Category: Seasonal Impression Roundups

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Get Away from It All with ESTAB-LIFE: GREAT ESCAPE

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

“Do you want to run away from your current situation?”

And so, the season begins with a doozy.

ESTAB-LIFE: Great Escape is peculiar on several fronts. For one, it was a beneficiary of the increasingly-common practice of a pre-air screening. The first two episodes have actually been out for about a week, today merely marks the start of its actual broadcast run. (And just to clarify; to give it parity with the other anime I cover in this column, I’m only looking at episode one here.) It’s also an all-CGI affair, still novel enough a thing to be worth noting. It comes to us from Polygon Pictures, who have built their particular fiefdom of the anime industry entirely out of that sort of thing. Its director is Hiroyuki Hashimoto, whose filmography is a bit scattershot. (It’s difficult to make firm statements about a man whose greatest contributions to popular culture thus far have been directing the anime adaptions of Magical Girl Raising Project and Is The Order a Rabbit?) Nonetheless; this is first original anime, not based on any existing property. But interestingly, the “original plan” (whatever that means) is credited to someone else; Gorou Taniguchi. Who you may know as the man who directed Code Geass, perhaps the grandfather of all truly gonzo camp-fest anime of the past decade.

This is all well and good, but you’re probably wondering–even with that colorful legacy in mind–what this show is actually about, which is fair enough. Here are, with as little embellishment as I can muster, the events that unfold in the first five minutes of ESTAB-LIFE, before the opening credits even roll.

We open on a rain-drenched funeral with a priest solemnly reading out last rites for the deceased. His prayers are interrupted by a car horn, and our cast–two anime girls, a small robot, and a wolfman–pile into the Hearse, with apparent intent to drive it somewhere. We cut to a slight bit later, and our heroes(?) roll up to some kind of military checkpoint. The ball-shaped android manning the checkpoint notices that something is amiss when one of them sneezes(?!) and pulls an emergency alarm. At this, our heroes blow through the checkpoint while pursued by a cloud of armed drones, to the irritation of the third anime girl hiding in the coffin in the back seat. They arrive at a gate, which they must hack open, or something, while under fire. One of the drones shoots one of our heroines dead in the eye, at which point she bursts into water, only to reform seconds later. Her compatriot remarks that this ability of hers is useful.

It is at this point that the OP plays, and it sinks in what kind of anime we’re in for.

Eventually, a kind of context for all this does emerge. The setting is Japan (naturally), but a Japan divided into many independent city-states called “clusters” that have little contact with each other. A civilian moving freely from one cluster to another is unheard of, and met with harsh, sometimes lethal response from the “moderators” who govern these cities. That’s where our heroes come in; they’re extractors, people who spirit away citizens who are bored or disaffected with their lives.

As we establish, that’s mostly by night. By day, they’re ordinary citizens at what appears to be an all-girls school; the two male members of the main five hold down the fort at home, we must assume. The three girls are Equa (Tomomi Mineuchi), Ferres (Rie Takahashi), and Martese (Maria Naganawa). Respectively, the compassionate leader whose only desire to help out everyone the group possibly can, the cynical one who swears she’s going to quit this extractor business any day now, and the cocky, flirty one who can turn into water. (She’s a slime-person “demihuman”, as we eventually learn.) There’s a lot of great banter here, and even though I singled out Martese as the flirter it’s worth noting that all three of them kinda seem to be into each other, which is cute.

I won’t belabor the point by going over every single beat of the episode. Its main plot centers around the girls smuggling their philosophy teacher, one Yamada-sensei, out of their cluster. This eventually comes to involve, in no particular order; the man having to thumbprint a document saying that the extractor team can’t guarantee his prosperity or happiness in his new city, his being handed an emergency grenade by the team’s robot, Alga (Shou Hayami), just in case he gets captured and has to “end it all,” and Martese creating a diversion in a police station by pretending to be drunk off her ass. (This backfires. One of the cops scans her and finds out she’s a slime person, and apparently, slime people can’t have alcohol because it’s dangerous to them. The more you know!)

The actual extraction goes pear-shaped, because of course it does. Even with three girls with guns, a talking robot, and a wolfman who doesn’t talk but does have two swords (Shinichirou Miki) on your team, sometimes things go wrong. Eventually, Yamada-sensei does end up making it to his new cluster of choice; but he has to get there by rope, and it’s not after a whole lot of shenanigans involving busted elevators and improvised building-climbing. Nietzche quotes are thrown around.

Top to bottom, the whole episode is also stuffed with great banter and surprisingly good little character moments. (Especially in the animation department, which is far from a given in any anime.) That, combined with its generally oddball nature and focus on “escape” as a main theme makes it remind me less of any recent seasonals and more of that Idolmaster short I covered a few weeks ago.

All in all, it’s hard to say where, exactly, ESTAB-LIFE is going, but it’s certainly going somewhere, and the ride seems worthwhile. Keep an eye on this one.

Grade: B
The Takeaway: Interesting character designs, great banter, an intriguingly odd plot, and a general sense of WTF-ness combine to make this an early standout in the young season.

An administrative note: I alluded to this in the body of the article itself, but I have basically no clue what’s going on with this thing’s schedule. The regular broadcast apparently starts today, but on some JP services it’s apparently going up in three batches of four episodes each. And I’ve seen conflicting reports as to what schedule streaming services available in the US will be following. Personally, I’m probably just going to watch it week by week like any old seasonal. I hate to think that an unorthodox release schedule might hurt Estab-Life‘s chances at gaining an audience, though.

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: What the Hell is SABIKUI BISCO?

