” over the course of the story has kept Love is War‘s character writing consistently interesting. This holds true both when exploring the school-day trauma that Ishigami still suffers the aftershocks from and when breaking down the surprisingly complex character of the moralistic, blustery Miko.

But those are strengths equally attributable to the original manga. What puts Love is War the anime near the top of its bracket is the way the visuals elevate and enhance this storytelling. From a comedic perspective, the visuals breathe new life into jokes manga readers have heard before and really make them pop for newcomers. At times, new gags are even made up wholesale, often leaning on the visual element alone. Scenes like Kaguya randomly breaking into vogue, Hayasaka annoyedly bursting into Kaguya’s classroom, and even random visual asides referencing Dark Souls and Peanuts give the entire thing a wonderful, absurd edge.

On the more serious side, these techniques are instead turned toward invoking empathy. Faces have their visual features erased to signify disassociation, crowds coalesce into shadowy masses to project anxiety. Visual effect enthusiasts are given quite a bit to pour over in Love is War.

You might rightly ask why you should care about any of this, since at its core Love is War still is very much a “will they or won’t they” sort of love story. The sort that anime has seen many times before and will see many times again. To a point, that very question has kept it from an even higher spot on this list. But conversely, I would argue that resonant artistic depictions of the anxieties and absurdities of youth will never lose their place in the artistic canon. Not for anime, and not for anything.

#3: Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club

If this list were ranked solely by how much the anime on it made my heart sing, Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club would hold a comfortable #1 spot. Earlier this year I began an earnest dive into the girl group idol anime genre after only idly (haha) poking at it for most of my life. My opinion that 2011’s The Idolm@ster is the genre’s gold standard remains unchanged. But I did not expect it to receive an even close to worthy contender to the title this year. But here we are, and I do genuinely think that Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, the latest entry in the rival Love Live franchise, makes a damn good showing of it. Why? Because of the sheer effort the series go through to convey to you one simple fact; these girls are born entertainers, and they love it, through and through.

The ways in which they love it vary wildly, and if I had to pin a single weakness on Nijigasaki it would probably be that its gargantuan cast size (eleven main characters!) means that some of the girls do only get cursory development. The flipside though is that almost every single one who does get some focus is so magnetic that the passion they have for singing transfers almost directly to you. In its best moments, Nijigasaki feels like holding a live wire of artistic inspiration. Without a doubt; the anime is best experienced by checking any cynicism at the door and just throwing yourself in, arms wide open.

And part of the reason it succeeds is how easy it makes it to do that. Nijigasaki‘s great writing triumph is how quickly and snappily it establishes each character within each arc. Part of this is down to sharp visual design; things like Setsuna’s pyrotechnic stage setup, Rina’s iconic digital “faceboard”, Shizuku’s black and white dress, and so on. But the show’s laser focus when it comes to establishing why each girl wants to become an idol and how she goes about doing so is an incredibly convincing argument for this genre in this format, proving you don’t need two cours here. (Not to say an extra 13 episodes of this would’ve been in any way unwelcome.) The final arc, where group manager Yu and idol Ayumu have a near-falling out over the former’s desire to become a composer proves that the series can also work in more delicate emotional shades, which (as with many things this high on the list) makes me hope for a second season.

In a broader sense; from Setsuna’s matchstick strike of a guerrilla concert in episode three to the blazing monster of a festival that closes out the series, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is a celebration of communal art and performance in a year where, to paraphrase music critic Todd Nathanson, the very idea may as well be science fiction. Being so fantastically escapist emphatically does not hurt Nijigasaki, it is the very core of its strength. What makes it wonderful is how it is borderline utopian; a vision of a place where everyone’s dreams come true.

#2: Tower of God

I try not to think about these kinds of things too much when I write, but I suspect if there’s a “controversial” pick this high up on the list, it’ll be this one. Tower of God stands as one of 2020’s most polarizing and, in my opinion, most misunderstood mainstream action anime. Tower of God is two primary things: for one, it is a kickass battle shonen set in a truly unique fantasy world inherited from its source material, a sprawling webcomic that effectively wrought the Webtoon movement from the ground with its bare hands. For another; it is an absolutely dialed critique of systems of arbitrary merit. If you’ve been waiting for me to bring up capitalism again, wait no longer. Frankly I don’t need to, Tower of God does it for me. It’s not like characters having to pay off their own medical expenses within the Tower is exactly a subtle analogy to real life.

Tower of God‘s attitude towards its source material–adapt the interesting or the relevant bits, skip everything else–can definitely leave it feeling a touch hard to follow at times. But Tower of God makes its intentions clear in its final few episodes, where deuteragonist Rachel does exactly as the Tower incentivizes her to, and betrays protagonist Twenty-fifth Bam. And why wouldn’t she? Every detail of the Tower’s worldbuilding portrays it as a ruthless meritocracy where only looking out for #1 at the expense of everyone else is rewarded. Bam never understands this because he never has to. His natural talents; his vast reservoirs of shinsu (mana, effectively) and propensity for making allies, are rewarded in a place he has been deposited into by what is more or less random chance. Essentially, he’s privileged. Rachel, who has no such talents, understands it intuitively, hence her betrayal.

But Tower of God‘s critique of these systems goes both wider and deeper. It’s foreshadowed much earlier by minor character Hoh betraying his team during the “Tag arc” that takes up the show’s middle third. Elsewhere, the series touches on misogyny (there is something truly–and intentionally!–offputting about how it’s spelled out to us that the King of Jahad ties the powers of his “princesses” to their virginity) and frame-ups (whatever happened with Khun and his sister). Through it all, its central point remains sharp; the Tower’s world is fantastical, but the principles it operates on are very much like our own.

