Category: anime

Posted on in anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes – Darling in the FranXX Episode 15: Jian

Twenty Perfect Minutes is an irregular column series where I take a look at single specific anime that shaped my experience with the medium, were important to me in some other way, or that I just really, really like.

“It has to be you.”

Whatever happened to Darling in The FranXX? Rarely are anime-originals as popular as it was, but in 2020, just two years after it aired, there is a vague sense of embarrassment associated with the series. I won’t pretend to hate DarliFra, myself: I enjoyed watching it at the time even if, with hindsight, I greatly overestimated its cleverness. It is though hard to argue that it’s particularly well-put-together. If you want an anime that’s easy to rag on, DarliFra lines up neatly, it’s almost a microcosm of everything wrong with the TV anime mainstream. Shaky writing that leans on cliche and borrows from better shows, loads of unnecessary cheesecake-style fanservice-centric pandering, and most infamously, a thematic “Get Yourself A Wife, Otaku-san” core so comically conservative, out-of-step with wider cultural trends, and patriarchal that it inspired an endless outpouring of memes and general ribbing even at the time, and even from people who enjoyed it. It’s often pegged as the single most divisive entry in Studio TRIGGER‘s filmography, a descriptor that only isn’t true by the arguable technicality of it being made by a purpose-built split committee called Code 000 (which effectively consisted of TRIGGER staff plus staff from a just-pre-CloverWorks A-1 Pictures, but DarliFra’s odd production history is too long of a tangent to go on here).

Yet, all of this said and meant, DarliFra is certainly a watchable show on a moment-to-moment level, and there are a few times when it almost actually realizes the vision it’s striving toward. I would argue however, that in terms of genuinely reaching that vision? That happened just once, almost exactly halfway through its run. Thus, on this Twenty Perfect Minutes column, we cover the one and only truly great episode of one of the most contentious hit anime of the 10’s.

This episode, centering around the grand mid-show plot point of storming the Gran Crevasse, is a winning one for two big reasons. One: it’s impeccably-directed. Much of the episode is action setpiece after action setpiece, and those were always DarliFra’s strongest moments. That said, the kinetic action is intercut with various other things. Most prominently, Hiro, our protagonist, who is emotionally reeling from the absence of Zero Two. There’s a neat little trick deployed here (and sparsely in other places in the series) where instead of having Hiro voice his feelings, either aloud or in voiceover, they’re actually written on-screen. These more tense, dramatic shots are arguably just as important as the fights. Throughout, this episode is the rare moment where DarliFra’s running subplot about the romance triangle between Hiro, Zero Two, and Ichigo actually seems to tick the way the series wants it to, and the direction does a lot to sell that.

The second reason: This is an (again, rare) episode where DarliFra knows to get out of its own way. The reductive, laughably conservative gender politics of the rest of the series are thankfully absent for the majority of “Jian”, and it’s the rare episode where the heavily genderqueer-coded Nines get almost as much shine as Squad 13.

I’m actually kind of cool in this episode!

Almost everyone gets at least a little bit of the limelight, in fact. Even the redshirt Squad 26, who reappear here for just the second time in the series only to have a wonderfully wrenching moment where they’re promptly forced to sacrifice themselves after watching a klaxosaur crush their home. Another thing this episode does right is really hammering home the flat-out cruelty of APE as an organization.

You’d sweat if you were assigned to “blow up your robot to hopefully inconvenience the kaiju” duty, too.

Zero Two is used to great effect here as well. Effectively “feral” from the events of the prior arc at the episode’s start, she gets the “inner thoughts written on-screen” treatment, too, arguably to even better effect. Aside from the fact that we get to see the Strelizia in its alt-mode here (which is always nice), the girl herself is drawn, in interior shots from the first half of the episode, in a way that really emphasizes her bloodlust. This is Zero Two off the deep end, at her worst, and at her most convinced that she’s irredeemable, inhuman, and fundamentally unlovable.

Then, halfway through the episode, Hiro hijacks a training pod and rushes out onto the battlefield to reunite with his beloved. Against orders and against all common sense. The scene that follows, in which Hiro and Ichigo co-pilot the Delphinium while the latter must directly reckon with the fact that Hiro loves Zero Two and not her, is both sincerely affecting and the closest that a shot framed inside one the mech’s cockpits comes to not looking fundamentally ridiculous.

There’s tons of great touches in the couple minutes that follow, aside from just the animation itself (which is gorgeous). Ichigo’s fury at Zero Two’s actions translating to a mech-on-mech dope slap is one, the Delphinium turning out to have “hair” under its helmet is another.

But more importantly, it lets Ichigo, one of the many characters the series at large is guilty of under-writing, express herself in an immediate, visceral way, even as she inarguably “loses” the love triangle. She’d never be this much of a firecracker again.

Of course, fundamentally, this is Hiro and Zero’s story. The two’s reunion here stands out against the rest of the episode. I’m of the opinion that Hiro and Zero Two’s chemistry is among the better things in the show, but this scene is one of the very few where it’s tied together in a way that’s truly emotionally resonant instead of merely cute. The imagery is mixed-up and messy, but the feeling remains. Through cutaways to elsewhere and flashbacks to the characters’ own convoluted intertwined history, through the offputting and arresting images of a young Zero Two being experimented on, and eating the fairy tale storybook DarliFra often attempted to use as thematic thread, it somehow all works. It’s immediate. It hits you in the heart.

The episode caps with the Strelizia transforming back into its humanoid form (in a visual homage to the henshin sequence from Kill la Kill, no less) with a new all-red look and a powerup, and ripping the remaining klaxosaur horde to shreds nearly single-handedly. All the while, Hiro and Zero Two shout out their love for each other at the top of their lungs, behind them blasts the show’s opening theme “Kiss of Death”. Gently teasing them for not cutting the comms are their squadmates. Watching from afar, scheming, is APE. It is the only moment in the entire series where the show’s attempted core thesis of first love as a delirious, rapturous high, depicted by the wonderfully camp visual metaphor of a mecha tearing through an army of monsters, completely makes sense. This is Darling in The FranXX‘s peak. If we are to remember art as it is at its best, this is how we should remember DarliFra.

