Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
This week, Spy x Family wisely returns to what is probably its greatest stylistic asset; the fact that Anya, for the many ways in which she is not like an actual child, is, at her core, written with an authentic kiddishness that lets her carry whole scenes—or in this case, an entire episode—by herself. For being, what, five years old? She’s a hell of an actress.
Our A-plot here is pretty simple. Anya is assigned a job-shadowing project at school; she has to follow one of her parents to work and ask them a few questions as they go about their day. Initially, she asks Yor, but after an admittedly quite amusing sequence of Yor vividly imagining what “taking Anya to her job” would actually entail, she decides to ask her pa instead.
Thus begins a miniature odyssey of Anya going to the hospital that Loid practices as a therapist at. (I think this is the first confirmation we’ve gotten that he actually does go in at least occasionally to keep up appearances for his real work.) In general, this entire plot reminds me of the aquarium episode that closed out the first cour, except here, the monkey wrench is not an enemy spy organization but rather Anya herself. Predictably, she gets into all sorts of trouble at the hospital, from taking notes on what Loid is thinking rather than saying, to sneaking into a secret passage that WISE has installed in the hospital for Loid’s benefit, to stressing her papa out by dumping a bunch of toys into a therapy sandbox in an expression of pure, utter chaos.
The point is this; while Spy x Family still hasn’t really regained any sense of urgency, this plot is proof that it can at least be genuinely fun and charming. This is to say nothing of the report that Anya eventually gives when she’s back in class; a pretty acrid piece of genuine cringe comedy in an anime that doesn’t really go there that often. The mixup is nice, even if it’s not a direction I’d want SpyFam to take for very long.
The B-plot is similarly simple. Anya watches an episode of SpyWars, the in-universe cartoon she’s obsessed with, featuring a cryptogram. She becomes obsessed, and has Yor help her copy the puzzle onto paper several times. Thus begins a dead-simple bit where Anya runs up to various people—her mailman, the women who live down the hall from the Forgers, Becky, Damian, even Frankie—and exclaims “top secret!” before handing them one of the cryptograms and running away. It’s absolutely adorable, and it put a huge smile on my face. (Spare a thought for Frankie, who once again somehow manages to twist this into being convinced that Some Random Woman is in love with him.)
All in all, a resoundingly fun episode for a show that seems to finally be finding its swing again. Let’s hope that continues as we head into the final stretch of the season.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Chainsaw Man is a story about bad things happening to people. I have said this before, I will say it again many, many more times before it eventually ends. To really get where CSM is coming from, one should attempt to understand this. Chainsaw Man isn’t a drag; we know this already, as the series is full of humor and of more delicate character moments. But it’s not happy, either. The jokes in Chainsaw Man are those of a depressed friend. But at the risk of sounding like the most arch and stereotypical critic imaginable; that gives it a real emotional honesty. The kind that makes everything hit with appropriate weight even when it might seem egregious in an anime that wasn’t this specific kind of tuned-in.
All of this is worth restating, not for the last time, because today’s episode is another fairly slow one, despite an impressively bizarre climax. Gently pressing down the brakes on the actual plot-as-such, it spends a lot of time engaging in character building. As always, if Chainsaw Man is crass, or hedonistic, or occasionally out-and-out psychotic, it is so for a reason. Case in point; episode 6, “Kill Denji”, is a wild seesaw of tone and emotion. This remains a best-case-scenario for adapting the manga; truly unhinged, quietly poignant, and crudely funny, by turns, and as it needs to be.
Where to even start? Sure, we open by learning that, as they suspected, our heroes are trapped on the eighth floor of their hotel, but a simple “how do we break the loop?” mystery would not be nearly compelling enough for CSM. (Even so, what of that is done here is done very compellingly, complete with a small visual motif in the form of a squarish alarm clock that keeps ticking back and forth to always land on 8:18.) We can break what occurs up into roughly three categories, although they’re not entirely in discrete sequential chunks as such.
First of all; we get properly introduced to Kobeni in this episode. Kobeni, as previously mentioned, is a walking bundle of neuroses and anxiety in the vague shape of a 20something young woman. She should really not be in this line of work, and in the manga she was essentially Chainsaw Man‘s main comic relief character. Kobeni’s backstory is so dead simple that it’s lodged somewhere between hilarious and ridiculously depressing. Her parents made her sign up so she could put her talented older brother through college. It was devil hunting or sex work. Ouch.
As has been its wont, the anime sands away a bit of the dark humor here. In the manga, the format itself means that we don’t actually linger on Kobeni’s depressed rambling for particularly long. Here, it’s a full scene, which really screws in just how utterly bleak her life situation is. In a more conventional series, she and Denji might find some fast camaraderie in their poverty-stricken upbringings. In Chainsaw Man, it is she who eventually gives this episode its title, but we’ll come back to that. The main thing to take away is that, while Kobeni’s initial breakdown remains a source of black comedy, much of that is shifted over to Power’s comedically insensitive reaction, rather than Kobeni herself. Remember; to her, this is deadly serious.
We also get a fair bit more insight into Aki and Himeno’s partnership up until this point in this episode. Much of the episode’s middle third is taken up by a flashback of Himeno repeatedly trying to get Aki to try cigarettes; “life is better with a little dependence”, she says, a bit of hard-luck pithy wisdom that suits the spirit of this series perfectly.
This entire sequence is dominated by warm guitar in the soundtrack and a purple-pink sunset over the city. But, even in reminiscence, no one in Chainsaw Man is safe from reality; Himeno is jolted from one memory to another with a slap, a surgically-precise cut that bleeds out the nostalgia of the preceding few minutes in a subtly heart-rending way.
Said backhanding comes from the girlfriend of one of Himeno’s late partners. Aki, who understandably doesn’t think she deserves that kind of treatment, gets petty revenge by sticking some gum on the woman’s clothes, probably the first time in the entire series so far that we’ve seen him do something genuinely funny on purpose. The two bond over a cigarette in the scene afterward, and Aki’s chainsmoking habit is established. The entire thing is sweet, in an off-kilter way.
