Category: Seasonal Impression Roundups

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: From The Closet With Love – Socially Anxious and Slinging a Six-String in BOCCHI THE ROCK!

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 all heard this story before, although maybe not in a long time. Introverted teenager falls in love with popular music genre at a young age, grabs an instrument and devotes their life to becoming the next Joe Strummer (or whoever). The history of rock n’ roll in Japan is long and winding, and frankly something I’m only passingly familiar with, but the general notion remains the same across national boundaries and across time. You hear the ring of the guitar chord and the roar of the crowds, and you want that; who wouldn’t?

Lots of people have wanted that, and BOCCHI THE ROCK! is not remotely the first anime to tackle that idea, even if the full-band anime as a format has been mostly dead for years at this point. (I once saw someone jokingly describe the genre as “idol anime where you can hear the bass.” They were being silly, but I think that the comparison exists at all speaks to how rare these things have become.) But Bocchi the Rock is not BECK for the same reason that Bump of Chicken aren’t The Clash. Time and space change both the ends and the means; Bocchi the Rock has a lot more in common with Hitori Bocchi, another anime, from a few years back, that uses the same pun on the Japanese phrase for “all alone”, than it does most older music anime. Except, of course, for K-On!, whose modern classic status is as easily argued for by how easily its lasting influence has bridged the gap between these once very different formats than anything about the series itself. (Which is good, because K-On! remains probably the most high-profile anime from the new ’10s that I haven’t seen.)

The chief conceit of Bocchi the Rock is that our title character—real name Hitori Goto (Yoshino Aoyama), nickname “Bocchi”—wants to melt faces with the sheer sun-like power of her guitar wizardry. Preferably, to audiences of thousands. But she’s deeply introverted, which makes that hard. I would go farther and say she is perhaps the character I’ve seen in an anime who most obviously has some sort of severe social anxiety, of every anime I’ve seen full stop. And yes, I am including the title character of the aforementioned Hitori Bocchi.

Bocchi being not just introverted but socially anxious is an important point to me. It will not surprise you to learn that I, nearly 30 and making a half-living by running a blog about cartoons, also have pretty severe social anxiety. In general, I talk to my roommates and very few other people on a day-to-day basis. I have not simply “gone out with friends” in a casual way to have fun since high school or so. I’m not remotely unique in this case, and I have made some steps to try to remedy this in the past year or two, but I bring it up because this makes me very sensitive to how socially anxious characters are portrayed in media. Maybe overly so.

All this to say; I was pleasantly surprised by how well Hitori’s anxiety is handled. It very much is a source of comedy, but that doesn’t inherently make it unsympathetic or reductive of that trait. It’s a frequent source of jokes among people who are socially anxious that our mental illness seems to think the world operates in some truly strange ways, and there is an element of that in Hitori’s particular headsnakes. The plot proper kicks off when she’s recruited to play guitar for a small band, initially as a pickup member but, by the end of the episode, apparently permanently. This is great for her, since her extreme shyness cuts badly against her desire to be a guitar hero.

Hitori, proud owner of a 30K subs Youtube channel (also called “guitarhero.” Really.) where she does guitar covers, thinks she’s up for the challenge. She isn’t; playing by yourself isn’t the same as playing in a group, and Hitori gets flatly told that she sucks.

Crumpling in the face of something she thought she could do but finds out she can’t—I’ve been there—she almost literally shrinks into a chibi, and the series slams us in the face with what is certainly the funniest fake credits gag I’ve seen in years.

I can’t believe Hitori Goto is fucking dead.

A side note; some praise should be given to Aoyama’s voice acting here; she dips into a growly, lower register for Hitori’s more depressed (or outrageous) inner thoughts, and easily flips to a flat, emotive-by-being-unemotive diction for Hitori’s actual speech. It’s an interesting contrast and gives the character a lot of personality.

As for Hitori sucking, things get better. The also fairly inexpressive Ryo (Saku Mizuno) gets the idea to have Hitori perform while inside a cardboard box. This is, purposefully, very stupid, and it doesn’t really help in any meaningful way. But it does get Hitori—newly christened “Bocchi” by Ryo, and ecstatic to get her first-ever nickname—through the group’s first concert. Have I mentioned yet that the band is basically called “The Zip Ties”? A terrible name in any language, as commented upon by their third member, Nijika (Sayumi Suzushiro). I kind of love it. In any case, through a combination of the box idea and the other two girls offhandedly mentioning how much they like that mysterious guitarhero youtube channel (Hitori is too giddy to actually mention that she runs it. That’s a reveal for the future, presumably), they’re able to get out there, and they do in fact play their first show, in a scuffed little underground club called Starry.

The episode ends on an interesting, rather nonstandard note for this sort of thing. We don’t get to see the band’s performance at all, depriving us of the usual “surprisingly good first performance of the show” sequence. The whole cardboard box tactic hasn’t really accomplished much, and it remains very much to be seen how, exactly, Hitori will actually overcome her problems. But things are on an upward trajectory, and that’s mostly what counts.

I do fear I’ve made the show sound rather dramatic. It really isn’t; it’s a fairly standard slice of life comedy with a mildly melancholic outer edge, but I would be truly shocked if this twelve-episode run does not end with the band—who will hopefully have a better name by then—performing in front of some crowd somewhere. Hitori’s anxiety is the core of her character, but there is ample room for her to grow beyond it, and I really would love to see that. In any case, she exits the episode in the most me_irl way possible.

Someone tell her about spoons theory, please.

I should also at least passingly mention the series’ visual element. The show’s direction comes to us from CloverWorks‘ Keiichirou Saitou. This isn’t literally his first directorial project (he’s previously done a one-episode OVA), but it’s his first full series, so I’m interested to see if some of the more unusual touches here, particularly the more offbeat camera angles, will be ironed out or reinforced as the show gets further along. As far as the visuals in hobby comedies go this season, it’s still firmly in second place behind Do It Yourself!!, but that’s not a bad spot to be in.