Execution aside; this is all still pretty, to put it politely, “traditional”, as far as resolutions to a love triangle (and just general “romance problems” plots) go, a larger writing issue that would just a few episodes after this rapidly erode the show’s potential. But, this episode, watched in isolation, is almost good enough to make those criticisms seem irrelevant. It’s not an exaggeration to say that whatever flaws the rest of the series may have, this episode can go toe-to-toe with anime that live and breathe this kind of stuff. Symphogear, its own spiritual predecessors Kill La Kill, Gurren Lagann and Diebuster, you name it.

One of the reasons I love anime is that it has a nearly-infinite capacity, despite the medium’s limitations, to surprise and inspire wonder. Sometimes, that wonder and surprise just happen to occur only in fleeting bursts. Thus it is with Darling in The FranXX.

If you like my work, consider following me 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.

Posted on in anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes – ReCREATORS Episode 1: The Wonderful Voyage

Twenty Perfect Minutes is an irregular column series where I take a look at single specific anime that shaped my experience with the medium, were important to me in some other way, or that I just really, really like.

“You made this crazy world. I’m stuck between the two….”

Re:CREATORS was a weird little blip in mainstream seasonal TV anime. I’m fond of the show–more than many other people are, from what I’ve gathered–but it’s definitely an odd and sideways take on the action anime genre. The “reverse isekai” is arguably more of a part with fellow ’10s genre subversion work like Rolling Girls and Anime-Gataris than it is other action series. It’s not a flawless series to be certain: the writing is an acquired taste to put it mildly and the pacing is downright bizarre. But it didn’t always seem that way, before 21 more episodes stretched out its hyper-meta story, its very first was one of the strongest action-anime debuts in recent memory. Even if Re:Creators itself never became the “story to surpass all stories” glibly dropped in Sota’s opening monologue here, it’s an incredible effort for other reasons.

The first two minutes of the episode are quite quiet and subdued for what follows. We get a context-free collage of shots of popular in-universe media which serve as foreshadowing for later in the series, but more important is the silent suicide of a character who, at this point in the story, we knew nothing about. A girl calmly walking in front of a train; that’s how Re:Creators begins. It’s perhaps the one and only sign in this episode of what the show would eventually become, because what follows is frankly nothing like it at all.

Instead, after his opening voiceover we see Sota sit down on his computer. Pop open ClipStudio Paint, get bored, look at Pixiv. Usual Nerd Stuff. It’s when he goes to watch anime on his tablet that he’s promptly–albeit only briefly–teleported to another world, and it is here where the episode promptly kicks into high gear. The fight scene that comprises the following three minutes might be the single most iconic thing about Re:Creators. It’s not hard to see why. You have Selesia’s Vision of Escaflowne-style fantasy-mech throwing down against one of the downright coolest villains of all time. Altair, though she was nameless at this point in the series.

Hell. Yes.

This scene is honestly amazing. It’s so burned into my mind that on the rewatch for this column I was astounded at how short it is (not even quite three minutes total). In that short time though, we get the Vogelchevalier thrashing about, the delightful digital CGI blue cubes that represent worlds crossing over and breaking apart, Altair tossing swords upon swords at Silesia, and of course, the first appearance of the infamous Holopsicon. A machine gun that she plays like a violin to activate its reality-bending powers. I maintain, and will until the day I die, that if you don’t find something ridiculously cool about that, then your sense of wonder needs a jumpstart.

This here? This rules.

Also great here? The soundtrack. Re:CREATORS developed a reputation for running this specific piece of music–called “Layers”–into the ground, as the show had few pieces of battle music, but having not heard it in its proper context in quite some time, I was immediately delighted to hear it again. It really is one of my favorite battle themes ever.

The following scene, which serves as something of a cooldown, has Selisia and Sota, shall we say, conversing.

Your waifu does not want to smash. She wants to stab.

Sota’s panicked half-rambling explanation to Silesia that she’s a fictional character from a light novel series is occasionally pointed out as a weak spot of this episode, and while it’s not as strong as what surrounds it I honestly think it’s pretty fun. It does strike me as something a panicking nerd would do in such a situation, even if Sota’s reassurance to Silesia that she’s, you know, super popular is not as comforting as he seems to think it is.

Altair follows them to the real world before much else can be hashed out. Selesia puts her sword through the window to sort of flick it open, in one of this episode’s best-remembered shots.

This really is not how any of these things work, but who cares?

She and Altair have a little back-and-forth here. With Altair making the classic “join me” offer as she cryptically monologues.

SHE’S. SO. COOL.

….and Selesia riposting with what is among my favorite instances of anime logic ever.

The escape that Selesia pulls off here–using her magic to jump off the balcony, Sota in tow, and land on and promptly carjack some poor sap’s brand-new wheels–is silly in a way I really appreciate. My favorite moment of the whole thing comes when Selesia, who really does an astonishingly good job of driving a car for someone who’s never seen one before, assumes she’s found the “weapon” button, and promptly pushes it, which turns on the windshield wipers. Quote me: Comedy. Gold.

Another battle scene follows, because Altair is not really the sort of villain you can outrun in a compact car.

Can your favorite villain stop a car by teleporting in front of it and shredding it to pieces with a barrier made of rotating sabers? No? I rest my case.

I might actually like this fight scene a little better than the already-great first. It’s a bit longer and is more dynamic, with a couple changes of scenery and some great up-close locked-blades action between Selesia and Altair while the latter continues to exposit (as much for our benefit as Selesia’s) about her plans and the nature of the world they now both inhabit.

I want you to know that it is taking every bone in my body to not just caption this picture with a row of capital A’s.

What breaks the tie is the mortar-fire-first introduction of Meteora, who appears here for the first time toting some artillery which we’ll learn in an episode or two that she stole from a nearby JSDF stockpile.

The episode winds down here. In his closing voiceover, Sota, among other things, says of these events that the beginning was “haphazard”. He (of course) is not actually talking about the episode, but were he, I’d actually argue the opposite. Anime that plunge you head-first into their stories and worlds as fast as this one does are pretty rare. He also says that it only takes “one minute” for the world to change.

There, I must also disagree. If we’re speaking of our own personal worlds, Re:CREATORS had a big hand in shaping my eventual desire to become an anime blogger. The show in general, and this episode in particular, were one of several that convinced me that there was value in following seasonal weeklies, as opposed to just cherrypicking things that were recommended to me by friends after they were over. This, in turn, lead me to where I am today. I would say, then, with all this in mind, and if you’ll pardon the title drop, that it takes about twenty.

