Category: Seasonal Impression Roundups

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: The Beautiful Bloom of KOMI CAN’T COMMUNICATE

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 have a dream, Komi?”
“My dream is to make 100 friends….please don’t laugh.”
“Then I’ll be your first friend, and help you make the rest.”

I didn’t actually intend to write more of these for this season, but sometimes things have a way of surprising you.

Komi Can’t Communicate was not something I intended to pick up. I didn’t even really intend to watch the premiere. To tell you the gods’ honest truth, I don’t really like the original manga all that much. I know! It’s widely-liked, by enough people that it’s the sort of thing where I’ve just accepted that I’m firmly in the minority. I followed it for a few months when it was relatively new, and it just never inspired any strong feelings in me. I had some things I kinda liked about it, some things I kinda didn’t like, but on the whole it didn’t move me. I didn’t get the hype. But I started hearing things about the anime; positive things. Things that were so positive that I felt like I just wouldn’t be doing my job if I felt like I didn’t at least look into it. And good lord, what a difference a change of medium can make.

On paper, Komi Can’t Communicate shouldn’t really work as an anime. This is a series whose primary character dynamic hinges almost entirely on talking. No, not talking; non-verbal communication. It’s a bit of a challenge to make that visually interesting. And indeed, while the manga itself certainly has nice art, I wouldn’t say it’s terribly visually dynamic. That can be a real problem in motion! So how did Komi‘s team overcome it? Well, in a way, the answer is very simple.

They turned in one of the best productions of the entire year.

Komi Can’t Communicate is gorgeous. (Enough so in motion that it’s actually rather hard to capture its appeal in still screenshots.) Its only real competition this season is takt op.Destiny, from which it is stylistically whole universes away. But while takt op is bone-cracking action and melodramatic camp, Komi Can’t Communicate zeroes in on the warmth of youth, even when it’s being funny. It’s a feeling I associate more with films like Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop than I do TV anime. That’s not to say that Komi is particularly serious–it’s a fairly straightforward and lighthearted show–but it’s straightforward and lighthearted while looking utterly beautiful. This is the sort of thing that even those wholly uninterested in its plot can watch for visuals alone. There’re loads of clever little tricks in here; cut-ins, overlaid text, subtle art style shifts, etc. Some of these are inherited from the manga, but even those simply look way better here. This is a truly rare elevation of the source material, and I think even those who love the manga will agree with that.

This shot is from the OP, which is an instantly-iconic, sun-drenched piece of loveliness.

Its actual plot is so basic that it barely warrants summarizing. What do you want me to say? Boy meets girl! This is simple stuff. But Shouko Komi herself (our female lead) is an interesting character. As the title implies, she has what is colloquially known in Japan as a “communication disorder”. This to say: she cannot talk to people. Her case seems to be particularly bad. Over the course of the first episode, actress Aoi Koga (who recently made a name for herself as the title character in Kaguya-sama: Love is War!), doesn’t say a single actual word. Her vocal consists of flustered stuttering. That’s it.

But as the narration helpfully (and truthfully!) points out, people who have these kinds of difficulties do not crave human contact any less than anyone else. Komi still badly wants friends, but her anxiety is such an issue that she can’t bring herself to even say things as simple as morning greetings to anybody. Worse; all this, combined with her general appearance, has convinced most that she is an archetypal “cool beauty”, rather than a kind, gentle girl who deeply, simply wants to have friends and live a normal life.

That’s where our other lead comes in. Hitohito Tadano is an astoundingly average fellow, aside from his odd (but quite cute) habit of wearing a flower in his hair. The only “skill” of any kind that Tadano brings to the table is that it’s he who first recognizes Komi’s true nature. So, they get to talking. Or rather, to writing, as he comes up with the idea that using the classroom chalkboard while they happen to be alone between classes might be less anxiety-inducing than actually speaking aloud. By coincidence or by competence, he hits on the right idea, and the episode’s entire middle third is the two getting to know each other through a sprawling correspondence of chalk. This was cute in the manga. Here, it’s enrapturing, it pulls you in. For a few minutes, these two teenagers getting to know each other seems like the most important thing in the world.

Eventually, they come around to the exchange quoted at the top of this article. Things take a turn for the more comedic not long afterward, as the narration reminds us that the high school in which Komi Can’t Communicate is set is full of wild, wacky characters. (In the manga, I remember this kind of being a turn-off for me. I suppose we’ll see how it’s handled here.) So perhaps Tadano’s got more than he bargained for, but one gets the sense that he’d be okay with it if he knew. And that’s really the key thing; what makes a romance anime work is that we the audience have to believe that these two characters are interested in each other on a fairly deep level. Komi Can’t Communicate‘s first episode proves it with a startlingly clear, rosy, warm portrait of two young people who simply happened to be there for each other at the right time. For whom that simple serendipity will likely develop into much more. What else could you ask for? Komi and Tadano both get a little less lonely. The world gets a little brighter.

Grade: A+
The Takeaway: Komi Can’t Communicate stands as the season’s second truly essential anime. If you’re interested in romance anime as a genre or seasonal anime as a format, you should check this 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: Let’s Get Ready to RUMBLE GARANNDOLL

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 majority of this year’s real marquee anime have been pretty serious affairs. Analyses of the human psyche, explorations of shared generational trauma, things of that nature. Even the great final conclusion of the Neon Genesis Evangelion saga, Thrice Upon A Time, among the medium’s defining achievements this year, fits in here. And that’s all well and good! There is an important, well-earned place for that sort of thing in popular art. But if you’ve felt like something was missing–something simpler, something closer to the root of why people tend to like cartoons in the first place–Rumble Garanndoll may just be what you’re looking for.

