Tag: 2024 winter anime season

Posted on in anime, Anime Orbit Weekly

Anime Orbit Seasonal Check-in: No, Seriously, What The Hell is Going on in ISHURA?

Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week.

Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.

Bad anime are fascinating things.

I would argue that there are two pretty distinct types of bad anime. There are anime that are trashy—which have an open disregard for artistic aims beyond “be cool”, a mentality that can lead to shows that are the anime equivalent of empty calories—and there are anime that are boring, which may aim to be Serious Art but profoundly fail at it. ISHURA, an isekai battle royale political intrigue fantasy thing that aired its seventh episode this week, asks; need this be a dichotomy at all? What if, for example, it was possible to be both trashy and sometimes fun, but also tedious and dull? Not at the same time, obviously, but in alteration?

We’ll get into the specifics of that, but in a lot of ways, my main thought about ISHURA, a show I would say I have decidedly mixed feelings on, is just that it is an extremely ’20s anime. Ten years ago, it was not entirely clear how vast the endless appetite for isekai light novel adaptations truly was, so I can’t see it getting made then. Ten years from now, I imagine this market—maybe the entire industry—will have collapsed. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s just my call on things. ISHURA‘s defenders, however, of which there are a surprising amount, will point to a few merits that make them hold the show in more regard than your run-of-the-mill narou-kei adaptation, and argue these are reasons that ISHURA not only got an adaptation, but deserved to get one. Let’s run those down.

1: the action scenes – ISHURA has, in the rare occasion it’s actually gone full-tilt with them, admittedly had some cool fights. These are, though, uniformly sloppy despite the surface-level wow factor. The direction is there, but it struggles against wonky CGI and inconsistent animation quality. In the most recent episode there was a moment where there was very visibly and obviously a cut missing. If I, a random viewer with no formal animation training whatsoever, can notice that kind of thing, there are issues with your pipeline. In spite of these imperfections, I’ll concede that these are easily the show’s best moments, because they’re fun in spite of all that.

2: the worldbuilding – Frankly, I understand this argument the least. ISHURA‘s plot is a confusing, dull tangle of lore dumps, proper nouns, fantasy geopolitics (complete with our old friend, Ye Olde Fantasy Racisme, although it’s not as major a factor here as it is in many competing isekai), and silly character names that I am not going to do the show the favor of trying to summarize here. The world they take place in is an obvious step up from the infinitely-xeroxed settings of many fantasy isekai, but there is a difference between worldbuilding being interesting and there simply being a lot of it, and I place ISHURA firmly in the latter category, despite a few cool details like the presence of a faction of talking wyverns. I will admit the magic system seems neat, but it’s not interesting enough to devote most of an episode to explaining it at length, which ISHURA of course, does. That particular expository scene takes place in a hot spring, which takes us to our third point.

3: the babes – Many people probably think of themselves as being above watching something because it has attractive women in it. I am not “many people,” and, from what I gather, neither are most ISHURA fans. That said, with one exception, I don’t find ISHURA‘s cast to be a standout in this regard. (Which is kind of weird, because the studio behind this series are longtime ecchi peddlers Studio Passione.) None of the men really do it for me either, sadly.

Let’s talk about that exception, though, because she’s indicative of both ISHURA‘s obvious weaknesses and, conversely, its strengths. I think by looking at her, we see the show itself in microcosm.

This is Nihilo [Rie Takahashi]. Full name Nihilo the Vertical Stampede (no relation to Vash). She has short purple hair, a smug streak a mile wide, and has wires that look like old iPod earbud cords coming out of her back. I think she’s basically the perfect woman and I love her more than every other character in this show put together.

I felt the need to include two screenshots because the first one is so dark that it’s honestly kind of hard to see her. I’m not sure why anime have started taking lighting cues from Game of Thrones, but I hate it.

I will not sit here and pretend that Nihilo is a terribly well-written character. She has an easy to understand motivation (she wants to be treated like a person instead of a living weapon, to very much boil it down), which is nice, but we’re not exactly breaking new ground there, and this is the case for most of the show’s characters. What’s more important than all that is that in the most recent episode, she climbs, naked, into a giant spider mecha that somewhat inexplicably has its own name and title. As she did this, and as she sped off cackling about how she felt free and had her “body” back, it occurred to me that maybe I was just watching ISHURA in the wrong way.

This isn’t a get-out-of-jail free card, to be clear. Episodes 3, 4, 5, and 6—a good chunk of the show—are mostly just unforgivably dull. But, there is a certain “smacking action figures together” appeal to the show’s stronger moments, particularly when any of the shuras (as its various Powered Individuals are called) fight each other. Perhaps that’s all you’re really supposed to get out of ISHURA. Pick a favorite character—or a couple favorite characters, I’m also partial to the in-way-over-his-head, wyvern hating general Harghent [Akio Ootsuka] and the skeletal Shalk [Kouichi Yamadera], who also has a nice turn in this episode as he fights the show’s alleged protagonist—cheer when they’re onscreen, and sit through the rest of the show while just barely paying attention.

