Tag: 2022 spring anime season

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Less Money, More Problems in TOMODACHI GAME

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

I hate saying that something “isn’t my genre.” Partly, it feels like an excuse. Surely any reasonably well-rounded critic should have an at least workable command of all major genres within their chosen medium?

Well, maybe so. But I’m not going to lie to you all and pretend I understand the whole “death game” genre. This isn’t technically a death game, as I’m sure some would hasten to point out. Instead, it’s a “debt game.” Similar names, but one only kills you indirectly. (And if you don’t think so, trying being poor for a few years.) I disclose this upfront because the truth of the matter is that I have no real idea what to make of Tomodachi Game. I certainly wasn’t impressed, but maybe that’s just because I don’t really know what I’m looking for.

The setup isn’t complicated, at least. Our core cast consists of five friends. I could introduce them, but the show pops these nice little on-screen intros up basically as soon as it starts, and since the effort was taken to subtitle them, why not just use those?

(Voiced by Tomohiro Oono, Satomi Amano, Daiki Hamano, and Yume Miyamoto, respectively, top to bottom.)

The only one not displayed here is Yuuichi Katagiri (Chiaki Kobayashi), our protagonist, who is portrayed as a hardworking but poor lad but who is probably hiding some skeletons in his closet. I base that guess on the fact that he shows up in the OP grinning like a maniac with money literally hanging out of his mouth.

In his guest verse on Nelly’s classic 2005 bling-rap track “Grillz,” rapper Big Gipp says he “has a bill in [his] mouth like [he’s] Hillary Rodham.” It’s such a viscerally unpleasant mental image that it’s bothered me for years, despite the fact that I love the song otherwise. And now I’m passing it on to you via an overlong image caption because the above picture kinda reminded me of it. Aren’t you glad you read this blog?

Our leads all attend the same high school, and the plot is kicked off when a collective funding pool for a class trip–two million Yen, all told, about $16,000 USD–goes missing, evidently stolen from Shiho’s locker. (You may ask why it was kept there to begin with and not, y’know, some kind of safe. I say just roll with it.)

Inevitably, there’s suspicion within the class, especially toward Shiho herself–she was the one holding on to it, after all–and Yuuichi, given his general poverty.

Eventually, a round of mysterious letters beckons our friend group to meet outside the school gates at 11PM. Inevitably, they are then knocked out, kidnapped, and hauled off to partake in some bizarre game for god-knows-what reason. No explanations are forthcoming this early on, which is fine. But it is kind of hilarious how abrupt all this feels. We’ve just met these characters, only just learned that they’re all friends, and now suddenly it’s time to do the thriller anime dance already. The extremely abrupt directing does the show no favors here. In general, there are tons of repeated cuts to the show’s “intermission card”, which is just the name of the series on a white background. You will get sick of this image fairly quickly, even with the couple variants the episode trots out.

When our heroes come to, they’re in an all-white, tiled room. I like to imagine this is somehow the same building that Cube 2: Hypercube takes place in. (Side note here; fuck that movie.) There, they’re introduced to the host of this “debt game,” one Manabu-kun (Minami Takayama), who takes the form of a small boy from an old children’s cartoon. He likes to, for instance, taunt Yuuichi about not trusting his friends. Sure, why not.

Manabu lays out the rules pretty plain; somebody among them owes a 2 million Yen debt. When they entered the game–which they allegedly all agreed to, even though none of them remember doing so–this debt was split up into 5 shares distributed equally to each of them. If they can win the game, their debt will be forgiven. If not, they’ll have to pay back whatever price of their share remains. (It will not shock you that we’re almost immediately introduced to rules that can change the amount of debt an individual person owes. Also; you’re allowed to tell people your debt, but not actually show them the electronic tag you’re forced to carry around which displays it numerically. Hmm.)

The first game–likely, one of many–that our cast have to play is a simple quiz involving a Kokkuri board. This scene forms the entire center of the episode. Thankfully; the core game as explained here is very straightforward. Our heroes need to answer some very basic yes/no questions by pushing a giant coin to one side or the other of the board (labeled Yes and No respectively.) But! The questions need to be answered with total consensus. If even one person disagrees with the others, the coin will favor the minority answer.

Even so, these are some seriously basic questions. We start with Japanese geography so simple even I knew the answers, and then move on to such brain-busters as “is one plus one two?” and “are there seven days in a week?” They only have to actually get one of these questions unanimously right to win the whole “debt game” outright, so this really seems like it should be easy.

Of course, Tomodachi Game would be totally pointless if our heroes just won outright this early. Thus, there’s the mandatory twist; someone pushes the coin toward “No” each time. Whether it’s the same person each time or not is left ambiguous, as is the question of why they’d want to do this in the first place. We get a hint, though; the fact that someone is clearly sabotaging things is enough to make Yuuichi consider doing the same. He doesn’t go through with it, but someone else pulls the coin toward “No” anyway. A pair of girls observing the game note that literally no team has ever gotten past this stage.

Thus betrayed, Yuuichi ends the episode on this note, before (presumably) sabotaging the last question himself. I must confess, this is one of the rare times an anime has ever put me at a total loss for words so early on.

Yes, that non-sequitur, delivered with total dead-seriousness, is how the episode ends. The closing shot is that ugly closeup of Yuuichi’s teeth.

I said this already, but death games–and their adjacent, related setups–are not my genre. I may simply be missing something here, but, if so, what? For all its bluster about how humans can’t endure hardship alone and the dichotomy between “money” versus “friends” being the most important thing in life. (Represented by flashbacks on Yuuichi’s part to conversations with people that appear to be his father and mother respectively.) The series feels much like any other adaption of a manga in this genre. Too edgy by half and ill-suited to the TV anime format.

