Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.
What we’ve basically got here, in BOCCHI THE ROCK!‘s third episode, is an adorable little tale about how mistakes are rarely as big in reality as we make them in our minds, and how even people who really seem like they’ve “got it together” only occasionally actually do. Along the way, BOCCHI THE ROCK! continues to casually be one of the best-looking anime in a season that is not lacking for visual style. Witness the series go all-in on one-off gags by shifting art styles, waving around paper cut-outs on popsicle sticks or even weaving in tiny snippets of live action footage for additional effect.
Really though, none of that would be half as impressive without the character work on display here. As with any comedy, dissecting why Bocchi is funny kills the humor somewhat, but it is again worth circling back around to this idea of Hitori as the Ultimate Introvert. A constantly-fretting ball of anxiety who frequently blows things up beyond all reason in her own head, only to be taken aback when it turns out that no one is actually out to get her. It is, as I mentioned back in my writeup for the premiere, an immensely relatable feeling.
This episode centers around Ikuyo Kita (Ikumi Hasegawa), who Hitori is trying to recruit into her band as a second guitarist and vocalist. Her initial attempts go so poorly that she spends a memorable scene hiding in shame under the stairs at her high school, and laments her lack of social skills the only way she knows how; playing the guitar and singing while an imaginary music video plays in her mind.
Hitori from Bocchi the Rock 🤝 Eve from Birdie Wing causing random music videos wherever they go.
Kita is, in theory, Hitori’s total opposite; an irrepressible little firecracker of pure energy who gets along with just about everybody. But, as it turns out, she and Hitori have more in common than may first be obvious.
Like, a lot more.
“Kita is the guitarist who previously bailed on the band Hitori is now in” more.
As we find out, Kita cannot actually play the guitar. She lied about being able to, and joined the band to get closer to Ryo. And I want to be clear here; when I say she “joined to get closer to Ryo,” I mean she has a big-ass gay crush on Ryo and wanted literally any reason to be near her. This is not subtext.
Wow, a preppy girl falling for the slightly butch bass player. Surely this is a unique circumstance in history, never to be repeated.
We also learn that another reason Kita flaked out on being in the band is that, incredibly, she does not even own a guitar. She thought she did, and much is made of Hitori’s correct deduction that she’s been practicing this entire time just by feeling the calluses on her hands, but in one of the series’ comparatively more low-key gags, it turns out that she actually bought a six-string bass. Thankfully, at episode’s end, Ryo buys it off of her and she gets an actual guitar instead.
Which, yes, of course things resolve themselves cleanly. (Why wouldn’t they? If you want emotional devastation there are other shows airing this season for that.) Hitori spends some time worrying that Kita might replace her at the club, since she seems to be better at most of the club work than Hitori herself is, but that quickly dissolves when the aforementioned callus plot point rears its head. Hitori ends the episode as Kita’s new guitar teacher, and the band grows into a proper quartet, where it will likely stay for the rest of the series.
The rest of the girls take Kita’s deception in stride, and Nijika reasons that if she hadn’t done all that, she and Ryo wouldn’t have met Hitori. Forgiveness comes easy because, well, none of this was ever a huge deal in the first place. It was just mildly inconvenient. Bocchi the Rock! is developing a running subtheme, almost, about how these things seem so much more important in our own heads than they ever are to the people around us.
But in a more general sense, the series continues to be warm, personable, and full of charm. Here’s to looking forward to the rest 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!
I didn’t point it out at the time, but last week, Denji’s then-boss described our hero thus; “the good thing about Denji is that he does what he’s told.”
Today, in the first part of its second episode, that point orbits around several times. With Makima, Denji has effectively traded one master he must unconditionally obey for another. One could argue it’s a slight upgrade, since, as we’ll see, Makima treats him materially much better than the old yakuza boss who ordered him around before this point, but his life still isn’t really his own.
He knows this, on some level. A very early scene here sees Makima describe Denji as her dog. This little smidgen of animal symbolism is probably Chainsaw Man‘s single most well-known thematic motif. Dogs, after all, generally do what they’re told as long as you take care of their needs. Denji is briefly angry about being treated like one, but upon Makima promising him a hot meal of whatever he likes, and offering him her coat to wear so he’s not walking around shirtless, his disaffection mostly evaporates. A few scenes later, and he is almost literally eating out of the palm of Makima’s hand.
It’s important to remember that Denji isn’t unique here. Most people will put up with a lot as long as their material needs are being met. Even given the line of work he’s being asked to take up, it is hard to imagine that many people, in his situation, would not do the same. (Some of you will say something like “RIP to him but I’m different” to that statement. We’ll get back to you as the show goes on.)
Not just an everyman, it’s important to remember that Denji is, too, a hormonal teenager. In addition to the obvious food and clothing benefits, Denji goes along with what happens here in part because he thinks Makima is hot. (Hot tip for the younger people who read my blog; you will never get with your boss.) Of course, Makima isn’t even remotely above picking up on and playing to that desire anyway, and it’s pretty obvious that she’s doing so.
Chainsaw Man is very good at subtle facial expressions as silent conveyors of intent. If you’ve already seen this episode and want to look for something neat on a rewatch, I would recommend going back through those early scenes and keeping an eye on Makima’s face specifically. She’s actually quite expressive and there are multiple points where you can almost see the gears turning in her head over various things.
In any case, as much as this episode is about Makima and Denji’s newfound working relationship, Denji doesn’t actually work directly under her. Instead, he’s assigned to one of Public Safety’s many devil hunting units. Specifically, an “experimental” one, lead by a ponytailed chain-smoker named Aki (Shougo Sakata).
King of Spades
Aki’s real introduction is one of the early manga’s most memorably goofy scenes, and for perhaps the first time, Chainsaw Man the anime actually sharpens the bent for crass humor in the original, rather than backing away from it.