That’s not really an endorsement on its own, and I would still describe ISHURA as easily the least essential of the anime I’m watching this season. Plus, if it ever slows down so much that we get back to episodes 3-6 levels of tedium, I will be very sad. But episode 7 is at least, you know, fun? Fun is worth something. The show’s massive ensemble cast also makes it so that you never really know quite what you’re getting with each subsequent episode, and I do get why that appeals to people in a landscape where every isekai feels interchangeable.

ISHURA‘s appeal is, in many ways, the appeal of seasonal anime in general; you really never do know for sure what you’re going to get! Sometimes you get excellent adaptations of great source material (Delicious in Dungeon, Sengoku Youko), solid genre work (The Wrong Way To Use Healing Magic), fun surprises (Brave Bang Bravern!, Bucchigiri?!), or things that are just totally inscrutable (Metallic Rouge). And, sometimes, you get one of these. If I had to compare ISHURA to anything, it would be Big Order, another light novel adaptation, and one that has found cult “so bad it’s good” status in the near decade since it aired. I’m not sure if ISHURA is committed to the bit enough that it could ever get there, but it seems to be making a run for it.

And yet, at the same time, I’m left wondering if that’s really enough to make up for its many obvious deficiencies.

From its instantly-polarizing opening episode, wherein ostensible female lead Yuno [Reina Ueda, in one of the weirdest miscasts in recent memory] sees her girlfriend brutally murdered in front of her by giant, hulking magitek robots, I knew I would have complicated feelings on ISHURA. I’ve wanted to like it in spite of that, because I think people are often too hard on stories that open on a down note. But it’s become clear that ISHURA is really just interested in shock value and spectacle. That first episode really is quite visually impressive, and the most recent follows suit.

Those are fine things to aim for, but is it really so much to ask that the series have decent pacing and just a little more thought put into it, in addition to that? I’m content to classify ISHURA as a guilty sometimes-pleasure, but it would really be nice if it could be more than that. That it’s not just makes me wonder about what could’ve been.

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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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, Anime Orbit Weekly

Anime Orbit Seasonal Check-in: METALLIC ROUGE and The Nightmare of Fabrication

Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week.

Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.

There are a lot of things that Metallic Rouge is not; it isn’t Serial Experiments Lain, it isn’t Ergo Proxy, etc.. But in its cyberpunk themes and non-linear storytelling, it has kinship with those anime and anime like them. This makes it rather unique in the present anime landscape, and it’s why I’ve been rooting so hard for the series despite not always being able to discern what it was trying to do with all its decidedly charged imagery and androids-as-minorities symbol politics.

Indeed, that’s been my sticking point with the show; pulling off actual, meaningful commentary on the contemporary political landscape is difficult, and most shows that try end up with their foots firmly in their mouths. For its first episode, I was willing to give it some grace. Since then, I’ve gone back and forth on how I feel about the series’ use of androids as a distinct social class. There’s a lot to be said about the show’s use of the charged imagery of police brutality and violence visited upon minorities, particularly people of color, how the characters being subjected to this imagery are androids that just look like people of color, and the bizarre worldbuilding choices that make this all the worse. The kindest possible interpretation—which many people will, understandably, not be inclined to take—is that this is a blunt-force tool wielded, somewhat clumsily, by a show that may have its heart in the right place but seems to not really understand entirely what it’s doing. (At the very least, Metallic Rouge seems to understand that things like police brutality and segregation are bad.) Thus, roughly, is my read on the series’ first four episodes.

Episode 5, though, is something else entirely, and I think if the series more solidly finds its footing, it will be off the strength of material like this rather than in political material that it seems unsure of how to handle. For episode 5, we largely (though not entirely) put aside the brewing conflicts in the series’ world. Instead, Rouge finds herself aboard a space-travelling circus, where she’s sedated by the decidedly creepy troupe leader, a character who identifies himself only as The Puppetmaster [Hiroshi Yanaka].

In his decidedly sketchy care, Rouge is plunged into the world of her own memories, and we’re treated to a warped, kaleidoscopic walk through her life story. Doing this instead of giving it to us straight is brilliant. It immediately makes this the most engaging episode of Metallic Rouge so far, and it gives us plausible room to doubt what we’re seeing. It gets us guessing. Are the strange visions Rouge witnesses reasonable reconstructions of actual events, symbolic codes that map to actual events, or just made up entirely, the result of the Puppetmaster rooting around in her mind, looking for the mysterious ‘Eve Code’, as he helpfully tells us he’s doing?