I’m not comfortable simply writing the show off, mind you. Even the examples of this genre generally held up as all-time greats don’t make a ton of sense to me, and there are way too many things yet to be established for me to firmly claim this is just A Bad Show. But it’s definitely a series only for those of pretty specific tastes, and I don’t think I fall into that category this time.

The Takeaway: Genre fans should give it a look, but unless that describes you, you can safely skip this one.

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 Soothing World of HEALER GIRL

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.

Before we even talk about Healer Girl, Studio 3Hz‘ new original anime project, let’s briefly discuss its trailer.

Released inconspicuously back in December, this PV is absolutely spellbinding. As recently as a few days ago, I’ve previously called Healer Girl an idol series, and it does have an associated idol group. But the actual Healer Girls are more Wilson Philips than AKB48, and as the soft, light pop music flows out of your speakers you’ll eventually notice the visuals, too. Our girls fly in the air, their songs extend literal beams of music outward, raising stone pillars from the ground and healing all who hear them. They’re dressed in all white, like they were angels. It’s one of the most singular PVs in recent memory, and Healer Girl the actual show has a lot to live up to.

Let this much be said: it must know that, because it puts a strong foot forward. It is exactly three and a half seconds into Healer Girl before we get our first piece of music. Before the opening credits even drop, Kana Fujii (Carin Isobe), our lead, sings a soft little song to a group of schoolchildren who were roughhousing. The scrape on a little boy’s knee disappears in the blink of an eye. One boy points out to another that this isn’t “magic,” it’s healing. This is a pretty bold first step for your show to take, and it speaks to a lot of confidence on the part of the writers.

After the OP finishes, we get some explanations for what exactly is going on. Healer Girl takes place in a world where “Song Medicine” is an accepted, scientific form of treatment. (Here referred to as the “third major branch” of medicine. My brief time working at a pharmacy does not qualify me to speak on how real either of the other two are, I have no idea.) The few pieces of terminology we get throughout the episode are–obviously–audiomedical technobabble, but that’s fine. The point is made; these girls are less like idols and more like doctors. Or med students, since our three leads are apprentices. They mostly train rather than do anything more involved at this stage in their careers. There are pushups.

The first half of the episode plays out like a reasonably typical work or school life comedy, albeit one set in a world with key differences from our own. Healer Girl is certainly not short on the merits that the better examples of these shows have; there’s a lot of colorful animation, some interesting directorial decisions (the series has a fixation on rotating the POV of a shot), and the coveted Good FacesTM that seal the deal on any character comedy. Kana’s co-stars are fun, too, with simple personalities that avoid being one-note. Reimi Itsushiro (Marina Horiuchi) is the straightlaced one, but she has a fixation on the apprentices’ collective teacher, Ria Karasuma (Ayahi Takagaki). The crush she harbors on Ria is hilariously unsubtle. I might use the word “thirsty.”

Hibiki Morishima (Akane Kumada) is soft-spoken and eccentric, at various points in the episode she professes to be scared of manju(?) and white rice(??) and tries to freak out her fellow apprentices by claiming there are ghosts in her bedroom.

On top of all this, Healer Girl is also kind of a musical! There are, by my count, two proper songs and a medley in this first episode. Which, combined with those aforementioned strengths, would make Healer Girl recommendable on its own.

Before we get to the last thing about the show, though, we should back up slightly. It’s established that that little stunt that Kana pulled in the opening minutes isn’t something mere apprentices are actually allowed to do. For reasons left ambiguous to us, healing music is strictly regulated. Apprentices doing so much as singing away a knee-scrape is very much not okay.

Which leads us to the closing act of the episode. A little girl named Yui pounds on the front door of the clinic while Ria and the other in-house doctor happen to be out giving a conference. Her grandmother is in trouble, and she doesn’t know what to do. Our apprentices, accordingly, spring into action; dialing an ambulance, trying to get ahold of Ria, and heading to Yui’s house to comfort the patient, respectively.

It’s Kana who takes that last job, and good lord does she ace it. She knows–and we know, from earlier–that she shouldn’t try to heal this old woman, so she improvises, instead singing simply to stabilize her and calm her down while the ambulance arrives, and it is as she’s doing this that Healer Girl goes from having a good first episode to having an amazing one.

The central connection that Healer Girl makes, even this early on, is between music and medicine. One heals the soul, the other heals the body. Healer Girl‘s main trick is to make that connection literal with music that can soothe both. Other anime in and around the idol genre have occasionally flirted with spiritual, magical, or religious imagery, but, speaking personally, I’ve often been frustrated by how hesitant they are to commit. If you’re going to draw up grandiose metaphors, go hard on those metaphors! Restraint is for suckers, and it makes most popular art worse! Go fully unhinged! Have your idols literally heal the sick! Do it! Madonna wasn’t afraid to compare herself to Jesus and you shouldn’t be either!

Healer Girl seems to agree; when Kana sings to this poor old woman, a flower blooms beneath her feet, she levitates in the air and tiny poppets in her own image materialize from the ether to calm her patient down.

It is a beautiful thing to watch, and the show damn well knows it, because when Ria does arrive, she excuses her apprentice’s kinda-sorta rule break, and is as impressed with her display as any of us are. This is not the face of a woman who’s unhappy.

There’s some more exposition here–apparently this transcendentally luminous phenomenon we just witnessed is called an “Image”, and the fact that Kana’s changes while she sings is somehow notable–but mostly everyone is just happy that the old woman is okay. Kana, deservedly, takes some time in the episodes final moments to bask in a job well done.

