Tag: anime review

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [11/29/21]

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.

Hello again, anime fans. I don’t have terribly much to say in my lead-in here. It’s been a bit of a week and I’m a bit struck by the winter blues. I hope you won’t begrudge me that this week’s column is only about two shows. For what it’s worth, I think they’re some of the best that have aired this year. One of 2021’s great stories comes to an end and another begins to hit its stride….

The Heike Story

A common nugget of wisdom holds to show, not tell, when weaving a story. But it’s a false dichotomy in some ways. In the Heike Monogatari, now concluded after eleven weeks, the showing and the telling are one in the same. Never has this been more true than in the series’ final act, where Biwa, fully embracing her role as a chronicler of fate, tells us of the Heike’s demise as we see it happen; two perspectives unified like the visions from her own mystical eyes.

The series’ finale is a thing of beauty. The Heike Clan make their final stand in a battle at sea. They lose, as we knew they would from day one. Many, including the young Emperor, cast themselves into the sea. It is not what you’d call a happy ending.

A common criticism I saw of Heike Monogatari during its airing is why, exactly, Biwa did not “do more” to help the Heike who are, after all, her adopted family. As a critique it makes some sense on the surface. She can see the future, and if anime has trained us to expect anything it’s that those with heterochromia and mysterious powers will intervene to stop bad things from happening. But I cannot help but think this is a simplistic view of both Biwa’s personhood and her situation. She is a witness to history; as we all are, in spite of whatever unique talents we may or may not have. Many of us could “do more” to change things with our own talents, yet we do not. If it is a character flaw on her part, it is one most of us share.

And then there’s the series’ moral, such as it is. A fundamental truth of the world; all things are impermanent. Everything dies, empires rise only to fall. What remains are the stories we pass down and the feelings we hold with us. That, truly, is all.

This is a theme that has run through some seventy years of anime history, but if one wanted to find contemporary examples, they would not need to look all that hard. Surely critics who have studied more classical literature than I have will point out that this is a “very Japanese” and “very Buddhist” theme. Perhaps these things are true, the series is based on a historical epic after all and such things are very much informed by their era and place. I also think, though, it may also be a warning against self-importance akin to what we often grant ourselves here in the Anglosphere. We treat ourselves as living at history’s end, but it continues to happen every day in spite of us.

Heike Monogatari‘s true triumph is to delve into the minds of those gone by; to make the past feel real by showing us the human beings behind history’s academic brushstrokes. In doing so, it reminds us that we are all mortal, and we are all witnesses. Like Biwa, many of us will live to see the fall of all kinds of empires. The only question is whether we will deign to sing about it.

I do my best to sing. Do you?

Ranking of Kings

I don’t usually pick shows up mid-season, but Ranking of Kings (known as the somewhat snappier Ousama Ranking in its home country) just didn’t give me much of a choice. “Positive buzz” is one thing, but Ranking on a pure visual level does not look like most anime. This is a reflection of the source material, which seems to draw both on a western-influenced fairy tale book influence and on older strains of anime, not many of which have particularly many artistic descendants in the modern day. So provably, even speaking aesthetically, Ranking stands apart from the usual seasonal grind. This would be interesting on its own, but without a strong story to back it up, it wouldn’t be worth much. Thankfully, Ranking stands as a buzzer-beater candidate for one of the year’s most unique anime from just about every angle. Its visual style could fool one into thinking it’s a happy, straightforward story, but the truth of the matter is that it’s more of a deliberate contrast against the complex character writing and political machinations that our lead, the Deaf Prince Bojji, finds himself caught in.

It’s an utterly fascinating little show, and eight episodes in I can confidently say I have no idea where it’s going to go from here. But what I can do is tell you where it’s been. Doing so alone should be enough for any skeptics to hop aboard the Bojji Train before it’s too late.

Our setup is pretty simple. Bojji is the eldest son of Bosse, the king of a nameless kingdom of which he was the founder. In the show’s opening act, Bosse dies, leaving the question of succession a difficult one. Bojji is Deaf, physically small, and has the misfortune of living in a distinctly fantasy-medieval setting. (Ranking effortlessly pulls off letting us into Bojji’s inner world without any spoken dialogue, but many of the adults around him tend to treat him with vague disdain, or at best, an infantilizing overprotectiveness.) He’s also not much of a swordsman, despite the guideship of his trainer Domas. Though interestingly, he’s great at dodging, a skill that has yet to quite pay dividends narratively but is sure to later.