Memories of Rouge’s childhood—such as it was—blend together with conversations with her ‘brother’ Jean [Shunsuke Takeuchi], where vengeance is sworn upon the Nine Immortals who killed the pair’s father. Rouge’s first meeting with Sarah Fitzgerald is inextricably entangled with that of her death, of the blood on Rouge’s own hands. Gene plays a somber song on the piano; a bird drops from the sky into it and dies. A caterpillar crawls up the strut of the piano lid and morphs into a butterfly. People swap in and out freely, to Rouge’s apparent ignorance. The Puppetmaster looks on, trying to coerce what he needs out of Rouge’s subconscious mind.

It’s almost disappointing when the episode snaps back to reality later on, even though it means we get a pretty great fight scene involving a gothic lolita character who I really hope comes back.

It’s too late by then anyway, the Puppetmaster has what he wants, and Rouge cannot remember her ordeal when Naomi finds her again. Metallic Rouge may never get back here, but that it was here at all matters. Sitting alone in his throne room of sorts, the Puppetmaster says that Rouge will find him again when she’s truly free. We are left to wonder if such a thing is possible for Rouge. And here, at the end of what is easily Metallic Rouge’s best episode thus far, it flags in the wind, unanswered.

I don’t want to paint a picture where I say that Metallic Rouge‘s attempts at political commentary are worthless. They’re not, in a landscape where the bar is, unfortunately, often very low, even trying at all counts for something. But it’s definitely thin on the ground. I think what this episode delves into, a more psychological and personal approach to its characters, (along with some of the more genre-y sci fi stuff that I’ve not discussed here, which has been a strength of the series since its first episode) could really benefit the series in the long run as it approaches its halfway mark.

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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 First Impressions: WONDERFUL PRECURE is Doggone Great

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.

“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.“

-Zhuangzhi

After last year’s season proved that adults, magic babies, and even boys can be Precures, Wonderful Precure continues the trend by introducing the first Cure who is buppy. An absolute good girl. A magical woofer. What I’m telling you is that the lead character of this season is a literal dog. Truly, we are breaking new ground here.

It’s a little meaningless to ask ourselves if this is a “gimmick” or not. Precure seasons tend to make pretty heavy use of loose visual themes, so in some sense they’re all gimmicks, other than perhaps the original Futari wa team. (And even they had the whole black/white duality. Plus the hand-holding thing.) It’s more important to acknowledge that, for however silly this premise may seem on its surface, Wonderful Precure‘s first episode is exactly that. It’s a significantly more low-key affair than last year’s opening blast of explosive punch, but it trades that in for a surprising amount of character depth given the relatively short amount of time we get to know the characters in question.

It goes something like this; Iroha [Atsumi Tanezaki] and her cute little dog Komugi [Maria Naganawa] live in the happy burg of Animal Town, a place known for how much its residence love their pets. We open, as so many magical girl anime do, on a typical day. Iroha is late for school, and Komugi wants to play but sadly, her human can’t stay. Anyone who’s ever owned a pet knows this whole song and dance, and it makes for a cute and relatable opening few minutes of the show.

Pictured: The main character of the show, and a human.

Komugi herself, despite still very much being nothing but an ordinary dog at this point, is given a fair bit of internality here as well. While Iroha is away at school, Komugi dreams a sad little dog nightmare about how she and Iroha will always live separate lives. That sadness is here represented by a washed-out shade of denim-y blue-grey, and a pair of shadow girls who look like they’re on leave from Revolutionary Girl Utena, representing Iroha’s human friends.

Iroha herself seems very kind and peppy, it’s clear she loves animals, as in when she hollers a greeting at the cat in a window of a local Pretty Holic shop just opening up in her neighborhood. That cat, Yuki [Satsumi Matsuda], is a haughty little furball in the classic cartoon mold, and seems to lightly scold her own owner Mayu [Reina Ueda] when the latter actually hides upon hearing Iroha’s cheerful how-do-ya-do at her cat. One gets the sense that she’s very shy and anxious, a likely hint toward the direction her own character development will take in later episodes.

Finally, there’s Satoru [Takuma Terashima] and his pet bunny Daifuku, who are introduced as the former studies a local landmark called the Mirror Rock. Satoru seems to be our supporting boy, at the moment, a character archetype many previous seasons of Precure have used to greater or lesser effect. He gets flustered when Iroha chats him up and it’s clear the two already know each other, so if you want to place your bets on who the token puppy-love interest is here, it’s probably him.

Daifuku does rather little in the few minutes they’re on screen, but still manages to convey an immense amount of personality just by Looking Like That.

This early part of the episode is very character-driven, and it does a great job of balancing all of these different introductions, giving us just enough of a look into these characters (both pet and human!) to tell us what they’re like, while firmly foregrounding Komugi and Iroha as the show’s actual leads. Frankly, it’s actually fairly light on any indication that this is even is a magical girl anime. Only a brief cut over to a mysterious, sinister-looking orb and a demonstration of its corrupting effects on a land of magical talking animals reminds us that this is a Precure series we’re watching, and the more typically mahou shoujo genre elements largely only emerge in the episode’s second half. It’s worth noting, though; the orb seals all of these animals in magical black eggs. These are, it would seem, our local plot devices this time around.