If you’re a certain kind of person I could see finding Healer Girl‘s whole thing offputting or even creepy. There is no denying that the little worldbuilding we get here also raises some odd questions about the setting. (What is the role of non-healing music, for example? Does it even exist? Does all of it sound like early 90s light pop?) But I can’t pretend to be part of that group, I’m all in on Healer Girl. I have tried to refrain from making predictions about a show’s success (doing so last season ended, I would say, embarrassingly), but I certainly want this one to keep up this level of quality.

Speaking personally, I had a very bad morning before I sat down to watch Healer Girl. A morning filled with medical anxiety, even, complete with missing prescription refills and an agonizing wait in a doctor’s office. Healer Girl made me feel better, too, and I cannot give the series a stronger endorsement than that. Early in the episode, Reimi compares recorded healing music to OTC drugs. But what can I say? Sometimes the over-the-counter stuff works.

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, Reviews

(REVIEW) Reckoning with MAGIA RECORD: DAWN OF A SHALLOW DREAM

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

Here we are, again and at last. I have written about Magia Record; the anime adaption of a mobile game spinoff of the original Puella Magi Madoka Magica, again, and again, and again over the past two years. This will, barring something truly unexpected occurring, be the final time. Dawn of a Shallow Dream is the final “season”–really more of a movie with intermissions–of the series. Part of me will miss it.

Magia Record on the whole is, to use a term I consider neutral, but some would call a denigration, messy. Its pieces do not all fit neatly together. It overreaches, and from a purely technical point of view, it’s a serious mixed bag, marrying near-immaculate directing with consistently inconsistent quality of actual, y’know, drawings. Its three seasons are all very different and its cast of characters is too large for it develop them all equally-well. Its core theme–persistence in the face even of impossible odds and crushing despair–is arguably overdone within this genre, and is better-executed by its parent series, by Symphogear, and perhaps even by distant cousins like Day Break Illusion. Aren’t we all a bit tired of this by now?

Well, if you’re reading this, you probably know how I feel about these things (and if not, you will soon enough.) So, it will not surprise you that the answer from me, the woman who thought Blue Reflection Ray was really underrated, is “no, I’m not tired of it at all.” Bring them on a hundred strong, I say.

My thoughts on Magia Record have shifted a bit several times since the first season originally aired, but I remain resolute on a key point. As a “Precurification” of the original Puella Magi Madoka Magica‘s general idea–that is to say, a vehicle for delivering and iterating on “Madoka stories” within a fixed format–it absolutely kills. Shallow Dream is its swing at a grand finale. It doesn’t hit every target perfectly, and I will discuss what bones to pick I do have a bit farther down, but it makes a good show of things in its own way.

Magia Record‘s plot has always been a point of contention; the show is very cognizant of its own worldbuilding. Lucid, even. But that doesn’t translate to it always being clear to the viewers. This is probably the simplest it’s ever gotten, and thankfully things are conveyed fairly strongly here. Even so, to sum it up I can only offer something like; Iroha (Momo Asakura) and friends stop Embryo Eve by weaponizing the power of human connection. Not perfectly, of course, because this is Madoka, but, you know, pretty well. Along the way we get some long-overdue explanations for what was going on with Iroha’s sister and their two friends. Also because this is Madoka, about a quarter of the cast dies along the way. You can’t win ’em all.

I completely understand why MagiReco’s insistence on burrowing so heavily into its foretext is offputting to some (I would argue it’s still in service of a solid thematic goal, regardless), but it does mean that for the hardcore magical girl fan, Magia Record has been a treat of well-done henshin sequences, fight scenes, and just in general, deliciously weird imagery that nothing else in the genre quite touches. We don’t get as much of that in “season three” here as we did last year for season two (there’s really only one fight in the whole thing and it’s pretty brief), but it remains a pleasure to look at, even when the character art goes headlong into “why is SHAFT like this?” territory.

The background we get for Touka (Rie Kugimiya), Nemu (Sumire Mohoroshi), and Iroha’s long-missing sister Ui (Manaka Iwami) fill in a lot of the gaps from the first two seasons, which does have the nice benefit of making this all feel a little more like it’s one thing instead of three discrete shows under a broad umbrella. Their turn from good intentions to total villainy makes sense in hindsight. From just wanting to save Iroha, to trying to loophole their way out of the magical girl system entirely–which of course, horribly backfires and is why Ui goes missing in the first place–and finally to their full villainous, cult leader-esque incarnation from seasons one and two, it’s all compelling stuff, a story of how the best of intentions can go horribly awry when met with poorly understood circumstances.

Elsewhere, Momoko (Mikako Komatsu) and Mifuyu (Mai Nakahara) give their lives to free as many of the girls trapped by Magius’ “witch factory” as they possibly can. The sequence is heartwarming and tinged with a cosmic all-is-love energy. Nothing in the Madoka universe comes without sacrifice, of course, but we would all be lucky to go out, if we had to, while helping so many others.

Not everything works quite so well. In particular, I can’t help but be a touch disappointed with the treatment of Kuroe (Kana Hanazawa), who becomes a witch here before being killed off, mostly to teach Iroha a lesson about how she can’t just impose her own worldview on other people. This feels like something that should’ve come up more strongly than this earlier in the series, and Kuroe being offed when we just got to really know her does leave something of a bad taste in my mouth. Even so, the sequence is undeniably pretty damn cool.

The last battle against Eve, in which it is only just barely prevented from merging with Walpurgisnacht, is suitably epic, even when it gets interrupted by the ranting, raving, honestly a little out-of-nowhere? Hijacking by Alina Gray (Ayana Taketatsu).

These scenes are all notable individually, and there are a number of others I’ve not discussed here. (Yachiyo (Sora Amamiya) makes up for her absence from much of the season by getting a lovely, touching reunion with her late partners, or rather, the magic they held that lives on inside her, for example.) But you may ask what this all adds up to. It’s a fair question.