It is true that the show’s setup basically begs for a second season, one that’s yet to be confirmed. But even if it were to end here, with Bam washed down to the bottom of the Tower, the show has made its point. All of us are climbing, and the Tower still waits.

So with how high my opinion of Tower of God clearly is, what could possibly be better than it? Well, if you know my tastes, or indeed if you’ve simply studied the banner closely, you can probably guess. Scroll down to find out, and raise a hand if you saw this one coming.

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#1: Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!

Fundamentally, my taste in anime hasn’t changed much since I first discovered the medium over ten years ago. I have a hazy, sun-blurred memory of watching the dub of foundational school life comedy Azumanga Daioh chopped up into pieces and uploaded on Youtube. Azumanga Daioh and Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! are, very loosely, in the same genre, despite otherwise not being particularly similar. I bring the former up because I marvel at the many strange and wonderful shapes the school life comedy has taken over the past decade and a half. And Eizouken! certainly has the hallmarks of the genre. It is set primarily in a high school, centers around the activities of a small group of students, and uses the pitfalls of coming of age to set up relatable comedic skits. But it’s also more than that.

I place Eizouken! firmly in an emerging movement of anime that increasingly combine this genre with more serious and reflective elements, a logical step from its origins. (It’s not like AzuDaioh couldn’t be reflective when it wanted to be, after all.) I would happily shuttle it right up next to the post-apocalyptic melancholia of Girls’ Last Tour, or the contemporary but more adventure-oriented A Place Further Than The Universe, my own favorite anime of the 2010s, or the funny, wrenching dramedy of O’ Maidens In Your Savage Season! But its place within that movement is interesting, because while many of its genrefellows seek to perhaps evolve past the school life descriptor entirely, Eizouken! reestablishes why it matters in the first place. How it does this is pretty simple; it has perhaps the most well-considered thematic core of any TV anime to air this year.

History will probably peg Eizouken! as an “anime about anime”, but that’s looking at it narrowly. Eizouken! is an anime about the creative process in general, about what it means to be passionate about something, about turning that passion into reality, how that can be very hard, but how it is almost always worth it.

Our three leads correspond to an aspect of the inner world of art. Midori Asakusa, short, behatted, and kappa-like, is the pure ambition and the font of ideas. She spends the series half-adrift in a sea of drawings and daydreams, in love with flying machines and walking logos. Tsubame Mizusaki, of average height and with a sharp haircut, is the strive toward the perfection of technique, the desire to capture One Perfect Movement as cleanly as possible. (This is why it is she who expresses that she cares about animation, not anime. Contrast Midori who cares very much about anime-the-medium.) Finally, there is the tall, tombstone-toothed Sayaka Kanamori. The brains of the operation, someone for whom practical knowledge and the pursuit of money is a means to her and her friends’ collective happiness, a sort of person vanishingly rare in the real world. Alone, they’re incomplete. Together, they’re unstoppable. I’ve seen many anime whose casts compliment each other well, but Eizouken! might have one of the most well-oiled character dynamic machines in recent memory.

Eizouken!‘s beauty is in how it does not need to really explain itself at length. The series is an argument for itself. The skeptical may be inclined to ask the question back at Eizouken!; “what can sticking to your passions really accomplish?” And, well, the answer is Eizouken! Admittedly, as someone who writes for a living, I am predisposed to like themes in this general realm. But by the same token, pretending that Eizouken!‘s deep understanding of how the creative process functions, the diversity of motivation as to why people want to make art, and its celebration of the two didn’t move me would be disingenuous. I would simply not be doing my job as a commentator on the medium.

The show celebrates many kinds of people in general, really. Sometimes this is even surprisingly literal; Eizouken! stands as a still-rare anime that has a fairly racially diverse cast even though its leads are still Japanese. The series’ near-future setting seems to imply both a Japan and a larger world that is more heterogeneous (in every sense) than today, but this optimism shouldn’t be taken to be naivety. There is conflict in Eizouken!, the optimism comes from the resolution of that conflict. Short films are premiered, audiences are blown away. “We are all different, but truly great art can bring us together” seems to be the final message of the series. It’s a thesis that is so optimistic, almost utopian, that it can, to some, scan as corny. Whether Eizouken! “earns it” or not is where people are split on the series, but I think I’ve made damn well my case that it does.

Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! premiered at the top of the year, in the Winter 2020 anime season that now feels a lifetime ago. Yet, throughout this long, dark, bizarre year, I found myself continually turning it over in my head. I think it’s likely that I will be for years to come. If I may make take back one thing from my original review that predates this blog, it’s this; Eizouken!, with the benefit of distance, feels like it’s not really from this, or any, specific year. It feels like it’s always been there. And from now on, it always will be.

And with that sign-off by way of what is in my estimation the first truly great anime of the ’20s, that concludes our little journey over these past few days. To both old friends and new readers, I wish you the best possible in the new year. Hold each other close, and in all things help one another. Magic Planet Anime will see you in 2021.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 3

The middle-top of the list, where we run into more things that I more like than don’t like but which may or may not have various caveats and so on and so forth. This was the hardest part to have anything interesting to say about, can you tell? As with Part 2, most of these shows could be arranged in any order and I’d have no real complaints. Honestly, plenty could also switch places with those in Part 2 as well. Perhaps I’m just too easy to please?

Make sure you hit up the Intro post if you’re new here, so you can read Parts 1 and 2 before this. Anyhow, on with the list.