This one fits in a curious tradition of self-aware otaku escapism shows. The first episode points toward commonalities with series such as Anime Gataris and the Akiba’s Trip anime or even The Rolling Girls. (Hell, Kill la Kill arguably fits in here.) Effectively, anime that serve as defenses of themselves and by extension the entire medium. You need to be careful with this kind of thing, because it’s easy for it to drift off into self-absorption. No one truly thinks that anime is the most important thing in the world, but the magic of good anime is that it can make us feel like it is, if only for half an hour or so at a time. This monumental task; essentially to both be entertaining and justify its own existence at the same time, is what stands before Rumble Garanndoll. Lesser anime have crumbled in the face of this challenge. But Rumble Garanndoll is willing to try anyway, as evidenced by the existence of its frankly hilarious “OTAKU ISN’T DEAD” tagline.

It’s too early to say definitively if Rumble Garanndoll pulls the whole thing off, but we’re off to a good start. Our lead is Hosomichi Kudo, ex-otaku and–this isn’t a joke–employee of a host bar. He takes his glasses off in order to avoid having to look his clients in the eye while he talks to them and has the opening theme of an in-universe anime (the fictional Sea Emperor Zaburn) as his ringtone. While he is clearly meant to be, to some point, You, Dear Otaku, he has more personality than the blander end of the Protagonist-kun spectrum. There’s a big gulf between that and being an actually great main character, but it’s progress. He may get there.

Chug!

As for our setting? Just the usual. A Japan that’s been divided in two by a fascist, art-hating oppressive state lead by a guy who can’t be older than 20 or so. He inherited the position, and the state is called the “True Country”. Just so you don’t have any illusions about who the bad guys are here.

Sure you are, bud.

The other half of that “two” is the Fantasy Country, which, although it’s not explicitly spelled out here, seems like a dystopic extension of modern Akihabara. (We do learn that specifically one thing is from Akiba, which we’ll get to.) The first episode opens with the True Country invading the Fantasy Country, via squat, diminutive mecha that might remind viewers of 2019’s similarly-titled Granbelm.

A lot happens during the invasion, but the main thing is that a lone rogue mecha dares to stand up to the invaders. Its name is Shark One. It’s a blue, adorable thing, and it’s kept active by an AI-droid-thing-it’s-not-totally-clear yet called a Battery Girl. The one who controls Shark One is named Rin, and she is just great, an instantly-likable little firecracker of a character who spends much of the episode as a moeblob and is willing to open up to Hosomichi because they both like Zaburn. (Being voiced by Ai Farouz helps a lot to sell the whole thing.)

Hosomichi, of course, soon finds himself in Shark One’s cockpit. There’s a lot of great back and forth here between him, Rin, and his former manager, who is tagging along for the ride. Occasionally punctuated via phone call or megaphone by the hilariously-named Commander Balzac, who seems to serve as the leader of the resistence that Rin and Shark One represent. That he kinda looks like an aging Kamina is probably not a coincidence.

This entire sequence, frankly, is charming as all hell. It also, impressively, manages to stay on the right side of self-aware, with Hosomichi and Rin’s mild embarrassment at having to scream “SHARK CAVALIER!” at the top of their lungs being the only real example. (Even that is more charming than anything.)

Crucially, it’s cut with this little bit of dialogue. The message is clear, and twofold. There is firstly the text itself, and then the subtler implication that Rumble Garandoll is not content with gesturing toward great anime. It wants to be a great anime. You don’t plant a thematic flag front and center in your first episode unless you’re very self-confident.

The aftermath of all this, of course, sees Hosomichi recruited into this (as of now, still nameless to us) resistance. The journey has just begun, for him and for us alike. We also meet Rin in her non-chibi physical form for the first time, rocking a Mega Man-inspired blue suit. She and Hosomichi have a brief squabble. Is a first episode ending on that note cliché or timeless? That, really is the question.

Art, at its absolute best, can inspire and connect us. Most anime don’t commit, full-tilt, to that aspiration. And most anime that do commit don’t succeed. (Pour one out for 2018 boondoggle Darling in the FranXX.) Will Rumble Garandoll get there? It’s really quite hard to say. But it’s possible, and for some, possibility alone will be enough. Certainly it is for me.

Grade: A-
The Takeaway: For a certain kind of person–and you know who you are–this is a must-see. Most others should at least give the first episode a watch unless this kind of thing just strongly isn’t your cup of tea.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: PLATINUM END Makes Moral Bankruptcy Fun!

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

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

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

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

For example; Nasse is kind of incredibly evil.

Nonbinary people are presumably safe from its effects.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

What a world!

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

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Going Way, Way Down in SAKUGAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

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

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so. GIFs in this article appear courtesy of Sakugabooru.

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

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

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

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

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

In the sky, with diamonds.

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

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

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

Sugar sugar, oh honey honey.

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

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

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

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

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

You say New York, New York is dangerous.

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

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

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

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

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

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

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

Haha. Oh boy.

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

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

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

Me when I run out of Arizona Tea.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

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

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

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

Well? Have you?

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

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

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

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

“Yo.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

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

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

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

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

Surely there are no shady, immoral reasons for this.

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

This is Lev. He’s pleasant enough.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: SELECTION PROJECT

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Y’know, like, nya?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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