The truth of the matter is that Magia Record is, again, messy. It is not an immaculate distillation of its core values down to a euphoric four-episode package. It does not “transcend” and become “more than the sum of its parts,” perhaps. But I challenge anyone with even the slightest shred of affection for this series–Madoka, not just Magia Record–to watch the closing shots; where the surviving magical girls band together and push forward, heads held high even in the face of their unenviable, tragic situation, and not feel something.

Magia Record ends with a literal closing of the book; the white-gloved hands of a Goddess (Aoi Yuuki) shutting it with an affectionate finality. The girls narrate that no one knows of the battles they fought and what they sacrificed. That no one knows of the dreams they held that were lost. Of their picking up the pieces and starting again. The existence of the series itself, and of this review, is proof otherwise, of course. And you could interpret this as a tragic ending, if you were so inclined. But what, really, is more positive than starting again? I have said this before in other columns and will say it again in many more. The true essence of hope–that nebulous thing–is to live on, and to help others 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, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [4/2/22]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.

Hi folks! I’ve been crazy busy this week with impressions articles (a trend that will likely continue at least somewhat into next week and possibly even the week after), so I haven’t had a ton of time to write much else. (Especially considering that for administrative reasons, it’s arriving a day early.) Still, I hope you appreciate the Priconne writeup below.

Before that, though! The Community Choice Poll has concluded, and in hindsight the victor was perhaps a bit obvious. Still, I didn’t expect it to absolutely crush its competition in the way that it did.

So! Our previous community choice winner–My Dress-Up Darling–was a CloverWorks-animated romcom. Congratulations to our new community choice winner. SPY X FAMILY, a CloverWorks-animated romcom.

Jokes aside, I hope you look forward to my covering the series. I’m sure you’re all as excited to see Yor animated on the silver screen as I am. And I’m sure the rest of the show will be pretty good, too. Best of luck next time to the runners-up Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Season 2, The Demon Girl Next Door Season 2, and BIRDIE WING.

Wait, really, BIRDIE WING? Huh.

In any case, you can look forward to seeing those shows covered here on MPA as well to at least some extent.

Not on the Frontline Report though, because this is the last edition of this column.

By which I mean, I am changing the name. The column will be on hiatus next week, since I have more premieres to cover and some real-life stuff to get done. (Taxes, ahoy!) When it returns, it will be under the name Anime Orbit Weekly, a name that better fits my site’s loose “planet” theming and….frankly is just better in every way. I’ve never really liked “Frontline Report” and have largely stuck with it out of inertia. The new name is catchier and also easier to Google.

Anyway, on with the column!

Weekly Anime

Princess Connect! Re:Dive

They really didn’t have to go this hard. That’s what I kept thinking as I finished up the second season of Princess Connect! Re:Dive. This episode is a finale, so it should look good, but the fact that they were able to do this without visibly sapping resources from elsewhere in the production–aside from maybe a single filler episode near the middle?–is astounding. Shows just being produced this cleanly is a rarity in of itself. Add to that the following; Princess Connect‘s season finale is a symphony of magic fireworks; magical-digital floating spell circles, fuckoff-huge sword beams, gloopy swarms of shadowy darkness, CGI metallic projectiles, pick a favorite visual trope that a fantasy-action anime of the past 10 years has come up with, it’s in here somewhere.

But I fear that in my coverage of Priconne I’ve maybe over-emphasized the production merits and made it seem like that’s the show’s only strength. So, all I’ll say further on this front is that I wouldn’t be shocked if this whole damn episode was on Sakugabooru.

Fundamentally, the finale is a huge tug-of-war between the Gourmet Guild and Omniscient Kaiser. It is, in a lot of ways, super basic. The heroes triumph over the big evil villain via (spoiler) the power of friendship. But if, in a meta sense, Princess Connect has any core thesis, it’s that you can build a perfect machine from imperfect parts. There is not a wasted moment in the whole episode; every line sharpens the show’s emotional core just a little bit more. You’d have to be a real stone-face to not grin while watching this, its sheer enthusiasm for its own genre, its strength of belief that this is an impactful story that will light a fire in your heart, is infectious.

Kaiser even gets a somewhat sympathetic backstory squeezed in here, where the sheer ennui of being a tyrant in the name of a failed utopia quite literally consumes her alive; she’s eaten by the mostly-dead shadow clone we thought died last episode, in an honestly pretty damn gruesome bit of body horror for something that’s generally been pretty conservative with even showing blood.

In the last raising-of-stakes available to a VRMMO series, it’s made clear that if Kaiser dies while under the Shadows’ influence that she’ll be gone for good. And that’s just not allowed, of course. So the show’s big final act is our heroes venturing inside this giant End of Eva shadow lady to bust Kaiser’s soul out like this was the world’s most high-stakes heist movie. Karyl does most of the actual convincing Kaiser not totally give in to nihilistic solipsism, but Pecorine performs well throughout the episode, too. Throughout the whole series, Pecorine has felt like the “real” hero, and it’s cool that she mostly gets to ride that status out here as her kingdom is finally restored to her at episode’s end.

Yuuki gets a great showing here as well, and honestly, this is probably the most he’s ever felt like the protagonist he ostensibly is. But even with all he gets done over the course of the finale, he still only gets eight total lines–I counted–and two of them are just “Go!” and “Nice.”

Still, it’s worth noting that the final battle does technically ride on him–he refuses another pass through the time loop from Ameth, choosing to live or die by the bonds he’s formed with his friends. That faith in them pays off, and all present are, in fact, able to defeat Omniscient Kaiser, who is returned to her normal state.

It’s Labyrista who sums up the episode’s–and really, whole show’s–theme best.