The result? Well, Aki takes Denji for a walk, briefly interrogating his motives. What he gets out of this conversation is that Denji is basically only in this line of work to get with Makima. That’s not good enough for Aki, so he takes Denji to an anonymous back alley and slugs him across the face, expecting the ass-kicking to teach the punk a lesson. To hear him tell it, this is his version of kindness; he’s seen people die from getting into the business for weak reasons, and as much as he doesn’t really seem to like Denji, he doesn’t want that to happen to him.
Denji responds to this particularly physical brand of thoughtful consideration by kneeing Aki in the nuts.
Repeatedly.
While a “ding!” sound effect plays every time it happens.
Immature as hell? Yes. Extremely funny? Also yes. Chainsaw Man is rarely afraid to get a little juvenile in order to take the edge off things. Probably a good call, all things considered.
Soon after this, Makima compliments Aki and Denji on “hitting it off” upon hearing what happened (a very dry sense of humor on that one), and then, in the same breath, makes it very clear to Denji that if he is ever no longer useful to Public Safety for any reason, he’ll be killed.
Your last first day.
Denji and Aki’s first mission together, to exterminate a Fiend—a devil possessing a corpse—goes awkwardly. Denji’s able to dispatch the thing very easily, with a single swing of a Public Safety-provided hatchet, but Aki is annoyed at Denji for not using his devil powers, thinking of it as evidence that the younger hunter isn’t taking things seriously. Aki, it’s established, lost his life to a devil attack. So it is pretty understandable that he’d be miffed by Denji seemingly treating the entire thing as a game.
None of that really gets through to Denji though, who begins instead thinking very hard about boobs again.
He’s such a gentleman.
In fact, his entire sequence here plays as a stone-faced parody of the usual shonen-protagonist-hyping-themselves-up internal monologue, albeit an affectionate one. Indeed, in episode two of his series, Denji has truly found his noble calling, the righteous cause he must fight for.
This is, of course, supposed to be silly. But it’s worth again remembering that when you’re this age, one does think of trivial things like “scoring” with a girl (as CR’s subtitles so lovingly render it) as matters of life and death.
In any case, even with this particular goalpost set, Denji’s life gets more complicated one more time in the final few minutes of this episode, when a different girl walks into his life. Introduced by Makima as his “partner” within Aki’s unit.
You probably already know her, but if you don’t, I kind of envy you.
Because getting to meet Power for the first time is fun as hell.
Queen of Clubs
Yes, that wonderful idiot. A fiend, not unlike the man in the apartment that Denji just killed, but one who is—after a fashion—able to be reasoned with, but that doesn’t really make her rational. She’s introduced with a galumphing, ludicrous carnival music backdrop in the soundtrack, and there’s a reason for that.
Ai Farouz, her voice actor, stands out amongst Chainsaw Man’s cast by being a comparative veteran. She hasn’t been in the industry for terribly long—her first role of note was only in 2017—but she’s had a number of prominent roles. (Notable to me personally, she was Cure Summer in Tropical Rouge! Precure last year.) She plays Power perfectly, swinging from a low growl to a smug mid-range conversational tone, to a whooping screech when Power’s really excited. All of CSM’s VAs have been great so far, but Farouz might take first place. Perhaps it’s a case of limited reference pools here, but she really does play the character like a demonic Cure Summer. It works astoundingly well.
Certainly, Power herself steals what remains of the show from the second she appears. We get a small bit of exposition during her and Denji’s first patrol together (and also more of his leering thoughts about titties), but much more important is her catching the scent of devil blood on the wind and sprinting full-force towards the devil in question, fast enough that Denji can’t actually keep up. She literally hammers the target—the Sea Cucumber Devil—to pieces with a massive mallet made out of her own blood. The BGM erupts in an explosion of pulsating techno thump, and as she smashes the thing to smithereens, she positively howls in triumph. On that note, the episode ends.
And normally I’d cut the article here, but I do also want to take a moment to point out that one of my favorite bands, ZUTOMAYO, did the ED for this episode. It’s cool to see them finally getting exposure via an anime.
Until next time, anime fans.
(I haven’t said that in a while, have I? Well, there you go, a nice return to form.)
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!
“Boof!”
I feel like I’ve been a bit unduly mean to Spy x Family since it came back. Not in a major or intentional way, but more just out of reflex. I made clear last week that I think Spy x Family’s most recent storyline has been hitting kind of an odd note. I more or less stand by that, but part of me feels that I just haven’t been giving the series the attention it deserves. Which is unfair, because while I’m maybe not as keen on Spy x Family as some are, it is still one of the year’s better action anime and one of its better comedy anime. That’s a solid showing twice over, and it deserves credit for that.
Either way, the whole terrorist bomb dog plot comes to its conclusion here with some amount of fanfare, but much to my own joy, this episode dials back in on the comedy that made Spy x Family so endearing in the first place. In the process, it rediscovers its inner warmth. I don’t think it’d be at all a stretch to say that this episode is the best since the show came back from its hiatus.
Let’s start with the basics. If you were worried about the cliffhanger from last week; don’t be. Loid does not shoot the dog, and in fact, he goes out of his way to make sure the dog who attacked him is fine, even managing to somehow get its bomb harness off and tossed into a nearby river, where it explodes harmlessly.
Yor also gets a brief bit of shine here. It’s perhaps not as much as I’d like, but a scene where she spin-kicks the terrorist Keith through a windshield and sends him careening into a lamppost is a pretty solid showing.
But of course, the main focus is about the dog. Not just any dog, the dog who is basically already Anya’s. With the crisis averted, Sylvia, Loid’s handler, tries to confiscate the psychic woofer while incognito as the state police.
And if you can forgive your blogger here for a moment; she looks damn good while doing it.