In contrast to Bojji, there is his younger half-brother, Prince Daida. Daida is much more in the image of a traditional heir to the throne than Bojji. It is thus unsurprising that when Bosse passes away, the kingdom’s council of advisors votes to install Daida as the king instead of his older brother. One might initially think that the story’s central conflict will come down to Bojji’s quest to reclaim his rightful throne, and it may still circle back around to that eventually, but something that simple would not do justice to the sheer amount of stuff this series has covered so far.

For instance; adding fuel to the movement to replace Bojji as the heir apparent is that when Bosse passes away, a massive red devil appears and gestures at the prince. What does this mean? We still don’t know a good half-cour later.

Which is good, because that’s how you build some genuine mystery. Details like this are packed into every minute of Ranking’s runtime and things are only explained directly if absolutely necessary. As a watching experience, it’s engrossing, and doesn’t have much recent competition. I haven’t even brought up Bojji’s plus-one, his shadowy friend Kage who the prince won over with his kindness, and whose obligate backstory episode is one of the show’s highlights.

Some of this attention to detail might come down to Ranking‘s runtime; it’d feel rushed were it only one cour, but it’s thankfully two. (This sadly puts it out of the running for my top five list I’ll be publishing at the end of December. I’m sure the folks at Wit Studio are just heartbroken.)

I have to admit that I considered doing a writeup of this week’s episode as well, but in deference to those who have perhaps not started watching the show yet but might find it interesting based on what I’ve said, I will not do so. Next week, though, you have my promise! Stay strong in the meantime, Prince Bojji!

He’s a mighty little man.

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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, Reviews

(REVIEW) The Far End of Summer, SONNY BOY, and Me

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

“Rajdhani’s parrot laughs.”

Abstract art faces an inherent double standard. It must both earn its right to be non-literal in the first place, and is expected to eventually “make sense” to its audience. It’s an impossible task, to convey truths through symbolic language alone but to do so so clearly that it cannot be accused of pretension.

Sonny Boy has only just ended, so it is hard to say where, eventually, it will fall, in the public consciousness. Some abstract anime are eventually acclaimed as classics, others are derided as nonsense. Either way, the series stands as one of the most compelling of the year. Enough so that simply saying such can feel rote–or even worse, dogmatic. But sometimes the reason so many people think something is interesting is simply because it genuinely is. Sonny Boy stands as a rare moment where a truly out-there piece of art has managed to capture the imagination of the public at large. Even by itself, that is a huge achievement.

On a production level alone, Sonny Boy speaks for itself. Its character designs lean more realistic than most modern TV anime, making it immediately stand out, with characters being distinguished by face shapes and so on. Its backgrounds are painterly and convey, as needed, a sense of surreality or depict vivid, natural landscapes. Accompanying all this is a bold, sharp directorial approach that knows precisely when to fully cut loose, scored by a well-curated soundtrack of synthesizer pieces, indie rock, and, sometimes, dead silence. To some point, mentioning these things at all feels like box-ticking. It is obvious from watching even any few random minutes of the series that it looks and sounds fantastic. So the big question is not one of production then, it’s one of theme. What is Sonny Boy about?

In a very real sense; nothing less than our lost generation. Sonny Boy centers on a classroom of high schoolers sent, per their own words, “adrift.” References to The Drifting Classroom and Robinson Crusoe abound. The nature of the anomaly that shifts our cast from the mundanity of modern Japan into the chaotic randomness that is the Matroyshka Doll worlds-within-worlds land they end up in is never explained and is not really the point. Nor is the nature of the superpowers they get (no quirky name here, they’re just called “powers”) examined either. Sonny Boy is an exploration of what young people would do, given all the time in the universe to do it, and of the social systems that shape them into who they are.

Our ostensible main character is Nagara, a somewhat unassertive and otherwise unremarkable young man. But much of the cast get put under the microscope, always to interesting effect. Take for example Mizuho, whose principled nature clashes with the remnants of the student council. An entire early episode revolves around her unwillingness to apologize for a wrong she didn’t commit, and for this part of the series, Sonny Boy seems like it may conclude that any group of people, isolated and given enough time, will reinvent the worst aspects of the society they originally come from.