Back in the present, our heroes happen upon the entity keeping them trapped on the 8th floor. The creature isn’t named as the Eternity Devil here, but its identity is fairly obvious, given its powers and some of the imagery. The Devil has a very simple condition. A contract, even. If the other devil hunters kill Denji, he’ll let them go.
Kobeni and Arai (who’s also been having a hard time of it), immediately turn on Denji, with the former charging him with a big shiny knife while squealing like some kind of small, dying mammal. This doesn’t work—mostly because Himeno and Aki(!) aren’t okay with just turning over a comrade to this thing, even as Himeno points out that it can’t possibly be lying. (Short version of the exposition; if a devil calls something a “contract” it has to fulfill its end of the promise or it’ll die instantly.) The Eternity Devil itself is a cascading wave of rubbery flesh, a specific kind of body horror that you really don’t see very often in mainstream TV anime. (The only other example from this year that I can think of is the finale villain in The Executioner & Her Way of Life.)
There are other options; that mysterious sword Aki’s been carrying is apparently Cursed Or Something, and is quite powerful at the cost of literally taking years off of Aki’s life. He could use it to get them out of this situation, but Himeno objects hard enough to use her Ghost Devil to stop him. Which, itself, leads to Kobeni accidentally stabbing Aki in the side.
All this going on, is it any real wonder that Denji ends the episode by feeding himself to the Eternity Devil? He has no real plan, beyond “make it suffer enough that it’d rather die than keep them trapped in the hotel.” But long-term plans were never our boy’s strong suit.
In the rush to praise what the CSM anime will eventually get to, I do worry slightly that we’re all a bit missing the forest for the trees. This episode ably proves that Chainsaw Man is already great, early on or not.
Bonus Power Screencap: Given all the ruminating over the anime’s themes and general tone this week, I didn’t actually have time to discuss the incredible comedy break of Power deciding to win a Nobel Prize and become Prime Minister so she can make everyone miserable by instituting a “100% income tax.” Here’s her coming up with that little idea.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
For the second time while writing this column, I feel the need to open this article with an apology. I have to level with you here. I genuinely mostly like Spy x Family, but this is, by my count, the fourth episode in a row that’s been basically pleasant and amusing but also of no consequence whatsoever. I’m aware that Spy x Family is not some immortal drama that seeks to resonate throughout the ages, but it’s not a particularly great sign when co-seasonals of such narrative heft as BOCCHI THE ROCK! and Do It Yourself!! have had more comparative forward plot momentum this cour than SpyFam has. It’s not that I’m demanding shootouts, character deaths, and commentaries on the nature of the human condition in every episode, here, but it really and truly feels like very little is happening. This is Spy x Family spinning its wheels; in a full water-treading mode that is perhaps the unintentional result of its heavily decompressed pace. It’s not even that these episodes are bad; they’re just difficult to write about.
The good news is that, for an episode that isn’t really about much of anything—save maybe some more light pair-the-toys energy between Anya and her perpetual frenemy Damian—it at least is still a pretty good one. (Again, nothing since “Yor’s Kitchen” has even sniffed actually being bad. There’s just not really a ton going on.)
Again, the episode is split between an A and a B plot. The A plot is another Anya segment, although the real focus is on new character George Glooman, a classmate of Anya and Damian’s who we haven’t seen until this point. Georgie here is under the impression that his company has been “crushed” by the Desmond Group (the very same owned by Damian’s family). To this end, he hired a spy to try to mess with Damian’s grades—that was the B plot of last week’s episode, which we skipped here on Magic Planet Anime because I wasn’t feeling very well. It also introduced us to a new counterpart for Loid, a bumbling novice spy who goes by the codename “Daybreak.”—and when that doesn’t work, he here resorts to trying to get him expelled. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that doesn’t work either; Anya might not like Damian as much as Damian clearly likes her, but she’s unwilling to let him get kicked out of school over nothing. It would foil her beloved papa’s mission, after all.
There’s also some stuff here about George exploiting the fact that everyone—even himself—thinks he’s leaving. He asks for drinks, for caviar(!), for mementos, etc. Only to then find out from his pa that the Glooman company is just being bought out and everything is pretty much fine. Whoops!
The B plot is a bit more interesting this time around. Mostly because it stars Yor, who gets her first real chance to show off at all here since the cour started. She runs a bundle of gym clothes to Eden Academy because she gets the impression that Anya’s forgotten them. Naturally, Spy x Family being what it is, she’s actually mistaken, and the entire segment’s punchline is that she did all this for no real reason at all.
But, along the way we get some very nice animation and some unusually zany directing for this series. Including a memorably bizarre cut where Yor kicks a falling flowerpot back up onto the windowsill it fell from, in full Looney Tunes fashion.
Maybe, in the end, that’s really how I should be thinking of this show. As a half-hour Chuck Jones or Tex Avery joint, a showcase for fun animation and wacky antics. But by its very nature of having an overarching story—Loid’s mission and Anya’s part in it, and the blooming family dynamic between Loid, Yor, and Anya—it more or less resists that classification. Thus, episode 19 ends like last few have: solid, but unsurprising. The next-episode preview once again teases a new proper story arc. Perhaps we’ll get something more substantial to chew on then.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Earlier today, I had a lengthy discussion with a good friend of mine in which we went over all sorts of very personal and heavy subjects. One of these was, essentially, dreams – aspirations. These things keep us pushing forward and pursuing them often defines our lives. I, for example, would like to formally study history someday. I have an interest in the subject and think it’s an important field.
But of course, different people have different sorts of dreams, which brings us to today’s Chainsaw Man serial. You see, at the start of episode five, Denji achieves one of his dreams.
To touch a boob.