Anya, in a shrewd moment of using her psychic powers directly for her own benefit, throws a bit of a temper tantrum and threatens to stop going to school. Which is enough to get both Loid and Sylvia to change their tunes. There’s a touching scene in here where Sylvia remarks that Anya is a good kid, and offhandedly mentions that she had a daughter her age. The past tense isn’t remarked upon directly, but combined with her cold-blooded treatment of the terrorists in last week’s episode, this certainly implies some pretty heavy shit in Sylvia’s past. (Not that this is surprising, given her line of work.)
The rest of the episode, though, is concerned with the far more lighthearted but very important work of naming the dog, who Anya has up until this point just been calling “Mr. Dog.” (Inu-san.) Anya even assumes that the simple act of having a named dog might help her befriend Damien at school. Though, in her defense, Damien’s reaction when he asks for her dog’s name and she can’t give it to him is pretty amusing. This episode is actually a veritable harvest of Anya faces in general, which is great news for anyone who’s been missing those.
We have “Imitation Yor.”
“Thonkeng.”
“The Antihero”
“Edvard Munch’s ‘Scream'”, and many, many more!
She does settle on one eventually; late in the episode the Forgers take Anya and her new pet to a dog park. There, her dog retrieves a pair of gloves surreptitiously swiped from Anya by a different dog. Anya is reminded of an episode of Bondman, and this big pile of fur and love is given the most natural name possible; his name is Bond. Forger Bond.
He likes his martinis shaken, not furred.
And with that, the episode ends later that night, with a shot of the two having fallen asleep together. Yor remarks that Anya looks like a “little angel in [their] midst.” She is absolutely correct.
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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
“You know when the Buddha initially like, lived in a life of decadence and luxury, closed off from the ailings of the world? And how once he saw the truth of things, that Suffering Exists, in the form of the sick man, the elderly man, and the dead man, he vowed himself to a life of ascetism and austerity? But even then, the extreme measures of such a life could not assist him? And it was only there, sitting under the bodhi tree, that he finally understood the true meaning of the Middle Path? Yeah, this anime is like that, sort of.”
-Imaginary Anodyne, a personal friend.
This is not a recommendation.
More than maybe anything I have ever written about; I must be very clear about one thing; do not watch LOVE FLOPS. Bare minimum; do not watch it yet. It has not earned it, and it probably won’t ever earn it. Indeed, this is one of the year’s crassest, unfunniest, and just downright most off-putting premieres. If this were a normal anime, I would not be writing about it at all.
Sadly, it is many things, few of them good, but one thing it definitely isn’t is normal.
The protagonist: Asashi Kashiwagi (Ryouta Oosaka), a walking lump of anti-charisma that makes his seasonal peer Ittoki from Shinobi no Ittoki—with whom he shares a voice actor—look like a movie star by comparison.
The setting: A near-future Japan, defined by nifty hologram cellphones, VTuber fortune tellers, and autonomous robots.
The plot: Perhaps the most obnoxious harem setup of the last decade. Asashi runs into a series of harem cliches-on-crack on his way to school, running through a solid five in less than ten minutes. Notably gross misadventures include one of the girls accidentally planting her ass on his face and then punching him between the legs for the trouble, and another being sexually assaulted by a dog. Yes. Really.
Its components are simultaneously so basic and so exaggerated that the series exists in a kind of hyperreality. This is what people who never watch these kinds of shows think all of them are like, and that impression then cranked to 11 and the knob ripped off. When something is this much, this loudly, in this in-your-face a fashion, the question naturally rises in the brains of a generation of anime fans raised on fakeout openings and genre-switch rug pulls; is there something else going on here? And if so, what?
Let me just say, I’m not sure I’m really convinced. The same friend quoted above semi-jokingly suggested this might be the protracted setup to a particularly gonzo strain of BL narrative. (Quote: “Also, its gonna be fuckin gay quote me on that shit.” They have a way with words.) That would certainly be something, and as someone unfamiliar with that area of that genre, which mostly to my understanding exists in VNs and the like, I can’t say this doesn’t look like that, since I wouldn’t know. But more to the point, I can see how some would get the impression that there must be something else happening here, even if what—or why it would need to open like this—isn’t yet clear. Let me lay it out of it’s not already obvious; this is less going to be a first impressions article in the traditional sense, and more me trying to galaxy brain myself into a convincing argument for why I didn’t just waste 30 minutes of my time (and then quite a bit more time writing all this). If you want a “should you pick this up?”-style takeaway, I will again say; no, you should not. There are too many good things airing this season for all but those most fascinated by bizarre garbage to waste their time with this.
And I do suspect I might well be wasting my time; I’ve gone broke assuming things like this of anime before. (See my Akebi’s Sailor Uniform writeup from earlier this year.) And eventually being Up To Something would not redeem how truly, truly awful the first episode is. (I really cannot stress enough how thoroughly and quickly it discards any kind of good taste.) But while it’s certainly not a sure thing, I do think there is definitely some credence to the idea that Love Flops is trying to pull something. Let’s take a look at the evidence.
First, the setting; as mentioned, Love Flops takes place in a near-future time period, with all the flashy technology that implies. On its own, that’s not really that weird for a harem anime. One of the genre’s foundational texts, Tenchi Muyo, mixes its setup with a bizarre space opera / fantasy saga, so from that point of view, just setting things in 2080 or whenever is pretty tame. But there’s a decidedly unreal vibe to the entire thing.
Asashi appears to live alone, has a notably strange breakfast consisting of toasted bananas, and watches an apparent VTuber on the television for his morning fortune. The VTuber thing comes up in a few places, usually subtly, but the fact that they’re animated differently from the rest of the show—in a noticeably shoujo-ish style, and seemingly with Live2D—makes them stand out in a way that feels intentional, and almost gives them the air of being a surveillance tool. In another spot—as part of a terribly unfunny gag about panties—a trashcan-shaped robot appears to be idly disposing of peoples’ clothing, marking them as “trash.” You could easily write that off as the ‘bot malfunctioning in-universe, for the sake of the joke, but in context it does make one wonder.