But, Sonny Boy abandons this comparatively straightforward, political strain of thought early on. (Consequently, there is a certain crowd who will be displeased that the show is not an effective handbook for revolution. So it goes.) As it marches through its twelve episodes, the series becomes increasingly big-picture and existential. Political themes give way to religious ones, which finally give way to the philosophical. So whatever one might think of Sonny Boy, they absolutely cannot fault it for lack of ambition.

Because our generation (Millennials, and, increasingly as they reach majority, “Gen Z” as well) is often derided as overgrown children rather than real adults, Sonny Boy earns its right to use an all-teen cast in this scenario even more than most would, given that it is us–the literally immature, and the spiritually immature–at whom Sonny Boy is directed. It feels deliberate that the only adults in the series are respectively an imposter playing at an authority they don’t truly possess (Ms. Aki) and someone so far removed and incomprehensible to the rest of the cast that they may as well be divinity (the Principal).

In this sense, Sonny Boy is that old metaphor, a ball of confusion. If it’s sometimes hard to tell quite what’s going on, well, it’s even harder to tell what’s going on in real life. I would say “especially when you’re young”, but it’s easy to argue that part of Sonny Boy‘s core thesis is that, in the grand scheme of things, we’re all young.

That, of course, could feel to some like a cop-out. One might want to know what all of this is building up to. And while the series certainly settles well into a role, in its midpoint, as a mint for surreal parables of the modern age, anyone wanting a broader, singular “point” might feel a little left in the cold.

If there is an overall message, it is what the character Rajdhani states in the penultimate episode and Nagara finally internalizes in the finale. The world–all worlds–are chaos in motion, “an endless exercise in vain effort”, as Rajdhani puts it. But in this seeming meaninglessness, there is beauty.

Call Sonny Boy, then, a treatise on optimistic nihilism. Life is, and then it isn’t. It is a hectic, meaningless thing, to hear Sonny Boy tell it. The other side of that, of course, is that that doesn’t have to be a bad thing.

The final words of the series, spoken by Nagara, are “Our lives are only beginning. What lies ahead will take just a little bit longer.” It’s a simple, almost prayer-like coda to a series that is otherwise anything but. Yet, a truth is a truth. Like some of its peers that have aired this year and in the recent past, all Sonny Boy asks of us is to take care of one another and do our best. All we can do is make the most of what we have, and all we have is ourselves and each other.

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

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

Posted on in anime, KeyFramesForgotten

(PODCAST) KeyFrames Forgotten Episode 3 – WINDY TALES

Our third episode arrives some months late. Forgive us, folks! This whole podcasting thing is hard. More importantly; Windy Tales is a lovely, subtle little show from Production IG’s mid-2000s period with an unconventional art style and a lot to say about the impermanence of all things. You can listen to the podcast below, or, when it’s finished processing, check out the Youtube mirror at the bottom of this article.

KeyFramesForgotten is a podcast about anime you haven’t thought about in a while. Join anime nerds Jane-Michelle and Julian as they discuss anime from the recent or not-so-recent past that the general public has forgotten about. We discuss the merits of these anime, why the public has left them behind, and whether we think they’re worth a second look.

You can follow Jane on Twitter here and Julian on Twitter here.

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) Everywhere and Nowhere in SIMOUN

This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by S.F. Sorrow. Many thanks, as always.

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

The gender binary works for almost no person on Earth. The national war machines of the world, even fewer. In the abstract sense; Simoun is about this simple pair of facts, and how they relate to the broader systems that define our lives. Moreover, it is about how those systems can be dealt with; through adaption, rejection, self-sacrifice, self-love, and self-knowledge.

It’s possible I’m betraying a small reference pool here, but I find Simoun a true original. I’m guilty of overusing terms like “unusual” and I call enough anime “a bit of a weird one” that you could conceivably make a drinking game out of it while reading my blog. But qualifiers like “a bit” are unnecessary here. I don’t think I’ve seen much else even remotely like Simoun. Frankly, I struggle for reference points. “A shoujo-inflected political war drama with gender identity issues” doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue. And indeed, Simoun is defined by some very unusual stylistic tentpoles.