As for Hitori, there is something to be said for the fact that it doesn’t seem to occur to her that by having made friends—or hell, at least friendly acquaintances—she’s already taken a huge first step. My hope is that Bocchi the Rock continues along this same path; I don’t mind laughing at Hitori—it’s not unlike laughing at myself, really—but I do also want to see her grow as a person. Part of the magic of any series based around a performing art is seeing the characters grow into these dreams that they have. By the end of this episode, I wanted to see Bocchi performing on stage, too. So, keep raising your skinny fists, girl in a box; the stage is yours to take.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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 in the World is AKIBA MAID WAR?

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.

“maid is a state of mind and it’s about being a woman and shooting people.”

-memetic tumblr post by user lezzyharpy

Friends, rejoice. It’s finally happened, after who knows how many decades, the pop culture icon of the anime maid has finally completed her transformation, from her origins as a specific kind of live-in cleaning staff to a roving band of hyper-violent killers in funny outfits. The metamorphosis is complete; the postmodern otaku eschaton is upon us.

Akiba Maid War, a show that promises a whole hell of a lot by having that title, makes me regret I already pulled out the “Birdie Wing and Estab-Life” comparison earlier this week with Shinobi no Ittoki. Akiba Maid War isn’t the same kind of ridiculous as those two anime, but it’s definitely part of a minor ongoing trend of anime whose main defining feature is just being sublimely inscrutable. Like Ittoki, though, it’s also a self-conscious throwback. Once upon a time, this sort of deadpan surreal comedy where extreme violence is half the joke was pretty common, but demonstrative examples like Excel Saga, Puni Puni Poemi, or Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan are no longer widely recognized, at least not in the Anglosphere. This just isn’t a genre that has many modern descendants, with perhaps the only other recent example I can think of being Dropkick on My Devil.

But enough of comparisons to other anime. Even if you’d never seen a single other, you’d immediately clock Maid War as something supremely strange just by its opening minutes, where a rain-drenched Akihabara c. 1985 erupts in a, to us, currently unexplained shooting. A cafe maid is shot dead in the downpour, and her companion silently swears vengeance upon her assassins. Cut to opening credits.

When we return, it’s nearly 15 years later. 1999, the final year of the 20th century. Our protagonist is the chipper Nagomi Wahira (Reina Kondou), who is looking forward to her new job at a pig-themed(…??) maid cafe. A job that even provides free room and board.

Her enthusiasm remains through her extremely rough first shift, in which Nagomi firmly slots herself into the classic dojikko archetype, but quickly withers when a guy shows up trying to demand what sure sounds an awful lot like protection money from Nagomi’s boss (Ayahi Takagaki. The character herself has no name, she’s just “Tenchou.”).

From here, things rapidly escalate. Nagomi is sent on a nondescript “errand” that consists of handing a letter to the manager of a rival maid cafe. Ranko (Rina Satou), another one of the maids, who is a 35 year old woman and, I’m pretty sure, the same woman from the opening scene, insists on accompanying her. We then find out that Maid War is, essentially, what would happen if someone watched Black Lagoon and got angry that Roberta wasn’t every character.

The letter contains a bunch of yakuza-esque insults, including calling the other cafe’s girls (who wear rabbit ears) “cockroaches with antennae.” This goes over aabout as well as you’d expect, and Ranko ends up taking over as the main force for the episode’s final few minutes, where it turns out she can do some serious gun-fu shit.

But honestly even without the bloodshed, the show’s entire vibe is “off” in a way that’s clearly deliberate but also surprisingly subtle. The color palette and lighting are the biggest tells; far more than the popping pinks and blues that populate the whole “otaku action anime” micro-genre like Akiba’s Trip and Rumble Garanndoll, Maid War‘s visuals are dingy, washed-out, and deliberately rather grimy-looking. Even the scenes that actually take place outside, under the neon lights of Akihabara itself, having a slightly sickly look to them. Fitting for Maid War‘s grotesque take on the whole “moe moe kyun” thing; the central setpiece is Ranko mowing down hordes of angry battle maids, soundtracked to her coworker Yumechi (Minami Tanaka) singing a cutesy song back at the cafe.

We end on Nagomi, traumatized from her exposure to frankly unthinkable amounts of death in a single day, trying to brainstorm a way out, only to discover that Ranko is in fact her roommate, and the very notion of escape is, consequently, totally impossible.

Obviously, all this is a joke, but it is a little hard to know if Maid War will be able to keep up the silliness. A lot of the most memorable shows in this genre are on the short side, and that’s because it’s difficult to keep topping yourself in terms of absurdity. Then again, this is a series where a gratuitous Kurosawa movie-style blood gusher can turn off and on again like a leaky faucet if it needs to for the sake of a gag. Maybe Maid War will be just fine.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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: Make Your Own Fun with DO IT YOURSELF!

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.

Yua Serufu (Konomi Inagaki, in her first lead role) has a problem, and no, it’s not that the official translation of her show ignores the truly stunning pun baked into her name. It’s that she and her very best friend, the uptight but diligent tsundere Miku “Purin” Suride (Kana Ichinose), have ended up going to different high schools. Serufu is a disheveled space case of a girl, so that fact in of itself doesn’t bother her. But the fact that she can’t hang out with her bestie anymore definitely does. How does she plan to solve this? By building a bench. Obviously.

Let’s back up a moment; Do It Yourself! is the latest from Pine Jam, a fairly low-key studio that usually only puts out one or two projects a year. But they’re consistently visually great projects; most recently the trashy but excellently directed action seinen Gleipnir, and then, last year, the stage girl drama Kageki Shoujo!! Those last two are also by this series’ director, Kazuhiro Yoneda, and it’s his first original project with the studio. (And Pine Jam’s first original period since 2017’s Just Because!)

The point is this; the first thing one will notice about Do It Yourself! is that it just looks gorgeous. The art styles are dissimilar, but the free-flowing animation and school life-but-slightly askew setting remind me just a bit of Windy Tales. And the series makes heavy use of a soft but very warm and inviting color palette. I dislike describing things as “cozy” because the term often gets used to paper over the flaws of anime where not much is going on. (Such as, say, DIY’s contemporary Management of a Novice Alchemist.) But it definitely applies here in a real and positive way. There are, crucially, also a few places where it does feel a bit colder. Mostly, these are the areas that lean into its very near-future setting. Purin, for example, has an eye-scanner on her front door, the swarms of drones that ambiently fly overhead certainly offer a very literal overcast to the otherwise warm setting, and Purin’s high school itself—an upscale vocational/technical school where, Purin brags, that she’s learning how to 3D print body parts for surgery—quite literally overshadows Serufu’s. It’s larger and physically surrounds it, being constructed in a U-shape around the smaller building. Regardless, all of this makes the series’ world feel truly lived-in in a way that’s rare enough to be worth pointing out.