Later, when Asashi hops on a train, there is quite literally no one else in the entire car with him, other than a woman who turns out to be his teacher as part of one of the aforementioned harem cliches-on-speed. The presence of a specific sort of futuristic technology makes the series’ world feel decidedly digital, and one character outright brings up the idea of the world “secretly being a video game.” He references it offhandedly, as though discussing a cliche, but that particular setup isn’t terribly common and never has been. (You’re more likely to get a Sword Art Online situation of people being trapped in a game, or a more general “the world is a simulation” sort of thing. ‘Secretly in a video game’ is an oddly specific pull.)
Secondly, let’s talk about those cliche harem situations themselves. Love Flops runs through them with a truly stunning speed, exhausting five within its opening ten minutes, and its plot doesn’t make a whole lot of sense even by this genre’s standards. Asashi’s homeroom teacher, for instance, is both a standard Sexy Teacher and also, for some reason, the show’s obligate Chinese character. (And this is not a genre that treats its non-Japanese characters particularly well, so one can imagine how that will go as the show wears on.)
Now, being annoyingly self-aware would not make Love Flops unique on its own, in this regard. There are plenty of ecchi anime that try and fail to do a very frustrating nudge-nudge wink-wink kind of thing. (A terrible cliche in of itself at this point, I would note.) But the sheer rapidity that Love Flops goes through these motions, and how hormone-destroyingly unsexy any of it is, could certainly give some credence to the idea that it’s all setup for some grand reveal. Once again, it would have to be one hell of a reveal to salvage the show after this opening episode, but it would be something.
Third, there’s Asashi’s friend, Yoshio Ijuuin (Jun Fukuyama). There is just something weird about this guy. Asashi can’t remember his name when they first meet, despite Yoshio claiming that they’re longtime friends. And later—and I’ll admit that this is probably the weakest bit of actual textual evidence on display here—this happens.
Hide.
Yeah, Asashi asks him what he’s looking at. While he’s staring directly into the ‘camera.’ In isolation I wouldn’t think anything of it at all, and there is a reasonable in-universe explanation (he was looking at some girls who were off-screen) but in the context of everything else, it just feels weird. Here is also a pertinent place to note that almost none of the camerawork is from Asashi’s perspective. So, it often feels more like we’re monitoring him than having some kind of adventure alongside him.
Lastly, and perhaps most damningly, there’s the bizarre dream from the very beginning of the episode. There is a very brief scene that provides a cold open before the anime itself starts, and it is perhaps the strongest evidence of all that something is up, here. Asashi sees an unknown girl who might also be Aoi Izumisawa (Miku Itou), the first girl he runs into on his way to school and is the one who gets her panties stolen by a robot. (The episode closes with her confessing to Asashi, for whatever reason. While still not wearing any panties. Yeah.) The dream is vanishingly short; consisting of the girl mouthing something to Asashi, and then turning away, before vanishing into a yawning void as both she and the entire world dissolve into neon green bits of code.
Let’s turn away from the evidence pile for a moment and let me bring up another series. Have you heard of Rengoku no Toshi? I would guess not, as the series is obscure even by weird seinen manga standards. But! It’s a useful comparison here. That manga, known variously as Prison City of Love, City of Imprisoned Love, or similar in English (it never got an official release over here), is also an ecchi series that takes place in a constructed false reality. It too spends some opening time setting up a fake romcom situation, only to reveal not long later that, surprise, it’s actually a thriller manga. Now, Rengoku no Toshi A) never exactly got good, I would say, and B) did still have that ecchi element even after the genre pivot. But still, this is a thing that’s been done before. I never quite loved Rengoku no Toshi, and I didn’t finish it, but it did go to some truly strange places eventually.
If you want to imagine what this manga was like without having to read it; just imagine this scene, played out over and over again, but sometimes one of the characters is an anime gyaru and is naked.
Would a similar turn maybe redeem at least some part of the terrible, terrible things that have happened in this anime’s first episode?
….Maybe?
Certainly, the answer is not “yes.” That would be a ridiculous thing to say, it really is quite difficult to fully bounce back from “two different characters are sexually assaulted by a dog” (yeah, that happens twice) as a development in episode one, yeah? But it might at least make me not entirely regret having started this in the first place. To the friend who steered me away from this show “even if I was paid to watch it,” you know who you are, and I am sorry for not listening to you.
As for everyone else, if you never see Love Flops on this site again, you can safely assume that it spiraled off into a kind of insanity that did not interest me. But, if it makes a grim return, knocking on your window like a creature from a horror manga, just know that I am only the messenger of this particular dark god, not a devotee of it.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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!
War, and what people do while waging it, are terrible and depressing. This is known. Armed conflict remains a serious issue throughout the world, perhaps even moreso now than it was just a few months ago back during Spy x Family‘s first cour. Again; terrible, depressing.
The same isn’t true for Spy x Family itself. Even as we get into the meat of a pretty damn serious arc with this second episode of its second cour. Throughout this arc parts, of the story get pretty grim, but Spy x Family still cuts its most serious moments with ones that are more lighthearted. This prevents what is easily the most uncomfortably real arc of the entire anime so far from being outright suffocating, but, nonetheless, it does kind of hit a weird note, doesn’t it?
What actually happens here is pretty simple; the episode is split between a cat and mouse game between Loid’s agency and the terrorists (And eventually, just their leader, the mononymic Keith.) and, separately, Anya and the clairvoyant dog from last week trying to stop a bomb from going off.
That second part is ostensibly the “lighthearted” half of this week’s episode, but even this involves the dog having a grim vision of the near future where Loid dies in an explosion, which, obviously, Anya is desperate to avert. It says quite a bit that this is still the comparatively sillier part of the episode. Mostly due to Anya’s goofy reactions when things don’t go her way.