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

A sickness called the Rust. Forbidden mushrooms that offer toxic euphoria. A desert with iron sand and the foggy streets of the sin city beyond it. Those streets crawl with the sick and dying, hucksters, hookers, butchers, and a doctor with a heart of gold. This is Sabikui Bisco, one of the season’s most singular offerings.

Bisco is absolutely suffused with atmosphere, and it’s tempting to spend the entire article talking about that instead of the actual story (which is only in its very early stages anyway.) But we should at least touch on that before we get into what this thing is actually about. Despite a fairly modest production from an animation point of view, the visuals on this thing are beyond engrossing. (The series comes to us from the brand-new studio OZ. This is, as far as I can tell, their first-ever production.) Almost everything in the city itself is lit with a neon undertone that really sells the whole “Las Vegas of post-apoc Japan” vibe. The character designs, similarly, really pop, and there’s a lot to love about them. Even minor characters get to look good.

But yes, about that “post-apoc Japan” bit. Bisco takes place in a world overrun with something called The Rusty Wind. It makes people sick, and eventually kills them. Also factoring in are a group of people who have some sort of supernatural control over those mushrooms I mentioned before, The Mushroomkeepers. I am quite sure that before watching this episode I had never heard the phrase “mushroom terrorist” in my entire life. Having now seen it, I’ve heard it several times. Most people don’t seem to like the Mushroomkeepers, and while it’s too early to draw clean good guy / bad guy lines (if that’s something this series ever wants to do at all), it’s not hard to get why. Most Mushroomkeeper activity seems to consist of causing huge colonies of tree-sized caps to sprout in places, which causes a lot of damage. One of our protagonists, the titular Bisco (that’s the wild-eyed redhead on the cover. Played here by Ryouta Suzuki, probably best known to readers here as Ishigami from Kaguya-sama: Love is War!) is a Mushroomkeeper. Apparently quite an infamous one. We’re made aware of his legend in this utterly brilliant exchange from the episode’s opening minutes.

Bisco himself doesn’t do a ton in this first episode. What he does do is quite impactful and sets the whole plot in motion, but we’ll circle back around to that. Let’s talk about our other protagonist first.

Milo “Panda” Nekoyanagi (Natsuki Hanae, easily best known as the lead, Tanjirou, in Demon Slayer) is a feminine-looking doctor with a heart of gold who appears to quite literally treat his patients out of a brothel. He seems like a genuinely very nice man, as demonstrated by his habit of giving away treatment (both for Rust and a number of other things) for free. He also collects illegal mushrooms, hoping to synthesize a permanent cure for the disease from them. There’s a personal investment here, as his sister Paw, the city’s guard captain (Reina Kondou, who given that she was also Nikaido in the Dorohedoro anime, seems to be building a niche for herself voicing dangerous women in weird science fantasy settings) is also ill with the disease.

Milo also has one other connection we should discuss. That with the prefectural governor, Kurokawa. (Kenjirou Tsuda, an industry veteran most famous as Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! Though I’d be remiss to not also mention his roles as The Giraffe from Revue Starlight and the talking dog Yamabiko from Sonny Boy.) Kurokawa does not seem to be a nice man, and in his first on-screen appearance tries to bully Milo into abandoning his sister so he can offer his services to the prefecture’s rich elite instead.

His attempt at a verbal beatdown is interrupted, though, by Bisco, who for reasons currently unknown to us, lets loose a mushroom colony in the middle of the city. Utter chaos ensues, with Paw dawning her guard uniform to go stop him despite Milo’s pleas. (And if I may, she looks amazing while doing it, too.)

I try to keep obvious thirsting over anime girls to a minimum on this site, but you’ll have to pardon me here, I have a type.

Paw actually knocks Milo out, but, unfazed, the good doctor simply slinks into his laboratory to continue his work. That, of course, is when Bisco inexplicably shows up behind him, and the episode ends there, with our two leads meeting face to face for the first time.

A lot about Sabikui Bisco reminds one of Dorohedoro, but beyond that I struggle for reference points. (And even in that context, Bisco is very much its own thing.) This is absolutely one to keep an eye on, we might be looking at the start of something big. Even if not, it promises to be intriguing.

Grade: A-
The Takeaway: If you have the time, give the first episode of this a watch. It’s interesting.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, 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: PRINCESS CONNECT RE:DIVE SEASON 2 Arrives with a Delicious Second Course

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

We’ve got something of a first for this blog on our hands with this one. Almost two years ago, I (very briefly) gave my impressions of the first season of Princess Connect Re:Dive. Now, here in 2022, we’re met with season 2. It both feels like far too much time has passed and almost none at all, but that’s the 2020’s for ya.

Season 1 was an out-of-nowhere hit. Far more than just a promotional tool for a then-languishing mobile game, Priconne had a real sense of lived-in coziness to its slice-of-life escapades. Toward the end of the season, when things took a turn for the somewhat more dramatic, it was able to cash in that goodwill and pull off one of the more surprising turns of 2020, hinting at a greater storyline lurking in the background behind all the warm character dynamics and JRPG fantasy aesthetics without losing sight of those merits. That’s a hard thing to pull off, and even if its second season were to totally tank, Priconne would deserve praise on that first season alone.

Thankfully, things seem to be pointing toward season 2 being just as good, if not better. The opening here is just spectacular, with a wide shot of the city that the Gourmet Guild call home that manages to instill it with a sense of genuine gravitas. Having a bespoke studio (CygamesPictures) certainly seems to have its benefits.