Listen, I never said the man’s dreams were noble. Or terribly fulfilling. But hey! He has them! Respect his dreams! Or don’t! I’m not a cop.
Instead of being fulfilled, Denji finds himself spiraling. Power, in a bit of the manga’s trademark askew humor, was wearing breast pads the entire time for…reasons. Who knows why, really? They’re probably Fiend reasons. Very secret, you and I wouldn’t be privy to them. Denji thus finds his boob-touching experience to be largely unsatisfactory, which plunges him into a bout of existential ennui. If there is no truth and beauty to be gleaned from the titties of the world, where then, might it be gleaned?
Well, Denji gets an answer not long later. Whether or not it’s a useful answer is another question entirely.
It’s been a moment since we last spoke about Makima’s Problematic Power Dynamics Emporium on this blog. I don’t think I’m cutting the legs off of any kind of “twist” by pointing out that Makima does not exactly have Denji’s best interests in mind, but Denji himself of course does not know that, and as an emotionally shattered teenager whose spent most of his life not knowing even the feintest hint of human kindness, Makima’s practiced, razor-sharp manipulation seems entirely genuine. What might be read flags to an experienced viewer are, instead, to both Denji and I’m sure at least some of the demographic at whom Chainsaw Man is in fact aimed—it’s a shonen manga at the end of the day, recall—genuinely alluring. They’re also instructive; as warnings.
The little lecture that Makima gives Denji here is all about physical intimacy. She tells him that sexuality is best explored with someone you know very well. She has him fondle not just the obvious but also her ear. It is all extremely charged, and it’s supposed to be. But it’s also supposed to be a little unsettling. Take note of the many cuts back to Denji’s own eyes, which Makima stares phantasmal daggers into, intentionally or not. She also asks him if anyone’s ever bitten his finger before. The sort of request that scans as a little bizarre on paper, but could easily absolutely destroy the unprepared in the right circumstance.
Make no mistake; Denji is actively being manipulated here, in a way that is extremely transparent and wildly inappropriate, considering that Makima is pretty clearly at least a bit older than Denji and is also his boss. Guys; don’t rake me over the coals for this, but I think that this Makima character might not have our boy’s interests in mind!
And sure enough, before he really even knows it, Denji is agreeing to hunt the Gun Devil, a spectre of death that appeared in—where else?—the USA some number of years ago. (Why does he agree? Other than the fact that Denji would probably do nearly anything Makima asked at that point, it’s because she offers to grant him any “one wish.” You get two guesses what he plans on making his wish. First two don’t count.)
We get a flashback, eventually revealed as Aki’s, where the creature passes unseen over a remote home and completely obliterates it and everyone inside in microseconds. Except for Aki himself, waiting for his brother to go fetch a pair of gloves so the two of them can keep playing with snowballs. Naturally, Aki’s brother never comes back.
More exposition, brief but important; the Gun Devil sheds bits of flesh—casings, basically—wherever it goes. Stick enough together, and it acts like a giant magnet, pointing you toward the Gun Devil itself. This is all the context we need for part two of this episode, where we meet some new friends.
From left to right (and skipping Power, Denji, and Aki, who we obviously already know), that’s Arai (Taku Yashiro), Kobeni (Karin Takahashi), and Himeno (Mariya Ise). Respectively, they’re straightlaced and serious, a walking bundle of nerves in the vague shape of a human who jumps out of her own skin at anything and everything, and a bisexual whirlwind freewheeling spirit whose broad smile, perhaps unsurprisingly, holds a profound inner pain. They’re all pretty great. Much of this half of the episode is character dynamic, feeding us fun little hints about this other company of Devil Hunters (such as Himeno’s contract devil being the Devil of Ghosts) fun moments for the newly-expanded cast to interact in equal measure.
Anyway, not long after this, they discover that the hotel building they’re infiltrating is looping infinitely in every direction. The episode ends there, because cliffhangers are fun.
a line of infinite ends finite finishing the one remains oblique and pure – arching to the single point of consciousness – find yourself starting back
On that note, I’d like to talk briefly about this show’s pacing, as a closing note. I think some have been surprised at the relatively easy pace the series is adapting the manga’s chapters at. It’s only skipped a very few things and most of these small arcs at the start of the series have been given an episode and a half or so to sort themselves out. It’s a pacing that feels slightly unconventional in the modern TV anime landscape, but if it is a difference, it’s a welcome one, and it suits Chainsaw Man extremely well.
Bonus Power Screencap: Behold, the hall of 100 Powers! Tremble at their infinite variety and their varied facial expressions! At this rate I’ll be able to pick these out from the ED alone every week.
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 Directoryto 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.
This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Wynne. Thank you for your support.
“There must be a paradise waiting for us somewhere.”
The image of a vampire in a garden is a pleasant one. Consider it for a moment; the bloodsucking creature of folklore allowed to sit in peace, the Sun gently lighting her face in the way it does for the rest of us. Throughout Vampire in The Garden, we examine this visual metaphor, jewel-like as it is, from several angles. Some of these are surprisingly literal, others symbolic, but it’s clear from the outset, and throughout the miniseries, that the primary meaning is not that of a greenhouse or anything of the sort. It is of a garden of Eden. An imagined, perfect paradise beyond this world, in which there is no strife, violence, or hatred. In which two people who love each other can be together, even if they are from vastly different circumstances.
Even if the whole world is arrayed against them; arrows aimed at the throat.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Vampire in The Garden is yet another anime this year to focus on vampires and romance, following after the second part of The Case Study of Vanitas, but presaging summer seasonal hit Call of The Night. It has a bit in common with both of those, but its real roots lie much deeper; back in the era of 90-120 minute OVAs. Vampire is a little longer, the five-episode mini-series clocks in at about 2 hours, but it is very much a single, self-contained story. And what a story; this is easily one of the year’s best anime, no mean feat in 2022, which has been absolutely swamped with great shows. As for the production-side of things; it’s a Wit Studio project, helmed by director and series compositor Ryoutarou Makihara, his first time at the helm since the obscure Empire of Corpses.