Loid’s half of the episode is much darker and is almost entirely devoid of humor. Perhaps the most indicative scene being one where his handler, Cynthia, interrogates Keith’s terrorist ring. Things get pretty intense!
And while that conversation is, I’m sure, written from a place of good intention, it does illustrate something of a problem with this episode.
At the end of the day, it’s excellently made, and it certainly deserves to exist in an abstract sense, but cutting so close to the gritty realities of war is dangerous for Spy x Family, which tends to work better when it’s in modes that are a little less reflective of things that actually go on in the world. (Deadly-serious dodgeball games, for example.)
More concretely, it’s a little annoying how yet again Yor is reduced to a bit player in a show she is supposed to be one of the protagonists of. It’s understandable that things here play into Loid’s specialties a little more, given the whole espionage angle of this arc, and I’m not asking Yor to start shanking people in front of her daughter, but surely, she could’ve been given a little more to do? Perhaps next week, it’s hard to say. All in all, this is a well-made but somewhat disappointing episode for me personally. If you feel differently, I’d be happy to hear why in the comments.
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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
We’ve all heard this story before, although maybe not in a long time. Introverted teenager falls in love with popular music genre at a young age, grabs an instrument and devotes their life to becoming the next Joe Strummer (or whoever). The history of rock n’ roll in Japan is long and winding, and frankly something I’m only passingly familiar with, but the general notion remains the same across national boundaries and across time. You hear the ring of the guitar chord and the roar of the crowds, and you want that; who wouldn’t?
Lots of people have wanted that, and BOCCHI THE ROCK! is not remotely the first anime to tackle that idea, even if the full-band anime as a format has been mostly dead for years at this point. (I once saw someone jokingly describe the genre as “idol anime where you can hear the bass.” They were being silly, but I think that the comparison exists at all speaks to how rare these things have become.) But Bocchi the Rock is not BECK for the same reason that Bump of Chicken aren’t The Clash. Time and space change both the ends and the means; Bocchi the Rock has a lot more in common with Hitori Bocchi, another anime, from a few years back, that uses the same pun on the Japanese phrase for “all alone”, than it does most older music anime. Except, of course, for K-On!, whose modern classic status is as easily argued for by how easily its lasting influence has bridged the gap between these once very different formats than anything about the series itself. (Which is good, because K-On! remains probably the most high-profile anime from the new ’10s that I haven’t seen.)
The chief conceit of Bocchi the Rock is that our title character—real name Hitori Goto (Yoshino Aoyama), nickname “Bocchi”—wants to melt faces with the sheer sun-like power of her guitar wizardry. Preferably, to audiences of thousands. But she’s deeply introverted, which makes that hard. I would go farther and say she is perhaps the character I’ve seen in an anime who most obviously has some sort of severe social anxiety, of every anime I’ve seen full stop. And yes, I am including the title character of the aforementioned Hitori Bocchi.
Bocchi being not just introverted but socially anxious is an important point to me. It will not surprise you to learn that I, nearly 30 and making a half-living by running a blog about cartoons, also have pretty severe social anxiety. In general, I talk to my roommates and very few other people on a day-to-day basis. I have not simply “gone out with friends” in a casual way to have fun since high school or so. I’m not remotely unique in this case, and I have made some steps to try to remedy this in the past year or two, but I bring it up because this makes me very sensitive to how socially anxious characters are portrayed in media. Maybe overly so.
All this to say; I was pleasantly surprised by how well Hitori’s anxiety is handled. It very much is a source of comedy, but that doesn’t inherently make it unsympathetic or reductive of that trait. It’s a frequent source of jokes among people who are socially anxious that our mental illness seems to think the world operates in some truly strange ways, and there is an element of that in Hitori’s particular headsnakes. The plot proper kicks off when she’s recruited to play guitar for a small band, initially as a pickup member but, by the end of the episode, apparently permanently. This is great for her, since her extreme shyness cuts badly against her desire to be a guitar hero.
Hitori, proud owner of a 30K subs Youtube channel (also called “guitarhero.” Really.) where she does guitar covers, thinks she’s up for the challenge. She isn’t; playing by yourself isn’t the same as playing in a group, and Hitori gets flatly told that she sucks.
Crumpling in the face of something she thought she could do but finds out she can’t—I’ve been there—she almost literally shrinks into a chibi, and the series slams us in the face with what is certainly the funniest fake credits gag I’ve seen in years.
I can’t believe Hitori Goto is fucking dead.
A side note; some praise should be given to Aoyama’s voice acting here; she dips into a growly, lower register for Hitori’s more depressed (or outrageous) inner thoughts, and easily flips to a flat, emotive-by-being-unemotive diction for Hitori’s actual speech. It’s an interesting contrast and gives the character a lot of personality.
As for Hitori sucking, things get better. The also fairly inexpressive Ryo (Saku Mizuno) gets the idea to have Hitori perform while inside a cardboard box. This is, purposefully, very stupid, and it doesn’t really help in any meaningful way. But it does get Hitori—newly christened “Bocchi” by Ryo, and ecstatic to get her first-ever nickname—through the group’s first concert. Have I mentioned yet that the band is basically called “The Zip Ties”? A terrible name in any language, as commented upon by their third member, Nijika (Sayumi Suzushiro). I kind of love it. In any case, through a combination of the box idea and the other two girls offhandedly mentioning how much they like that mysterious guitarhero youtube channel (Hitori is too giddy to actually mention that she runs it. That’s a reveal for the future, presumably), they’re able to get out there, and they do in fact play their first show, in a scuffed little underground club called Starry.
The episode ends on an interesting, rather nonstandard note for this sort of thing. We don’t get to see the band’s performance at all, depriving us of the usual “surprisingly good first performance of the show” sequence. The whole cardboard box tactic hasn’t really accomplished much, and it remains very much to be seen how, exactly, Hitori will actually overcome her problems. But things are on an upward trajectory, and that’s mostly what counts.