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

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Why Blog About Anime Anyway?

I see the question asked, sometimes, you know? And I’ve thought about the answer at great length. I have, at this point, stumbled ass-backwards into a kind of, sort of, if you squint, successful-ish career as a person who Writes About Japanese Cartoons For A Living. (It’s only able to be such because of additional support from my beloved girlfriend and our mutual flatmate, but, a living-of-sorts it remains.) So I’ve thought a fair bit about the question of, you know, why this?

The cast of Azumanga Daioh are here to break up the visual monotony of these opening paragraphs.

The practical answer is that I like doing it and am good at it, but that’s unsatisfactory. Not the least of which because it applies too specifically to just me. No, I think a better approach is to zoom out a bit. Why do I like anime anyway? No no, farther. Why does anyone like any art? Well, now we’ve got a big question on our hands. People have written about this subject at length, of course, and my response is just one part of what we must imagine is in truth a larger answer that we as a species are still figuring out.

but all that said

I think the simplest answer is that we like things that resonate with us somehow. And that’s kind of a funny word, resonate. But I think it’s apt. People don’t look to art for any one specific feeling or theme or aesthetic, what they look to it for in the broadest sense possible is something that speaks to them in some way. Things they can relate to, or they see themselves in, or things that inspire them. In some fashion, even if it’s not that straightforward a lot of the time.

And I think in my case, I have a tendency to hunt for resonance in places where many people in my position would not think to look for it. Let’s put anime aside for a second. My first love, as an artform, was actually hip-hop music. That’s kind of silly on the surface. A deeply closeted white transgirl from a rapidly-collapsing old-money Pennsylvania Dutch family has no business finding anything to relate to in, say, Enter The Wu-Tang (36 Chambers).

….and yet I did. Not to the specifics of a rough upbringing in New York, of course, but to the broadest, most general sentiments. To again use 36 Chambers specifically as an example, to the deep melancholy of the Wendy Rene sample on “Tearz”, to the “put it on if you need to feel invincible” vibes of “Wu Tang Clan Ain’t Nuthing ta F’ Wit'”, the basics-of-capitalism breakdown of “C.R.E.A.M.” I was also entranced with the actual text of the record–the style, if you will. The wordplay, the way the rhymes were actually constructed, the timbre of each member’s voice, Rza’s dusty, gritty production. I risk spending too much time on an example, but you get the idea. Even in a piece of art that had, essentially, nothing at all to do with my life experience, I found something that connected with me.

I don’t know if the specific experience of listening to 36 Chambers had anything to do with it directly, but as I got older I found myself seeking that kind of experience out more and more. Being interested in the broadest, most universal and elemental building blocks of the human experience. I would never deign to call myself someone with truly eclectic tastes–I’ve well fallen in to personal habits by now–but I think a big part of why I connected with anime specifically is that despite the cultural differences and a very obvious language barrier, I still find that I get that very simple joy of knowing other people out there experience the same feelings I do even if our experiences, upbringings, and so on are vastly different.

I couldn’t put a name to the feeling at the time, but Serial Experiments Lain, one of my first anime where I really “knew” it was an anime, felt like it was speaking to me–a young girl who, like Lain, was largely growing up on the internet instead of in the physical world, with all the up- and downsides that that entails.

I can draw from dozens more specific examples. The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya spoke to the adventure-filled high school life I wished I was having while Azumanga Daioh reminded me of my interactions with the real friends I did have. Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann was the first time I felt like I was on the same wavelength as older anime fans who loved pure, hot-blooded action. Code Geass and Death Note, well, had smart protagonists and made me feel smart for liking them. Listen, I never said all of these reasons I resonated with things were good reasons.

On the style side I was starting to feel myself out too: sci-fi, giant robots, “high school” settings where it feels like anything can happen, roguish protagonists who aren’t quite necessarily “good guys”, etc. Some of these tastes have changed over time and some have stayed the same, but I find the process of thinking about why I like these things to, itself, be incredibly interesting. I think many people enjoy, maybe even need, this kind of self-reflection even if they aren’t necessarily cognizant of it.

Over the years, I’ve enjoyed expanding my horizons and finding when I have similar feelings as other anime fans and when I don’t. Straight-ahead mainstream action-shonen? Still kind of frosty on that most of the time (although Tower of God is perhaps changing that). Dark magical girl-adjacent fantasy stuff? Madoka Magica has rapidly become one of my favorite anime of all time both because of its aesthetics and its surges of deep, black emotions, and it’s taken me all of about three months to become a hardcore Rebellion apologist, so, yeah, I think there’s some real merit in that (now rapidly waning) subgenre.

Homura is the coolest character ever and none of you will ever take that from me.

But those are still all just examples. The point I am attempting to make is that I love seeing art, and, specifically, anime, push those emotional buttons. I’m not yet an experienced enough critic to say I have a concrete philosophy on what makes art “good or bad” (to be frank I sort of consider the question uninteresting), but I think what makes art important is what it reflects of us. Of who made it, of who engages with it, all of us.

Perhaps that’s a cheesy answer. Perhaps in ten years I will look back on this post and find myself wondering how I ever thought it was that simple. What I do not think will change is that when I make myself strip away the extraneous things people associate with critics: The idea of being a voice of authority, of having some kind of “sway” over public opinion, of having “the most” knowledge about your chosen medium, all things I think most critics on some level at least aspire to a little bit (it’s the inherent mild pretense required to even become a critic in the first place).

I find myself thinking that what I write for is ultimately for the joy of watching. Through all the possible barriers, any time I can imagine the sheer strength of feeling from every director, animator, storyboarder, voice actor, script-writer, et cetera, reaching certainly not just me, but any viewer, I remember that that, right there, is what I am writing for. That connection.

That is why I blog about anime.

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

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

It’s Out of Touch Thursday – How A “Lucky Star” Edit is Keeping Us Sane

“But I’m out of my head when you’re not around….”

How oh how did we get here? If you had asked me a year ago, I’d have told you that Lucky Star seemed like one of those shows whose cultural footprint was not destined to outlive the 2010s. That’s not a knock, plenty of great shows aren’t widely remembered a year after they come out, much less thirteen in the case of the seminal school life comedy. It wouldn’t have been that weird either, a lot of Lucky Star‘s humor is reference-heavy and was deliberately “dated” even when it was new. I can tell you with certainty that the series is the only reason I or any other otaku of my general age knows what the hell Timotei shampoo is.