It’s simple, but simple works for Princess Connect, a series that–despite its ostensibly complicated “lore”–is very much focused on the fundamentals. The show’s very few problems; Said lore’s complexity, Kokkoro not getting much of a role in the finale, and arguably the oddly showy outfits, do not really ding it at all. At the end of the day, Princess Connect is just a really damn good fantasy anime. When the Gourmet Guild officially reforms and the World is Once Again Saved, it feels like the most logical ending possible for such a pure, warm series. Even here, there’s one last fun little character detail; Karyl is the one who cooks the Gourmet Guild’s first meal back home after their big adventure, and we see the scrapes and burns on her hands from prepping the food.

Everyone settles in for some good, hearty food, and the credits roll. Will we meet the Gourmet Guild again? It’s not impossible, but if this truly is the last episode ever of Princess Connect, it’d be hard to complain. What else could you ask for? Everyone lives happily ever after.

This section is pretty long this week.

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

ESTAB-LIFE isn’t the best thing airing right now, but it might be the weirdest, as the two episodes since that have involved a mob boss who wants to be a magical girl and KGB penguins have proven.

Seasonal First Impressions: Conquering the Pop World with YA BOY KONGMING!

Ya Boy Kongming! is a weird one, a solo-focus idol series with the bizarre high premise of said idol’s manager being Chinese military genius Zhuge Kongming, who was brought to the present….eh, somehow. It doesn’t really matter. The first episode of this was surprisingly affecting, and I’m looking forward to seeing where it goes from here.

Seasonal First Impressions: THE EXECUTIONER AND HER WAY OF LIFE is a Knife in Isekai’s Heart

The Executioner and Her Way of Life is what we call a “banger,” friends. God knows if it’ll keep up the impressive visual quality and interesting–if a bit edgy!–storytelling throughout this whole season, but I certainly hope it will.

Seasonal First Impressions: AHAREN-SAN WA HAKARENAI is a Sleep Aid in Anime Form

I don’t get it.

Seasonal First Impressions: The Dream Lives On in LOVE LIVE! NIJIGASAKI HIGH SCHOOL IDOL CLUB SEASON 2

The first season of Nijigasaki High School Idol Club was one of my favorites when it aired back in 2020. This first episode of the second season doesn’t quite match up to some of season one’s highs, but I have confidence that it’ll get there. Plus; the new girl introduced in this episode is just a deliciously excellent heel. Girlboss fans everywhere, eat your heart out.

(REVIEW) The Lost Legacy of FLOWER PRINCESS BLAZE!!: How a Forgotten Toei Series Shaped 15 Years of Magical Girl Anime [April Fools’]

Finally, there’s this. As I’ve now indicated in the article name, this was just an April Fools’ prank. One I inexplicably decided to spend like 2 months working on. It’s a review of the fake magical girl anime from My Dress-Up Darling. Except, given that that show doesn’t exist, most of it is just made up. This was a fun creative writing exercise but also a huge amount of work, surprisingly. So, I doubt I’ll be doing it again. Enjoy this odd-man-out of my website; file it next to the Mao Mao review and the ENA writeup. Huge thank you to commenter momomanamu for playing along in the comments, it made my day.

And that’s about all for this week. There may or may not be articles tomorrow and Monday (my schedule is a little off, right now, as I’m sure you’ve noticed by the fact that I put up three articles today. Something I almost never do.) But articles should resume on Tuesday at the latest, where I plan to cover the BIRDIE WING premiere.

Until then, anime fans!

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 Dream Lives On in LOVE LIVE! NIJIGASAKI HIGH SCHOOL IDOL CLUB SEASON 2

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 its own way, the daylit parallel present-day of Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is a utopia. In the show’s first season, from back in 2020, there were few if any conflicts that could not be solved with a song. It was a fairly far cry from the franchise’s stereotypical portrayal as being obsessed with school-in-danger plots and melodrama. Its highlights, uniformly, were livewire “music videos” that disregarded any pretense of realism for pure visual splendor. What it may have lacked in minute detail–although it could do that too, at times–it more than made up for in a truly rare dedication to pure spectacle.

Nijigasaki High School Idol Club‘s second season continues that devotion; opening as it does with a delightfully bonkers promotional video shot by the titular Idol Club. We get reacquainted with most of the first season’s highlight characters here, although the actual narrative, in as much as there is one, stays firmly centered on club behind-the-scenes-er / sort-of manager Yuu Takasaki (Hinaki Yano), and new girl Lanzhu Zhong (Akina Homoto).

Before we discuss what that narrative actually is, though, we should take the broad view for a moment. Nijigasaki is in an interesting place in 2022. The first season’s only real competitors in the idol anime format were Hypnosis Mic, which targets a different audience and has vastly different aims, the already-forgotten Dropout Idol Fruit Tart and Lapis Re:LiGHTS, and the utter train-crash that was 22/7. In the present day, though, Nijigasaki is no longer the only smart kid in the class, and there are other, equally-bright pupils of the genre present. Mostly in the form of the admittedly yet-to-premiere wildcards Healer Girl and next season’s SHINE POST, but even this season has Ya Boy Kongming!, which despite its absurd premise and smaller focus on just one singer, is very much in at least a broadly similar tonal space. There’s even a fellow Love Live season, also premiering in Summer; the followup to last year’s Love Live! Superstar. In other words; there is an actual level playing field for the first time in a while. Nijigasaki‘s status as Idol Anime of The Year is no longer a given.