We have here a deliberately slow and ponderous pace, sketchbook fantasy architecture, a decidedly odd setting with flying vehicles rendered in airbrushed mid-aughts CGI (the titular simouns themselves), and a surprisingly complex….well, complex of fantastic gender roles and associated dynamics. All this is soundtracked, naturally, with a combination of very of-its-time canned breaks and four-on-the-floor rhythms, and a shocking amount of violins. It’s a lot to take in.

At its heart, Simoun is both the story of its cast, all of whom are young girls in a military unit called the Chor Tempest, and how they are affected both by the social systems that they live in and each other. If that sounds a bit heady, that’s because Simoun itself often leans that way. This is a show with a lot on its mind, and it spends all twenty-six of its episodes pouring it out.

Getting into the nitty-gritty of what Simoun is about requires first explaining a facet of its worldbuilding. Though I called the show’s protagonists “young girls” in the previous paragraph, that’s not actually entirely correct. Simoun‘s cast consists mostly of young people belonging to a social caste of their country, The Theocracy of Simulacrum, called sibyllae (singular: sibylla) who are perhaps best thought of as being a kind of nonbinary, although even this is, admittedly, a simplification. Sibyllae pilot the titular simouns, both as ritual instruments in their role as priestesses and as weapons of war in an ongoing conflict with first one and then two other powers; the Archipelago of Argentum and The Plumbum Highlands. Two pilots occupy each simoun, in a bond called a “pair” that is both tactical and emotional. Sometimes merely friendly, other times romantic. On a few occasions it’s even adversarial.

Once they reach maturity, sibyllae (and indeed, all of Simulacrum’s citizens) are expected to retire from their role and visit a magic fountain, where they will choose to either become male or “remain” (the terminology is somewhat odd, but can probably be chalked up to the age of the series) female. Alternately, if they are uncommitted, they can have the fountain itself (via its representative, a priestess figure named Onashia) choose for them. Much ceremony surrounds this, and the reasons individual sibyllae give for their choice varies wildly; some want to remain with their simoun pair or some other romantic interest and thus choose to become male, others seek specific jobs more associated with one gender than another, and so on.

In the series’ second episode, a sibylla named Elly has the fountain choose her gender for her. We don’t see much, but we learn as she does that she is to become male. Almost immediately, she cries out in anguish and breaks down crying. A lack of commitment on the part of someone who is still essentially a child is punished by being forced into a role that does not fit her and that she is not happy with. To say it’s “hard to watch” is an understatement. It’s horrifying. And it’s one Simoun calls back to more than once over the course of its run. It is the first major indication that all of these invented systemics are buildup to a real core, not just aesthetics or aimless experimentation.

The sibyllae occupy a role that has no direct, obvious real-world counterpart, which has the benefit of halting any preconceived notions on the part of the viewer. Any notions that do form will be quickly picked apart by the characters themselves. Almost to a one, every character in the show has a distinct opinion of the syballae, none moreso than the pilots themselves. Some see the sibyllae primarily as priestesses and lament the combat role they’ve had to take up in wartime. For others, such as Mamina, it’s the entire point; a chance to prove oneself and rise above one’s station. Others still, such as Aeru, who is probably the closest thing Simoun has to a proper protagonist, primarily serve in order to avoid the inevitability of the fountain.

Some are just as lost as the audience; Neviril, around whom much of the series revolves, is engaged with a desperate search for purpose after the loss of her partner in the first episode. This is all without even mentioning the complex and thorny dynamic of having a bunch of children who are essentially miko pilot the simoun themselves. Given that the vehicles are, when deployed at their full strength, functionally magical nuclear bombers. These are just some of the many issues that Simoun picks at numerous times over the course of its run.

It’s unsurprising then that tonally, Simoun is iron and rain. The foggy atmosphere tints the deep regret, unrequited love, and crises of faith that permeate the series. As it progresses, conflicting ideals of religious and noble duty clash with those of militaristic nationalism, the individuals that espouse these ideas caught in between. Simoun is heavy as lead. This is not a show you watch for fun.

This means that the show does have a few, not weaknesses exactly, but quirks. The way it handles big emotional moments is almost more reminiscent of dramatic theater than anything else. But make no mistake, that stately sense of gravitas is absolutely capable of sending chills up the spines of the unprepared. It’s a trait the series shares with some other big-picture war dramas, your Gundams and such, making it the thing that most easily places Simoun within the obvious broader context of its medium.