#9: Kakushigoto

Months on from its ending, and I’m still not entirely sure what to make of Kakushigoto. (My opinion on it has admittedly muted a bit from when it ended and I originally reviewed it, though not by too much.) Two shows for the price of one, is one way to look at it. On the outside, Kakushigoto is a goofy slice of life comedy about a bumbling father who draws dirty gag manga for a living and is absolutely desperate to keep his young daughter from learning that fact. On the inside, it’s an oddly melancholy examination of what we lose when we grow up. Somewhere in there is a pretty compelling defense of manga as a medium itself. There’s a lot going on here, and not all of it works.

So what does work? Well, the comedy in this thing is mostly pretty damn funny. There are a few notable places where it’s really not (a bizarre Desi stereotype character being the most egregious) but in general when Kakushigoto sticks to the inherently amusing dynamic between Kakushi (the aforementioned father) and Hime (the daughter) it’s really charming and hilarious. A lot of the bits here are standard slice of life fare bent just enough by the father/daughter relationship to feel fresh again. Some–such as Kakushi’s ongoing feud with an annoying editor–rely a bit more on industry inside baseball, but those are generally pretty good too.

And then there’s the frame story, which is in many ways a different beast entirely, and deals with Hime at age sixteen, after her father has, as we eventually find out, suffered an accident that renders him amnesiac. With the benefit of hindsight I think Kakushigoto would’ve benefited from leaning more into this side of its story. (And there’s a theatrical recut of the series scheduled to premiere next year, so perhaps it eventually will.) In its best moments, the frame story taps into a universal, melancholic summertime nostalgia, and if I seem to have less than might be expected to say on Kakushigoto it’s only because that kind of ephemerality speaks for itself. There’s a lot to like about a series that revolves around familial ties and the passing of the artistic torch from one generation to the next. And Kakushigoto also certainly holds a special place for having perhaps the most memorable ED of the year. Putting an entire generation onto Japanese pop godfather Eiichi Ohtaki is no small feat.

#8: Assault Lily Bouquet

Assault Lily Bouquet is a lot of things. It’s kind of a mess, for one. For another, it’s an entry in a sub-strain of the battle girl genre with some not-entirely-flattering unifying characteristics. Like Katana Maidens, The Girl in Twilight, and Granbelm before it, Assault Lily Bouquet leans heavily on proper nouns and invented terminology. It is extremely coy, often directly toying with audience expectations, sometimes to its own detriment. It’s also stuffed to the gills with tonal back-and-forth, often yoyoing between the comedic, the tense, the saucy, and the genuinely romantic at the drop of a hat. This all could rightly be called a lack of focus. There is indeed a part of me that intensely wanted to dismiss Assault Lily Bouquet as a series that didn’t know what it wanted to do and wouldn’t know how to do it if it did. To a very limited extent, I actually still kind of think that’s true.

Some of this isn’t the fault of the anime itself. Picking up a pre-premiere hype train comes with a lot of expectations. That Assault Lily Bouquet picked up the nickname “SHAFTogear” off the strength of just some teaser trailers may well have put it at an unfair disadvantage. Indeed, Symphogear this is not. (It is an obvious acolyte of that series, but that’s the norm for the genre nowadays.) If you’re inclined to drop an anime off the back of things like a surface-level ridiculousness and the aforementioned lack of focus, Assault Lily Bouquet will not make it difficult for you to do that.

But, here’s the thing. Two things, even. First; Assault Lily Bouquet has some of the best single episodes of the year, from a long, summer-drenched slow-burner centering around ramune soda to a peppy uptempo miniature school festival arc, the series is definitely at its best when it channels all of its energy into doing one specific thing. Second; there’s the finale.

Assault Lily Bouquet‘s overarching plot is….strange. It’s mostly delivered in fairly dry expository dialogue between four characters who otherwise don’t matter much. As mentioned, it leans really heavily on a lot of corny terminology. (Terrible idea; make a drinking game based on how often the phrase “Rare Skill” is used. You’ll be out like a light by episode four.) And what exactly it’s trying to say is fairly inscrutable until the very end of the series. Assault Lily Bouquet‘s core thesis is an unfortunate combination of under-articulated for most of the series and unusually complicated.

In general, the show explores shades of love, loss, feelings of inadequacy, how they might be overcome, etc. How people move on from relationships that have been broken and how they form new ones from the ashes of the old. Along the way, it briefly touches on how male-dominated infrastructures fear powerful women, militarism, and even environmentalism. To say you have to squint to see a lot of this is putting it mildly, Assault Lily Bouquet is maybe the most tongue-tied anime of 2020.

Still, at the end of the day it’s just really hard for me to dislike an anime that ends with two girls in love fighting a giant monster. Has it done before? Yes. Will it be done again? Certainly. But as the battle girl genre continues to grow and multiply, I find myself compelled to defend basically every one of them, because I really do just love them all that much. It’s perhaps my favorite modern genre of TV anime.

Time will tell what, if anything, is in store for the future of Assault Lily Bouquet. The success of the wider Assault Lily franchise which started life as the rare modern TV cartoon directly based on a toyline and now includes this anime, a manga, and a mobile game is probably what will dictate if we ever see Riri and Yuyu again. But I hope we do, Bouquet can dress it up in terms like “Schutzengel” and “Schild” to duck conservative watchdogs and add an air of chuuni-ness to things all it wants, but I know a power couple when I see one.

#7: Sleepy Princess in The Demon Castle

Sometimes, all a comedy anime needs to succeed is to take a truly silly premise and run with it. Thus is the case with Sleepy Princess in The Demon Castle, one of the year’s premiere entries in a sort-of genre I like to call “idiots in a jar”. In an “idiots in a jar” series, all you need is some exceptionally dense characters and a reason for them to interact. Sleepy Princess has the titular princess, the Demon King who’s kidnapped her and is imprisoning her in his castle, and the latter’s horde of minions. And the reason? Well, hostage she might be, but our heroine needs a good night’s sleep. Preferably a fantastic night’s sleep, since there’s not much else to do in the Demon Castle.