In the episode’s second half, Iroha, at a dog park with Komugi, has an encounter with a giant, rampaging sheep that seems to have been taken over by some sort of sinister force, which we shortly learn is termed “garugaru.” (The work of the aforementioned orb, no doubt.)

Iroha is able to distract the beast, helping a local boy out of danger, but she fails to account for the sheer speed of the thing, and the fact she’s now in danger herself. Komugi, initially trembling at the sight of this monster, rushes in to save her owner, despite being outmatched in comparison to this angry ram creature in just about every respect.

You can probably guess what happens next.

That “three, two, wan!” countdown is ungodly cute.

Yes, suddenly filled with magical energy, Komugi becomes a real, entire human girl, and then transforms into a Precure. Every Cure’s first henshin is an event, and Komugi’s is just as much of one as any long-time fan would expect. The new Cure Wonderful’s approach to fighting the monster is novel, as she doesn’t really attack it per se (perhaps owing to the fact that the baddies this time around are, you know, animals). Instead, she blocks its own attacks with a giant, paw-shaped shield and chases it around to wear it out.

Finally, when it’s exhausted and cornered, she realizes it’s in pain, and gives it a gentle hug, which is enough to purify it and turn it back into a regular sheep.

What this simple textual description leaves out is the sheer amount of personality the animation has here. Cure Wonderful is, on the inside at least, still a jumpy little puppy, and she’s drawn as such even as a human and even when in her magical girl form. It’s honestly just absolutely delightful, and if this is any indication of how the character will be written and drawn going forward, we’re in for a year of adorable, fuzzy charm.

But let’s give some credit to Iroha, too, who ends the episode in exactly the fashion you’d expect a baffled middle schooler to respond to their dog suddenly turning into a person. At first, she has no idea who this girl is and wonders where her cute little dog went. Then, as the facts of the situation slowly dawn on her, she is completely dumbfounded. Her expressions really must be seen to be believed, especially when she tries the whole “give me your paw” trick on the newly-human Komugi and the former dog still responds as expected.

All told, and to the surprise of few, Wonderful Precure marks another fantastic opening episode for a series that has gotten very, very good at doing those. It’s already February, but I think I can safely predict that we’re in for a wonderful year.

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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 First Impressions: Breaking Down the Madness of BRAVE BANG BRAVERN!

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.

Anime with protagonists in the military are a bit of a tough sell for me, for a variety of reasons, with only a couple of exceptions. Thus, when I went into Brave Bang Bravern!, the latest from CygamesPictures (and a rare original from them), it was mostly off the strength of its staff. That studio, Masami Ōbari involved as the director, etc. I had no idea what to expect, since all promotional materials suggested that this was going to be on the “fairly realistic war drama” end of the spectrum, as far as mecha anime go. You know, your Gundams and such.

In hindsight, there were several tells that this wasn’t exactly the case. For one thing, there’s that title; “Bravern” does not sound really sound like the name of a robot in that sort of thing. But I admit that’s a dubious imperfect metric (“Gundam” doesn’t necessarily sound like that either). And secondly, Obari is not really known for being involved in anime that are, in basically any way, down to Earth. So this show, with its JSDF mecha brigade protagonist Isami [Ryouta Suzuki], seemed like an outlier.

All this in my head, I went into Bravern a bit skeptical and very unsure of what to actually expect. To the show’s credit, that uncertainty turned out to be intentional. On the other hand, I’m still not entirely sure to what end precisely it’s doing all this, but there’s something to be said for going for broke, and I think there’s some good evidence that Bravern‘s heart is in the right place, as we’ll get to.

As for what it’s actually about, well, we open in the middle of a joint US / Japan / a couple other countries it’s not totally clear mecha training exercise, as one does, where Isami wins the day in-simulation by storming an enemy position by himself, backed up only by US Titanostrider pilot Lewis Smith [Youhei Azakami]. This opening scene portrays Isami as a classic wild gun, loose cannon sort. He goes against orders to do this, and is duly reprimanded, but the narrative seems to paint him in the opening half of the first episode here as a guy Willing To Do What Must Be Done. You know the sort if you’re familiar with any even vaguely macho military fiction.

As it turns out, this is the first of several fakeouts. The characterization of Lewis as a stock cool guy, on the other hand, seems pretty accurate. The show’s opening minutes do a lot to build up a tense but ultimately still friendly rivalry between the two. At one point, Lewis challenges Isami to a mecha showdown, asking if he’s not “brave enough” to accept, in a bit of fun foreshadowing.

The second fakeout dispels any idea that this is going to be a grounded, politically-driven mecha series. Somewhere in a control room, an alarm suddenly blares and a mysterious object appears on-screen. You know the deal here, too, most likely; an invasion from space, they show no mercy. The same bullet points that indie game ZeroRanger memorably pared down to their barest, most elemental form in its opening cutscene. They’re treated with a similar, perfunctory but punchy approach here. The invasion is swift and brutal, some real War of the Worlds shit as the aliens stride in, coldly levelling anything and anyone in sight with their pinkish UFO-mecha. This is about where most people might assume they’ve got Bravern figured out, if they’re entering sight-unseen. Those people would be wrong.