There are two main things one must understand about Vampire in The Garden in order to properly appreciate it. 1: it is an intensely queer story. While it is true that the themes found within it could be generalized out to apply to other situations, there is a reason that both of its leads are women, and the story simply makes far less sense if you try to rationalize your way into believing that our protagonists, Fine (Yuu Kobayashi), and Momo (Megumi Han), aren’t in love. 2: it is a tragedy. Gay romances that end in heartbreak get a bad rep these days for understandable reasons, but such a thing should only truly be objectionable if it doesn’t have something to say, and Vampire in The Garden has plenty to say. Throughout, it demonstrates a keen eye for imagery and paints a very emotionally honest portrait of life as a queer person in a society that is not very accepting of those.
Consider our protagonists. On the one hand, we have
Momo; a hardworking factory girl with a talent for tinkering, who lives in a massive compound called the Tower, run by her authoritarian, abusive mother. She longs for an escape, and a flight of fancy—fixing a broken music box, forbidden, as all music and art are, in the Tower—spirals into a tragic adventure. Her close “friend” Milana is shot during a raid on the Tower by vampires, the eternal enemy of mankind in the bleak, frozen, post-apocalyptic world that Vampire takes place in. But, of course, if things were as simple as “humans vs. vampires”, we wouldn’t be here. In a combination of panic, confusion, and the urge to seize the chance to escape, she meets–
Fine; queen of the vampires. Flighty, constantly neglecting her duties by choice. She too longs for escape, and it’s a chance encounter with Momo that sets them off, together, on an adventure far from the Tower and far from Fine’s own ostensible demesne, ruled as it really is by her consort/vizier Allegro (Chiaki Kobayashi). Together, Momo and Fine are star-crossed lovers in the most classic mold possible; a Romeo & Juliet of the modern age. You already know how this story ends; amid a field of moon azaleas, somewhere deep within a cradle of earth, all graves, shed petals, and teardrops. But that doesn’t make it a journey not worth going on.
That journey sees Fine and Momo searching for that mythical paradise. Initially, they seek such a thing solely to escape the shackles of the human/vampire war itself, but before long, they’ve grown close enough that it’s clear that the promise of somewhere where humans and vampires can live together in peace, and thus where Fine and Momo can live together in peace, becomes their primary motivator. At the start of this story, Momo loses Milana, who she is clearly quite close to. We learn much later on that Fine lost someone she was quite close to, Aria, a long time ago. Momo and Fine’s relationship, as deeply upsetting as the circumstances it was born in are, is one that springs from mutual loss. They find comfort in each other in a way that feels truly human.
Their first stop is the catacomb-esque opulence of Fine’s manor, where Fine helps a wounded Momo recover. It’s here where they first start to trust each other and their relationship goes from something uncertain and tenuous to something very real and immediate. The good times are fleeting, of course, but they have meaning.
At one point, Momo stumbles into a cinema, and is so rattled by the film idly left playing—probably the first she’s ever seen, mind you—that Vampire itself dissolves into a nightmarish patchwork of loss and traumatic imagery, and it is Fine who must calm her down. For not the last time in the series, Vampire is astoundingly lyrical, a tapestry of images both in the forefront and background that imbue the world with tactility and meaning;
a bath, a record player, an opera singer whose voice, spilling out of the player laments the loss of those she loved
There’s a garden – a beautiful, green, lush, literal garden – where Fine grows all manner of plants, in defiance of the Sun itself. She teaches Momo to sing, to appreciate art and music. For this, she is rewarded by the pursuing humans of the Tower, and then, separately, the vampires, raiding her mansion. Both of our protagonists are pursued–
Momo by her mother’s forces.
Fine by her own subjects.
–and the mansion ends up in flames as they flee, starting a pattern that will repeat several times over the course of Vampire‘s five episodes. Momo and Fine arrive somewhere, settle there for a short time, and then are driven away by these twin forces independently pursuing them. It is worth noting that they never directly do anything we’d understand as wrong, it is simply that the very act of a human and a vampire living together is unconscionable to the people of this world.
Throughout, as these entwined swathes of fire pursue its protagonists, Vampire is able to capture a gripping, rare feeling. On the one hand, you can appreciate much of these more action-oriented scenes for what they are on a technical level, and say that Vampire, especially its first half, is a kickass action-post apoc-sci-fi-fantasy adventure. This is true, but on the other hand, it is also a near-hallucinatory torrent of love and loss; trauma, laughter, music, snow, iron, blood – mixed together, and adjoined end to uncomfortable end, a feeling evocative of memory itself. Much like the music box that serves as a leitmotif throughout the series.
Everywhere Fine and Momo go is a false promise, in a way. The manor, of stability. The segregated two-island vampire / human town they visit in episode three, of unity. The too-good-to-be-true village in the far north in episode four, of community. And finally, the blasted-out ruin of some long-forgotten metropolis in the final episode, an already-broken promise of civilization itself.
This extends somewhat to the supporting cast as well. Momo’s mother is portrayed as disturbingly, realistically abusive, swinging wildly from backhanding and berating her daughter and pleading for her forgiveness and asking for a hug. When Momo finally turns her away near the very end of the show, it’s hugely cathartic. Later in the story, we meet Elisha, the representative of the idyllic / winter horror village in episode four.
In addition to enabling the false promise of community and hospitality that the village itself represents, she’s also quick to attack Momo as a hypocrite when things go south. This is, of course, nonsense. There is a vast gulf between harming people accidentally, or in self-defense, and doing so as part of a convoluted scheme to live a life of privilege, which is what Elisha’s village is doing.