I do fear I’ve made the show sound rather dramatic. It really isn’t; it’s a fairly standard slice of life comedy with a mildly melancholic outer edge, but I would be truly shocked if this twelve-episode run does not end with the band—who will hopefully have a better name by then—performing in front of some crowd somewhere. Hitori’s anxiety is the core of her character, but there is ample room for her to grow beyond it, and I really would love to see that. In any case, she exits the episode in the most me_irl way possible.
Someone tell her about spoons theory, please.
I should also at least passingly mention the series’ visual element. The show’s direction comes to us from CloverWorks‘ Keiichirou Saitou. This isn’t literally his first directorial project (he’s previously done a one-episode OVA), but it’s his first full series, so I’m interested to see if some of the more unusual touches here, particularly the more offbeat camera angles, will be ironed out or reinforced as the show gets further along. As far as the visuals in hobby comedies go this season, it’s still firmly in second place behind Do It Yourself!!, but that’s not a bad spot to be in.
As for Hitori, there is something to be said for the fact that it doesn’t seem to occur to her that by having made friends—or hell, at least friendly acquaintances—she’s already taken a huge first step. My hope is that Bocchi the Rock continues along this same path; I don’t mind laughing at Hitori—it’s not unlike laughing at myself, really—but I do also want to see her grow as a person. Part of the magic of any series based around a performing art is seeing the characters grow into these dreams that they have. By the end of this episode, I wanted to see Bocchi performing on stage, too. So, keep raising your skinny fists, girl in a box; the stage is yours to take.
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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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
“maid is a state of mind and it’s about being a woman and shooting people.”
-memetic tumblr post by user lezzyharpy
Friends, rejoice. It’s finally happened, after who knows how many decades, the pop culture icon of the anime maid has finally completed her transformation, from her origins as a specific kind of live-in cleaning staff to a roving band of hyper-violent killers in funny outfits. The metamorphosis is complete; the postmodern otaku eschaton is upon us.
Akiba Maid War, a show that promises a whole hell of a lot by having that title, makes me regret I already pulled out the “Birdie Wing and Estab-Life” comparison earlier this week with Shinobi no Ittoki. Akiba Maid War isn’t the same kind of ridiculous as those two anime, but it’s definitely part of a minor ongoing trend of anime whose main defining feature is just being sublimely inscrutable. Like Ittoki, though, it’s also a self-conscious throwback. Once upon a time, this sort of deadpan surreal comedy where extreme violence is half the joke was pretty common, but demonstrative examples like Excel Saga, Puni Puni Poemi, or Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan are no longer widely recognized, at least not in the Anglosphere. This just isn’t a genre that has many modern descendants, with perhaps the only other recent example I can think of being Dropkick on My Devil.
But enough of comparisons to other anime. Even if you’d never seen a single other, you’d immediately clock Maid War as something supremely strange just by its opening minutes, where a rain-drenched Akihabara c. 1985 erupts in a, to us, currently unexplained shooting. A cafe maid is shot dead in the downpour, and her companion silently swears vengeance upon her assassins. Cut to opening credits.
When we return, it’s nearly 15 years later. 1999, the final year of the 20th century. Our protagonist is the chipper Nagomi Wahira (Reina Kondou), who is looking forward to her new job at a pig-themed(…??) maid cafe. A job that even provides free room and board.
Her enthusiasm remains through her extremely rough first shift, in which Nagomi firmly slots herself into the classic dojikko archetype, but quickly withers when a guy shows up trying to demand what sure sounds an awful lot like protection money from Nagomi’s boss (Ayahi Takagaki. The character herself has no name, she’s just “Tenchou.”).
From here, things rapidly escalate. Nagomi is sent on a nondescript “errand” that consists of handing a letter to the manager of a rival maid cafe. Ranko (Rina Satou), another one of the maids, who is a 35 year old woman and, I’m pretty sure, the same woman from the opening scene, insists on accompanying her. We then find out that Maid War is, essentially, what would happen if someone watched Black Lagoon and got angry that Roberta wasn’t every character.
The letter contains a bunch of yakuza-esque insults, including calling the other cafe’s girls (who wear rabbit ears) “cockroaches with antennae.” This goes over aabout as well as you’d expect, and Ranko ends up taking over as the main force for the episode’s final few minutes, where it turns out she can do some serious gun-fu shit.
But honestly even without the bloodshed, the show’s entire vibe is “off” in a way that’s clearly deliberate but also surprisingly subtle. The color palette and lighting are the biggest tells; far more than the popping pinks and blues that populate the whole “otaku action anime” micro-genre like Akiba’s Trip and Rumble Garanndoll, Maid War‘s visuals are dingy, washed-out, and deliberately rather grimy-looking. Even the scenes that actually take place outside, under the neon lights of Akihabara itself, having a slightly sickly look to them. Fitting for Maid War‘s grotesque take on the whole “moe moe kyun” thing; the central setpiece is Ranko mowing down hordes of angry battle maids, soundtracked to her coworker Yumechi (Minami Tanaka) singing a cutesy song back at the cafe.
We end on Nagomi, traumatized from her exposure to frankly unthinkable amounts of death in a single day, trying to brainstorm a way out, only to discover that Ranko is in fact her roommate, and the very notion of escape is, consequently, totally impossible.
Obviously, all this is a joke, but it is a little hard to know if Maid War will be able to keep up the silliness. A lot of the most memorable shows in this genre are on the short side, and that’s because it’s difficult to keep topping yourself in terms of absurdity. Then again, this is a series where a gratuitous Kurosawa movie-style blood gusher can turn off and on again like a leaky faucet if it needs to for the sake of a gag. Maybe Maid War will be just fine.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
Yua Serufu (Konomi Inagaki, in her first lead role) has a problem, and no, it’s not that the official translation of her show ignores the truly stunning pun baked into her name. It’s that she and her very best friend, the uptight but diligent tsundere Miku “Purin” Suride (Kana Ichinose), have ended up going to different high schools. Serufu is a disheveled space case of a girl, so that fact in of itself doesn’t bother her. But the fact that she can’t hang out with her bestie anymore definitely does. How does she plan to solve this? By building a bench. Obviously.