In a way, the increased competition is mirrored in the first episode’s own story. What we have here is pretty simple, Lanzhu near-literally steals the show during the Idol Club’s promotional time at a school event. Her songwriter Mia Taylor (Shuu Uchida) makes a bit of an impression earlier on in the episode, but Nijigasaki is Lanzhu’s show, this week. And tellingly, it’s she, not any of our returning characters from season one, who gets the premiere’s music video. It’s a thing of beauty, and also as pompous and grandiose as any real pop diva’s videos, which, as we soon find out, fits her character pretty damn well.

The music video, it must be said, carries on the tradition of total showstoppers from season one very well. These are the episode’s centerpieces and need to convey important information in addition to being visually compelling, and Lanzhu’s knocks it out of the park on both counts. The scene transitions have her doing all kinds of random but awesome-looking nonsense like posing in a bubblebath, standing on top of a bunch of aquariums, and dancing in an elevator while wearing what looks like a borrowed Revue Starlight costume.

By this, do I mean “it has epaulettes”? Yes.

Shot made and sunk; Lanzhu is immensely talented and also hugely egotistical.

That latter point is followed up on at the end of the episode in what is the only real development of conflict here. Lanzhu basically calls the Idol Club a bunch of posers and announces her intent to enter the Idol Festival by herself and to upstage all of them. She does, admittedly, come across as astoundingly bitchy here, but it says a lot that this is what passes for villainy in the Love Live universe.

This does raise the possibility that the second season of Nijigasaki might possibly be more in-line with the melodramatic Love Live baseline than season one was, which would, admittedly, bum me out ever so slightly. But on the other hand, the Idol Club end the episode resolute that their new rival simply means they all have to work harder, and that “where dreams come true” tagline rears its head again in the premiere’s closing moments. That in mind, even if Nijigasaki High School Idol Club isn’t the shoe-in for its genre’s nebulous AOTY award that its predecessor was, it’s hard to imagine the girls won’t be alright. These are school idols we’re talking about, after all, and if my decade-plus of anime watching has taught me anything, it’s that high school girls can do anything.

The Takeaway: Obviously, you should watch season one first, but unless you just hate pop music, you should, of course, check this out.

Special Thanks: Additional Idol Research for this article was provided by Josh the Setsuna Fan, thanks Josh.

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: AHAREN-SAN WA HAKARENAI is a Sleep Aid in Anime Form

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.

Friends, I may have met my match today.

I pride myself on being able to find something, if not necessarily substantial, at least evocative to say about every anime I cover. That streak, which has in my own opinion continued uninterrupted for the two years I’ve piloted this blog, may well come to an end today. Writing about Aharen-san wa Hakarenai, an absolutely narcotic new offering from Felix Film, feels like trying to draw blood from a stone. (The title means something like “Aharen-san is Unfathomable”, but in a rarity for a modern TV anime, it has no official English title, and is being released in the EN market under a romanization of its Japanese name. This may be the most interesting thing about it.)

The premise could not be simpler. Two new high school students, the tall boy Raidou Matsuboshi (Takuma Terashima), and the diminutive girl Reina Aharen (Inori Minase), are chronically shy, and end up seated next to each other in their classroom.

At one point, Reina drops an eraser and Raidou picks it up. The two bond over this simple act of kindness and become fast friends.

Premises this simple can lead to great things. Last year, Komi Can’t Communicate did a lot with a similar idea (down to the fact that both Aharen and Komi are difficult for other people to hear). Nearly a decade ago, Tonari no Seki-kun took the same “desk neighbors” premise and ran it into a totally absurd direction, creating one of the more memorable surreal shortform comedy anime ever made. In the case of Aharen-san, though, I could not only tell you that it doesn’t do anything great with its premise, it doesn’t really do anything with its premise at all. Calling a slice of life anime “boring” is a little like calling ambient music such, but even for iyashikei–that subgenre sometimes known as Ambient TV–this is utterly torpid. Almost nothing of note happens over the course of the first episode’s 22 minutes. There are a few slow-rolled gags dolloped throughout the whole thing, but very little else. Visually, it seems to adapt the look of the manga basically 1 to 1. Contributing to the soft-focus ambiance, everything feels very placid and understated, even the gags. There is plenty of softness here, but only occasionally any actual warmth. This is the Pure Moods of school life anime. (And honestly, I like Pure Moods a lot more.)

Lest it seem like I’m trying to trash the series, I can at least understand the appeal. Aharen-san fills a role akin to lo-fi beats to relax to. It presents an all-consuming nonspecific fuzziness that, if you allowed it to, could conceivably, provide an escape from the cares of the real world. For me, I mostly found it vaguely grating. I will concede that I did chuckle at two of the episode’s few true jokes; Aharen misinterpreting something Raidou said in the form of repeatedly headbutting into him from a distance, and whatever Raidou is doing here.

Other than that, I really can’t find much to say–to praise or to criticize–about this series at all. The post-credits sequence does tease a new character for next week, so maybe that’ll shake the show up somewhat. Until then, though, the most interesting things about Aharen-san are its OP and ED. This one is just not for me.

The Takeaway: If you’re looking for something to put you to sleep, this might help. Otherwise? Unless you have a monstrously high tolerance for pure, uncut cotton, I would probably give this one a skip.

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 EXECUTIONER AND HER WAY OF LIFE is a Knife in Isekai’s Heart

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.

Try to count them and their numbers are endless. Their visages form a parade of baby faces and expressions of bitter smarm; Kazuto “Kirito” Kirigaya, Naofumi Iwatani, Rudeus Greyrat, Takuma “Diablo” Sakamoto. They are ordinary until they aren’t. They are you, dear viewer, and all the strengths and flaws they think you have. They are everyone and no one. For a while, starting up The Executioner and Her Way of Life, it seemed as though we might be able to add a new face to that list.