If you’ve forgotten the show’s central character dynamic, this first episode is quick to remind you. The curious and gentle Kokkoro (played by Miku Itou, a fairly prolific actress best known to readers of this blog as takt op. Destiny‘s Titan.) is handed a mysterious map that may or may not lead the way to a “legendary seasoning” called the Drops of the Sea. The bold and rambunctious Princess Pecorine (Mao Ichimichi, also widely traveled but probably best known as Iris from Fire Force.) declares that this is a journey the Gourmet Guild simply must embark on immediately.

The fussy and high-strung Karyl (Rika Tachibana, this seems to be her most well-known role.) objects to the prospect of leaving the warm and cozy guild home to go on what might well be a wild goose chase. She is shouted down by the other two reminding her that the guild motto is to seek all the world’s tasty foods. Our ostensible protagonist Yuuki (Atsushi Abe, the most tenured VA among Priconne’s main four, with roles going all the way back to a main role in 2007’s Shugo Chara!), as is his wont, just kind of rolls with the down-shouting. Outvoted 3-to-1, the Guild thus embark on a quest full of adventure and hijinks.

Incidentally, it’s immediately notable that Yuuki can actually speak full sentences now. I don’t remember him having developed (or rather, regained) that ability during the first season, but that might just be my memory reducing him to an always-blithely-smiling caricature who tosses a thumbs up and a grin at basically every situation. In fairness, he still fits that description here, he’s just marginally wordier now.

But lest anyone think that any part of this might mean that Princess Connect has lost its comedic instincts, rest assured that it very much hasn’t. There’s a fun gag here early on where Yuuki briefly seems to have tamed some of the wild-eyed monster wolves that menace adventurers in the area, only for them to basically shout “sike!” and bite him on the arm.

The show’s sense of wonder is intact too. Much of this episode takes place in a forest that looks like a coral reef, complete with fish that swim in the sky. It’s pretty cool! Even if it turns out to be inhabited by fuzzy, poisonous mouth monsters.

The sheer amount of pure fun even in this first episode is pretty astounding. Along their quest, the Gourmet Guild help the ghost of an old adventurer move on into the next life and fly through the night sky in what looks like an ornithopter made of big leaves, straight into the eye of a storm. All of these would be large, multi-episode arcs for most anime, but Princess Connect is able to squeeze it all in its first episode back without it feeling strained. This is the rare half hour slot anime episode that feels twice its length in a good way. A lot happens.

All this to say, there’s really not anyone else doing fantasy adventure anime the way that Priconne is these days, in spite–or perhaps because of–its comedic bent. Yeah, their quest ends with something of an anticlimax (it turns out that they can’t get Drops of the Sea, normally shed by egg-laying giant sea turtles, because the only such turtle they can find is male. Whoops!) but the show’s whole point is that it’s the journey, not the destination. And if you don’t pick up on that yourself, the aforementioned ghost is more than happy to pontificate about it. It’s maybe the only scene in the entire episode that could use a little tightening up, but on the other hand, hasn’t Priconne earned a little self-indulgence? The time we spend with those we love is what’s truly important, and that’s a wonderful thesis for one of 2022’s most anticipated return shows to open on.

I’ve yet to decide on the second anime I’m going to be covering weekly for the winter 2022 season, but regardless of how it shows up, Princess Connect will be on this blog again. There are many more adventures with the Gourmet Guild ahead.

Grade: A+
The Takeaway: If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the Priconne IP. There’s literally no reason to not pick this up, if that’s the case. If you haven’t seen the first season, get on that! There’s plenty of time left to catch up and watch some of season 2 while it’s still airing.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, 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: Something is Wrong in AKEBI’S SAILOR UNIFORM

Lush, rolling green hills. They’re such a piece of staple iconography for a certain genre of summery anime that it’s a bit of a meme in some circles. I don’t think the people behind Akebi’s Sailor Uniform would much care about that. “Irony” is a foreign word to the language this series speaks. It’s all do-your-best’s, believe-in-yourself’s, sunshine and shimmering water. Everyone in Akebi is constantly sort of half-blushing, and always looks like they might break into a grin at any moment. I think in western otakudom this school of anime filmography is more associated with theatrical movies than it is TV anime, but it’s the space Akebi works in, and it is perhaps best understood as trying to achieve that aesthetic. I would not say it succeeds, but it makes an admirable go of it. But before we get into minutiae like production, there are two things I need to disclose up front that may seem random at first, but I assure you both will be relevant.

I went to a Catholic School, and I absolutely hate the sound of people clipping their nails.

As you might guess, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform is about a schoolgirl. A girl entering a private middle school, in fact. This is Komichi Akebi. Our protagonist and, really, in this first episode, the only truly important character. (Voiced by Manatsu Murakami. This seems to be her first time in a leading role.) For reasons we have not been told yet (and which I am sure will be divulged to us at some point in a future episode), Komichi puts a whole lot of value in the idea of going to a fancy private academy and getting to wear a fancy sailor uniform.

On a basic level, I find this kind of hard to relate to, but going by their lavishly drawn house, Komichi’s family seem to be pretty well off. Maybe this is the kind of thing rich kids get really invested in? I went to a Catholic middle school, and my memories of getting the uniforms I needed are largely tied to the unpleasantly stale air inside every uniform shop I’ve ever been in. Maybe things are different in Japan, I don’t know. Komichi’s mother actually makes her uniform for her, which seems like an utterly absurd level of burden to put on the parent, here, but again, maybe this is just what rich families do. I wouldn’t know. She literally cries tears of joy when she finally gets it, which is honestly more funny than anything.