There’s also Momo’s uncle, who leads the human forces that seek to recapture her, and in the final episode it’s revealed that he too once fled from home with a vampire he loved in tow, only for that story to end on a harsh, bitter note. This recontextualizes his earlier actions; like Momo, he longed for an escape from the drudgery of a world defined by petty, pointless conflict. Unlike Momo, when that escape was ultimately denied to him, he turned his anger outward.
Which leads us to Vampire’s conclusion.
Just based on what kind of story this is, it will not surprise you that only one of our protagonists is fortunate enough to live through the ending. Fine’s death is a long, torturously slow process. At first, she seems to die rampaging amidst muzzle flash and rubble, but the truth of things isn’t that simple. A serum that turns vampires into berserk beasts—a plot point back from back in the first episode, and one which I should point out, basically causes them to transform into what humans think they are—can’t be countered so easily. She does save Momo, and her final confrontation with Momo’s uncle actually ends when she stops attacking him. What truly rattles the man is not the notion of vampires attacking him, it’s of them not doing so, because it means that there isn’t anything inherently stopping vampires and humans from living in harmony, it really is just all circumstance; grudges, old wounds, and unsolved problems.
Momo’s own last confrontation is the aforementioned rebuke of her mother, as she carries the still-dying Fine to her final resting place; a warm cave below the cold surface, where the queen of vampires finally dies, amidst a bed of porcelain-white flowers. The very last shot of the main body of the series is –
Momo, kneeling in front of Fine’s body, taking a sharp, deep breath; preparing to sing.
She herself lives on, and Fine is gone, but not forgotten.
The main reason that Fine and Momo don’t both survive is that, unfortunately, that is rarely the case for real queer couples in these kinds of situations either. But we shouldn’t take this to mean that Fine and Momo’s entire journey was pointless. Instead, it is the very fact that Fine and Momo did journey, and journeyed together, that is, itself, the true paradise they sought, however fleeting it may have been. There is a real, resonant beauty in that notion, even if it is a very sad and tragic sort. Something like;
“If we don’t have each other forever, at least we had each other today.”
The series offers a single post-credits scene; a sunlit garden, where Momo cradles a young vampire child in her arms. This scene’s nature—real or metaphysical, future or afterlife—is left ambiguous. A ray of uncertain hope that pierces the gray skies of an even less certain present.
I have to confess, Vampire in The Garden has proven very challenging to “review”, in as much as this even is a “review” of anything. This is a work of uncommon grace and elegance, as even its ideas which sound, on paper, inadequate, or like they’re trying too hard, are executed absolutely perfectly in the miniseries itself. There are several other axes I’ve barely even touched on; the visual beauty of most of the show’s backgrounds, for example. Part of me does feel that I haven’t entirely done Vampire justice, but perhaps that is simply a limitation of my medium. Some things must be seen to be felt.
And of course, all criticism is, in the end, but a reflective prism of the original. Here, for the first time in a long time, I have felt honored to be that reflection; I am but a mirror to moonlight.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
What we have here today is a simpler and more straightforward episode of Chainsaw Man than the last few have been. It’s light on (although not absent of) more subtle characterization, and mostly serves to move us between a few key plot points. This is fine, though, because it looks great while doing it, and the fight scene that kicks off the episode proper might be the best-looking in the show to date. Manga-readers will of course be thrilled by the fact that, well, if they’re going this hard for material this early on, who knows what they’ll do later, but these basic visceral thrills are worth enjoying in their own right, too.
And they are visceral. After defeating the Bat Devil, Denji has to contend with his apparent main squeeze (or former main squeeze I suppose. It’s hard to have a gf if you’re dead), the Leech Devil. The Leech Devil is….pretty gross-looking, and the episode in general follows after that beat; it’s very bloody and gory, to an even greater extent than the past few.
Not obvious from this screencap is the fact that she has weirdly detailed udders. Why does she have udders? Leeches don’t have udders.
Denji puts in an impressive showing here, despite the fact that he’s lost so much blood that he’s really less Chainsaw Man at this point and more Man, With a Hint of Chainsaw. And hey, does it all while missing one of his arms, which really seems like it’d be a major plot point but, nope, he gets it back immediately afterward via a “blood transfusion,” somehow. A perk of being part-Devil, evidently.
It’s also worth noting that he doesn’t clinch the win all on his own; Aki, alongside Division 4, a group of characters very briefly introduced here who we’ll more properly meet next week, bail him out. This is notably also the first time we see that Aki is also contracted with a devil, mentioned here as being the norm for devil-hunters. His is the Fox Devil, whom he feeds pieces of his body in order to borrow her power.
Munch squad.
After this, Denji and Aki finally reach something of an accord. Mostly, Aki lets him off the hook in as much as he can because, true enough, Denji did actually save some people. And for not the last time in the series we do see a few members of the public remarking on how grateful they are….and the guy whose car Denji threw with him still inside it being pretty understandably pissed about that whole development. But, hey, nobody’s perfect.
Furthermore, in addition to housing Denji, Aki is now tasked with keeping an eye on Power, too. And he can’t exactly say no, because that’s an order from Makima, who puts in only a brief appearance in this episode but is as excellent and charismatic as ever. The report also contains a mysterious mention of “Gun flesh.” I’m sure we’ll find out what that is in due time.
Power is a predictably terrible roommate, and mention is made of the fact that she doesn’t really bathe, among other things. But, that ends up mattering little to Denji as soon as she offers to let him collect on the deal they made last week. The episode ends with Denji’s trembling hand reaching for Power’s chest, in a way that is truly, transcendentally dumb.
Down bad.
There will be better episodes of Chainsaw Man than this, and consequently this one does feel notably minor. But it is still pretty damn good. When you’re working on this high a level, you don’t really need to worry about hitting any snags. There aren’t any.
And now for the Bonus Power Screencap.