The situation falls to pieces quickly enough that the group who engaged in training exercises early on are left to fend for themselves. Isami tries and fails to save some of his comrades, including his blue-haired girl buddy Hibiki [Yume Miyamoto]. He does not do well, and it really seems like this is the end for Isami right up until the exact moment that one of the enemy’s blazing lasers is intercepted by an equally-bright green flash from the heavens above. Enter the show’s title character, Bravern [Kenichi Suzumura], a giant robot of a very different sort than we’ve seen up to this point.

Regardless of anything else I have or will ever say about this show, the turn-on-a-dime “what the actual fuck” spectacle of what happens here is absolutely immaculate. It’s the best capital A-M Anime Moment of the year so far. It is some absolutely cool as fuck nonsense. Isami goes from a foot soldier to plunged into the cockpit of Bravern, a dyed-in-the-wool super robot in the classic mold and a character in his own right. He has a flaming sword, he fires blasts of green energy, he arrived on a beam of green energy. He has diegetic in-cockpit theme music. It is a few absolutely wonderful, absurd, totally ridiculous minutes, and even if everything else this show does ends up absolutely paling in comparison, it will always have this.

It’ll also always have its actual, real opening credits, which seem designed with that same classic, old-school mentality in mind; a steel aircraft carrier beneath an azure sky, glowing, neon outlines around a cast of menacing, gargantuan robot silhouettes aglow with neon lines that we have yet to meet. It’s awesome. It promises a lot. Delivering on that is going to be the hard part, but it’s a promising sign that, as he sits in Bravern, Isami realizes that when he was a kid with dreams of justice, he didn’t really want to be a spec. ops. guy, a fighter pilot, a tank driver, or even a Titanostrider operator. He wanted to be a hero.

All of that is to the show’s benefit, because from here on out, starting in episode two which I’m also covering here, figuring out what this series even is becomes a lot more complicated. Because, you see, in addition to being a willful juxtaposition of super robot science-fantasy against a fairly gritty invasion story sort of thing, Bravern is also….a BL-inflected comedy.

No, really. Buckle in, because this is where things get weird weird.

When we see Isami at the start of the second episode, he’s being detained by some shadowy group or another and very literally tortured. This is a pretty sharp tonal departure from the end of the last episode, but what’s intercut with it is even stranger; Bravern, attempting to explain the situation to the group of military officials still gathered on the aircraft carrier and them largely not understanding. To be fair to them, his explanations include a lot of shouting his own name, Isami’s name, and doing things like relating his life story like a literal book complete with chapter titles. Also, his fixation on Isami is very clearly meant to resemble a gay crush, and his description of their first time “piloting” together very quickly becomes laden with so much innuendo that the term ‘subtext’ no longer feels sufficient. The show playing this for comedy is….a little blue, to say the least. (As is the show’s apparent intentional juxtaposition here. Isami is literally being tortured, the military officials are being ‘tortured’ by Bravern’s mannerisms. Eh.) Much of this seems designed to raise the question “what if the super robot you were piloting had a thing for you, and he was kind of annoying about it?”

By contrast, the actual situation Bravern’s explaining is pretty dire. The peril invading their world is an alien invasion of bio-machines, spearheaded by eight ships called Deathdrives, each containing a swarm of mecha and a single more powerful unit. One of which, the blue anti-Bravern called Superbia, we meet here. Superbia and Bravern fight, of course. Since Isami is still being detained by some aloha-shirted torturer guy, Bravern comes very close to losing that fight, as he’s noticeably weaker without someone in the driver’s seat.

Isami has to be convinced to get back in Bravern, in true mecha anime fashion, as his, ahem, “first time,” was not had under the best circumstances and he’s still processing all this stuff. (That’s all text, by the way, I am doing very little interpreting here.) At one point, Lewis tries to pilot Bravern instead, sweet-talking to the big red boyscout with talk of how he, too, wants to save the world and everyone on it. This almost works, and we are treated to a delightfully goofy scene where the whole conversation is rendered like something out of an old shoujo series, but Bravern seems to be monogamous. No one gets in him but Isami, and that’s final.

When he finally does get in Bravern, the dynamic duo kick Superbia’s tailpipe, of course. Including a charming, doofy scene where Bravern goes in for the super move kill and then stops himself because he insists that he do a different one this time. It’s charming, it’s very silly, and I think all this taken together maps out Bravern as being focused on, in roughly this order; being awesome, being gay, and being funny. That’s not a bad thing to be, even if the finer details of its themes remain ambiguous. Isami still has military command to deal with, after all.