And the rest….just sort of flows out from there. The specific parody fantasyland that Sleepy Princess takes place in has in many ways become a sort of cliche setting in its own right nowadays, and comedy anime like this have become more common than the action fantasy anime they once spoofed. Yet, Sleepy Princess‘s implacable-yet-lazy lead works well with its silly and often surprisingly inventive fantasy world. From monsters like Quilladillo and a man made of scissors to item designs that would fit in only the silliest D&D campaign, Sleepy Princess has a knack for invoking its fantasy trappings precisely when they add an extra kick to the joke. All this makes it stand out above many recent anime that are trying to do similar things. And it all feels very well-crafted and deliberate.

There’s also a certain coziness to the series, fitting for an anime about sleep. The Princess’ relationship to her ostensible captors grows closer over its twelve episodes, capping with the finale, which is open enough to leave the prospect of a second season tantalizingly probable. In fact, as far as shows that are simple, warm joy from start to finish, Sleepy Princess really only has one contender from 2020….

#6: My Next Life As A Villainess: All Routes Lead to Doom!

My Next Life As A Villainess is a magic trick. It’s an isekai series, it’s a harem series, and it’s one of the many 2020 anime that are a blast to speed through in a few evenings. Even having seen it, Villainess (also known semi-officially as OtomeFlag and Bakarina. This is the series with the most titles on the list, certainly) doesn’t feel like it should work. Die-and-reincarnate isekai premises are, appropriately, done to death, and the harem genre has arguably never had a good reputation. Yet, by simple virtue of having a likable female lead, and the small-stakes character writing victories that follow, Villainess manages to turn lead into gold. (And its maddeningly catchy, genre-unto-itself opening theme doesn’t hurt.)

The anime centers around the titular Katarina Claes and her life after she’s reborn into the world of an Otome game. This would be easy to milk for cheap drama, but Villainess is unconcerned with such things. Instead, to avoid the fate of her game counterpart, Katarina aims to be the nicest person possible. By dint of just being an irrepressible ray of sunshine, every single one of her game equivalent’s rivals end up falling for her. As a result; Claes can certainly claim the largest bisexual harem of any anime protagonist of the past year.

What takes Villainess beyond being just cute is a running through-line about relationships that persist across lifetimes. The show heavily hints at, and eventually outright reveals, that Katarina’s friend (and one of the many, many people crushing hard on her) Sophia is herself the reincarnation of one of Katarina’s classmates and close friends. Is this entire subplot super sappy? Absolutely, but I’m a sucker for this stuff, “I Entered A Dangerous Dungeon….”, in which we learn of Sophia and Katarina’s past relationship was one of my favorite episodes of the year, and sticks with me even now.

And I wasn’t the only one so taken with the show, evidently. A second season has been definitively confirmed to be on the way. My hope? Only that Katarina continues breaking the harem genre over her knee like a twig.

That’s all for the (slightly abbreviated) Part 3. See you tomorrow for the Top 5 in Part 4!

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 2

The middle parts of a list are always the weirdest ones to figure out. Not hardest, that’s the very top, but the weirdest, definitely. Because you end up asking yourself to compare shows that are incredibly dissimilar and that you like about equally. By the way; if you’re new here, you’ll want to check out the Introduction first, and read Part 1 before hitting this up.

Frankly, every entry on this part of the list could probably be freely swapped with each other and I’d have very few complaints. Still, all of these anime are ones that I think did more right than wrong and in some cases I think they did a few specific things very well. Let’s cut to the chase, shall we?

#14: Wave, Listen To Me!

Whatever else you may say about it, never accuse Wave, Listen To Me! of following trends. Very briefly, Wave is about a loud-mouthed restaurant worker who ends up getting her own graveyard-shift radio show hosting gig at the local station. Without a doubt, it’s one of the more singular premises of the year.

Does it live up to the potential in that premise? Well, yes and no. Like its seasonal contemporary Gleipnir, Wave has a tendency to get in its own way. When the series allows Minare, our heroine, to do her job and let loose with the full force of her personality in the radio booth, it’s amazing. Lead voice actress Riho Sugiyama is as important to Wave‘s general composition as anyone else, and with an actress less capable of fully embodying Minare’s spirit the show would fall apart.

So it’s rather frustrating that it sometimes does anyway. Much of Wave is about Minare’s off-air life. Sometimes these stories work and sometimes they don’t, generally following the pattern that whenever Minare feels like the butt of a joke, they’re not very good. Making things worse is an abundance of off-color-in-a-bad-way humor, most notably about a half-dozen gay jokes that feel woefully forced. Wave is perhaps the anime from 2020 that I’m the most internally divided on. Its highs are high, its lows are low. It ends on a pretty good note, and I’m hoping against hope for a followup. I’d like to see Minare given the opportunity to do more.

#13: BRAND NEW ANIMAL

This was the first of several anime on this list where I had the visceral reaction of “wait, that aired this year?” But yes, this Yoh Yoshinari-directed, Kazuki Nakashima-written synthwave-colored furry urban fantasy series was a product of 2020. BRAND NEW ANIMAL occupies a weird place on this list, in the wider cultural zeitgeist, and for me personally. I actually really quite liked this show, so why isn’t it higher on the list?