Let’s back up a moment; Do It Yourself! is the latest from Pine Jam, a fairly low-key studio that usually only puts out one or two projects a year. But they’re consistently visually great projects; most recently the trashy but excellently directed action seinen Gleipnir, and then, last year, the stage girl drama Kageki Shoujo!! Those last two are also by this series’ director, Kazuhiro Yoneda, and it’s his first original project with the studio. (And Pine Jam’s first original period since 2017’s Just Because!)
The point is this; the first thing one will notice about Do It Yourself! is that it just looks gorgeous. The art styles are dissimilar, but the free-flowing animation and school life-but-slightly askew setting remind me just a bit of Windy Tales. And the series makes heavy use of a soft but very warm and inviting color palette. I dislike describing things as “cozy” because the term often gets used to paper over the flaws of anime where not much is going on. (Such as, say, DIY’s contemporary Management of a Novice Alchemist.) But it definitely applies here in a real and positive way. There are, crucially, also a few places where it does feel a bit colder. Mostly, these are the areas that lean into its very near-future setting. Purin, for example, has an eye-scanner on her front door, the swarms of drones that ambiently fly overhead certainly offer a very literal overcast to the otherwise warm setting, and Purin’s high school itself—an upscale vocational/technical school where, Purin brags, that she’s learning how to 3D print body parts for surgery—quite literally overshadows Serufu’s. It’s larger and physically surrounds it, being constructed in a U-shape around the smaller building. Regardless, all of this makes the series’ world feel truly lived-in in a way that’s rare enough to be worth pointing out.
These tinges of darker and more mature concerns—the implied class conflict, the proliferation of intrusive technology—are not at the forefront of DIY’s modus operandi, though, and it’s hard to say whether or not the show will ever address them more directly. Serufu is a traditionally spacey (read, neurodivergent) lead for this sort of thing, and if she harbors any resentment toward the obviously-wealthier Purin, she doesn’t show it. Instead, she largely plays the part of the goofball school life lead. It’s an old character archetype, but done very well here, and Serufu has an unconventional but very much still adorable character design that really makes her stand out; covered as she is in bumps and bruises plastered over with Band-Aids. Not to mention smaller details, like the fact that her color palette leaves the inside of her mouth an un-shaded white when she speaks; minute touches, to be certain, but things that a lesser slice of life show would ignore.
As for the actual plot? There isn’t too much of one, yet. A kindly upperclassman (Rei Yasaku, VA Ayane Sakura) helps Serufu out after the younger girl’s bike chain slips and she smashes into a streetlight. Serufu, on the advice of shy and nerdy secondary character Takumi Hikage (Azumi Waki) goes to find her, to offer her a proper thank-you, and instead stumbles on a small wooden shack behind her school, where Yasaku whittles her after-school hours away as the only member of the DIY Club. As we meet her here, she’s making a bookshelf, which Serufu tries to help out with before promptly pulling the trigger too hard on a power drill and careening into a pile of planks.
(I feel the need to throw in somewhere here the fact that Yasaku is introduced by literally Heelys-ing to the site of Serufu’s bike crash, fixing her bike with barely a full sentence swapped between the two of them, and then Heelys-ing away without a further word. That’s the kind of A+ character introduction you don’t get every day.)
What happens next will be familiar to anyone who has ever seen even a single other series in the school club comedy format. You know the drill, they need X more members or the club will get shut down for lack of activity. Etc. Etc.
But sticking to a tried and true plot formula—at least this early on—shouldn’t be taken as some kind of glaring flaw. Instead, what’s obvious even from this first episode is that Do It Yourself! has an extremely strong aesthetic and storytelling sense. Look at, for another example, the wonderful way the show’s “imagination bubbles” are illustrated. Serufu’s daydreams actively shift the art style depending on their contents, going for a dreamy sort of comfort when she fantasizes about sitting on a cloud, a comedic chibi format when she reminisces about the time her mom banned her from doing arts and crafts because she injured herself so much. (And how this led to her taking up drawing as a hobby. And how she used to literally eat crayons. Serufu is a wonderful protagonist.) Occasionally it will pull an even wilder, bolder shift.
This truly is one to keep your eye on. In a way, Do It Yourself‘s relaxed vibe is deceptive; make no mistake, this is one of the year’s strongest premieres. Consider this article a wholehearted endorsement.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
In a way, it makes perfect sense that Shinobi no Ittoki exists and is airing right now. This has been a year full of absolutely bizarre shocks-from-nowhere. Birdie Wing, Estab Life, etc. Shinobi no Ittoki (something like “Ittoki the Ninja”, although in a rarity for a modern TV anime, it has no official English title) isn’t that crazy, at least not yet, and it’s as much a part with a certain strain of harem-but-also-something-else anime that has been largely supplanted by isekai shows in the modern day, but there’s a reason the first episode is called “Bolt From the Blue.”
There used to be a lot of vitriol in the air for this kind of thing, and I can certainly see why. The modern narou-kei problem of the hyper-generic “potato-kun” protagonist definitely has roots in this genre somewhere. That, combined with the mostly rather staid character designs and the good but fairly restrained visual work, really makes me feel like I shouldn’t be as taken with this as I am. But there’s just something about it that charms me. It’s endearingly dorky. Stupid in a fun way. A guilty pleasure, as some people say.
Perhaps it’s because the somewhat subdued visual presentation makes Shinobi no Ittoki feel retro rather than just dated. These kinds of anime were everywhere when I first started getting back into the medium in high school, and the only things that really mark Ittoki out as being made in 2022 instead of 2007 or so is the CGI truck in one early scene and the female lead having two-tone hair.