These tinges of darker and more mature concerns—the implied class conflict, the proliferation of intrusive technology—are not at the forefront of DIY’s modus operandi, though, and it’s hard to say whether or not the show will ever address them more directly. Serufu is a traditionally spacey (read, neurodivergent) lead for this sort of thing, and if she harbors any resentment toward the obviously-wealthier Purin, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she largely plays the part of the goofball school life lead. It’s an old character archetype, but done very well here, and Serufu has an unconventional but very much still adorable character design that really makes her stand out; covered as she is in bumps and bruises plastered over with Band-Aids. Not to mention smaller details, like the fact that her color palette leaves the inside of her mouth an un-shaded white when she speaks; minute touches, to be certain, but things that a lesser slice of life show would ignore.

As for the actual plot? There isn’t too much of one, yet. A kindly upperclassman (Rei Yasaku, VA Ayane Sakura) helps Serufu out after the younger girl’s bike chain slips and she smashes into a streetlight. Serufu, on the advice of shy and nerdy secondary character Takumi Hikage (Azumi Waki) goes to find her, to offer her a proper thank-you, and instead stumbles on a small wooden shack behind her school, where Yasaku whittles her after-school hours away as the only member of the DIY Club. As we meet her here, she’s making a bookshelf, which Serufu tries to help out with before promptly pulling the trigger too hard on a power drill and careening into a pile of planks.

(I feel the need to throw in somewhere here the fact that Yasaku is introduced by literally Heelys-ing to the site of Serufu’s bike crash, fixing her bike with barely a full sentence swapped between the two of them, and then Heelys-ing away without a further word. That’s the kind of A+ character introduction you don’t get every day.)

What happens next will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen even a single other series in the school club comedy format. You know the drill, they need X more members or the club will get shut down for lack of activity. Etc. Etc.

But sticking to a tried and true plot formula—at least this early on—shouldn’t be taken as some kind of glaring flaw. Instead, what’s obvious even from this first episode is that Do It Yourself! has an extremely strong aesthetic and storytelling sense. Look at, for another example, the wonderful way the show’s “imagination bubbles” are illustrated. Serufu’s daydreams actively shift the art style depending on their contents, going for a dreamy sort of comfort when she fantasizes about sitting on a cloud, a comedic chibi format when she reminisces about the time her mom banned her from doing arts and crafts because she injured herself so much. (And how this led to her taking up drawing as a hobby. And how she used to literally eat crayons. Serufu is a wonderful protagonist.) Occasionally it will pull an even wilder, bolder shift.

This truly is one to keep your eye on. In a way, Do It Yourself‘s relaxed vibe is deceptive; make no mistake, this is one of the year’s strongest premieres. Consider this article a wholehearted endorsement.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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: Throwing Stars & Broken Hearts in SHINOBI NO ITTOKI

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.

In a way, it makes perfect sense that Shinobi no Ittoki exists and is airing right now. This has been a year full of absolutely bizarre shocks-from-nowhere. Birdie Wing, Estab Life, etc. Shinobi no Ittoki (something like “Ittoki the Ninja”, although in a rarity for a modern TV anime, it has no official English title) isn’t that crazy, at least not yet, and it’s as much a part with a certain strain of harem-but-also-something-else anime that has been largely supplanted by isekai shows in the modern day, but there’s a reason the first episode is called “Bolt From the Blue.”

There used to be a lot of vitriol in the air for this kind of thing, and I can certainly see why. The modern narou-kei problem of the hyper-generic “potato-kun” protagonist definitely has roots in this genre somewhere. That, combined with the mostly rather staid character designs and the good but fairly restrained visual work, really makes me feel like I shouldn’t be as taken with this as I am. But there’s just something about it that charms me. It’s endearingly dorky. Stupid in a fun way. A guilty pleasure, as some people say.

Perhaps it’s because the somewhat subdued visual presentation makes Shinobi no Ittoki feel retro rather than just dated. These kinds of anime were everywhere when I first started getting back into the medium in high school, and the only things that really mark Ittoki out as being made in 2022 instead of 2007 or so is the CGI truck in one early scene and the female lead having two-tone hair.

This throwback nature applies equally well to its actual plot, such as it is. Ordinary diligent high school boy—and aren’t they all?—Ittoki Sakuraba (Ryouta Oosaka) does all the ordinary high school boy things. He goes to school, sleeps in class, is roasted by his friends, and is shadowed oddly closely by his childhood friend Kousetsu (Haruka Shiraishi), the aforementioned two-tone hair girl, who, in a bit of what I might very charitably call foreshadowing, pretty much always walks around wearing a black facemask.

Ittoki is confessed to by a classmate, Satomi Tsubaki (Miyu Tomita), in a scene straight out of every heart-on-sleeve romance film of the last 20 years. The relationship moves very fast, to the disapproval of Ittoki’s mother, and before too long Ittoki ends up flustered and confused in Satomi’s house while his kouhai is removing her clothes.

Then things take a turn, and Ittoki discovers he has things much more important than the ups and downs of puberty to worry about.

Long story short; his “new girlfriend” is actually an assassin from a rival ninja clan sent to kill him. Which is a big shock to Ittoki, given that he did not know he was the heir to a ninja clan before this. Or, indeed, that ninjas still existed at all.

That is his mom, by the way. Just to keep everything straight for you here.

Silly fight scenes ensue, including one starring Ittoki’s cool-loser uncle.

All of these feature snazzy hologram technology and some hilariously doofy-looking ninja-tech suits, and our opening episode ends on the setup that our protagonists here, the Iga Clan, have a rival in the powerful and wicked Koga Clan. Where is all this going? Who knows, but if it manages to keep up this brand of throwback goofball entertainment, it will remain worth watching.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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: MOBILE SUIT GUNDAM: THE WITCH FROM MERCURY 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.