So it seemed like plenty of great shows from the late 2000s and early 2010s, that Lucky Star would be a victim of the changing tides of the English-speaking anime fandom.

Then, at the start of this deeply unlucky year, something weird happened.

This video, an absolutely inexplicable but oddly inspired remix of the show’s frantic opening sequence, started making the rounds on tumblr. The clip makes a few edits to the OP–the footage is slightly slowed down and a transition is doctored out, but other than that, it’s downright bizarre how well the song chosen–“Out of Touch” by Hall & Oates–fits. Especially given that it has almost the polar opposite energy of the show’s actual opening theme, a goofy ode to school uniforms called “Motekke! Sailor Fuku!”

I am not a music critic (thank God), but the particular song choice strikes me as interesting. “Out of Touch” dates from 1984, 23 years prior to the Lucky Star anime’s premiere. Yet, in what is part of a fascinating ongoing deliberate cultural back-collapse, nowadays 1984 and 2007 feel like they might as well be equally long ago in the present moment. This is the same spirit of deliberate anachronism that inspired the vaporwave movement at the start of the decade.

But you may notice that the video itself was actually made a full two years ago, in 2018. So why has it blown up and become a full-fledged meme now? Well, the answer is likely multifaceted. Youtube’s algorithms increasingly like to put oddball things in peoples’ recommendations, for one thing, but I think the real heart of the matter might speak to a particular zeitgeist. For one, that the term “Out of Touch Thursdays” can be taken (by total coincidence) as an entendre about social distancing has been lost on precisely no one. (Do give @sampapaste here a follow.)

In a more general sense, in an era of lockdowns and stay-at-home orders, “timekeeping memes” have become a popular daily pastime. Both as a way to wring some humor out of the current situation and literally as a way to help keep the days of the week straight in a time when it can be kind of hard to do that. “Out of Touch Thursday” is probably the most popular of these, but there are many others.

Indeed, the meme’s popularity is such that it’s begun to take on something of a life of it’s own. There’s a dedicated twitter account, which has created something of a community unto itself around the meme.

Someone even went through the trouble of making an honest-to-god You’re The Man Now Dog page (which is a whole bygone phenomenon in of itself). Spinoffs include Out of Time Wednesday, featuring a pitched-up version of the song set to footage from elsewhere in the series.

And a personal favorite, this frankly inexplicable edit that features the core Generation 1 Decepticons from Transformers and is a full-on redraw. (Perhaps an attempt to get a cartoon that’s actually from the 80s involved? Who can say.)

I think what all this speaks to is that “Out of Touch Thursday” happens to hit a rare sweet spot. It’s an instant nostalgia (or fauxstalgia) hit, and it is completely innocuous–anyone who’s not a complete stick in the mud can enjoy the video at least occasionally. I mentioned vaporwave earlier, but the sort of forceful reclamation of “disposable” pop culture like synthpop and late aughts anime does really remind me of the subgenre. A declaration that the past belongs to us as much as the present that goes beyond just simple nostalgia. As we watch a lost spring tick on by, four anime girls doing a dance routine might be contributing more than we think to keeping us–funnily enough–in touch with each other, and ourselves.

Darlin’ darlin’ please!

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

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Seasonal Check-in: Spring 2020

Gleipnir

Let it be said that if nothing else, Gleipnir is far better than it has any right to be. To strip away all the extraneous guff (and my own biases at least for the moment) what Gleipnir essentially is, at least right now, is a battle shonen with a much darker outlook than most. I would also argue that because of said darker outlook it thinks it’s about a hundred times more clever and insightful than it actually is in a way that is sort of insufferable, but a lot of people like this kind of thing so it’s not a huge surprise that Gleipnir is proving to be one of the season’s bigger shows.

Now, to be frank, I think the show is flat-out ugly both in its thematic core and occasionally visually. PINE JAM largely do their damnedest to bring this material to life, and, god help them, make Shuichi’s ridiculous fursuit look seem intimidating, but it only intermittently works and occasionally the production values slip, depriving the show of its biggest asset. When the visuals don’t connect what you have is a fundamentally wrongheaded show that is constantly working against itself in an effort to wring some kind of pathos out of its setting and characters in a way that frankly gives me secondhand embarrassment. Yet, that said, the most frustrating thing about Gleipnir is actually that it’s occasionally kind of stupidly cool.

Much of episode 5 centers around Shunichi and Clair fighting a huge skeleton dude with blade arms who kinda looks like Summoned Skull from Yu-Gi-Oh! I love everything about this character design. He looks like he just walked off a DeviantArt page. And holy hooray, he actually survives to the end of the episode, so we’ll probably get to see him in action a bit more. (The show is swiftly approaching the point where I dropped the manga, so who knows, maybe it becomes Actually Good at some point going forward. Honestly my recollection of Skeleton Boy here is pretty fuzzy, which makes me wonder if he doesn’t die in short order or something. I guess we’ll find out).

On another note entirely: I wish the show had the good sense to let Shuichi and Clair’s relationship breathe a little more. You can do a lot with the idea of two fundamentally broken people finding solace in each other, but the series’ approach to writing this is so clumsy that it actively gets in the way of the surprising amount of genuine chemistry they have. But, of course, if it had good sense it just wouldn’t be Gleipnir. Lastly, because I feel compelled to mention it somewhere. What is it with this show and a commitment to just being stepped-on-a-slug gross about once per episode? A few episodes ago we got some bafflingly grody empty visual metaphors. Last episode we were treated to the sight of the alien slurping down one of Clair’s hairs like a spaghetti noodle. This week we get This Fucking Thing.

Sigh, why did I pick this up instead of My Next Life As A Villainess again?

Sing “Yesterday” For Me

I have never been so purely flummoxed by enjoying an anime as I am with this one. You don’t really watch Yesterday it more just kind of….happens to you. It’s an odd show. Despite its very grounded premise (Serial Experiments Lain this is not), its portraits of lives gone sideways feels weird and surreal; like a Mountain Goats song or a Youtube video on a little-visited channel.