Well, to a point, most of Nakashima’s anime scripts are….well, “similar” would be the generous way of putting it. Most of his scripts center around ideological conflicts between the individualistic and the communal and tend to end with both sides coming together to fight a common foe. That last bit has often (and not incorrectly) been flagged as a weakness, with his scripts’ formulaic story beats, and a corresponding lack of nuance, as the other main problem. These are fair criticisms, but I’d argue that what Nakashima’s writing lacks in its ability to propose solutions the world’s problems more specific than “come together”, it makes up for in its faith that we, in fact, can come together.

But of course Nakashima is a scriptwriter and an anime’s script is nothing without, well, the anime. Yoshinari and his team turn in an aesthetic feast with BRAND NEW ANIMAL. I mentioned synthwave earlier, but the blue and pink shadows often do bring that specific subgenre to mind. The fluid, popping animation that defines the best parts of the TRIGGER back-catalog and, because of the distinctly fuzzy cast, a wonderful array of animal-person designs are present too, they really tie the whole thing together.

Ultimately I suppose my main issue with BRAND NEW ANIMAL is simply that it isn’t either a bit longer or a bit more focused. For how clumsy it occasionally is, BNA does sometimes step into surprisingly sharp social commentary (“Dolphin Daydream”‘s jabs at fairweather allies and the harm they cause sticks out most clearly to me), but just as often its swings go wide. It’s an uneven experience, but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t enjoy it the whole way through and would instantly hop on any further material in the show’s universe.

In lieu of that….maybe greenlight two cours next time? Please?

#12: Dorohedoro

You know what I’ve always thought was an underrated quality? Knowing exactly what you want to do and just doing it. That’s about how I’d describe Dorohedoro, an adaption of Q. Hayashida‘s long-running bizarro seinen. It’s one of the better things Netflix has thrown money at in 2020 (other highlights include listfellow BRAND NEW ANIMAL and The Great Pretender, which is only not here because I haven’t watched the final arc), but much more importantly it’s a really good piece of genre fiction in a genre that doesn’t get a lot of rep in mainstream TV anime.

And that genre is….weird splatterpunk grungy fantasy I guess? If Dorohedoro feels hard to put in a box it’s only because seinen anime are fairly rare. But there’s still definitely something unique about a series whose main selling point is that it’s the adventures of a big lizard-headed guy on a quest to find out who turned him into a big lizard-headed guy, and his companion, an equally-buff woman who’s also a master gyoza chef.

Dorohedoro cruises by on its stylish ultraviolence, colorful cast, and its truly weird setting. The only real reason it’s not higher up on the list is that the manga is even stranger and the anime adapts only a pretty small part of it. Dorohedoro is an anime with basically no problems, but its strengths only go so far. It’s definitely worth checking out, but make sure you hit up the source material at some point, too.

#11: Princess Connect! Re:Dive

Breaking news: local action-comedy-fantasy isekai Princess Connect! Re:Dive makes the rest of those obsolete; KonoSuba found weeping in a trashed hotel room. OK, that’s a wild exaggeration, but you have to give it up for something as unassuming as PriConne managing to do so much with so little. This is a series in which the main character is effectively mute, and he still has more personality than your average Protagonist-kun.

I don’t think anyone would deign to call PriConne laser-focused, exactly, but the unifying element, weirdly enough, is cooking. Female lead and secret actual protagonist Princess Pecorine’s food obsession provides a tie-line through the series. It’s more than just comedic (though it’s certainly that, too), as the comfort of a shared meal comes to represent the family ties that Pecorine has lost. The other two primary protagonists have their own things going on, with Karyl’s secret double-agent status being the runner up as far as which is most interesting.

Did I mention this thing looks great, too? That’s not always a given for seasonals, although mobage adaptions seem to have slightly better luck than most. Princess Connect! Re:Dive features some of the most purely flashy animation of the entire year. Something that is downright impressive for a series that really did kinda seem to come from nowhere.

Honestly the only reason it isn’t even higher on the list is because of its fairly limited ambitions, which is really only a flaw in the most abstract sense. And with a second season on the way that seems poised to put focus on the dimension-spanning plot that lurks in PriConne’s background, it may not remain a criticism that’s true for very long. Don’t be surprised if this thing’s second season ends up a good five or ten places higher next year.

#10: Magia Record: Puella Magi Madoka Magica Gaiden

Yeah, this is another one that feels like it aired a lifetime ago.

Magia Record is a curious thing that seems like it was made for nobody. But I actually think, in this odd little anime’s case, that that’s not just a positive, but most of the reason it’s good. Magia Record is a spinoff / possibly-a-sequel-it’s-kind-of-hard-to-say of Puella Magi Madoka Magica, one of the most important, widely acclaimed, and successful anime of the 2010s. To say it has big shoes to fill would be a massive understatement. Indeed, MagiReco entered to no small amount of skepticism. Being a spinoff of a spinoff (it’s based on a mobile game), a lot of folks were of the opinion that the series was little more than a soulless, hollow cash-grab. But if Magia Record is a cash grab, it’s a fucking weird one.

In fairly sharp contrast to its illustrious predecessor, Magia Record explores some four or five largely unrelated miniature arcs over the course of its run. (Almost all of which concern various supernatural rumors. Something the series seems to have inherited from a different SHAFT property; Bakemonogatari.) This structure is deeply interesting to me, because it seems to me that Magia Record is of the opinion that Madoka Magica’s intangibles; its themes, aesthetics, the way it explores its parent genre, and so on have been so thoroughly strip-mined by other anime that engaging with them is no longer a goal it wants to pursue. Instead, Magia Record seems to treat itself first and foremost as a vehicle for expanding the pure text of the Madoka series. It’s a book of “Madoka stories” before it’s anything else.