Every so often, an anime comes along where simply by virtue of what it is, writing about it feels more than a little surreal. Such is the case with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. You can probably guess why; the series bears a supertitle with some very long and very heavy history in this medium. It is the first mainline Gundam anime in nearly a decade, and while I’m sure lifelong Gundam aficionados will have plenty to say about the series, I am coming at things from a different angle as a relative neophyte. I’ve only ever seen one other Gundam anime; 2007’s Mobile Suit Gundam 00, and when I saw it, it was only a few years old.

The legwork of worldbuilding and basic plot setup already done in an “episode 0” prologue that aired a few months back, The Witch From Mercury instead opts to open with our protagonist, Suletta Mercury (Kana Ichinose), rescuing an apparently-adrift astronaut from the inky depths of space as they float away from the space station / military academy that will presumably serve as the series’ primary setting. But less important than what happens in these opening minutes is how it happens; she’s a panicked bundle of nerves the entire time, with her demeanor contrasting sharply against the soundtrack; a bundle of whirling synthesizer swells.

Things establish themselves in stages. Our setting is a military academy where absolutely anything can be settled via duel (the “space Utena” comparisons write themselves) under the watchful, sinister eyes of a shadowy council of CEOs. “Anything” happens to include marriage, which means that when Suletta runs into Witch From Mercury‘s other protagonist, Miorine Rembran (Lynn), it’s mid-escape attempt, since Miorine is attempting to flee from the academy and her duel-decided future husband, Guel Jeturk (Youhei Azakami). Or, as you will come to think of him, This Fucking Guy.

Jeturk is, to put it politely, not a nice man. To put it less politely; he’s a conniving, self-centered dillweed who’s an abusive ass to his to-be wife, going on a performative “man rampage” at one point while smashing up a garden she keeps because it reminds her of Earth. His only real redeeming quality is an admittedly impressive head of two-tone hair. (Sidenote; a couple other characters with wonderful hair show up, including an evil CEO whose beard and hair combine to give him the same silhouette as Mac Tonight, and a girl with astronomically huge puffball hair.)

The good thing about Jeturk being such an ass is that he makes an ideal episode one villain. He spends most of his screentime either being terrible to Miorine or peacocking his status as the “Holder”; that is to say, the school’s ace pilot. Naturally, when Suletta, despite being all nerves, challenges him to a duel, he accepts and thinks he’ll win easily. Some complications (like Miorine hijacking Suletta’s mobile suit, the Gundam Aerial) aside, this setup of dominos naturally comes crashing down.

It’s worth noting just how badly Jeturk gets his shit utterly rocked. His purple mecha is pretty impressive in its own way, but it’s not a Gundam (contextualized here as being a portmanteau of “GUND-ARM”). The Aerial is a truly sublime piece of deadly artwork in Suletta’s hands, and her capability with it comes across as a mecha pilot analogue to performance composure. Some people come alive on the stage; Suletta, on the battlefield, for better or worse. The thing’s weapons spin and reconfigure themselves in a floating ring that is an absolute visual delight. The rest of the episode looks, variably, solid to pretty good, but the entire fight scene here is just astonishing. In particular, a shot where the Aerial’s shield deflects a laser strike, only to make it scatter and scintillate into the air behind it, is just beautiful.

Suletta and Miorine also bicker while inside the Gundam, of course, and Suletta’s philosophy that pushing forward at all times, because even if you don’t win you’ll have “experience and pride”, is certainly something that the series seems like it will loop back around to before too long. But here, and for now, it carries her to an inarguable victory, as Jeturk’s purple mobile suit ends up in a tattered pile of laser-cut scrap on the ground.

The Witch From Mercury‘s premiere then concludes with what is perhaps one of the all-time great end-of-first-episode revelations, which I cannot comment on except to reproduce it here in its entirety, in screencap form.

Really, what could I possibly add to that? Are you, dear reader, surprised that I’m going to tell you that I think you should watch the sapphic giant robot show that seems to be taking at least a few cues from Revolutionary Girl Utena? You shouldn’t be. The Witch From Mercury delivers what is thus an early high-water mark for premieres in an already absurdly stacked season; competing with this one will be hard.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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: The Tricky Art of Telling Tales in MY MASTER HAS NO TAIL

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.

To hear some tell it, there’s a lack of wonder in the world these days. Yes, if you put your ear to the ground or gaze out your nighttime window you might understand; once again, the world is changing.

Of course, we’re hardly the first generation to deal with this sort of thing. And My Master Has No Tail, an ostensibly straightforward gimmick comedy based on a 4koma that’s been running since 2019, might seem like an odd vessel to even briefly touch on that idea. But it belongs to a growing body of available-in-English Japanese pop media set in the Taisho Era, so it has more reason to think about the subject than one might assume.

But we’re starting in the deep end of the pool here; let’s back up a moment. On a premise level, My Master Has No Tail is pretty straightforward. Enough so, in fact, that instead of wasting time and effort, why don’t I just drop the relatively succinct official English summary right here, verbatim? (With VA credits added by yours truly, of course.)

Throughout time, supernatural, shapeshifting tanuki loved playing tricks on humankind. One plucky tanuki, Mameda (Mao Ichimichi), is no different. But there’s one big problem. She wasn’t born in the days of yore — she was born in modern, more cynical times! How can she fulfill her mischievous tanuki destiny when supernatural hijinks are a thing of the past? She finds an angle when she meets Bunko (Hibiku Yamamura), a master of the Japanese art of rakugo, which uses storytelling to beguile its audience. Mameda is determined to use rakugo to cast a spell on humanity, but first this tanuki trickster must convince the no-nonsense Bunko to take her on as an apprentice.

My Master Has No Tail – HIDIVE Official Summary

So yes, it’s about a tanuki—the supernatural kind—getting interested in the art of rakugo and trying to get a successful rakugoka to take her on as an apprentice. This simple premise belies two things; one, a genuine appreciation for the artform the series is centered around, and two, some interesting musings on the Taisho Era itself, and its nature as a transitionary period in human history. Of course, that must coexist with the fact that it is, at the end of the day, a comedy. The primary goal here is to charm you and make you laugh. If it can get you to think, that’s more of a nice bonus. (But an important one!)