The most recent episode introduces a photographer character with a tendency to perhaps unwelcomely subject others to his strong opinions on the artform and a fondness for circular metaphors. Yet, I find Yesterday‘s literal plot to be kind of hazy and hard to recount, it’s almost the least interesting thing about the show. (It helps that the gist of it is simply a complicated love triangle.) Instead, I was struck by, how, when taking screencaps for this very column, I ended up (by pure happenstance) grabbing a picture of Haru in the exact same manner that said character photographed her at episode’s end, just facing the opposite direction. It is not often that an anime gets one’s head all a-tizzy about their role as a critic, but here I am.

Wave, Listen To Me!

Now this is a show with a few screws loose. Some four or five weeks ago I called it the most promising premiere of the entire season. That of course does not mean that it would actually live up to that promise. So far, of Wave‘s five episodes I’d say only the most recent (the fifth, at the time of this writing) really lives up to that first episode, which is a little disappointing but maybe a good sign that the show is finally starting to get somewhere.

The issue with Wave is that when it’s focusing on what it does best: being a vehicle for voice actress Riho Sugiyama‘s portrait of Minare, its protagonist, it’s great. This is a woman whose life is in shambles and maybe always has been, saved (well, “saved”. Let’s not get ahead of ourselves) from both existential despair and the setting-in realities of poverty by the magic of early-AM radio. Minare’s a very three-dimensional character, which is great, but does leave much of the rest of the cast feeling a mite flat by comparison and branches of the story that revolve around characters that aren’t Minare tend to feel kind of underdeveloped. In particular, the gaggle of men that exist as supporting characters (some of whom the show is trying to build as potential romance partners for Minare) are slight, and the chemistry between any of these pairings is pretty minimal.

By contrast, Mizuho, the other woman in the show with a large role, really seems to be hitting it off with our heroine. Especially given that the two are now rooming together. It’s probably too early to hope for a gay conclusion to this particular part of the story, but Minare’s cracks about the chef who owns the curry restaurant she works on and off at being gay do kind of come across as jokes from within the closet. Time will tell.

But the romance outlook being kind of dicey would be less of a problem if the show spent more time elsewhere. When Minare finally gets another chance to cut loose in episode 5 like she did in the premiere it instantly ratchets the show back up to a real contender. Sugiyama’s performance, giving Minare a convincing, blown-out, rambly bluster is something you just don’t see that often in anime, especially for women. This is without mentioning the bizarre radio drama she manages to adlib about half of on her own, involving a woman who murders her boyfriend and then gets abducted by aliens.

More of this, please.

Even here though the show tries to tie things back to relationships. The character of Matou, Minare’s greasy boss at the radio station, essentially openly fetishizes her voice, which makes Sugiyama’s performance a bit harder to appreciate, adding a totally unnecessary sleaze to the proceedings. The entire thing comes across as a bizarre attempt to make the audience complicit in a creeping “man vs. woman” streak within the show’s writing. One that it’s not difficult to interpret as simple misogyny if you’re feeling uncharitable. Of course, we do need to be open to the possibility that this is all being set up to be knocked down later, and indeed at the end of episode 5 Minare explicitly rejects romance at least for the time being.

On yet another hand, this episode introduces an actual murder subplot which, who knows if we’re ever going to actually follow up on that. This show is certainly going somewhere, but it’s still an open question as to where, exactly, that is.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Spring Anime Season First Impressions – Round 4

Mewkledreamy

One of the most purely un-available shows of the season, Mewkledreamy lacks an official pickup and has currently been subtitled by only a single person who’s made it clear that they’re probably not going to sub beyond the first episode. That said, even if it were more widely available, it’s a little hard to imagine recommending Mewkledreamy to many people.

The core premise of the 48-episode(!!) series is that the Queen of The Sky commits some humans to being “dream partners” by way of a magic stuffed animal. These partners can enter other peoples’ dreams and purge them of evil influence. If you’re looking for a more grokkable explanation, this is basically Precure with the caveat that all of the monsters and such exist mostly in the dream world. With only the stuffed animals (and their evil counterparts) being physically present in the real one.

What Mewkledreamy has going for it is some great expression comedy and a colorful art style. Working against those strengths though is the show’s general flow. It’s a hard thing to peg more concretely but the series’ first episode just feels oddly-constructed, not helped by the J.C. Staff‘s somewhat floaty animation. This does occasionally work in the show’s favor. When we see the first dreamworld in this first episode the sheer surreality of its setting (some kind of office/dance club embodying our main character’s mother’s dueling desires to be a responsible businesswoman and uh, get lit, apparently) is an asset, but elsewhere it just makes the show feel kind of off.

The earlier Precure comparison wasn’t solely on the basis of them both being kids’ shows, as that’s clearly what Mewkledreamy is trying to model itself after, down to the placement of the henshin sequences, design of the mascots, and an all-CGI dance routine ED. The key difference is that Pretty Cure generally has its core thematics sorted from the word “go”. Even the first episode of a given Precure season will clue you in as to what the writing team is going for. Mewkledreamy by contrast feels aimless so far, with even the requisite “buy the toy, kids!” portion of the transformation sequence feeling abrupt and peripheral.

It’s certainly possible that Mewkledreamy will find its footing a little later on, being four cours long, it has a lot more time to do so than most things I’ve been covering in the first impression roundups, but at this stage it really seems like that unless you literally are a Japanese middle schooler, there’s not a ton of reason to watch Mewkledreamy except perhaps idle curiosity.

First Impression Score: 6/10

Diary of Our Days at the Breakwater

“Virtues of rural livin'” stories really are the same everywhere, huh?

Snark aside, Diary of Our Days at The Breakwater (formerly and unofficially known as Afterschool Embankment Journal in the anglosphere) is a pretty simple little thing. Protagonist Hina is a city girl recently moved to the country, where she is roped by lanky redneck Yuuki into joining the Breakwater Club, a line- and rack-fishing club at the local high school.

To lay it all on the table, as someone who lived in a rural town for most of my life, I find stories that focus on romanticizing these locations a bit inherently offputting (it’s why I could never get into Non Non Biyori), so I will never claim to be entering into this particular sphere of subject matter unbiased.