This throwback nature applies equally well to its actual plot, such as it is. Ordinary diligent high school boy—and aren’t they all?—Ittoki Sakuraba (Ryouta Oosaka) does all the ordinary high school boy things. He goes to school, sleeps in class, is roasted by his friends, and is shadowed oddly closely by his childhood friend Kousetsu (Haruka Shiraishi), the aforementioned two-tone hair girl, who, in a bit of what I might very charitably call foreshadowing, pretty much always walks around wearing a black facemask.
Ittoki is confessed to by a classmate, Satomi Tsubaki (Miyu Tomita), in a scene straight out of every heart-on-sleeve romance film of the last 20 years. The relationship moves very fast, to the disapproval of Ittoki’s mother, and before too long Ittoki ends up flustered and confused in Satomi’s house while his kouhai is removing her clothes.
Then things take a turn, and Ittoki discovers he has things much more important than the ups and downs of puberty to worry about.
Long story short; his “new girlfriend” is actually an assassin from a rival ninja clan sent to kill him. Which is a big shock to Ittoki, given that he did not know he was the heir to a ninja clan before this. Or, indeed, that ninjas still existed at all.
That is his mom, by the way. Just to keep everything straight for you here.
Silly fight scenes ensue, including one starring Ittoki’s cool-loser uncle.
All of these feature snazzy hologram technology and some hilariously doofy-looking ninja-tech suits, and our opening episode ends on the setup that our protagonists here, the Iga Clan, have a rival in the powerful and wicked Koga Clan. Where is all this going? Who knows, but if it manages to keep up this brand of throwback goofball entertainment, it will remain worth watching.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
Every so often, an anime comes along where simply by virtue of what it is, writing about it feels more than a little surreal. Such is the case with Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury. You can probably guess why; the series bears a supertitle with some very long and very heavy history in this medium. It is the first mainline Gundam anime in nearly a decade, and while I’m sure lifelong Gundam aficionados will have plenty to say about the series, I am coming at things from a different angle as a relative neophyte. I’ve only ever seen one other Gundam anime; 2007’s Mobile Suit Gundam 00, and when I saw it, it was only a few years old.
The legwork of worldbuilding and basic plot setup already done in an “episode 0” prologue that aired a few months back, The Witch From Mercury instead opts to open with our protagonist, Suletta Mercury (Kana Ichinose), rescuing an apparently-adrift astronaut from the inky depths of space as they float away from the space station / military academy that will presumably serve as the series’ primary setting. But less important than what happens in these opening minutes is how it happens; she’s a panicked bundle of nerves the entire time, with her demeanor contrasting sharply against the soundtrack; a bundle of whirling synthesizer swells.
Things establish themselves in stages. Our setting is a military academy where absolutely anything can be settled via duel (the “space Utena” comparisons write themselves) under the watchful, sinister eyes of a shadowy council of CEOs. “Anything” happens to include marriage, which means that when Suletta runs into Witch From Mercury‘s other protagonist, Miorine Rembran (Lynn), it’s mid-escape attempt, since Miorine is attempting to flee from the academy and her duel-decided future husband, Guel Jeturk (Youhei Azakami). Or, as you will come to think of him, This Fucking Guy.
Jeturk is, to put it politely, not a nice man. To put it less politely; he’s a conniving, self-centered dillweed who’s an abusive ass to his to-be wife, going on a performative “man rampage” at one point while smashing up a garden she keeps because it reminds her of Earth. His only real redeeming quality is an admittedly impressive head of two-tone hair. (Sidenote; a couple other characters with wonderful hair show up, including an evil CEO whose beard and hair combine to give him the same silhouette as Mac Tonight, and a girl with astronomically huge puffball hair.)
The good thing about Jeturk being such an ass is that he makes an ideal episode one villain. He spends most of his screentime either being terrible to Miorine or peacocking his status as the “Holder”; that is to say, the school’s ace pilot. Naturally, when Suletta, despite being all nerves, challenges him to a duel, he accepts and thinks he’ll win easily. Some complications (like Miorine hijacking Suletta’s mobile suit, the Gundam Aerial) aside, this setup of dominos naturally comes crashing down.
It’s worth noting just how badly Jeturk gets his shit utterly rocked. His purple mecha is pretty impressive in its own way, but it’s not a Gundam (contextualized here as being a portmanteau of “GUND-ARM”). The Aerial is a truly sublime piece of deadly artwork in Suletta’s hands, and her capability with it comes across as a mecha pilot analogue to performance composure. Some people come alive on the stage; Suletta, on the battlefield, for better or worse. The thing’s weapons spin and reconfigure themselves in a floating ring that is an absolute visual delight. The rest of the episode looks, variably, solid to pretty good, but the entire fight scene here is just astonishing. In particular, a shot where the Aerial’s shield deflects a laser strike, only to make it scatter and scintillate into the air behind it, is just beautiful.
Suletta and Miorine also bicker while inside the Gundam, of course, and Suletta’s philosophy that pushing forward at all times, because even if you don’t win you’ll have “experience and pride”, is certainly something that the series seems like it will loop back around to before too long. But here, and for now, it carries her to an inarguable victory, as Jeturk’s purple mobile suit ends up in a tattered pile of laser-cut scrap on the ground.
The Witch From Mercury‘s premiere then concludes with what is perhaps one of the all-time great end-of-first-episode revelations, which I cannot comment on except to reproduce it here in its entirety, in screencap form.
Really, what could I possibly add to that? Are you, dear reader, surprised that I’m going to tell you that I think you should watch the sapphic giant robot show that seems to be taking at least a few cues from Revolutionary Girl Utena? You shouldn’t be. The Witch From Mercury delivers what is thus an early high-water mark for premieres in an already absurdly stacked season; competing with this one will be hard.
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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.
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