When familiar elements do show up, the context is altered, strange, and unfamiliar. Not unlike what the original Madoka did with many trappings of the magical warrior subgenre in the first place. The original Puella Magi are the most obvious example; Mami reappears, but as a villain. Kyoko dips in and out of the show’s narrative, and is markedly absent for the finale. Sayaka is only present for the finale. Madoka herself appears only in a brief flashback. Homura is not even mentioned; a ghost among ghosts.

So those “Madoka stories”, where Magia Record seems most like a “normal” magical girl series, become the show’s lifeblood. They definitely have their ups and downs, and the best of the lot are front-loaded. (Rena’s arc, an examination of a truly deep-seated self-loathing, might be the overall peak of the series.) But that it is so disconnected from what the fanbase in general “wants” from a Madoka series is absolutely fascinating to me, and I like it for that reason. This interpretation of MagiReco is controversial (I have seen many who simply read its structure as inept), but I stand by it. A second season is in the wings that promises a return to a broader, overarching narrative. More than any other anime on this list, I have absolutely no idea what to expect from MagiReco, and I love it for that.

And that’s humble Part 2. Tomorrow we get into the top ten, uh, nine, so I’ll see you then for Part 3.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 1

It’s always a weird thing to have to write about why you didn’t like something. I’m a big believer in the idea that positive criticism is both more important and more difficult than negative. Yet, the format of the list means that we’re starting with several anime that I consider the very worst of the year (and indeed these first two entries are….not what I’d call favorites, we’ll put it that way). It admittedly makes me a bit nervous, because negativity is not my preferred mode of criticism.

Yet, at the same time. I think that even bad anime can expand one’s frame of reference and provide interesting insights into the medium in general. My hope is that this first part of the list does the same for you.

#20: The Day I Became A God

As I write this, it’s been about half an hour since I finished The Day I Became A God. This is the second-to-last anime I needed to finish for this list (the entire thing, all four parts), and I really, genuinely did not think I’d be adding something this far down this late in the game. I have to rewrite the opening sentence of my next entry, which in its current draft now-falsely claims that it is the only anime on this list to make me genuinely angry. That’s no longer true! Frankly, The Day I Became A God‘s final three episodes are so far and away the worst television period that I have watched this year that it’s made me see every subsequent entry on this list in a better light.

To talk about the latest from Jun Maeda and his colleagues at Key, we need to talk about how it starts. Because understanding how The Day I Became A God transforms from a pretty solid slice of life comedy with a supernatural edge into one of the most galling, maudlin, hacky attempts at a make-you-cri-everytiem love story that I have ever seen requires understanding how we got here. Or rather how we didn’t.

The Day I Became A God concerns Hina, alias Odin. It feels like a lifetime ago that the character was introduced to us as a blithe esper with the power to know anything. The first two thirds of the series chiefly concern her adventures with Youta, the inoffensively bland everydude protagonist. They do fun things like cheat at mahjong and help a ramen restaurant turn its fortunes around. It’s hardly groundbreaking, but it’s good fun, and if that were what we were discussing here this series would be assured a comfortable spot somewhere in this list’s mid-section with all the other solid genre anime.

Jun Maeda’s signature as a writer–so I’m told, anyway–is to build up the relationship between the characters and you, the audience, with this kind of every day life fun. Then, near the series’ end, some sort of Sword of Damocles will drop, the drama will hit, and tears will flow. Indeed, I knew this going in to The Day I Became A God, and am familiar with the device from the only other work of his I’ve seen–Angel Beats!, an anime I actually like quite a lot. The show even appears to foreshadow this; the anime’s other core premise is that Hina can sense that the world will end in thirty days.

So, fair play, right? Why am I mad?

If only this show dealt with something as interesting as apocalypse. Instead, for its final third, through a series of plot contortions so mind-bogglingly ridiculous that I will not recount them here, Hina is abducted by a shadowy government organization and has the source of her powers, a machine in her brain, removed. It’s revealed to us that, actually, Hina was severely physically and mentally disabled this entire time. (Because of a fictional Anime Illness, of course. God forbid you give your disabled characters any actual condition.) It was only the sci-fi magic of the machine that was allowing her to do what she did with Youta and friends, in addition to being the source of her omniscience. Are you crying yet?

The Day I Became A God‘s final three episodes are not just bad, they’re slimy. I actively felt repulsed by 11 and 12 especially. I absolutely loathe calling things “cringey”, but I physically winced at the screen during scenes in which (through another series of plot contortions) Youta, woefully-unqualified, tries to return her to his home where she lived for most of the series by posing as a physical therapist. These episodes go through great pains to portray Hina as pitiable because she is largely nonverbal and physically handicapped. In a particularly insidious twist, the show frames Youta’s generally ridiculous actions as being somehow, secretly, what Hina “wants”. It is a framing that cannot help but feel gross, ableist, and exploitative.

The finale, in which her actual doctor lets her return with Youta and the gang watches a student film they shot during the series’ first half (pointedly, when Hina was still verbal and able-bodied), feels like having this nonsense rubbed in your face. One has to go back a solid ten years, to 2010’s Occult Academy, to find a series that suffers a drop in writing quality this precipitous in its final 90 minutes. Even then, I think this example is genuinely worse.

I am left to wonder; who is this for? I make no secret of the fact that I am a massive sap, but the tearful reunions in the final episode of The Day I Became A God did absolutely nothing for me. My eyes remained dry, my fingers drummed in irritation on my desk, and I could only feel relief that the show was over.