As for actual weaknesses, it wouldn’t be inaccurate to call Simoun something of a slog. It’s not pointless, which is what that term usually implies, but it is definitely not anyone’s idea of a breezy watch. There are very few moments of emotional catharsis or even many pleasant interludes during the entire run of the show, these only really coming to fruition in Simoun‘s final half dozen episodes. It works well with the series’ thematic core, but it doesn’t make it any easier to stomach on a moment to moment basis and I must confess my millennial ADHD brain found itself struggling to keep my attention focused on the screen at times. It’s almost impressive, given that Simoun is only a fairly short 26 episodes. Simoun also looks very much of its time. I grew to appreciate its mid-2000s charm over the course of watching it, but I would be unsurprised if others were less charitable.

So those are the ups and downs. It is fair then to ask where all of this goes, and the truth is that Simoun‘s greatest strength is that by spending all of that time on worldbuilding and similar details, it earns an incredible amount of leeway to take the entire thing wherever it pleases. Simoun‘s true core thesis then, is wonderful. The series broadly rejects all notion of heroic narrative; the ostensible main military conflict fizzles out with four episodes left to go. Its’ finale is not about any grand confrontation, but about how the sibyllae who remain deal with the end of the war, and consequently the end of their special relevance to the Theocracy.

All of this is broadly a metaphor for coming of age. A thematic line that many anime explore, but Simoun‘s closest compatriot, at least from my own pool of knowledge, is none other than Revolutionary Girl Utena. The two share something that looks like fatalism from a distance but is both more practical and more resonant up close. Unlike many other anime, Simoun offers no dramatic moment of breaking the system. The system, in a way, wins, in that it continues to exist even after the war. The sibyllae’s own choices are where the revolution lies; for many, to go to the fountain, for one, to replace Onashia as its keeper, and for two, something far stranger, and not unlike Utena and Anthy’s great escape at the end of their own series’ film. It is a revolution not of the world, but the self.

One could argue that this thesis is incomplete, maybe even irresponsible. I would counter that no single work of art is obligated to depict all aspects of the human condition on its own. We need lovers as much as fighters, and Simoun is decidedly for the former. This school of thematic material lives on in anime to this very day for that exact reason.

For the flaws it admittedly does have, Simoun‘s final catharsis is wonderfully well-earned. The hours of our lives tick on, and somewhere far beyond them spin two eternal maidens, in a land of hope and dance.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) Shadows on The Sun: The Forgotten Flames of DAY BREAK ILLUSION

All of my reviews contain spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

I’ll be the light that breaks the sky.

In modern tarot fortune telling, a card being dealt inverted is generally a bad sign. A portent of something ill, or at the very least, great obstacles to be overcome. This perhaps explains Day Break Illusion, an anime that uses tarot as a motif and often feels like a dark mirror of a traditional magical girl series. Generally regarded as the first of the “Madoka Clones” in its day, it was rarely given much of a chance. It’s dimly remembered, seven years on, and many who do remember it don’t seem to hold it in high regard. Yet, I found myself oddly drawn to this series. Maybe it was the stylish character designs. Maybe it was that middling reputation–I do have something of a contrarian streak with certain things, after all. After I watched the first episode, the opening theme–a soaring ode to bitter defiance in the face of impossible odds–was definitely a factor. 

No matter why, I found myself taken in by Day Break Illusion almost immediately. Perhaps because how despite its reputation, it feels like it has much more in common with a “straight” magical girl anime than it does Puella Magi Madoka Magica.

More specifically, it often feels like a particularly black take on a Pretty Cure season. Where that franchise is, thematically, generally a celebration of female youth, Day Break Illusion is a depiction of a loss of innocence and an examination of how the pain that comes from that might be overcome, or at least dealt with. It is not a happy series, and it is certainly not for the faint of heart. It is also the rare anime I’ve seen that I would call deconstructive, in that in the process of not being a “traditional” magical girl series, it helps define what one is, both in the breaks in tradition it makes and what it chooses to hold on to.