My bet, if I can try to manifest something into existence here, is that Isami’s emotional journey will be attached to his learning to grow out of this role he’s built for himself as a soldier—one he’s already very much leaving behind as of episode 2—and into the role of a real hero, and there’s one final piece of evidence that might support that reading.

Just when it seems like the second episode could not possibly get sillier, Isami’s clothes explode in the final minutes of its main closing scene, and he is stuck inside Bravern as the episode ends, in an apparent parody of that one Evangelion episode. A ridiculous gag with no further meaning? A symbol of him being forced to shed his “soldier’s uniform” and confront reality as it truly is? Both of these things, somehow? Bravern’s sheer absurdity practically demands this kind of overanalysis, even as it can absolutely just be enjoyed as pure entertainment.

All told, the operative adjective here is definitely “campy.” And there’s a lot that I haven’t mentioned, including our main mechanic character, Miyu [Ai Kakuma], whose interest in Bravern quickly gets into robotfucker territory. (She thinks he’s handsome. Can you blame her?) There’s a pretty great scene where a German official speculates in her native language with one of her cohorts that this whole thing might be some kind of ploy by the Americans, only for her to be loudly reprimanded with Bravern’s absolutely awful German. There’s the show’s bizarre, maybe intentionally funny? art style dimorphism between the men and the women, where the former look like they’re from a relatively grounded military series and the latter look like they’re from a KyoAni production. (Quite possibly also just reflective of the interests of main character designer Jae-Uk No.) There’s a gag where Bravern cuts off a government official by loudly yelling his transformation phrase (obviously, he can turn into a futuristic jet fighter) and flying away. The fact that this thing is clearly heavily inspired by—and might be part of? I’m not clear on this—the Brave series. The fact that Isami and Bravern’s shouts are out of sync the first time they do their finishing attacks. And on, and on, and on. There’s a lot to like here, a lot to be puzzled over, and a few things to take issue with. It adds up to one of the season’s best premieres, and certainly one of its most ambitious.

It’s totally possible that all of this completely flames out, of course. This has happened before. Giving a story tons of slack because it’s weird or absurd can lead to Magical Destroyers situations, or even, in a worst-case-scenario, a Darling in the FranXX. Still, what’s the point of flying close to the Sun if there’s no risk you’ll be burned? Icarus was a chump.

After a supremely homoerotic ED sequence, Bravern‘s second episode features a brief post-credits scene, where Lewis quite literally stumbles over a girl in a crashed UFO-like ship, by implication, this was the pilot of Superbia, and is our local Rei Ayanami. This fairly standard sci-fi twist after such a weird premiere made me absolutely redouble my commitment. More than anything else that’s premiered this season, for Bravern, I will be there no matter what. I have got to see where this goes. Join me if you’re brave enough.

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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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: Munch Squad for Monsters in DELICIOUS IN DUNGEON

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

There are two ways you can look at Delicious in Dungeon.

The first is as an adaptation of a very well-liked manga; a classic fantasy series with a notable twist and some strong worldbuilding that sets it apart from many of its peers, and a strong sense of characterization as well.

The second is as Studio TRIGGER’s first plain ol’ TV anime since SSSS.DYNAZENON three years ago.1 If we discount sequels, it’s their first since Brand New Animal back in 2020. It’s also the first full directorial turn for Yoshihiro Miyajima, who’s been part of the studio for years but has mostly done storyboarding and direction of single episodes.

Combined, these facets put Delicious in Dungeon‘s anime in an interesting (if not necessarily enviable) spot. Fans of the manga are largely going to demand fidelity to the source material. Long-time TRIGGER heads will be disappointed if the series doesn’t go all-out with explosive action animation. (This has never been all that TRIGGER is good at, but it remains the studio’s defining characteristic in the minds of its western fanbase at the very least.) So far, it seems like those who want a fairly straightforward adaptation of the manga are winning out.2 This first episode is, true to the opening chapters of the manga, fairly slow and expository, neatly setting up and then demonstrating our premise.

Speaking of, that premise is thus; some years ago, an ordinary village was disrupted by a fissure from the ground. From the fissure came the undead form of an ancient king, who promised riches to those who would liberate his kingdom from a wicked magician. The only problem? The kingdom, and the magician, are buried beneath what were once crypts and graves, but have through magical influence grown and warped into a massive, labyrinthine dungeon. Delicious thus marks itself out as one of the relatively few pieces of fantasy media that kind of cops Wizardry‘s Whole Thing but actually tries to explain how any of this—including such gamey staples as partying up, an entire ‘dungeon town’ economy, complete with in-universe resurrection in town upon dying, etc.—actually works, and integrate those mechanics into the story. From what I’ve read of the manga, it’s not always successful at this and I’ll admit to being a bit less enamored with Delicious in Dungeon than some, but it’s still a solid idea, and I give the series a fair amount of credit for trying.