Indeed, the first half of the opening episode is about Mameda’s attempts to trick people in the city of Osaka. But her pranks—trying to pass off leaves as money, attempting to spook policeman by appearing to have no face, etc.—go awry, and end up making the townsfolk cross with her instead. Disheartened, she eventually finds her way into an entertainment hall, where Bunko, her to-be mentor, is performing. She finds herself unexpectedly enraptured by the story that Bunko tells, and she likens it to her own quest to deceive humans. (By the end of the performance, she’s had such a good time being “tricked” that she actually looks rather drunk, which is pretty funny.)

Bunko’s story is done well, too. It is (apparently) a well-known stock rakugo routine, but she tells it well, and the world of the show is supplanted by sketched, pastel drawings to enhance her tale.

The rakugo bit itself elicits more sensible chuckles than full-on belly laughs, probably owing to both the age of the bit and the simple fact that an Anglophone audience isn’t necessarily going to pick up on all the subtler details. (Certainly, I’m including myself there.)

After the performance, Mameda finds herself surrounded by angry townspeople, who recognize her from her earlier pranks and attempt to chase her out of the city. She’s cornered on a rooftop and nearly falls to her death because she forgot that, as a female tanuki, she lacks the comically large balloon-scrotums that are traditionally ascribed to the creatures. (Yes, that’s a real thing. Folklore is wonderful.) Luckily, she’s rescued.

By Bunko.

Who is piloting a flying boat.

Bunko’s musings; on the nature of human development, on the fact that both she and Mameda, as creatures of myth (Bunko herself is a kitsune) will soon no longer have a place in their world, and on the nature of storytelling, put an intriguing spin on the series’ solid but otherwise fairly simple first episode. This sequence exposes My Master Has No Tail as having a thoughtful emotional core in addition to its simpler concerns of comedy and charm. Bunko herself serving as the wise—if reluctant—mentor figure rounds this out nicely.

The episode concludes with Mameda deciding to stay and committing to studying under Bunko. Whether or not the fox spirit is interested is an entirely different question, and I suspect that much of the comedy of the weeks to come will involve the inherent push-and-pull baked into their dynamic. But capping things with a nice bout of quiet introspection is a nice trick, and while something like this is never going to find a massive Anglosphere audience, I do hope it finds one that appreciates it for what it is. It’s a subtle sort of magical; like all good stories are.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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: REINCARNATED AS A SWORD is Dull and Rusty

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.

Here is, without embellishment, the first five minutes of Reincarnated as a Sword, the latest entry in the novelty isekai canon; a guy (Shinichirou Miki) dies (of course), and is—you’ll never believe this—reincarnated in a stock fantasy world as a magic sword.

He fucks around in some JRPG-esque menus, and when a group of goblins tries to pull him out of the stone he’s stuck in, he attacks them because he “doesn’t want to be used by goblins,” and kills them all. This gives him experience points which he spends yet more time plugging into the aforementioned menus, and he comments that he feels nice, assuming it’s because he’s fulfilled “the purpose of a sword.”

I am hardly the first person to have noticed that the average isekai protagonist is a gleeful cartoon sociopath who seems weirdly eager to cut down every being in their way—whether or not they’re sapient—in the pursuit of naked personal power, usually as imagined by some borrowed grab-bag of video game tropes. But Reincarnated as a Sword is a pretty damn stark depiction of such a thing. Our Hero also spends a good chunk of this episode hacking a goblin tribe who live in a cave to pieces for no reason other than acquiring more magic skills. This in spite of the fact that, as demonstrated by their having a hierarchy at all (there’s a goblin king and a goblin wizard, naturally), these are clearly intelligent beings of some kind. Shouldn’t he hesitate at least a little bit, sword or no?

(If I scrunch my eyebrows together quite hard, I can pretend this is commentary of some sort. “Clearly,” I can imagine “this is the series lampooning the power fantasy nature not just of the isekai genre but of kill-all-the-monsters sorts of RPGs in general.” It’s not really that, of course, but it’s a fun thought experiment.)

Even if we really work to suspend our disbelief and acknowledge that this is just how this world works for whatever reason, say maybe the monsters respawn or something, it doesn’t exactly make for the most compelling television. The production has a decent amount of polish, and I must commend the staff on managing to squeeze a few visually dynamic action sequences in fights centered on a flying sword, because that can’t be easy. But that polish alone does not elevate Reincarnated as a Sword beyond the bare minimum of “watchable.”

Eventually, he gets stuck in a field that drains all of his magic, and can’t go anywhere. Thus we are treated to the truly absurd sight of a fucking sword lamenting its fate as it’s stuck in mana-sucking ground, and despairs that no one might ever wield it. It is a bizarre spectacle, and is a scene that, I must imagine wholly unintentionally, captures a certain zeitgeist. This, truly, is what the dregs of TV anime have come to. (Aren’t we all suddenly very glad that Chainsaw Man starts in two weeks? I know I am.)

We should, at least, give some cursory acknowledgement to Sword‘s other protagonist, who the titular sword eventually meets while stuck.

This is Fran (Ai Kakuma). She is a catgirl, and because the isekai genre has over the past decade developed a bizarre fixation on the awful practice, she is also a slave. Fran doesn’t get nearly as much screentime as the sword himself, so we only see little bits and pieces of her story over the series’ introductory 30 minutes. But what we do see is pretty awful; she’s routinely kicked around and beaten, is shackled with a magic collar that forces her to obey her masters’ commands, and in general is just treated like dirt. Now, the bare minimum of credit is due here; Reincarnated as a Sword does in fact seem to understand that slavery is bad. That is unfortunately more than can be said of some isekai, so it is worth acknowledging.