My own life experience aside, though, the series is well-animated and well-composed. Fans of cult studio Doga Kobo (who it feels weird to call that, but it’s true) will find another entry in their oeuvre to enjoy here. To be sure, there’s a lot to like if you’re into slice of life comedies. Yuuki in particular is a great character, and the series even this early on radiates a genuine love for its setting and characters. A lot of the comedy though does lean heavily on Hina getting freaked out by “country folk stuff”, especially in relation to fishing as you might expect given the show’s premise. If you find that offputting, you’re probably better off getting your seasonal dose of this genre elsewhere.

There’s honestly not much else to say about this one. You’ll figure out pretty quick if it’s your thing or not.

First Impression Score: Fishing/10

Princess Connect! Re:Dive

Princess Connect! Re:Dive is a show brave enough to ask the simple question; what if the chosen one sent to save your generic fantasy world was a complete idiot? No no, dumber than that. No, dumber still. There you go.

Princess Connect! is based on a mobage but I don’t know offhand if the series inherits much of that game’s tone. Disguising itself as an impossibly-generic straight fantasy anime for about 60 seconds, Princess Connect! reveals its hand pretty early. The series has pretty much exactly one trick. It will set up a situation that seems like it should be a plot beat in a fantasy series, or have some sense of gravitas, and then let the air out of it by having everyone be, to a man, unbelievably stupid.

Much of the first episode takes place in a typical RPG-style “starter town”. The banner image is from our hero, Yuuki, trying to eat a coin. This is the show’s sole trick, but damn if I didn’t have to stifle laughter every single time it happened. Comedic fantasy anime are nothing new (even relatively recently most people are at least aware of Konosuba), but this is a good one. The show’s sheer stupidity manages to leverage its relatively mediocre visual presentation as something of an asset–I think it would actually be less funny if it looked better. Even later in the episode when a surprisingly well-done fight scene breaks out, it’s undercut by several deliberate matches to less-well-animated cuts for comedic effect.

It is admittedly hard to imagine that this will still be funny twelve weeks from now, but who knows? Perhaps it has some other tricks up its sleeve or maybe it’ll simply keep setting up situations to pull the rug out from under. Either way, if you’re a fan of the truly dumb, this is one to check out.

First Impression Score: 7/10

Shironeko Project Zero Chronicle

Astoundingly artless JRPG adaptation by chronically low-ambition studio Project no. 9. Writing that makes Sword Art Online look profound locks blades with uninspired art direction, mediocre animation, and a lame, hollow, plot that is stuffed with cliches that were hoary 30 years ago. The first episode’s meager positives: two or three (not an exaggeration) competent cuts done by animators who will hopefully find a better studio to work at some day soon, some okay character designs, the writing being so bad that it’s sometimes unintentionally comedic, are vastly outweighed by the general sloggishness of the entire affair. If you want to watch a fantasy shonen this season watch Tower of God, if you want to watch a not-very-ambitious fantasy shonen this season watch Princess Connect or Shachibato. We have only so many years on this planet of ours, and there are not enough to waste time on something this boringly meritless.

First Impression Score: 2/10

Shadowverse

People have been riffing on Yu-Gi-Oh! since it was new, and Shadowverse is no exception. This particular entry in the “card game battle shonen” subgenre is an adaptation of the digital card game of the same name (which, just to point it out, yours truly is in fact a casual player of). Honestly, if you’ve seen any of these shows you’ve got a decent idea of what to expect here. Kid with a funky haircut defeats bullies and villains in card games with the power of friendship and/or a magical artefact of great power. Fans hoping for a straight adaptation of the game’s story mode might be disappointed, but it’s hard to imagine such an adaptation doing much justice to that bundle of oddness anyway.

The animation is solid and fun enough to make up for most of the cliche in the writing, and it’s great to see some beloved cards in animated format for the first time. Although it’s not a great sign that our token girl cast member gets shafted already in the first episode in order to play up the MC’s talents by comparison. Still, this is another one where you’ll know pretty quick if you’re in the target audience, it’s worth checking out if you like this kind of thing or are a fan of the game.

First Impression Score: 7/10

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Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Spring Anime Season First Impressions – Round 3

Shachibato! President, It’s Time for Battle!

I’m not one to accuse shows of going through the motions, but it feels fair to say that Shachibato! is aiming pretty much exclusively for one crowd–people who like the mobile game it’s an adaptation of–and nobody else. The ultratypical fantasy series is spiced up with the minor twist that the main character is the president of an adventurer’s guild rather than a hero archetype, and thus has to contend with all manner of humdrum business stuff as well as the usual monsters and mages.

To be honest, what this series mostly has going for it are some neat character designs, high production values, and a certain ease-of-watching. If that sounds like faint praise that’s because it kind of is. I can’t imagine anyone following twelve weeks of this, despite a perfectly inoffensive and pleasant first episode that looks nice and hits its plot beats just fine. The main thing I ended up walking away from Shachibato!‘s first episode thinking was that one of the characters–Akari–looks a lot like Hatsune Miku. It did also make me want to check out the mobile game, so it succeeds as an ad, at the very least. Will the series greatly improve and stage a come-from-behind takeover as one of the best anime of the season? Well, anything’s possible, but it doesn’t seem terribly likely, let’s put it that way.

First Impression Score: Aquamarine Twintails / 10

Wave, Listen To Me!

In an already ridiculously strong season, Wave, Listen To Me! might have the most singular premiere of anything currently airing. Our main character; Minare, an office worker with a drinking problem and the worst-best case of The Rants you’ve heard this side of a pompous rockstar concert intermission. A chance meeting at a bar with a scuzzy radio producer prompts an angry mid-workshift drive to the radio station the next day as Minare finds her bar ramblings being used as cheap airwave drama fodder. Then, our heroine is unceremoniously dropped into the role of amateur-hour radio DJ.

Lead actress Riho Sugiyama talks like a waterfall runs. Insanely, this is only her second main-cast role ever following a run in Franken Family back in 2018. She absolutely makes the show, and her performance as Minare is probably the best single character performance of the season so far.

The series itself is spellbinding, almost entirely because of that performance. Minare is clearly a trainwreck of a person and I’m certain the show will delve deeper into the how’s and why’s later on, but even at this early juncture she’s just fascinating. It’s easy to speak of “realistic” or “grounded” character writing, but Minare is intriguing specifically because she’s so bombastic and rambly. All this is tied together with a distinct look and, fittingly for something about radio, incredible sound design. I don’t think it’s absurd to say that this the most interesting thing airing right now. Watch this.