From today’s ED we have Super Shoutin’ Power. Use her to shut your enemies up, or just to cause general disruption in a place where things you don’t care about are happening.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Spy x Family returns to form this week after a rather poor showing last week. It helps that the show is here operating in one of its simplest and most effective modes; “Anya tries to galaxy brain a way into Damian’s good graces and fails spectacularly.”
The only real unfortunate thing is that this means that there isn’t terribly much to actually say about this episode. It’s funny, certainly, but there are only so many ways I can commend deft execution of simple jokes like “Anya makes a miscalculation in one of her little schemes and then makes a shocked face and says ‘Gong!’ out loud.” They are legitimately amusing, but at this point they’re fairly expected.
The more interesting material here comes from two specific characters; Damian himself, and Becky, Anya’s little friend whose parents are, if I remember properly, arms dealers? Something like that. In any case, Anya tries to pull this “oops, I dropped a cool picture” trick for the second time in as many cours, and instead what happens is that Becky sees the photo, and instead of being enamored with Bond, Anya’s big cool dog, she promptly falls head over tiny heels for Loid.
Becky reveals herself to have the same taste in men as about half of my Twitter mutuals.
The actual plot, about Anya trying to help Damian make a paper-mache griffin in an arts and crafts class so he can impress his dad, is basically just a vehicle for more gags and funny faces. It’s a decent vehicle, though, and on Damian’s part we get some further insight into just how detached his father actually is from his life. At one point, he fantasizes about his dad admiring the griffin and praising him for “honoring the family name.” Later, after school, he stands visibly apart from his classmates, talking to his butler Jeeves (really) on the phone. He asks his butler what his father thought of what went down during the initiation—you probably remember that episode—and Jeeves audibly struggles to come up with something. It doesn’t really work, because Damian knows full well that his father doesn’t think of him at all. It’s honestly pretty sad! It’s strange that Spy x Family handles this sort of “serious material” so much better than it does any other kind, but the series is pretty good at it, and I hope going back to this well several times means that some resolution is on the horizon somewhere.
After this plot runs its course, the episode again features a shorter B-segment. This is mostly about Sylvia Sherwood, Loid’s handler, and is mostly an exercise in some incredibly stone-faced humor. It’s a pretty fun one, so I’m glad it made it into the episode. The real punchline comes when Sylvia asks Loid for a report on his mission, and….she gets a different answer than what she probably expected.
There’s also an even shorter C-segment after the end credits, but it’s basically just a retread of last week’s Yor Food gags, and is thus not really worth discussing at any length. There’s a Yuri episode on the docket up next; we’ll see what the future holds 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 Directoryto 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.
This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Roko Da Silva. Thank you for your support.
Of ’00s shonen fandom’s “Big Three”, I have to confess that Naruto is probably the one I have the least investment in. I don’t dislike the franchise by any means—I did watch it, though not nearly as religiously as some of my friends when I was younger—but most of my memories of Naruto are hazy and nonspecific. Single cool scenes, general feelings, vague memories of liking one character or another.
For this reason, I was a little wary when I was commissioned to watch Clash in the Land of Snow, worried I wouldn’t entirely know enough to properly evaluate the film. Thankfully, Clash is a very straightforward movie, an unchallenging but fun piece of genre fare of a sort that’s never really gone away, even as it underlines a handful of very meta points about the act of acting itself.
No complicated schemes or lore drops here; our plot is simply that Naruto (Junko Takeuchi), Sasuke (Noriaki Sugiyama), Sakura (Chie Nakamura), and their mentor Kakashi (Kazuhiko Inoue) must escort an actress, Yukie Fujikaze (Yuuko Kaida), on a trip as preparations are made for her next film.
She is very hot and very disinterested. 10/10 character.
There are several little twists here; Fujikaze doesn’t really want to keep acting, and in fact one of her first scenes of note involves her getting drunk out of her mind while complaining that all she does is act out “lies.” There’s the fact that all three of our ninja buddies here are big fans of her most well-known role, Princess Gale (Yukie Fujikaze) in a series of films of the same name. Oh yeah, there’s also the detail that she’s secretly the exiled princess of the titular Land of Snow, and that her evil older brother is trying to hunt her down so he can retrieve a magic crystal she keeps around her neck that is the key to an ancestral treasure he really, really wants to get his hands on.
More than its plot, Clash in the Land of Snow is a series of exercises in unfettered shonen movie goodness. There are excellent fight scenes with characters who almost certainly never showed up again after this, metaphors of mixed effect about determination and duty, the protagonist gritting his teeth to pull through and save the day, a lot of quite pretty background art, and a few jokes of dubious actual humor. The version I watched also had slightly-busted subtitles, for that authentic 2006 fansub experience.
It’s no surprise that the real highlights here are things that aim to deliver a pure head-rush of fun and not much of anything else. Perhaps the movie’s most famous scene is one where Naruto, carrying Yukie (by now, revealed to be an alias, her real name is Koyuki Kazahana) has to outrun a train on-foot when they encounter one in a tunnel. Not just notable for the fandom trivium that it’s the only train in the entire original series (this leads to Naruto rather hilariously asking what a train is), but for the sheer action of the scene; as swift and powerful as the train itself. Naruto and Koyuki escape just fine, but when a band of loyalist swordsmen rally to Koyuki’s reluctant cause, the train’s cars open up, revealing a battery of kunai-launching flak cannons; a scaled up, ninjafied, and very messy take on the Korean hwach’a, perhaps. Of course, they promptly shred the loyalists to pieces. Shrapnel is shrapnel, after all.