In fact, if you squint, you can imagine how a compelling story might develop here. Fran finds and acquires the sword somehow—and that part does, in fact, happen, she runs into it while being chased by a monstrous, two-headed bear—and becomes a swashbuckling liberator of her people, the Black Cat beastfolk, and all the other sorts of animal people enslaved here by humans. Now let’s be clear here, the main character becoming a sort of catgirl John Brown would still be incredibly strange, and it would probably be heavier subject matter than something like this is equipped to handle, but it would certainly be something. And it would, again, at least be an acknowledgement that the world this takes place in is fucked up and needs some fixing.

There isn’t anything in this first episode that prevents Reincarnated as a Sword from eventually becoming that kind of story, but it still seems unlikely, if only because the show seems far more interested in hurling menus, stat screens, and meaningless terminology at us instead. Fran gives her motive for linking up with the sword, which she calls Shishou (“Teacher” or “Master”), as a desire to be “the first Black Cat to evolve.” There is some indication of what that actually means, in-universe, but does it really matter? It’s just another narrative shortcut taken among an entire forest of them.

Ultimately what you have here is yet another isekai with a marginally interesting premise that completely squanders it by taking the dullest route possible through almost every single plotting decision it could make. The idea that it might eventually become something more interesting isn’t really enough, I imagine, to make most people want to tune in. Maybe, in six weeks, we’ll be here talking about how utterly incredible it is that Reincarnated as a Sword started out so anonymously and eventually got so good. But I very much doubt it. I intend to spend my viewing hours elsewhere this season, and I recommend you do the same.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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

Let’s Watch LUCIFER AND THE BISCUIT HAMMER – Episode 1

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Oh god.

Do we really have to?

If you had told me a year ago, when we didn’t know anything about this, that this was how I’d be reacting to its first episode, I’d have never believed you.

The thing that sucks most is that I am not this person. I am not the person who goes into every anime season looking more for what I can drop and complain about than what I can watch and enjoy. I have met people like that, and they’re annoying. I certainly have never wanted to give that impression from my website, which by and large I try to devote mostly to positive anime criticism. The series I’ve disliked enough to review them negatively are few and far between. Enough so that it’s a tag on my review archive, specifically so people can avoid it if they want to.

But sometimes, unfortunately, for many of the same reasons that art can be an essential balm to the soul, art can be bad. The anime adaption of Lucifer and The Biscuit Hammer is bad.

Guys. It is so bad.

How did this happen? Why did so many of you vote for it in the poll? Did I do something wrong?

Okay, no, to be fair. To be so fair that it is physically painful, this is not the worst-produced anime I’ve ever seen. Barely. I’ve seen a couple that look worse. Magical Girl Spec Ops. Asuka was down there. Pride of Orange was down there (how the fuck have I had to reach for that thing as a comparison point twice in one day?). Modern Magic Made Simple, a tragic conflux of rancid taste and animated-at-gunpoint production values that I have blessedly only ever seen one episode of, is worse.

But this is bad. Make no mistake. Not mediocre, not so-so. Bad. The kind of bad that really makes you say to yourself “holy fuck there is too much anime being made right now.” I invite you to look at any random 5-minute slice of this episode and then do the same for any other anime I’ve covered so far this season. Hell, any anime I’ve ever covered on this site. Lucifer and The Biscuit Hammer‘s anime looks worse than the vast majority of them. This is unacceptable on a basic level.

I really want to know what happened. Studio NAZ are not really a known quality, they assisted on Sabikui Bisco two seasons ago, and that show certainly did look pretty rough in spots, but the Sabikui Bisco anime was also not adapting one of the best manga ever written. (Even so, I don’t remember it being this bad.)

Maybe it’s a difference in expectations. In this sense, I am That Person. Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer is one of my favorite manga of all time, a masterful pastiche of action shonen from the pen of the endlessly talented Satoshi Mizukami, one of his medium’s true modern auteurs alongside the likes of Dowman Sayman, Imitation Crystal, and in a more mainstream sphere, perhaps Tatsuki Fujimoto (I’ll get back to you on that last one once I finish Chainsaw Man). The man’s work is sprawling and spans a number of genres and almost 25 years of history. If you’re here for recommendations, go read—read, do you understand? Not watch—Biscuit Hammer. Then read Spirit Circle. Then watch Planet With. Even his minor stories are homeruns, but those are the big ones, the ones that truly are essential and some of the best manga penned in the last 20 years. (Or anime, in the case of Planet With.)

Biscuit Hammer, in its original form, is fun, riveting, full of interesting little twists and turns, and has a profound thematic core that cuts to the heart of the genre it so clearly admires and, more broadly, resonates emotionally with many, many readers. We will get into some of the specifics of that over the course of these twelve weeks—god, twelve fucking weeks of this—but that’s the short version. The Cliff’s Notes.

Adapting this thing to anime was probably always going to be really hard. But I must ask; would it have been too much to ask to at least try?

The main problem actually isn’t even the piss-dull production values, although they certainly don’t help. It’s the pacing. In the manga, main character Yuuhi Amamiya (Junya Enoki, completely phoning it in) comes across as a tedious, self-absorbed, petulant dick. He is those things, and that characterization is on purpose. But the first half or so of this first episode is an instructive exercise in the difference between manga pacing and anime pacing. Yuuhi being a jerk on the page is easy to breeze through because, in a comic book, you can read at your own pace. In an anime you are simply stuck there for however many minutes a scene lasts.

Over the course of the first half of this episode, Yuuhi gets roped into being a chosen one by a magic lizard (Noi Crescent, played here by Kenjirou Tsuda) and blows that off. Understandable, but we have to sit through his annoying dialogue about why he doesn’t want to be part of it. Less understandable, you could cut that down. Later, when he starts to develop the powers granted to him in service of this world-saving quest, namely a form of limited telekinesis, he uses it to get a peek at his teacher’s panties. At some point, choosing to preserve this—one of several such scenes from the early portion of the manga before it really found its footing—instead of cutting it in lieu of almost anything else feels like active taunting.

Yuuhi gets some much more granular characterization later on that helps me, as someone with prior knowledge, deal with all this. For a total outsider? I would blame no one for dropping the anime right then and there. Which would be tragic only because they’d be unlikely to give the much better manga a shot.