But looks can be deceiving, and those paying attention will note there is no mention of a “His” anywhere the title. If our little friend there is the main character of some story, it isn’t this one. The show’s opening episode takes just enough time to lead anyone going in blind (like say, yours truly) on that I imagine not everyone will get through it. The ingredients of a deeply generic series are here; That Guy is summoned to another world, ends up in a rough situation, and is pitied and taken care of by an attractive female lead who seems destined to play second-fiddle to him.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, a general thought. It is perhaps no surprise that there are few genres of modern anime–few genres of mainstream television period–more maligned than the isekai series. And while any genre so large is bound to produce works that strike outside of the established mold, we have been living in the middle of our own Isekai World for a solid decade now. It’s not just that people are tired of the genre–although that certainly is part of it–it is that they are tired of what the genre represents. The all-shortcuts worldbuilding, the ambient misogyny, the imperialistic undertone of an average Japanese teenager being teleported to an unsullied world only to inevitably dominate it through (depending on the series) some combination of “modern knowledge” and sheer Main Character Status. The problem is far worse the lower the barrier to entry, but plenty of these have seeped into the anime mainstream for years now. Speaking personally, I ignore the vast majority of them unless I’m given good reason to not. Because of that, I’m content to generally not speak on them at all.

But I sort of have to here, because while I myself am pretty down on the genre, I don’t think I hate it nearly as much as whoever wrote Executioner does.

Credit should be given here. Having a bone to pick with something does not mean you understand it, necessarily. But in Executioner‘s opening minutes we get some expository worldbuilding that is displays an intuitive understanding with all the unfortunate implications built into your ISO Standard Isekai Story. The world of the series is frequently visited by “Lost Ones”, people who come from a mysterious otherworld called–you may have heard of it–Japan. Lost Ones are summoned via various means (a scheming king is how our Potato-kun friend ends up here), and inevitably end up bringing knowledge to the world. Our nominal protagonist assumes he can contribute to this tradition, mentioning the wonders of mayonnaise (seriously), to which his tour guide, the aforementioned female co-protagonist Menou (Iori Saeki), replies that it’s “pretty tasty.” Banter of this nature continues; he naturally assumes he will be given free shelter and money since Menou is a priestess (he’s right on the first count, wrong on the second), he idly remarks that another Lost One he saw be summoned “had big boobs”, etc.

Can’t you just feel her enthusiasm?

All the while, Menou patiently explains to him that the world is divided into three classes–Commons (ordinary people), Noblesse (nobles and kings), and Fausts (the clergy, the only one with a slightly odd name) –and it becomes rather difficult for the viewer to not notice that whatever language(s) may have once been spoken in this world, they’ve all been supplanted by Japanese.

So, you have an arrogant asshole of a protagonist who thinks he’s god’s blessing upon this wonderful world despite all evidence to the contrary, and the broad implication that at some point at least some former Lost Ones may have Done An Imperialism with the help of their powers. (Of course they gain magic powers upon being summoned to the new world. This is still an isekai we’re talking about.) But if Executioner stopped there we’d merely be in vaguely ReZero-ish territory. Instead, when Menou helps this guy figure out that his magical power is “Null,” the ability to straight-up erase anything he’d like from existence, she does this.

Again, no “His” in the title.

The lead-on is a touch obvious, maybe. I could tell even from the first few scenes that this wasn’t going to be a straightforward isekai power fantasy, but I was legitimately surprised to see our heroine–our actual protagonist, mind you–straight-up stab someone in the damn head. Really, I shouldn’t have been. It’s right there in the name; she’s an executioner.

If all Executioner had up its sleeve was this single twist, though, I wouldn’t be writing about it at this much length. The fact of the matter is that the series immediately tosses a wrench into its own assumptions as soon as she does the deed. She spares a prayer for him, proving the priestess thing as no ruse, and says that in truth, at least by her own reckoning, he did nothing wrong.

Over the remaining half of the episode, we get a good amount of insight into Menou’s character. She has dreams that imply that she herself might be from another world; a world where she’s an ordinary high school girl and has a best friend who she misses dearly. Her religious devoutness is sincere, and she chastises her clingy lesbian cohort Momo (Hisako Kanemoto) for casual blasphemy. And she has a casual, friendly relationship with one of said religion’s archbishops. (In general, this religion seems awfully Christianity-ish. But whether that’s foreshadowing or just a straight use of a pretty typical fantasy trope is hard to say at this early juncture.) All this works to establish her as someone who grits her teeth and plays this role because she thinks it’s the right thing to do, not necessarily because she finds it pleasant.

In flashback, we learn how she was brought into the fold of “the church”‘s executioners; by being the only survivor of a Lost One accidentally destroying a whole town.

There is some pretty wild imagery in here; the Lost One in question transforming into a huge giant made of white ash after being killed by a different executioner. That’d be the vindictive Flare (Yuuko Kaida), who at the conclusion of the flashback becomes Menou’s mentor.

By now, you get the idea. This is a series that wants to very seriously examine the underlying assumptions of the isekai power fantasy. But the question naturally becomes; once it breaks the genre down, what does it intend to rebuild it into? And in the answer to that question we will find Executioner’s long-term success or failure.

There is always a temptation to refer to things like this as “deconstructions” of the genres they, at least in part, are built to criticize the foundations of. I do not use that word in my writing–not without heavy couching, at the very least–but to me this series does seem to aspire to a certain casual definition of the term. I said before that Executioner feels like it was written by someone who hates isekai, but it’s totally possible that the very opposite is true. Rarely is it easier to see the faults within a genre than when you’re a huge fan of it, and lest we forget, it absolutely is possible to still use this story format for interesting, compelling ends. (Not for nothing was Princess Connect! Re:Dive my favorite anime of last season.)