Being “unrelatable” is not a huge problem for popular art. I have never been imprisoned in a magical tower, but I like Tower of God just fine. I’ve never been a multi-millionaire, but I still listen to Rick Ross. That’s not the issue. But Akebi’s Sailor Uniform leans really hard on the–to the series, apparently self-evident–idea that sailor uniforms are near-religious symbols of prestige, class, coolness, and self-improvement. It is totally foreign to my experience, and for this reason and a number of others (which I’ll get to), my strongest impression of Akebi is not qualitative, it’s merely that this show is really freakin’ weird. Deceptively so, even, given its simple premise.

For example, the visual approach I mentioned in the opening paragraph? It actively works against the show. Akebi looks nice in a general sense, especially the backgrounds. But it doesn’t nail the look it seems to be going for, which has the effect of making everything look just a bit “off.” The characters themselves are hit hardest here, with their constant blushing and mix of old-school and contemporary design tropes making them look like stoned aliens in some cuts. The whole thing just feels strange.

The series’ take on Osamu Dezaki’s “postcard memory” technique dives full-on into the uncanny valley.

Maybe this is the lingering memory of Cocoon Entwined influencing my perception, but I almost expected something sinister to happen at some point over the course of this episode. Nothing ever does, and I don’t think it ever will, but the fact that I even entertained the possibility speaks to the series’ bizarre feel. Not helping things is the leering camera, which seems to treat Komichi herself with an almost fetishistic level of attention. Despite the fact that the show is, on a surface level, not as “horny” as the other series I covered today, I felt slightly uncomfortable way more often when watching it.

Some of this, admittedly, might be the point. But that “might” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.

In the second half of the episode, Komichi learns that, somehow, she got the design for the uniform she was supposed to give her mother wrong. Sailor uniforms are what the girls at the academy wore when her mom went to school there, but nowadays they wear blazers. (Sidenote here; for my money the blazers look way nicer and also more comfortable, but that’s just me.) Improbably, the school’s principal lets her wear the old uniform anyway, even though it will make her stick out like a sore thumb. Komichi understandably worries about being bullied about this, because teenagers are assholes.*

The fact that this woman actually kinda looks like the (extremely mean) principal I had at school does make me wonder if some part of Akebi is meant to distress me specifically.

When she actually gets to school–very early, and way before most other students–she meets Erika Kizaki. (Played by Sora Amamiya, who has been in a bunch of things but most recently of note to readers of this blog, was Yachiyo in Magia Record.) Erika does not notice Komichi when she enters the room and continues obliviously going about her morning ritual. Which consists of clipping her toenails and then sniffing the clippers.

I really want to be clear that I am not taking anything out of context here.

What the fuck.

On this incredibly bizarre note, they strike up a friendship. It’s nice, I suppose? I can buy that they genuinely get along, at least, which is important. There’s little else to the episode, and Akebi ends by establishing itself as the rare anime where the main characters do not sit by the classroom window.

To some point, I think the characters’ general strangeness may be intentional. A “wow, look at all these weird girls finding friendship with each other. Isn’t that adorable?” sort of thing. And hey, I guess it is cute, in a way. But the show’s general feel–something I acknowledge is very much based on a lot of things that vary from person to person–make it feel almost unsettling.

To be quite honest, I have basically no idea what to make of Akebi. If any of this sounds interesting, maybe check it out. Or even if not, maybe check it out, maybe my entire perspective here is just wildly off-base. I don’t know. For me, the entire episode just gives me very strange vibes, and I do not think I will be watching more Akebi. I’m sure Komichi herself will be fine, but I have no real wish to follow her story.

Grade: Sixth
The Takeaway: ???

*If you are a teenager, and not an asshole, I apologize for the generalization, but I’m speaking from experience here.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, 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: Everything is Right on CUE!

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

I went into CUE! extremely skeptical.

The opening three or so minutes of the series are–quite literally–another show entirely. This is a cold open. Mid-genre pastiche, as an unnamed green haired heroine and her male companion flee a flying fortress aboard a speedboat. It’s a legitimately really cool throwback to a bygone era of science fantasy shoujo action anime that counted classics like The Vision of Escaflowne among its number. It’s an opening unlike anything the season has offered so far.

This isn’t what CUE! is actually about, though.

CUE!, you see, is an anime about anime. Its cast are voice actors, and that opening scene is a series our protagonist–Haruna Mutsuishi–is working on. In series like these, I am always immediately led to wonder about the actual women voicing these characters. Is it surreal to voice a protagonist whose ambitions are an exaggerated, cartoon take on your own? Maybe it’s oddly reassuring, knowing that people care about, at least, some version of your story? I can only speculate. Regardless, that is our actual starting line with CUE!

In the minutes immediately following that cold open, things don’t look terribly promising. No longer needing to be a convincing pastiche, the animation stiffens. More pertinently, as Haruna arrives to her new job at a voice acting agency (named AiRBLUE, which is vaguely obnoxious in a true to life way), we are introduced to a truly silly number of other girls. Fifteen actresses in all, with the agency’s actual staff bringing the character total up to 18. Each gets only a vanishingly small few seconds to introduce themselves. Most prove themselves to fit into various archetypes; there’s a chuuni who says she’s from Hell, a nervous girl, an overly brash girl who doesn’t quite seem to get what’s going on, etc. etc. You get the picture; we’ve been here before.

All of these are, frankly, pretty bad signs. Sometimes an anime can handle a cast this large even on a fairly tight time budget, but it’s rare. Most things are not The Idolmaster. Last season, the atrociously dull Pride of Orange couldn’t manage to properly characterize a comparatively modest six. What hope, then, does CUE! have, even at twice that show’s length?

Well, here’s the thing. Sometimes the only thing you actually need to make a series tick, at least for its first few episodes, is a single good trick up your sleeve. And CUE! has a great one.