It’s worth honing in on that scene for another reason. Koyuki, despite in many ways serving a damsel in distress role for chunks of the film, is actually quite the well-done character. Her reluctance to accept the responsibilities placed on her head feels realistic and sympathetic (enough so that I’m not entirely sure how I feel about the film’s presentation of her eventual yielding to those responsibilities as a good thing). The death of her loyal assistant in the aforementioned scene hits particularly hard; she’s burned out enough by a life of running away that she can’t even cry, prompting a brilliant callback to an earlier (there, comedic) scene where she’s an incredible actor but can’t cry without tearing drops. Other highlight scenes include a chakra-sealed Naruto busting out of prison by filing away at his handcuffs with a file between his teeth (a fun trope in almost anything), and him laying a rainbow-colored rasengan down on the bad guy in the finale, only for the Land of Snow’s actual snow to start melting away as it turns out that the “secret treasure” that he was pursuing all along was, essentially, a magic weather machine that can warm the local climate.
The movie never gets as subtle as Koyuki’s lack of crying over her assistant’s death again, but it probably doesn’t really need to. This is pure popcorn stuff, and to a point I almost think that trying to be more ambitious would’ve actually hurt the film. There are obvious snags in its premise—the friend I was watching the film with pointed out that the Hidden Leaf Village are, by returning Koyuki to her homeland mostly against her own will, basically engaging in a proxy war—that are, of course, never addressed. But if these are problems at all, they’re minor ones. (I’ve actually heard that much later in the series, long after I stopped watching as a kid, Naruto does try to delve into some more political overtones, apparently to mixed results. But that’s a secondhand opinion, so take it with even more salt than you normally do when reading my site!) The film succeeds admirably at its main aim; to be, basically, a long episode of Naruto, and to be a good one.
All told, if it doesn’t seem like there’s much to Clash in the Land of Snow, that’s only because it doesn’t need to be much. Two hours of pure action movie anime entertainment is more than enough to make a film worthwhile. Fun is its own reward.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
We don’t really use the term “antihero” too often anymore. I think perhaps, collectively, we were a bit burned out on it somewhere around the mid-2000s. But it describes Denji to a tee, so I hope you won’t mind if I pull it out here.
To wit; our boy’s primary motivation throughout this episode is, once again, to touch a boob. This time, Power’s, in exchange for helping her rescue her pet cat (a less easy task than it may sound, given that said cat is imprisoned by a powerful devil, but we’ll get back to that). It’s such an idiotically basic motive that the word “motive” itself almost seems too grandiose. But hey, after god knows how many years of anime protagonists who “want to be a hero” or other similarly abstract things, I at least appreciate a protagonist whose motives are understandable if not exactly noble.
The cat-hunting is more in the latter 2/3rds or so of the epsiode. Before that, the series goes some way toward establishing Denji and Power’s push-and-pull dynamic. Notably, right off the top, Power gets in trouble for killing the Sea Cucumber Devil at the tail end of last week’s episode, and her first instinct is to immediately—and badly—lie and try to pin the blame on Denji.
In general, Power is pretty interesting, and it’s worth pausing here to talk about why. One of the best ways to make a character distinct (South Park influence notwithstanding, go look that up if you’re curious), is to pile on enough small character tics that aren’t notable in isolation but add up to a peculiar whole. Power is rather slovenly, as conveyed by the hoodie that’s often half-hanging off of her shoulders. She’s incredibly violent and prone to lying. But she also intermittently speaks in a screwy, stilted dialect of Japanese that the sub track translates as spurts of weirdly archaic English. (Even in that screencap up there, note that she phrases it as “It was he who commanded me to kill” and not something like “He told me to do it” or what have you.) She also noticeably clams up around Makima, who she is comparatively deferential toward, and seems perhaps even afraid of. All of this sums up as a character who is really pretty unique in the current anime landscape, and, accordingly, she’s a lot of fun to just watch bounce around the screen.
She has one further quirk; a fondness toward cats. As mentioned, this episode’s main plot consists of Denji being convinced to help her rescue her pet cat Meowy. (Or Nyako. They mean basically the same thing.) Power, as a Fiend, is pretty broadly disdainful of humans and, really, most life in general. Cats though, she seems to have a fondness for. Later in the episode we get a flashback about her initially meeting Meowy and it’s genuinely very sweet despite the fact that Power spends the entirety of said sequence naked and covered in grime. (CSM is bizarrely good at putting emotional resonance into scenes that read as ridiculous on paper.)
Denji, ever the gentleman, is openly disdainful of this affection….until Power makes the aforementioned offer to let him touch her chest if he helps her recover Meowy. At which point, he’s suddenly fuming mad about “that fucking Devil” stealing poor little Meow-Meow. The soundtrack even revs up alongside him. It’s pretty funny.
Elsewhere, Makima gets a few spotlight scenes as well, which serve to add some further depth to her character. Also, they serve to sate my endless thirst for this show’s insanely good use of characters’ lines-of-sight as non-verbal tells about how they’re feeling. Aki, in his only real scene in this episode, questions Makima on the wisdom of having Denji in his squad. If you were only listening to the dialogue, you would take Makima’s response as fairly cool and natural. If you look, however, she visibly glares at him (from behind, so he can’t even see it) for a moment before replying. Somebody doesn’t like their authority questioned, is all I’m saying.
I think if someone who looked like this looked at me this way I’d die on the spot. But hey, I’d die happy.
Also of note; a meeting between Makima and her superiors is the first glimpse we get at the wider state of Chainsaw Man‘s world. This particular council of anonymous, vaguely military-types makes mention of “war hawks” over in America and The Soviet Union (!), and rumors of devils deployed for military purposes. How true any of this is, we don’t yet know. But it is worth making note of the fact that even this council refer to Makima’s underlings as “dogs,” in case you were wondering if the people she works for are any nicer than she is.
As for the whole cat rescue situation? Well, Power was lying. She had no actual intent to help Denji fight the Bat Devil or anything of the sort, instead offering him to the Bat Devil as a sacrifice, so that the larger devil might heal his wounds by drinking Denji’s blood. This ‘brilliant’ plan has several flaws.
Flaw 1: The Bat Devil is a dick.