Maeda has said he intended to create “the saddest anime ever” with this series. The only thing he succeeded at was making one that is profoundly frustrating, disappointing, objectionable, and, frankly, insulting to its audience. I considered cutting this series some slack with its placement here; after all, those first two thirds do still exist. But I actually think that they make the finale even worse. By the end of The Day I Became A God, all of my goodwill and any endearment I felt toward any of its characters had been sandblasted away by one of the most colossally inept TV anime endings in recent memory. All involved can–and should–do better.

#19: Sing “Yesterday” For Me

The operative word for Sing “Yesterday” For Me is “unfortunate”. This is another one with a promising start that slowly careens into an unsatisfying finish. It’s not quite a worst-case scenario for adapting old material into new anime, but it’s close.

But let’s start with the positives, because despite what that sentiment might imply, I can easily imagine why people who aren’t me might like the series. “Yesterday”‘s earthy, grounded visual style and accompanying soundtrack give it an aesthetic sense that is a genuine treat. Plus, it helps make the show’s slow narrative go down more easily than it might otherwise. It also has its moments of self-awareness, such as in an episode about a photographer whose obsession with one of the female leads, high school girl Haru, parallels protagonist Uozumi’s own.

So what’s wrong with it? Nothing and everything.

“Yesterday”‘s entire premise rubs me the wrong way. What is markedly worse is that through no one’s fault but my own, it took me the entire length of the series to realize this. (You can find material on this very blog where I praise the series, in fact.) Saying I have something of an irrational grudge against this anime wouldn’t be entirely wrong.

“Yesterday” is ostensibly the story of the aforementioned Rikuo Uozumi, a young adult working a dead-end job, and two potential love interests; Haru Nonaka and a former classmate who is now a teacher, Shinako Morinome. To its credit, both Haru and Shinako feel like fully-fledged characters. While their relationship (or lack thereof) with Uozumi does dominate their arcs, it dominates the entire plot, so that only makes sense. The real issue is pretty simple; Uozumi is a college graduate, and while Shinako is his age, Haru is a narratively-convenient eighteen. After much hemming and hawwing over the course of the series, Uozumi and Haru kiss in the final episode. Roll credits.

Fundamentally, even if you don’t find age gaps creepy, the way Uozumi treats Haru until the closing fifteen or so minutes of the final episode gives every indication that he’s going to end up with Shinako, despite what is framed as a somewhat childish fixation on Haru. But if this were merely a case of bait-and-switch or of one’s preferred Best Girl not winning, it’d be a minor gripe at most. The back half of the show’s final episode throws everything the narrative has been building toward wildly out of whack. The series’ real, actual problem then, is that like so many romance anime, it ends where it should begin.

The idea of a college grad who is finally starting to pursue his photography dreams after waking up from the torpor of the layabout life while having to juggle a relationship with someone years younger than him is wildly interesting. It’s also arguably super weird, but that’s an angle a story can work with. Why does Sing “Yesterday” For Me take so long to get to what is by far the most interesting development in its story, and then just end?

There are no answers, at least none for me. I have spoken to others who enjoyed the series and a common view I find is that the series is about building up to lifechanging moments, to sudden pivot points from which there is no return. More power to the folks who can find it in them to read the series this way, but I cannot. Thinking back, I find myself craving a more properly developed drama. I can only consider “Yesterday” a disappointment.

#18: The God of High School

I’m genuinely not trying to be meanspirited with these first few entries, because I fully acknowledge that making any anime requires an immense amount of talent from many people all working in concert. It’s a process I could never be involved with and I do genuinely respect anyone in the industry grind, no matter what the end result is.

So with all that said; what on earth do you say about something like The God of High School? The God of High School is not really what I’d call a bad anime, and despite its abundance of hyper-compressed shonen cliche I’d say it’s still fun enough on a moment to moment basis. But it really is the sort of series that one struggles to describe not because it’s particularly inscrutable but because anything you could say about it also applies to many other, better-known (and just better) anime. For instance; I could tell you that it’s a tournament arc-heavy series where the protagonist lacks much characterization beyond a desire to fight and is loosely based on Sun Wukong, but you might then assume I’m talking about Dragon Ball Z. Other aspects of the series similarly feel so heavily indebted to its predecessors that saying anything positive (or even neutral) about it that couldn’t easily be mistaken as praise for Dragon Ball or Bleach or Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure or almost any other shonen series is extraordinarily difficult.

The issue is just that The God of High School feels very much like what it is, which is an animated adaption of a webcomic written by a shonen junkie. Consequently, while it’s fun in the places where it truly lets itself cut loose (such as the more out-there fight scenes), it feels dreadfully anonymous much of the rest of the time, and even when it is firing on all cylinders the breakneck pace of the adaption means it’s generally for only a couple minutes at a time. There are worse things to be than a decent way to burn six hours, but as it further recedes into the rearview I’ve come to realize I cannot imagine I’ll ever watch even a second of it again. And more than any other show on this list, I can even less imagine what a diehard fan of The God of High School would look like. If this is more indicative of the quality of what’s to be produced under the Crunchyroll Originals banner than a certain other Webtoon adaption that shows up elsewhere on this list, that is really not a great sign for future CR Original material. I would like to think it’s an outlier.

#17: 22/7

Maybe it’s unfair to call 22/7 disappointing. Yet, looking back on it a few months removed from its airing that’s the adjective that first springs to mind. 22/7 seemed poised to offer something interrogative and worthy of thought; early episodes gave the impression of building up to some kind of grand reveal, positioning the series as something of a would-be Madoka for the idol girl group anime genre. Whether through deliberate misdirection or just too-high expectations on some part of its audience, it never got there. Instead, as weeks stretched into months, it simply gradually ran out of steam until limping across the finish line at the end of its season.