As for whose story specifically we’re following, the anime opens as the manga does, with a party deep in the dungeon encountering a mighty red dragon—our second of the anime season, if you’ll remember the last article I wrote—which they cannot defeat. Of these adventurers; two quit, one, Falin [Saori Hayami], is eaten by the dragon, and the other three; Laios [Kentarou Kumagai], Marcille [Sayaka Senbongi], and Chilchuk [Asuna Tomari], are resurrected in town without a penny to their names, stuck in a pretty awful spot in that if they don’t hurry back to the bottom of the dungeon, Falin will be digested, and at that point there’s certainly no hope of resurrecting her at all. (Thankfully, we learn that dragons digest things very slowly. Still, our heroes are definitely on a clock here.)

So, with a little prodding from Laios, who seems awfully eager to try this in the first place, the party adopts an unorthodox approach which forms the crux of the whole series; they’ll live off of whatever they can procure in the dungeon, which means a whole lot of meals prepared from JRPG enemy staples like giant scorpions, slimes, ambulatory mushrooms, and so on.

The final piece of the puzzle here is the dwarf Senshi [Hiroshi Naka], who the party meets while trying (and failing) to prep scorpion meat. Senshi claims to have been researching monsters and the food that can be made from them down in the dungeon for over a decade. A fact Marcille openly questions, but nobody can fault his cooking prowess. Using the aforementioned Floor 1 mobs, Senshi is able to whip up a pretty tasty-looking stew, and goes into a fair amount of detail about how he’s doing so while he does it. This is the show’s essential appeal; the fun thought experiment of using a D&D Monster Manual as a cookbook.

All told, the premiere promises a fun if straightforward adaptation of the source material. What’s carried over particularly well is the character dynamics, which are enhanced by the obvious benefits of an anime adaptation (voice acting, character animation, and so on). Laios and Marcille have the best of it, here. The former is largely a lovable dumbass, whose fixation on eating monsters (considered strange even in-universe) contrasts with how Marcille is only going along with this very begrudgingly. Marcille’s delightfully bitchy, nervy personality in turn pings ineffectually off of Senshi, who is too busy imparting Cooking Wisdom to care. All three are rounded off by Chilchuck, who serves as a snarky sounding board in this early stage of the story.

Some specific scenes are worth highlighting; there’s a particularly great bit of comedic editing where Laios asks Marcille, just freed from the clutches of a predatory plant, how it felt. In his mind, since the plant has to secure prey (mostly animals) without making them uncomfortable enough to struggle, he thinks it probably feels pretty nice. Marcille’s reaction is this;

I didn’t edit that. (Although I will ask you to forgive my subpar screen-recording software.)

Elsewhere, the actual cooking scenes are the star of the show. This only makes sense, given that they’re the main draw of the series, and the pseudo-tart3 that Senshi prepares in the second half of the episode looks good enough that you’ll be a bit annoyed it’s not a real thing.

All told, this looks like a solid adaptation of an all-around good source manga. I fell off of said manga a while back (not for any reason to do with the story, to be clear, sometimes I just lose track of things), so it’s nice to be reminded of why I liked these characters in the first place. I think, despite the differing desires of the two main groups that are going to check this show out, everyone will walk away satisfied. There’s nothing to complain about here, and with a slated 24 episodes, the series looks to be a delicious two-cour-se meal of fun fantasy anime.

1: Cyberpunk: Edgerunners was a weird net animation thing. This series is being released by Netflix in the west as well, but as a simulcast rather than as something they directly funded, at least going by who’s listed as being on the production committee.

2: I know some folks were worried that TRIGGER might insert a bunch of extra fanservice that wasn’t in the original manga a la the Mieruko-chan anime or something. I’m not sure why people were worried about that, given that TRIGGER’s few other adaptations have been very faithful and straightforward, but if you’re in that crowd do rest assured that there’s nothing like that, here. Even in the one scene where there’d be an easy opportunity to add a bunch of extraneous ecchi material, they simply do not. Also, anyone who has read the manga knows that the character it’s horniest about is Senshi.

3: Pseudo because the crust isn’t edible. Which I guess makes it more like some kind of weird pudding?

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Dragons, Tigers, and Isekai in FLUFFY PARADISE

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

A new year means a new anime season; a fresh turn of the calendar page for a medium that, at least as far as TV anime goes, often feels defined by a chase for the next big cultural touchstone. 2024 does, in fact, have plenty of upcoming anime that look pretty promising, from the battle girl android action-yuri of Metallic Rouge to highly anticipated manga adaptations like Delicious in Dungeon, to whatever Jellyfish Don’t Swim in the Night is going to be. But today, January 1st, the very first anime to make its TV debut in 2024 is this; Fluffy Paradise. It’s an isekai, of course.