Our characters’ time at AiRBLUE kicks off with an unexpected, on-the-spot script read. The script? Hamlet, specifically a conversation between Hamlet himself and Ophelia, rendered in the sub track back into period-accurate Elizabethan English. Having your characters read a Shakespeare play is an absurd idea. When last year’s Kageki Shoujo!! did it in its last few episodes, it was a flex, a demonstration that all these characters had become so known to the audience that they could each deliver convincingly distinct takes on a literary classic. (Romeo & Juliet, there.) CUE! deciding to do it in its first episode is an act of monumental hubris. But this is where the aforementioned trick up CUE!‘s sleeve comes into play; the series cheats a little bit.

When we get our first Hamlet/Ophelia pair–the spacey ex-child actress Mahoro Miyaji as Ophelia, and AiRBLUE’s talent coach as Hamlet–the reality of the recording room falls away. In its place, an expansive medieval castle.

CUE!’s opening fakeout was no fakeout at all. It is a recurring technique the show seems to plan to use going forward, literally transporting its characters into the stories they’re acting out as they do, cutting back and forth between those fantasy-worlds and the tense, actual line reads they’re doing in the real world, with other characters observing and commenting as transparent ghosts within the “play.” It is a blast to watch. It’s probably the quickest a series has ever won me over.

Mahoro and the talent coach’s take on Hamlet is fairly traditional. What really kicks the episode past “solid” and into “arguably brilliant” is what happens after. In an incredible bit of economic character-building, we see very brief excerpts from other Hamlet/Ophelia pairs. (One girl reads Hamlet like a snotty shonen protagonist, which is hilarious. Sadly, we don’t get visual aids for these shorter reads.)

And then there’s the pair that Haruna herself is involved in. alongside the ponytailed tomboy Maika Takatori. (The two seem to hit it off really well, to say the least.)

The easy thing to do here would be for Haruna and Maika to do essentially what Mahoro did, to transport herself mentally to a sprawling medieval castle and give a fairly traditional line read.

Haruna and Maika do not do that. Instead, we get this.

Another shoujo fantasy daydream. I’ll give you this, okay? Maybe I’m just easily impressed, but I love shit like this. In the moment that Haruna and Maika act out their scene, they are not themselves, they are an epaulette-adorned girl-prince and her heartbroken sorceress(?) princess. It’s gay as hell. It’s theatrical in a way that completely transcends its production. It’s amazing.

There isn’t actually much more to the episode after this scene, but does there need to be? This is a point made and taken; this is what CUE! is about. The act of performance itself transports us to whole other worlds, and truly inspiring performers can bring these worlds to life for their audiences. That is a hell of an opening statement for a gacha game adaption that, as far as I can tell, rather few people had any serious expectations for, to make. Almost impossibly, CUE! earns the right to make it, in this scene alone if nowhere else. Obviously, CUE! did not invent this particular trick, but it uses it damn well, and it makes for a knockout finish to its first episode.

Also: Shippers eat your heart out.

The episode ends with the promise that next week our girls are going to be auditioning for something called Bloom Ball, which looks an awful lot like a magical girl anime. I can’t wait.

Also: out of lack of anywhere else that mentioning this little tidbit fits, I will do so here. It’s interesting that the comparative inexperience of the characters is mirrored in at least some of the voice cast. As far as I can tell, this is the first major role Haruna’s VA– Yurina Uchiyama–has ever had.

In any case, keep an eye on this one.

Grade: A
The Takeaway: I am hesitant to call anything a truly essential watch this early in the season. What I will say is that CUE!’s first episode is a genuinely impressive piece of showmanship that I think nothing so far has really matched. I would recommend almost anyone reading this at least check said episode out.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, 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: A Short Stay IN THE LAND OF LEADALE

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

I’m not going to sit here and pretend I quite understand the “die-and-reincarnate” school of the isekai genre. I have liked a few of them in my time, but generally in spite of that central conceit, not because of it. In The Land of Leadale is fairly genre-typical. Somewhere in Japan a power outage at a hospital cuts the life support systems, and a patient passes away. She is reborn into the titular MMO as her elf avatar Cayna. It’s fairly standard stuff, although there are a handful of caveats here to separate us from the most basic spins on the genre.

For one, Cayna doesn’t simply get zooped into the game as she remembers it. 200 years have passed, and she can’t use her foreknowledge of the game to just cheat her way out of any bad situations, Otome Flag-style. (Not a knock, I quite like Otome Flag.) This also gives us a central mystery, which prevents Leadale from feeling like it’s aiming for a pure wish fulfillment vibe that it probably couldn’t pull off.

The visual work on this thing is, to be nice, a bit simple. But the series makes the intriguing decision to strive for a pseudo-retro look, especially in gag faces and chibi cut-asides. It’s a small thing, but it does help the anime stand out a bit, and turns the lo-fi production into a charm point instead of a detriment.

If you can’t practically hear the “ha ha ha ha!” radiating from this image, we are from different generations of anime fan, to say the least.

About that central mystery: because Cayna’s been MIA for so long, Leadale is both not as she left it and seemingly not in great shape in general. When she plonks down a stack of silver coins the innkeeper at the inn she’s staying at hurriedly tells her to not flash so much money. Later that night, she’s nearly robbed in her sleep, with only bit of magic that she presumably set up beforehand preventing such from coming to pass. We do gain some insight into what’s gone on in Leadale in the intervening 200 years, but it’s not much. This is all we get.

Cayna seems to adjust pretty quickly. Again, not rare for this genre, although the few cuts back to her pre-reincarnation life are bizarrely depressing for a show that’s otherwise fairly cozy and upbeat. There’s also a funny bit where she learns (from a magic tower guardian who talks like a delinquent schoolgirl) that because of something she did in the game some time ago, she has kids. Frankly, as someone who tends to play video games pretty fast and loose, the idea of things I do in them having long-term consequences is terrifying, but that’s just me.