At the very least, Executioner seems allergic to easy outs. In addition to our protagonist’s own judgment of her morality, the task she’s sent upon at episode’s end involves seeking out another Lost One, who seems suspiciously evocative of the girl from her dreams. (And who herself dreamed of the other world before arriving there.) The question then becomes, obviously, how hardline she’s willing to be, and what Executioner can do with whatever the result is. The episode ends on this cold confrontation, questions hanging in the air with answers far off and out of sight.

Personally, I’m absolutely fascinated by this series. (Its devastatingly kickass OP helps, too.) But I will admit that I’m something of a genre outsider. So for any true isekai fans who happen to read this, I’d be interested to see what such might think of it.

As for everyone else? It’s been a strong season already, but there’s something special about this one, I can feel it.

The Takeaway: Unless you’re simply averse to the very premise, I’d give Executioner at least a few episodes. For some of you, the mere fact of seeing Cute Anime Girls go all stone-cold killer might be enough of a draw. And hey, if that’s so, no judgment from me.

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 Uncategorized

Seasonal First Impressions: Conquering the Pop World with YA BOY KONGMING!

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.

Have you ever thought to yourself; “what if classical Chinese military strategist Zhuge Kongming was transported through time to the present day and became an idol manager?” Well, if you have, then you’re a very strange person. Or you’re the original writer of Ya Boy Kongming! One or the other.

Anime as a medium is sometimes underrated (or occasionally, even ridiculed) in its ability to just casually roll with absurd elevator-pitch concepts. A legend of East Asian military strategy as the manager for a modern-day pop singer? Sure, why not. It should surprise no one that the “mechanics” of how Kongming (Ryoutarou Okiayu) ends up in modern Japan are pretty vague and are glossed through briskly in the show’s opening minutes. There’s something about a dying wish for “a life without bloodshed” in his next life, but beyond that it isn’t elaborated upon much. That’s just fine, because Ya Boy Kongming! is primarily a comedy, and when it does dip into other modes it has the good sense to only touch very briefly on how the whole Samurai Jack-ian “flung into the future” thing works. There are other things to be focused on here.

Instead, he wakes up in a random alley in modern Japan during a Halloween celebration. A pair of randos drag him to a club, where one of them makes him drink some tequila. He then comes to the obvious conclusion; he’s in Hell.

It will shock you, I’m sure, to learn that I–a professional anime critic–am not really the clubbing type.

But then, he hears the voice of an angel in this clamorous and disorienting place. That voice belongs to Eiko Tsukimi (Kaede Hondo when speaking, 96Neko when singing), who quickly establishes herself as Kongming’s co-protagonist.

She ends up taking him home because he gets blackout drunk. (This is kind of crazy, if you ask me, and she seems to think so too; muttering to herself that she “must be a saint.”) The following day, she–somewhat reluctantly–helps him adjust to the modern world, all the while still being mostly convinced that he’s just a guy who’s gotten way too into method acting. (Everyone seems to think this, in fact, including Eiko’s boss, who ends up hiring him because he, too, is a Three Kingdoms-era history nerd.)

This is all pretty funny, and Kongming goes from totally lost about present-day society to reasonably able to navigate his way around a smartphone in surprisingly short order. (A joke in here even implies that he learns about cryptocurrency. Truly a terrifying thought.)

Given all this, one might reasonably assume that Kongming! is purely a screwball comedy. But while the series is definitely funny, it’s not only funny, and the fact that it understands that having a beating heart under the gags is important speaks to a certain consideration of its own goals that isn’t ever a given with anime. (Or for that matter, art in general.) The turn begins when Eiko sings a song in her bedroom, seemingly as much for herself as to comfort Kongming. (Who is, understandably, a bit blue over, you know, everyone he knows and loves having been dead for almost 2,000 years, his country having long since fallen, etc.) Eiko has a seriously powerful voice, and the fact that she’s such a good singer is hugely important here, because Kongming!, remember, is also an idol anime.

Eiko’s whole situation is given as much focus as Kongming’s own unusual circumstances. She’s a bartender and sometimes-club singer. And while her boss is a decent guy in his own way, the job itself seems pretty dead-end. This, and the fact that she keeps failing auditions, makes her consider quitting music altogether. When Kongming asks what drew her to music in the first place, we get a pretty damn bleak flashback to her high school years. The short version; she was nearly a train-jumper, until the man who’s now her boss literally grabbed her out of the way. Taking her to his club to perhaps jolt her out of the whole idea, Eiko is moved by an American guest singer’s performance. This whole idea; that music can sometimes quite literally save people, is at the very core of the idol genre, and snaps Kongming! pretty firmly into place within said genre’s modern zeitgeist.

Plus, on a basic level, all this helps Eiko feel like an actual co-protagonist instead of a backup character. But more importantly, it nails down the show’s stakes. Kongming! appears to want to be both a goofy comedy with a casually fantastical premise and a heartfelt story of a struggling musician trying to succeed in a difficult industry. That’s a hard line to tow, but at least one other idol anime in recent memory managed it. If it worked once, what’s to stop it from working again? The show’s general character helps a lot, too. In both more lighthearted and comparatively serious moments, it has a vibrancy to it that’s easy to take for granted but should always be properly appreciated when it’s there.

The episode ends with Kongming convincing Eiko to keep at it–though by phrasing it that way I’m way underselling the scene, which is legitimately heartwarming–and offering her “his services.” What services? Why, just the finest military mind of Chinese Antiquity. Turned toward helping her make it as a musician, naturally.

Grade: B+
The Takeaway: While the apparently history nerd-baiting nature of its premise may scare some off, this is a show with a huge amount of potential, and fans of “music stories” like this should definitely check this one out.

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

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

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

And so, the season begins with a doozy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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