In brief: Day Break Illusion is the story of magical girls who wield the power of tarot cards and channel them into elemental powers. Our lead is Akari, who wields The Sun. The series goes through no pains to pretend her story will be a happy one. In the very first episode she loses her cousin Fuyuna, who becomes a Daemonia, this show’s version of the various baddies that populate Pretty Cure, Sailor Moon, and so on. This awakens her card, and she is brought to a magical school to become part of a team with three other students: Luna (The Moon), Seira (The Stars), and Ginka (Temperance), with whom she must learn to fight, and to deal with her unique gift; the ability to hear the cries of the Daemonia. Throughout the series’ thirteen episodes, the girls learn about each other, they have conflicts, they grow closer, and they suffer. 

That last part is actually surprisingly important. It’s easy to read Day Break as doing what it does for shock value. But while its bevy of cribbed horror anime tropes, weird digital visual effects, monsters begging to be killed, and even a few particularly nasty sequences that both draw on and snipe at the imagery of certain noxious kinds of hentai, are all both a lot in the dramatic sense and quite the emotional assault, they almost never feel pointless. This is important, and in the realm of the “dark mahou shoujo” series, is what separates the wheat from the chaff. 

That long, arduous ride through the dark night of the soul is what, I imagine, gives the show its polarizing reputation. Day Break Illusion is a good series, but it’s also a rough watch, and it plays its cards (pardon the pun) close to its chest until the very end. Perhaps I’m simply naïve, but I genuinely did not not know until the series’ closing episode if the misery of the final arc would pay off in any way. It does, but the journey there is fraught. Combine this with the lead villain’s goal being to–his words–”mate with” Akari in order to bring about a new species of super-Daemonia, and certainly, Day Break Illusion is a show that it is easy to read uncharitably. 

And I might well be in that crowd if the anime’s character building were less delicate and if its refutation of the world’s most predatory ills felt less pointed. Cerebrum, the aforementioned lead villain, is a bad guy in almost every sense of both of those words. The emotional manipulation he puts the cast through is often reminiscent of actual tactics used by real abusers despite its fantastical nature, and the parallel feels intentional. With this in mind, the show’s harder-to-swallow points–the blood, re-contextualized horror and H-adjacent imagery, the juxtaposition of all of this and the fact that it’s a magical girl series, and even just the storyline itself–begin to make much more sense. As do the ways that this ties into one of the show’s other main themes: self-acceptance.

Each of the four leads has a central flaw that is the source of their woes. It is confronted, admitted as part of the self, and reckoned with. In this way, Day Break Illusion often feels like a strange, shadow universe take on a specific Pretty Cure season, HeartCatch, which dealt with that same theme of self-acceptance. The difference is in execution, but drawing on some of the same thematic material places Day Break Illusion in conversation with the broader genre even as it stands perpendicular to it. 

So if another series, one that has more universal appeal, already exists and explores the same territory in the same genre and, arguably, does it better, what need is there for Day Break Illusion? 

Well, my theory resides in the show’s hardest sell: that dark nature itself. As we grow older, we become accustomed to the ills of the world. Magical girl anime, by and large, deal with simplified versions of such problems. This isn’t a flaw in the genre; children need stories they can relate to and for adults such stories serve as an important narrative place of healing. The key difference is that Day Break Illusion, by bringing the subject matter closer to home, closer to what is for us genuinely scary, functions to adults in the same way that those very anime do for children, by using this much more intense nature to raise the stakes, and produce an (ideally) even greater catharsis at its end. In the show’s own words; dark days help us appreciate the Sun. 

For every horrific moment in the series; every bit of slow-motion nightmare logic, every turn-key tension-building piece of music, every fright, every shock, Day Break Illusion ends happily. Not happily ever after, but with enough light left in the world that its cast both can and choose to carry on. 

In this way; Day Break Illusion absolutely deserves to be mentioned alongside more traditional genre touchstones. It is true that it lacks the same near-universal appeal of more straightforward magical girl anime, but what it doesn’t have there, it makes up for in its astounding belief in the power of the human spirit. Akari, who goes through so much, reminds me a bit of another orange-haired magical girl often compared to the Sun: Hibiki Tachibana of Symphogear, an anime that uses some of the same techniques as Day Break, to even greater effect. Day Break Illusion never found that series’ popular success, but maybe it didn’t need to. Sometimes all that needs to be done is to listen, and if you’re willing, Day Break Illusion has a lot to say.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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