As soon as Power shows up with a half-conscious Denji (who she’s whacked over the head with one of her bloodmallets), the Bat Devil collects his sacrifice and starts squeezing our boy dry in a decidedly unpleasant way. (Seriously, he vomits blood, and the Bat Devil drinks it. Chainsaw Man is not afraid to get nasty; remember this.)
Power demands Meowy back, but, surprise, the Bat Devil thinks Denji’s blood tastes terrible, and he takes out his frustration on Power by eating her cat in front of her. Then, while she’s having the flashback scene described above, he eats Power herself, too.
Flaw 2: There is no flaw 2. Flaw 1 got her eaten alive, what else do you want?
Anyway, this all makes Denji rather unhappy.
As far as battle cries go, it’s not exactly “you shall not pass,” but hey, whatever works.
The final act of the episode is a truly stunning fight scene; easily the best in the series so far. Denji and the Bat Devil tear a cityscape to pieces, ripping up chunks of concrete and twisted metal as they slug it out. And in what is arguably his first act of something vaguely like superheroics, Denji actually rescues a couple people. (He also throws a car at the Bat Devil with the driver still inside it, but, hey, nobody’s perfect.)
All told, this stands as probably the strongest single episode of CSM so far. It manages to keep a pretty noteworthy number of plates spinning, and it looks great while doing it. Here’s hoping to much more of that to come.
And now, making its grand debut, the Bonus Power Screencap, because I know what the fans like. This one is from this week’s ED. A simple Power, but strong, and bold.
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 Directoryto 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I don’t like the term “mid.”
Not because things can’t be mediocre—they certainly can—but because I feel like it gets slapped down on the table as an all-purpose “I didn’t really like this and don’t feel like really explaining why” card. When most people say “mid” they can mean anything from “decent but not my thing” to “outright terrible.” Rarely will they bother to explain which they mean or why.
But, you know, I say all this, but sometimes the only adjective you can pull for something truly is “mid.” There were some good parts and some bad parts and the whole thing is kind of just not that great overall. It’s not terrible, certainly, but maybe it’s a sign of bad things to come. Or just an unusually weak spot in an otherwise fine show.
Thus, we have episode sixteen of Spy x Family, the first Yor-centric episode in quite a while and also, unfortunately, easily the least essential since the series came back from hiatus.
The episode’s basic plot is pretty simple, revolving around Yor secretly learning how to cook from her coworker Camille (remember her? She was first relevant way back in episode 2). What the episode wants to be about is the simple joy of home cooking, the knowledge that you’re preparing something for someone close to you and, in a very real way, putting your heart and soul into it.
This is all well and good, and when the episode hits its primary climax at about the 15 minute mark, it does hit well enough to feel roughly worth it. Yor ends up cooking a stew (topped with a fried egg!) of some kind for Anya and Loid, and it’s genuinely pretty cute.
But the problem is getting there. Between the start of the episode and this little story’s conclusion is a parade of iterations on what might be the most overdone joke in the entire shonen format; the classic “oh no, someone is bad at cooking and their food looks like unidentifiable purple gunk” gag.
“Twists” on the trope in this case include Yuri, Yor’s obnoxious younger brother, who of course co-stars in this episode, actually loving Yor’s terrible food because he grew up with it, and….well honestly that’s kind of it. There’s some other stuff where Yor has difficulty properly preparing ingredients because her assassin instincts kick in and she ends up essentially butchering them. It’s marginally more unique, but not really any funnier. A lot of this really just seems far too basic for something like Spy x Family, which has previously demonstrated both much stronger characterization than this and much stronger comedic chops. Why waste time on this?
Yor does, at least, get the jump on Loid in one important way here, in terms of character development. She is the first one to realize that her “fake” family now matters to her more than what it was originally a cover for, and her coming to terms with that is an easygoing kind of heartwarming that perhaps more of this episode should’ve aimed for.
So, we end up with a very weak series of gags leading up to an emotional beat that is nice but doesn’t entirely feel earned. Is that “worth” it? It’s hard to say.
But don’t worry, this is a double episode, because Yor isn’t allowed to be the protagonist of an entire 22-minute stretch of Spy x Family. That would be silly.
No, instead, the latter half of this episode is about Frankie.
Yeah.
Uncle Scruffy here spends his half of the episode trying to enlist Loid’s help in hooking up with a cigar shop employee with the mildly amusing name Monica McBride. Presumably her mother is named Molly McBride and she has two sisters named Matilda McBride and Mary McBride.
Loid’s help mostly consists of telling Frankie to be himself—he tries making a way-too-thorough conversational chart too, but, perhaps wisely, Frankie thinks using that would be weird. There are some decent gags here, like when the two are having a full-on shouting argument and a stage direction pops up onscreen to inform us that they’re actually whispering.
Also, Loid uses his disguise skills to turn into a spitting image of Monica herself. I have to say, holding this against the show is astoundingly unfair of me, but when I’m already a little cold on an episode, hitting me with the dysphoria pangs does not improve my assessment.
On the other hand, it proves that Loid Forger could have tgirl swag if he wanted to.
Naturally, Monica turns Frankie down. (Sidenote here; it would’ve been very funny for the joke instead to be that she likes little awkward fuzzballs, a sort of hairy version of an Android 18 / Krillin situation. But that would’ve put a win in Frankie’s column, which I suppose is unacceptable for some reason.) Loid then closes out the episode by making one of his little speeches about how “people like them” can’t afford to be emotionally attached to others. Sure, dude. Keep telling yourself that.
And that’s where we end for the week! Again, I don’t hate this episode or anything, but a lot of this is just not all that interesting. The more emotional moments are the highlights, but there aren’t really enough of them to bring it above mediocre. Thus, again we must turn to that dreaded descriptor; mid. This is a mid episode. If you put a gun to my head and made me score it out of ten, I’d give it an even 5.
But, hey, next week is an Anya episode, and it’s been a while since we’ve had any episodes taking place entirely at her school. Hopefully that will be fun.
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 Directoryto 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.
The Magic Planet 