Eventually, through a combination of a laughably middling action scene and some exposition, Yuuhi gets the gist; the world is being threatened by a, we’ll say sorcerer for now, who summons monsters called golems, and who threatens to crack the world asunder with the giant invisible-to-normals mallet that gives the series its English title. (It’s called Hoshi no Samidare domestically, if you were curious.)

It’s hard to muster up the enthusiasm to go into any of the specifics here. The fight scene is very short and scored by a wildly inappropriate EDM soundtrack that reminds me a lot of that of The God of High School. The golem here retains its charmingly doofy look from the original series, so that is a minor positive.

Indeed, I will say this much, buried under all this mediocrity is one single real bright spot. Something that the otherwise well below par anime adaption cannot smother. If you’re familiar with the manga, you can already probably guess what I mean.

For some people the term “tomboy” really just doesn’t cut it.

Samidare Asahina. Princess Samidare. Samidare of the Stars. Lucifer. Played here by Naomi Oozora, who, full credit, really seems to be trying, unlike almost the entire rest of the voice cast.

Samidare is the true focal character of Biscuit Hammer, and she is a fascinating individual, for reasons the show hints at here but won’t properly get to until later. (Assuming the pacing doesn’t also fall to shambles there, that is.)

I actually find describing Samidare’s character a little difficult, because there isn’t really much else like her. She’s a willfully authoritarian little brat who, for reasons as yet undisclosed to us, mostly wants to stop the Biscuit Hammer from falling so she can destroy the planet instead. Near the end of the episode, she jumps off of her own balcony to test both Yuuhi’s power and his loyalty. In its last minute, she demands he swear loyalty to him, and in an action that completely defies every single thing we’ve seen of the young man so far, he feels like he has to.

I would compare Samidare, specifically the anime’s Samidare, to Siesta from The Detective is Already Dead or Aika from Blast of Tempest. A young, strong-willed girl whose sheer force of personality and just sum competence are so much greater than everyone else’s that she warps the story around her. Unlike them and other “removed woman” characters, Samidare is very much alive and present, still able to actively wield that influence.

In the original manga, this had the fascinating effect of making it almost seem like Samidare was actively stealing the series’ protagonist spot from Yuuhi, only sharing it on her own terms. Here, because the adaption is simply not nearly as good as the original, it captures only a fraction of that essence. Still, no amount of incompetence can completely defang her. She’s a nugget of gold panned from muddy water. When she folds her arms, her back to the sky, with the Biscuit Hammer hanging ominously, obscured by the clouds behind her, you can see the spirit of the original Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer in there, if you squint. Perhaps that sheer power of personality is why the manga is named after her in its original Japanese.

But those few feint echoes of the original manga are not enough to save this as an adaption, and trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who’d watch this knowing nothing about the original? Puh. I cannot imagine that this episode would make them at all interested in Lucifer. It does almost the exact opposite of what a good adaption is supposed to do, in that it magnifies every weakness of the original material and creates new ones while pruning off the areas where it excelled. Even purely as an ad for the manga, this first episode is an almost complete failure. Considered as its own standalone piece of work, it is perhaps even worse.

I will say, I am going to try to cover the remainder of the anime in the best faith possible. (What you are reading is the kindest version of this column that I can manage, and I mean that in total seriousness.) So whatever lies ahead, we will face it together. You all wanted me to cover this, for whatever reason, so I am going to cover it. If that means twelve weeks of scrounging for bright spots, then so be it.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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: The Robotic World of PRIMA DOLL

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.

Generally I end up covering at least one or two things here per season that are total misses. Prima Doll is only one episode in, so even with everything I’m about to say about it I feel like I’d be jumping the gun by calling it a total miss. What I am comfortable saying is that of the anime I’ve so far done first impressions articles on, it’s by far the least essential. This isn’t to say that it’ll never mean anything to anyone, but I found it lacking in a crucial, tangible warmth, something that is extremely important if you’re trying to make a show that can either offer some sort of comfort to its viewership or can make them cry. Prima Doll is trying to do both, and it feels underequipped on both counts. And hey, if that’s not enough of a red flag for you, it’s also pretty dull and charmless.

The important note to make off the top here is that Key are involved with this. Key, the visual novel studio behind Clannad, etc. have a reputation for a pretty specific kind of work; shamelessly melodramatic, heavy on obvious emotional cues, and dedicated to making you cry, every time. I’m a fan of a small slice of that work—I really like Angel Beats!—but their only other series I’ve seen is The Day I Became a God, which I absolutely hated, and has put me off of seeking out much else by them. (As far as material I’ve covered on this site, I’d put it somewhere just above Pride of Orange, last year’s worst anime, which is terrible for totally different reasons.)

But that really just informs the mood of the piece. What is it actually about?

Well, if you’ve played or even heard of Girls’ Frontline, basically that. Robots in the shape of cute anime girls are, for reasons unexplained and perhaps unimportant, the main language of warfare spoken in this world. Our protagonist, Haizakura (Azumi Wakai), is one such robot, here as in Girls’ Frontline called a doll. (No “T” this time.)

For reasons currently unknown to us, she ends up repaired by mysterious café owner and employed there, along with other “broken” dolls, all of whom have various quirks that prevent them, one must assume, from being useful in military action anymore.

Haizakura herself is very clumsy in a way that, to be honest, I found extremely grating.

It should not make me actively annoyed when a character is subject to slapstick.

She also faints whenever she uses her abilities, which at one point she does to deactivate a rampaging military drone. Drones and dolls are different. I Guess.

This first episode’s plot involves her trying to reunite a young girl named Chiyo (Misaki Kuno) with the doll who served as her surrogate older sister, Yugiri, who looks, sounds a bit like, and has the same name as Yugiri from Zombie Land Saga. (Whether this is an intentional reference, a coincidence, or a mind-bogglingly ballsy example of plagiarism is unknown to me.)

Yugiri, coincidentally, is deactivated in the cafe’s basement. Somehow, Haizakura turns her back on (or something else does and Haizakura is just there when it happens, it’s not totally clear), and Yugiri and Chiyo spend some time together. But oh no! The ending of the episode reveals that Yugiri actually has amnesia and feels terrible about it, so she lies to Chiyo and tells her she’s “going on a journey” so as not to hurt her feelings, and is then deactivated again and promptly returns to the cafe basement.