If it seems like I’m struggling a bit to come up with things to say here, that’s because I kind of am? In addition to this not being my genre, In The Land of Leadale is a fairly slight series in just about every respect, at least so far. It has some charm, but not much else. On the other hand, I’m loathe to condemn something that is so outside of my usual wheelhouse to begin with, to say nothing of the fact that this is a series that’s clearly not trying to make a bombastic first impression. If any of this sounds appealing to you, maybe give Leadale a shot. Its first episode is, if nothing else, a breezy and pleasant watch. (Those cuts to the hospital aside. Again, this is a weird genre convention that I don’t totally understand.) You could certainly do a lot worse.

Grade: C
The Verdict: If you like simple, cozy slice-of-life style isekai maybe give this one a look. Otherwise, you can pretty safely pass on it.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, 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: POLICE IN A POD is Comedic Homicide

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

There are many reasons that people are generally distrustful of the police. A lot of those reasons are fairly complex and rooted in longstanding authoritative structures, some of which have pretty nasty roots. In the US, there has been a concerted movement to, as consumers, move away from media that depicts police officers in an unambiguously positive light. The neologism “copaganda” was coined for this exact purpose, to make it clear to others that yes, depicting cops as superhuman arbiters of justice (as is the case in numerous cop shows) is kind of a problem. “Copaganda” generally is applied as a label to tonally serious fare, but comedies, such as say Brooklyn 99, aren’t immune either.

While distrust of police is a broader issue, the circumstances that lead to this willful withdrawal from certain kinds of television are fairly specifically American. Japan’s law enforcement has its own issues–ones I’m largely wildly unqualified to speak on–but as an American viewer even the goofiest show that revolves around the police is a hard sell. (This is one of the reasons I’ve never even tried to watch You’re Under Arrest!) I try to judge every anime I cover as fairly as I can, but if I seem unduly harsh on Police in a Pod, MADHOUSE‘s latest, do keep in mind there are reasons for that. Taking art on its own terms is important, as a critic, but it is pretty much impossible to step outside of your own head.

All of which would matter a lot more if Police in a Pod required any nuance to discuss. Here’s a secret about popular art in general; you can get away with a lot if what you make is actually good. Easily impressed eggheads like me will heap praise on things for being difficult or messy because they engage with problematic concepts while still being compelling. We do it all the time. Frankly, we probably do it too much. But you absolutely have to nail the qualitative aspect. Failing all else, you have to at least be interesting.

Police in a Pod is not good. Or interesting. Or for that matter, much of anything.

This series’ first episode is so utterly fucking unfunny, so lacking in charm or really any other merit, that it practically writes an article about itself. Where to start with this wretched little thing? Let’s be nice and start with one of the tiny handful of things it almost gets right. Our main character, Mai Kawai, is a box cop. She joined the force because of the pay and because she failed the exams for every other civil service job she tried, she wants to support herself and her dad and police work was the only way to do it. She honestly seems to have a bit of a self-loathing issue about it, going by some stuff she says in this episode! She also complains a lot about how police work is hard and no one respects her, which, gosh, I can’t imagine why.

‘One of the very, very few things that could redeem this conceptual wreck of a series is if it ended with Mai quitting police work entirely, something she actually considers (but sadly doesn’t follow through on) in the episode’s opening minutes. It’s a real shame, she could perhaps enter a more respectable and fulfilling field. Like gravedigging. Or insurance fraud. That won’t happen for reasons I will shortly make apparent, but hey, it’s fun to dream.

So, our main character is baseline sympathetic, that’s one thing done…we’ll say mostly right. What about her partner, Seiko Fuji, the series’ other main character?

Sigh.

Folks, I’m going to break a rule of criticism and go on a tangent about my upbringing here, please bear with me.

My uncle is a police chief. He was a big figure in my early life, and I hate the guy. He’s a miserable man who fights with his wife, gets drunk on Mike’s Hard Lemonade, complains about both other cops and the “civilians” he’s ostensibly sworn to protect, and says racist bullshit about minorities when he thinks he’s in comfortable company. He is a fucking loathsome human being and every single day I am grateful for the fact that, since I’ve moved out of state, I will likely never see him again.

I feel like Seiko and my uncle would get along great.

Seiko’s main personality trait seems to be that she is helpful to peoples’ faces and then bitches about them when she thinks no one is listening. Because this is a “comedy series,” people–usually Mai–often are listening, and their mechanically predictable “wow, how could you say that?!” reactions to her petulant, entitled nonsense are supposed to be funny. They are not. Seiko–and honestly, Police in a Pod itself–seems to think that interactions between police officers and the public should consist either of cops bullying criminals both petty and serious into pants-pissing terror, or innocent citizens fearfully cowering in submission as they, say, accept a $150 ticket without complaint. Seiko is openly disdainful of the idea that she should be a positive presence in her community, or even just be nice to people. She’s a deeply unpleasant character. If this is supposed to be satirical it doesn’t come across, it just seems like the show happens to be following a total asshole because it thinks she’s funny.

I will admit that I have a hard time with characters like this in general, but when you put them in a position of authority and their abuse of that authority is the entire joke? That goes over a line from “artistically unpleasant” and crosses straight into “genuinely fucked up.” It boggles the mind that something this much of a non-entity artistically could muster up the gumption to actually be offensive, but Police in a Pod somehow manages it over the 20-odd minute runtime of its first episode.