First Impressions Score: 10/10

Gleipnir

Sigh.

Gleipnir is another manga adaptation, this one coming to us courtesy of studio PINE JAM. I can’t in good faith say I went into Gleipnir’s premiere unbiased. To the casual observer it might seem like a good (maybe even great) first episode of a solid action anime. Unfortunately, I’m familiar with the manga, which I’m on record as thinking is pretty awful. The good news here is that the production values are uncommonly high for a seinen adaptation and the animation and soundtracking work are good throughout the episode (if occasionally bizarre, listen to whatever the hell plays as BGM when Claire is getting changed, for instance). So if you are a fan of the manga, this is going to be a high point of the season for you, certainly.

The real issue with Gleipnir is its scuzzy writing, which shows through even at this early stage. Mostly in the first episode this deals with the treatment of the female lead–the 15-year-old Claire Aoki–as some kind of sexpot femme fatale, but it gets worse in widely varied ways later on. Even if you’re unbothered by that kind of thing on a moral level, it’s incredibly hokey. Male protagonist Suichi Kagaya doesn’t fare much better, being the same kind of self-loathing pseudo-nice guy that stars in the vast majority of the sort of manga that the original series is a part of, squandering his singularly weird superpower of transforming into a Five Nights At Freddy’s reject. It’s a tired archetype.

I can’t in good conscience score the episode too low because of said production strengths, but this isn’t one I can recommend to most people. At best, if you’re the same sort of animasochist I occasionally am, it’s shaping up to be a decent hatewatch to riff on with friends.

First Impression Score: 5/10

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Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Spring Anime Season First Impressions – Round 2

LISTENERS

Self-empowerment parable through the medium of superpowered CGI rock n’ roll-robots. You’ve heard this story before even if you didn’t realize it–the folks behind Listeners are surely familiar with the seminal FLCL–but wearing its influences on its sleeve is no knock. Call Listeners a “high variance” seasonal, this one could end up being the best of the season or it could putter out into the same disappointment pit that Darling in the FranXX fell into. Perhaps most likely is that it could stay the course and turn out to be Just Solid. It’s hard to say right now.

The show’s got a fair bit going for it; a strong aesthetic that welds a 2000s-era look (I’ve seen Eureka Seven brought up as a point of comparison and I do see it) to clear inspirations from classic rock album art, and a good command of what differentiates the retro from the merely dated. On the less positive side, the animation is inconsistent and there are some very unwelcome sex jokes in the first half of the first episode. Listeners is a “who knows” right now, but consider keeping your eye on it if you’re the gambling type. Speaking personally, I’m also a sucker for anything whose first episode ends with its protagonists having to flee from their hometown (well, one of theirs’ hometown, it’s complicated) on a train. We’ll see where it goes.

First Impression Score: 6/10

Gal & Dinosaur

One of the season’s true oddballs, Gal is ostensibly an adaptation of the manga of the same name, a comedic slice-of-life series about a gyaru and her unexpected new roommate, a blue dinosaur. While it does directly adapt the source material the approach is….eclectic, to say the least. This all makes more sense if you consider the director here–Jun Aoki, of Pop Team Epic fame.

This isn’t to oversimplify, as the two shows are far from identical. Even the animated front half has a slow, loping pace that flows like not much else airing right now, and very differently from the hyperfrantic PTE. The second half of the series, which is in live action and reprises some of the same material, is more in line with what Aoki converts from Pop Team Epic will be expecting. The altered context and different medium changes the way some of the gags land and it’s interesting to compare and contrast the two. Of course, even if you’re not one for that kind of thing, it’s hard to deny the simple comedy appeal of airhorns.

I suspect whether you prefer the more traditionally adaptive first half or the weirder, more experimental second will come down to how big a fan you were of the manga. Personally, I was never huge on the Pop Team Epic adaptation (as far as bizarre slapstick anime I prefer Teekyuu and the brain-melting Ai Mai Mi!), so I know my preference, but both halves excel at what they’re trying to do. It’s hardly “essential TV”, but this is the kind of thing that if you’re part of the intended audience, you’ll figure it out pretty quickly. Definitely one to at least give a cursory watch to see if it’s Your Thing or not.

First Impression Score: 7/10

Sing “Yesterday” For Me

Straight-n-true adaptation of a classic drama manga makes its way to television. The original manga dates way back to 1997, and some of the plot beats here make that pretty obvious even if the setting didn’t (and it does). Yet, despite going into this being pretty sure I wouldn’t like it, I found myself surprisingly compelled by the cast of castaways that are Sing “Yesterday” For Me‘s characters. To a one, they’re burnt-out young adults ranging from a high school dropout to a high school teacher to our main character, a disaffected convenience store worker and self-described “loser”.

This is stuff that’s fairly well-tread ground for the genre and it wasn’t exactly revolutionary in ’97 either. Yet, somehow, I feel more of a beating heart under this show than I do many similar titles, perhaps it’s just the age range of the cast, perhaps it’s that even in the first episode said cast picks at and openly questions the value of stories like this in the first place. Maybe I’m just kind of amazed that there was a confession in the first episode of something based on a romance manga. Who knows? Yesterday is one to keep your eyes on. Those familiar with the original will have more concrete opinions, but even for someone like me who isn’t, the possible ceiling for this series seems very, very high.

First Impression Score: 8/10

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Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Spring Anime Season First Impressions – Round 1

The first few weeks of an anime season are always the most exciting to me. You get to see how the short little clips and promo art pieces of preview materials translate into actual, full-length episodes. So to share that joy, I’ve decided I’m going to pen short little thoughtpieces (or maybe not-so-short in some cases, who knows) on each show I’m checking out this season. I’ll be doing these at basically arbitrary points, whenever I have enough shows under my belt to make a post of decent length.

BRAND NEW ANIMAL

This is the one, if you’re curious. Technically, I’ve been following BNA for two weeks now. The first six episodes were unceremoniously dump-trucked onto Netflix some time back and Little Witch Academia standbys Asenshi.moe have been subbing them at a roughly weekly pace, so I’ve only seen two of those episodes thusfar, but what I’ve seen puts it at the top as far as promising shows for this season.