Look, I’m a pretty huge sap, and I’m not shy about admitting it. But even as I could actively feel it trying to tug at my heartstrings, most of Prima Doll‘s tearjerking did nothing for me. It’s really hard to nail this kind of thing down when it’s done right, and maybe even moreso when it’s done wrong. Obviously this is all very fiddly and subjective, but to me there is simply something too self-conscious, too obvious, and maybe even too contrived about Prima Doll.

There is certainly potential in the notion of a group of “broken” people—very literally, here—discovering a found family in each other. This is a notion that unites works of fiction as disparate as, indeed, Angel Beats! and, say, James Roberts‘ More Than Meets The Eye. (Hey, the dolls from this and the Transformers from that are even both robots! There you go.) But that’s the sort of thing that requires a delicate touch and a good command of character writing. Prima Doll displays zero evidence of having either at this point, and if it’s this unwilling (or unable) to show off even a little bit of that, I see equally little reason to give it much chance.

And as a final note, yes, there’s some potential also in the background and setting, but when stuff that’s actually good at worldbuilding—say, Lycoris Recoil, which is even also partly about a café—is airing this season, why on Earth would you bother with this?

The Takeaway: Pass.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to 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 SMILE OF THE ARSNOTORIA THE ANIMATION

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 we stand in the blistering spring wind,
we are resolute, humble, and decorous.
We are Pentagrams,
and with the pride of flowers,
we learn and study hard.

I really must, before saying anything at all about this series, direct even site regulars to the warning in the header. Arsnotoria is the sort of thing I’d recommend going into as blind as possible. (Even saying that much is a bit of a giveaway, but there’s a certain amount of that which can’t be helped.)

But let’s get into it, shall we?

You get them a few times per year; anime whose premieres just make you go “huh?”

Often, they start out as one genre and then take a left turn into another. Or their tone does a total headstand somewhere in the first episode or two. Something like that. By me even mentioning this, you can guess that Smile of The Arsnotoria: The Animation—clunky title and all—is an example of this, but it’s worth explaining why even bringing that up is noteworthy. These days, these kinds of swerves don’t have much impact anymore. Somewhere after Gakkou Gurashi people started to almost expect them, and most modern examples don’t even bother waiting until the premiere to tip their hand, with, for example, one of Arsnotoria‘s contemporaries Lycoris Recoil not even keeping up the facade for all of its preview trailers. So, if nothing else, if the entire rest of the series is a total, out-and-out bomb that drops off the face of the Earth after it finishes airing, it should at least be noted for its restraint.

There are 22 minutes in Arsnotoria‘s first episode. About 20 of them are extremely pleasant, almost iyashikei-esque slice of life coziness. Let’s talk about those minutes first, since they form the bulk of the episode.

Right from the top, we’re dropped to the goings-on in a magical academy of some sort, and into the lives of five schoolgirls. These are Arsnotoria herself (Misaki Kuno), Mell (Miharu Hanai), Ko Alberta (Miyu Tomita), Picatrix (Eri Yukimura), and Abramelin (Eriko Matsui). No, I don’t know why Ko is the only one with a last name either (although there is brief mention of a Grand Alberta, also. Maybe they’re related).

They fall into familiar and broad character archetypes; Arsnotoria is the cutesy and naive one, Mell is rambunctious and michievious, Ko is a sleepyhead who’s more aware than she lets on, Picatrix is an ojou complete with ending most of her sentences with “desu wa”, and Abramelin is the serious, responsible one. These aren’t the most compelling or deep characters, but they work in the sort of easygoing, slice of life mold that most of the episode traffics in.

“Easygoing” might be underselling it, really. Much of the episode is positively languid, and it’s telling that a solid 10 minutes are taken up by the characters discussing tea. This admittedly gets a little boring toward the end, but it’s to Arsnotoria‘s credit that it manages to actually keep this fairly engaging for most of that time. Discussions of what side one butters their scones on recall the (in?)famous chocolate coronet scene in Lucky Star. And at one point, Ko tries to bash a sealed jam jar open with some lavishly-animated and quite powerful looking magic wherein she summons a huge, bandaged hand to punch it.

Aside from this, there are a few setting details. The school this all takes place at, the “academy city” of Ashlam, seems to basically be a furnishing school for young arcanists, which is perfectly fine as a setting and it’s one plenty of other things have done (in anime alone you have everything from Tweeny Witches to Little Witch Academia to Mahou Girls Precure to, perhaps most relevant for this part of the episode, Mysteria Friends). A fair bit of proper terminology gets lobbed at us here. Not quite enough to be a Proper Noun Machine Gun, but maybe a Proper Noun Slingshot.

And mixed in with all this are some interesting bits about London being on “the surface”, which seems to both imply (somewhat surprisingly) that this takes place in a version of our world, and that Ashlam is actually physically above the ground.

All of this may seem irrelevant, given the total tonal 180 that you’re all aware, if you’ve gotten this far in the article, is coming, but there is one other detail that seems significant; the opening of the episode sees our characters return from a “watch” shift. A watch for what is not a question I thought to ask while first viewing the scene, but it’s certainly on my mind at this point.

Because, yes, in its final two minutes or so, Arsnotoria completely tips its hand, in perhaps the most dope slap-blunt way possible. A cut to black, the word “WARNING” inexplicably written across the screen in bright red, and then this.

A scene of total, apocalyptic ruin. (Complete with some very nice billowing fire animation.) Inquisitors patrol streets and slaughter citizens for being “Negatives,” explaining nothing with their cryptic comments as they do so. It does not even look like it’s from the same universe as the entire preceding 20 minutes, and with just that little bit of footage, Arsnotoria goes from being enjoyable if predictable to a total fucking wildcard.

None of this necessarily means that Arsnotoria will be good. It is entirely possible to have an interesting structure but fail on any number of other counts (or even all other counts), but it’s at least a good sign.

The Takeaway: Really, this one is pretty simple. If you enjoy throwing caution to the wind and gambling on something that no one has any real idea as to where it’s going, you want in on this. If not, you can probably skip it.

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