None of this is to say that Police in a Pod actually seems to like Seiko. When jokes are made at her expense, they tend to look like this, and her total lack of reaction is notably weird.

But she’s never actually punished–even in a comedic way that would fit the show’s ostensible tone–for her arrogance or her bullying. That’s breaking a pretty basic comedic rule, a sort of “what goes up must come down” of character arrogance. In of itself, that’s not terribly surprising, because on top of everything else, Police in a Pod is a terribly staid production. Nothing has any real pop, there aren’t any interesting cuts or visual tricks. Even the soundtrack is boring. Were its premise not so gallingly tone-deaf, it would be hard to muster up much an opinion about this series at all.

Lest you think I’m being too hard on Police in a Pod, one of the vignettes here sees Mai–the more sympathetic of the two leads, mind you!–essentially explain and endorse a slight twist on Broken Windows theory to a bunch of school children. (Her explanation as to why it’s bad to ride doubles on a bike is that it will show criminals that they’re free to break rules in the area. This is provably stupid; the reason to not ride doubles on a bike is because it’s fucking dangerous. Just saying that never occurs to her, for some reason.)

I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. If anything worse than this manages to come out this season, we are in for a truly dire time indeed. Don’t watch this show. It’s miserable.

Grade: F
The Takeaway: Irredeemably unfunny and lacking in any other merit, this series is to be avoided at all costs.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, 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: What is THE MISSING 8?

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

A comet streaks the sky above a dying planet. That is the central image that closes out the first episode of The Missing 8, one of two currently released. It’s a striking image, and a fitting symbol for one of the most mysterious anime premieres in recent memory.

The natural question is very simple. What is this?

The Missing 8 premiered on the Youtube channel FUZI with very little fanfare on December 28th, dropping its first episode several days after Christmas in the pre-New Year winter dead zone. I can find just a single announcement–a teaser trailer from earlier in December–indicating that anyone outside of the animators and voice actors involved in the production had any idea this thing was going to come out.* Allegedly, it’s a collaboration between (or lead by?) animator Naoki Yoshibe and some amount of Wit Studio personnel, at least if Anime News Network is to be believed. Beyond that, there is basically no information on the English internet about this thing. We’re flying blind.

In the absence of the usual “you may know Director So-and-so from The Such-and-such Project” spiel, I am thus left with the task of describing what the show actually consists of. On a basic plot and setting level, that’s confounded somewhat by the fact that the subtitles on this thing are a bit stiff. But the gist is this; somewhere, either our own world in the far future or on another planet, a group of people with the power to transform others of their kind into any object they can conceive of defend their city against antagonists of some sort known as the Dragonewt.

Two of these people; Poppy and Punk (the former of whom loves to refer to herself in the third person) have a brief falling out in the first episode, after a scuffle with the Dragonewt goes wrong. Further spurned on by Poppy claiming to experience dreams. Something she’s read about before in the mysterious tome known as The Lux Code, but which Punk has (apparently) never had. They make up by episode’s end after Punk pays a visit to his mother(?), a blindfolded woman who is apparently the only real human among the group.

If this all seems a bit esoteric in the retelling, it’s doubly so firsthand. What I’ve danced around mentioning until now is that calling The Missing 8 a “seasonal anime” is admittedly rather misleading. I’m filing it into the coming Winter 2022 season, mostly for my own recordkeeping purposes. But this is a short-form project being uploaded to Youtube. Arguably calling it an “anime” at all is misleading, given that only select cuts of it are actually animated in any major way, with the rest being more akin to the (somewhat obscure over here in the good ol’ Anglosphere) medium of the picture drama, a cousin to TV anime proper and a regular fixture on Blu-Ray extras and the like. I am nonetheless going to continue calling it a seasonal anime, for the aforementioned recordkeeping purposes and because when it is animated it looks quite nice, respectively. Despite the general opacity, there’s a lot to love here; cool character designs and a surprisingly hard soundtrack chief among them.

I will not spoil the second episode, as is my general policy with these writeups. But what I will say is that the comet the first episode closes on turns out to have some intriguing implications for the little world that Pop and Punk inhabit, and have grown, it seems, so used to. This is a fascinating little series, and even if it’s not technically in the same format as much of what I cover here, it certainly deserves to be taken on its own terms. My hope is that this little article will help a few more people do that.

I’ll see you all come the new year for the start of the “proper” season. Until then, consider checking this out.

Grade: B+
The Takeaway: The Missing 8’s two episodes are so brief that you have very little reason to at least watch the first of them, unless you just hate the format or cool character designs or something.

*Despite my mild bafflement, this is a format shows that receive an official translation sometimes air in. Just this past season Heike Monogatari aired online before eventually hitting TV. Longer ago, obscure Studio TRIGGER projects Ninja Slayer From Animation and Turning Girls premiered online as well, and the latter even also dropped on a random Youtube channel like The Missing 8 did. I can safely say that The Missing 8 is better than Turning Girls, though. Also: in this specific case, Missing 8‘s characters appear to originate from a series of music videos that Fuzi has done. Not that being based on music video characters is unique among anime properties.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in Other Posts, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal(???) First Impressions: HIGH GUARDIAN SPICE is Finally Here, But is it Too Late?