Even setting that aside though, 22/7‘s command of character writing is pretty limited. Every character arc is hamstrung by the show’s bizarre editing, which likes to cut backward and forward, interweaving flashbacks with scenes of the present day. It seems likely that this is supposed to draw a deliberate contrast; how our idols got from where they were to where they are. Instead, it generally makes episodes thematically and tonally incoherent. Even the best of them (such as Jun’s focus episode) are often hamstrung by dicey writing. At its worst, as in episodes revolving around more minor and frankly less-interesting characters like Reika, it hauls in hoary sexist ideas of what an idol should be that feel stuck in the ’80s. It’s impossible to prove that these somehow stem from the involvement of industry oldguardsman Yasushi Akimoto, but his presence in the background of the series’ production does not incline me to charitable interpretations of the 22/7‘s flaws.

The show does have its positives, of course. It’s generally nicely-animated and sometimes well-directed, especially in the case of the aforementioned Jun episode, and it has solid character interactions even if the arcs are not particularly strong. But I think if 22/7 the series survives in the collective cultural conscience at all, it won’t be through the lens of the show itself. 22/7 is also an actual idol group, and their music ranges from solid to, at its best, fantastic. The melodramatic cloud of black smoke they turned in for the show’s opening theme–a cheery number about how life is hard and no one understands each other called “Muzui” or “It’s Difficult”–remains one of my favorite pop songs of 2020, and I found myself returning to it many times over the course of this difficult year. Far more time than I ever spent appreciating the series it’s a theme to. 22/7 the group have a bright future. 22/7 the anime is best left in the past.

#16: Burn The Witch

Burn The Witch is a weird one, for one several reasons. It’s not a TV series, for one thing (the only such entry on this list), and it’s in the odd position of being the adaption of just the first few chapters of its source material. Something that would likely have never happened were the writer of said source material not Tite Kubo. The man most famous for the polarizing–but undeniably very successful–Bleach. Burn The Witch has a lot of things going for it. It’s animated by Studio Colorido, and being made as a three-episode special means that it’s never less than great to look at, and the fights in particular here are superb. The worldbuilding is goofy but in a fun sort of way; you know that things are off to a good start when we get a made-up statistic about dragon-related deaths in London right off the top. Our two protagonists, Noel and Ninny, are also quite fun to follow, each in their own way. Even the show’s magic system is a good time, more anime could stand to experiment with goofy horn-guns as their weapons of choice.

So all that said, why isn’t this higher up (or, well, lower down, one supposes) on the list? Well, not to repeat myself, but Burn The Witch has a man-shaped millstone hanging around its neck.

It’s really hard to overstate how much of a problem male lead Balgo Parks is, as a character. He’s sexist, he’s obnoxious and he’s everywhere. He completely kills the fun any time he’s on-screen, and he’s on-screen all the time. It’s a terrible, terrible problem for an otherwise solid OVA to have, because every second he’s there he’s cutting into the actually enjoyable parts of it, and ultimately, he ruins it. Time will tell if this applies to any further adaptions of Burn The Witch we get (and it’d be surprising if we didn’t get at least a season or two of a TV series), but I certainly hope it doesn’t.

#15: Gleipnir

Grisly, grody, sometimes flat-out exploitative seinen adaption that’s a mess from top to bottom. I feel like if I were a more “respectable” commentator on the medium I’d hate this show. But I’m not, so I don’t. I wouldn’t say I like it either, exactly, but it’s definitely the entry in this part of the list I have the most nice things to say about.

Gleipnir‘s been a part of my life for an unusually long time compared to the rest of the entries on this list. I first read the manga (which I markedly did not care for) back in 2017. When I heard of an anime adaption premiering this year I was curious to see if it’d be improved at all by the change in medium, and, admittedly, I was hoping that if it didn’t, it’d at least be a fun thing to riff on with friends.

To a point, that is exactly what I got. Gleipnir‘s idiosyncrasies too often fall on the bad side of good taste for me to really call it great. There are too many offputting shots of the show’s female lead in her underwear covered in fluid, weird problematic or just straight-up uncomfortable elements (a centipede demon from the show’s 2/3rds mark springs to mind as an example) for that to be the case. And its male lead is the kind of shonen-protagonist-but-edgier that just doesn’t leave you with a ton to work with most of the time.

But nonetheless, there’s just something about this series. Maybe it’s the surprisingly good action direction and atmosphere, which is certainly a credit to both director Kazuhiro Yoneda and his team at PINE JAM in general. The man has episode direction credits on the grandfather of 2010s trainwreck anime; Code Geass R2. While I can’t prove that the experience somehow uniquely equipped him to deal with Gleipnir‘s ridiculously up and down source material, but it wouldn’t surprise me. Over the course of its single cour Gleipnir manages to, in spots, eke out some surprisingly affecting character writing, has a downright haunting final few episodes, and, as mentioned, some great fight scenes. An example in the final episode might still be one of my favorites of the year as it unites both the show’s literal reality and its thematic core of relying on others to compensate for your weaknesses and confronting your demons in a way that it otherwise struggles to articulate. Gleipnir‘s central issue is its tendency to get in its own way, but that’s hardly a rare problem for the medium.

I don’t know if a second season would fix (or even mitigate) that problem, but Gleipnir is the only anime in this part of the list where if one were released I’d be interested in watching it. That must count for something, surely.

And thus we finish the “unpleasant but necessary” part of the list. Still, even among these unlucky few there is not a single one among them I actually regret watching, not even The Day I Became A God. I have said many times that part of what draws me to anime as a medium is its infinite capacity for surprise. That surprise is not always pleasant! But you take the bad with the good.

Speaking of the good, I will see you in Part 2 when it goes live. Happy Holidays!

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