It’s hard to even feign shock at the sheer deluge of isekai series anymore, and to be honest talking about the genre’s saturation has started to feel pat. (Plus, there actually aren’t that many this season, compared to some seasons still fresh in memory where we’ve had up to ten airing at once.) So let’s just skip all that and get to the actual meat of this thing, or what meat of it there is anyway. For one thing, yes, this anime starts with the obligate scene of the protagonist dying in the ‘real world.’ I have to admit I’ve always found the fact that they seem to feel the need to show this directly kind of morbid and I’ve never totally gotten over that. For another, the protagonist, in her previous mundane life, kind of looks like Kobeni from Chainsaw Man, so hey, that’s something. (And this seems like something that would happen to Beni, given her rotten luck.)

The fact that she’s a woman in the first place shouldn’t go unnoticed, either. Isekai anime remains very lopsided in terms of protagonist gender, and it is nice to see one that’s not vaguely otome game-themed have a female lead.

Our girl is of course given the obligate talking-to by a deity who offers to compensate her for her short life by fixing things in her favor in the next. He does ask for her help with something rather specific in return, though. We’re told that in this world, humans are persecuting “non-human creatures,” complete with some silhouettes of what sure look like catgirls and doggirls and such. The show doesn’t really circle back around to this until the very end of this first episode, but it is the one point that sticks out.

I say this because much of Fluffy Paradise is frankly dull. It leaves no real impression for most of the length of its runtime. We could get into specifics about its plot and characters, but they feel so cursory in of themselves that there doesn’t seem like much a point. Our girl ends up in a very plain isekai setting, born (of course) to noble parents. There, she’s given the name Nefertima—Neema [Ai Kakuma] for short—and the show begins in earnest. The main focus here is that she wished to be able to “pet lots of fluffy things” as part of her reincarnation, so animals love her, and it’s from this that the series gets most of what flavor it does have.

Anywhere she goes, Neema is surrounded by a Disney Princess-esque parade of adorable animals. This extends even to befriending the divine “sky tiger” that she meets upon a visit to the royal palace. All of this is pretty cute, but it’s not really ever more than that, and even the few moments that seem like they’re trying to be vaguely transgressive (eg. a few mildly charged interactions between the three-year-old Neema and the teenage prince) don’t accomplish even that much. They’re too tame to even be tasteless.

Meh.

Arguably, the entire point of “cozy isekai” like this is that they never do too much. But by introducing that whole Man vs. Nature element at the start, the show inherently asks to be taken more seriously than as just another lazy Monday series. I’ll also admit, I tend to be a bit harsh on this subgenre in general. I’m a longtime iyashikei apologist, and even I tend to find that most of these “slow life” shows are boring rather than actually relaxing, usually owing to their iffy visuals and general lack of atmosphere.

The production values are decent, on that note, but come with their own set of caveats. The animation is just expressive and bouncy enough that Fluffy Paradise escapes the fate of its often-stiff isekai brethren. Even then, there are still a few spots that are disappointingly under-animated, such as a magical board game played in the episode’s middle portion. You could also be forgiven for not really noticing, because the actual art direction is very drab and generic. Pity any RinBot player with this and even just a few other isekai in their back catalogue, because they’d largely be indistinguishable. This is true of the setting as well; an ISO Standard vaguely European isekai setting with basically no characteristics to set it apart from its genre-fellows whatsoever. You can get away with this if your show is funny enough or has strong enough characterization (eg. in the case of In My Next Life as a Villainness! or such), but that’s not really the case here, and the nondescript visuals contribute to an overall feeling of interchangeability. This show could’ve aired at any point in the last decade and it wouldn’t seem out of place. That can be a good thing, but in Fluffy Paradise‘s case, it really isn’t.

But, there is a silver lining here, the one spot where the show seems willing to take a risk, and that’d be the dragon.

Bro thinks he’s Smaug.

In the episode’s closing minutes, Neema’s sister summons a dragon during a magic demonstration. We’re not told anything explicitly here but she sure seems intent on killing it, until Neema rushes out to get between her sister and the dragon. The episode ends on that note, providing a cliffhanger and a (theoretically at least) solid hook to bring people back next week. If Fluffy Paradise ever breaks out of the middling isekai box—and hey, it’s happened before—it’ll be there, with Neema as a defender of the world’s wild things against her fellow humans. Still, given everything else about the first episode, I don’t have a ton of faith it’ll actually follow through on this idea.

I could sit here and wax further about how there are just so many isekai and how it’s such an over-saturated genre and so on, but at some point you just have to let things be what they are. Fluffy Paradise seems basically fine as far as such things go, but it also seems solidly “safe.” There’s nothing in here that a hundred other anime haven’t done, and if I want to put on my Nostradamus hat and make big predictions, I kind of wonder if the lower amount of isekai this season means people aren’t maybe finally getting tired of this whole setup.* Who knows.

I won’t keep watching Fluffy Paradise, personally. But for the people who do, I legitimately hope it turns out to be better and more ambitious than I’m predicting here. In cases like this, I like to be proven wrong.

(Also, the ED is a cute thing with a lovely felt stop motion visual style. That counts for something, too.)

* A very rare after the fact edit from me, here. What was I talking about when I wrote this? This season is absolutely swamped with isekai.

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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblr 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.