I’ve loved TRIGGER basically since the original LWA movie dropped so this will probably surprise nobody, but among their big ticket directors I’ve always felt that Yoh Yoshinari was among the most underrated. His style’s in full force here, but the story being told has much higher stakes than the relatively school life genre-indebted LWA. Michiru (our protagonist) has already questionably-legally immigrated to a city full of beastmen, had her wallet stolen on her first day there, and been inadvertently involved in busting up organized crime. God knows what else is in store for the poor tanuki.

The show’s gearing up to tackle some pretty big ideas, and it’s entirely possible that it’ll fumble the ball there, but the visual chops can’t be denied, and given some surprisingly subtle character design decisions (making our Big Badass Cop archetype a social worker instead, for instance) it might have a more nuanced approach than some might assume. This is some great stuff, folks. Keep your eye on Asenshi’s uploads.

First impression rating: 9/10

TAMAYOMI: The Baseball Girls

On a totally different note, we have this. Tamayomi is, at least so far, a nearly perfectly archetypal slice of school life-meets-sports anime. It’s almost comically orthodox for this particular genre intersection, but that shouldn’t be taken to mean that it’s bad, necessarily. In what I assume is a strength inherited from the manga it’s adapted from, the show has a warm inner glow that goes beyond mere cuteness (although there’s that, too). Add a little dollop of some pretty on-the-nose lesbian subtext–a pair of twins are fawning over protagonist Yomi’s pitcher hand before the ten minute mark–and you’ve got a perfectly good little anime.

I will say, the visual work is shaky at the best of times, and in some cuts the characters are downright badly-drawn, with inking errors like mismatched eyeshadow thickness and such, which does undercut some portion of its charm. My hope is that this is the result of either the current global unpleasantness, the fact that the first episode had to be done a month ahead of schedule for a preview screening, or both. Otherwise, while it’s certainly the least essential of the four shows here, it’s perfectly good and worth watching if you like this kind of thing.

First Impression Rating: 6/10

Kakushigoto

From the mind of Zetsubou-sensei creator Kouji Kumeta comes an oddball comedy about a dad who draws a dirty comedy manga and his quest to keep his beloved young daughter from ever learning that fact. This one took me slightly by surprise, as I wasn’t originally aware of Kumeta’s involvement and was expecting more of a heartstring-tugging father/daughter bonding type of story. What it actually is is great too, though, and as someone who mostly passed over Zetsubou-sensei in its popular heyday I was a bit surprised to find myself grokking the sense of humor here as quickly as I did. They don’t quite operate on the exact same wavelength, but this is one fans of stuff like Nichijou and Daily Lives of High School Boys should keep an eye on. Even if it’s not quite that frantic. This is definitely the best comedy of the season so far, with a gag late in the episode about how Starbucks orders sound like magic spells being my favorite.

If I do have a complaint it’s about the odd coding of Mario, the extremely campy owner of a fashion boutique the main character works near, but he’s not onscreen enough for it to be a major strike against the series yet.

First Impression Rating: 8/10

Tower of God

Roughly once a season, some huge shonen series drops that seemingly everyone and his grandmother watches. I’m only rarely interested in these shows (by and large, despite being a known fan of gaudy fight scenes and overdesigned characters, it isn’t my genre) and have a bad habit of thinking “oh this is the one” about once a year and then dropping it four episodes in. It’s too early to say if Tower of God will be the thing that breaks that trend, but it just might be. This one’s got an interesting IP history, too, being an adaptation of a South Korean web-manhua that’s been running since the beginning of the last decade. The original comic was among the first such properties to ever get an official English translation, and Crunchyroll of all folks are partly bankrolling the anime.

As for the show itself? Dirt-simple story (“girl leaves boy, boy goes on epic adventure to find girl”) meets lavish fantasy worldbuilding. There’s not a lot out there that’s like this, in spite of its simple building blocks, and it tickled a part of my brain that I don’t think has been buzzed since I watched MÄR on Toonami as a kid. Despite the stock protagonist archetype that male lead 25th Bam (yes, that is his name) falls into, the first episode was quite engaging, involving our hero having to figure out how to crack open a black orb in a giant water tank while being hounded by a sea monster. Also introduced here is Ha Yuri Jahad (seen up there in the header picture) who I took an immediate liking to. There’s just something charming about seeing the “rebellious princess” archetype played perfectly straight in 2020 and with a character with such a great design, too. I was also interested by the mysterious, rabbit-like Headon, who seems to be the titular Tower’s caretaker.

I don’t need to tell anyone to watch ToG–you’ll know pretty much right away if it’s your bag or not–but I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it. If every episode is this interesting this might be the first shonen series in some time that I actually finish.

First Impression Rating: 7/10

So that’s it for Round 1 of the Spring Anime Season impressions. Everything I’ve seen so far this season is at least solid, and I think all four of these shows have the potential to get even better. This is the most excited I’ve been going into a fresh season in some time, and we haven’t even gotten to some of the real heavy hitters yet (in particular, a certain beloved romcom from last year returns next Friday), so I’m thrilled. What about you? How’s your season looking so far?

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch Healin' Good Precure

Let’s Watch Healin’ Good Precure – Episode 9

Catching up was not as big an issue as I thought it’d be. However, this shorter length is probably going to be the norm from here on out rather than the exception. We’ll see what the future holds, though.

This is another simple character study episode. This time covering Hinata and her attempts to take her two friends to a photoshoot boutique at a mall (not something that really exists in the US but my understanding is that they’re not rare in Japan). Hinata continues her reign as the show’s at least-semi-intentional neurodivergence rep. The trip goes wrong a few times because of Hinata attempting to jump the gun on things–something very familiar to anyone with ADHD or the like. She even tries to take on this week’s Megapathogerm all on her own, which doesn’t work out for her. Though, we do get another great fight scene out of the whole ordeal.

Hinata’s a great character in general and probably my favorite of the three leads so far this season. Intentional-ness of the representation aside, she’s broadly relatable to anyone whose short attention span has ever gotten them in trouble, and as a woman who was a chronic C student in grade school, I feel it. I also really like whoever in the writer’s room is playing cupid between her and Nodoka, because they really poured it on this week.

Absolutely superb.

Puppy love or not being its own thing, this is a great episode and showcases some positive character development for Hinata, whose arc continues to be the one I’m most excited about. Behold our Shot of The Week, a Very Surprised Cure Sparkle.

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