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

Back in 2018, when “Crunchyroll Originals” had not yet become a deeply toxic pair of words, the streaming service announced its first slate of original programming. On that slate was High Guardian Spice. This article is only slightly even about High Guardian Spice, because to talk about HGS is to talk about its bizarre circumstances of creation and how Crunchyroll has handled it, a horrible boondoggle that I would wish on nobody. As for the show itself, full disclosure, I am basing all that I am about to say off of High Guardian Spice‘s first episode, to give it parity with, you know, every other show I’ve done a writeup on this season. I feel it’s only fair.1

So about that initial 2018 announcement. We didn’t know much about HGS; the show had a soft, rounded art style, early press materials boasted of it being written by “100% female writers”, and….honestly that was sort of it. Cultural currents conspired against the series; the Gamergate-derived reactionary movement within anime fandom descended on it like vultures to fresh carrion. It was decried as an assault by whatever word-scramble the alt-righters had managed to smash together that particular week. An assault not on anime alone but on you too, specifically, dear otaku, who were being replaced by legions of evil feminist SJWs with dyed hair. It was all very awful, hateful, melodramatic, and pointless.

Even at the time, this all seemed astonishingly ridiculous to anyone with two braincells to rub together. Crunchyroll had no qualms about airing things that demonstrably aren’t anime before, and it would have no qualms after. The idea that this show specifically was somehow going to be the straw that broke the camel’s back is absurd, even as someone who really does think that the ongoing pan-corporate attempt to rebrand any non-comedy cartoon not aimed at children as “anime” is somewhere between stupid and insidious. But, companies listen to internet outrage, no matter how contrived it is and no matter how much they might like to pretend they don’t. Spice was, thus, shelved for a time. Despite being finished sometime in 2019, it’s only “premiered”–read: was unceremoniously kerplunked down in a single, twelve-episode data dump–today. Its promotion amounting to a banner across the site’s top that will, I imagine, mostly serve to rekindle that tedious, performative, reactionary flareup, until it is eventually replaced by a banner advertising a new episode of a mediocre isekai.

And all that for this.

Even with just 20 minutes of footage to judge on, this is not a series that merits all that guff. High Guardian Spice is a very simple show, and its only real problem is not even a problem with the show itself; it’s where it is. It’s an issue so astoundingly unfair to the series itself that I feel bad bringing it up. But, that’s the fact of the matter. The show is a Crunchyroll exclusive, sitefellows with Attack on Titan and Demon Slayer and The Great Jahy Will Not Be Defeated. It is probably, as a result, totally doomed. I can imagine a smidgen of demographic crossover with the same section of Crunchyroll’s audience that leads to things like ancient newspaper comic strip Rex Morgan, M.D. namechecking Kira Kira Precure A La Mode. Beyond that? I really don’t see it.

It’s a shame, too, because the show is pretty good! As an anime critic (in as much as any person is one), I consider myself used to the tropes, structures, and rhythms of Japanese animation moreso than other sorts. And yeah, as everyone correctly predicted from day one, High Guardian Spice is a very American show, which makes it a bit of an odd watch if you’re expecting something built like an anime, but that’s not a bad thing in of itself.

Our premise here is very simple; village girls (and I am pretty sure, girlfriends) Rosemary and Sage are off to join a magical school, where they will be trained as Guardians. What’s a Guardian? Presumably they protect the world from evil of various sorts. It’s not gone into too deeply in the first episode. We mostly learn that Rosemary (she’s the rowdy pink one) wants to be a warrior, Sage (she’s the quiet blue one) wants to be a healer, and that Rosemary’s also-pink mom was also a Guardian. (She seems to be somehow missing rather than outright dead, lest anyone accuse HGS of riffing on Steven Universe too directly.) Rose and Sage do not actually attend the magical school–High Guardian Academy–in this first episode. Instead, they move to the city of Lyngarth and in with Sage’s cousins (also a very obvious lesbian couple), and get the lay of the land.

This gives the first episode a rather slice of life-y feel. The memorable stuff here is the character details; bits like Rosemary excitedly postulating that a striped, ferret-like creature “might have rabies”, a pair of interactions with an aloof elf, even simple things like her habit of loudly “AHH!”-ing when startled, these are all good, solid character-building. It’s cute, and it’s charming. Rosemary and Sage’s relationship deserves special mention here, as it’s clear even this early on that they care for each other a lot. This, perhaps, is the main thing from that silly “100% women” quote that actually shines through, here. They do have a genuinely very sweet relationship and I’d be interested to see how it develops over the course of the show.

As for the more serious, plot-heavy stuff? It’s there, but if it ever does develop into something more compelling, it must take some time. It’s very barebones this early on, mostly consisting of “Rosemary’s mom is missing” and something very vague about “old magic” and “new magic” being two things that don’t necessarily mix. To be fair; leading with something lighter and only building up to the actual meat of things later on is pretty standard for this kind of thing, so it’s hard to hold this against the series.

And honestly? That’s High Guardian Spice‘s premiere in a nutshell. It’s solid, if perhaps not entirely my thing. (I think being involved in the Steven Universe fandom during the show’s height of popularity may, sadly, have killed my interest in this genre, whatever you’d call it, for good.) I think that given a better home HGS could find the audience it truly deserves. It’s hard to argue it’s not a victim of Crunchyroll’s ramshackle, neglectful IP handling. I committed myself to checking out the series because I wanted to see what the actual cartoon was like. What was hidden behind all those layers of corporate brandspeak and performative reactionary rage. What I’ve found? A perfectly good little cartoon that didn’t get a fair shot. I can only hope that I’m wrong and actually does attract an audience that truly appreciates it, despite all odds. It deserves better than this, we all do.

Grade: B
The Takeaway: If you’re a fan of latter-day Cartoon Network and Disney’s TV fare, or of Little Witch Academia, you should give this a look.

1: I will note that the show opens with a hilariously incongruous warning that the program contains “strong language, violence, and sexual content.” I am pretty sure this is an error of some sort, although if the show does have some kind of weird mid-season shift into being edgy as hell, that would be….interesting, to say the least.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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