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.
Here’s two things I rarely talk about on this site; western animation and media preservation. But they’ve been thrust to the forefront of the media conversation following HBO Max‘s utterly morally bankrupt decision to simply delete and delist a sizable swathe of programs, thirty-six as of right now, including a number of well-liked Cartoon Network series such as Infinity Train, OK KO! -Let’s Be Heroes-, Uncle Grandpa—which was briefly the last man standing of the whole purge—and once-and-future coverage recipient Mao Mao, Heroes of Pure Heart.
Obviously, for all involved, this sucks. Both for the fans, who no longer have a legal way to watch the shows in question, and for the creators, who are quite deliberately being shafted by this move, as HBO Max is removing the shows in question to save on residual fees.
But this is a blog about anime and manga, so you might wonder what, exactly, any of this has to do with anything I cover here. The simple fact of the matter is – everything.
Easy and legal access to subtitled (or dubbed) anime is a fairly recent thing, dating back to not much more then ten years ago. Before that, what anime, if any, were legally available in the English-speaking world was a total tossup. Dubs and subs were certainly made, many of them were quite widely-watched, too, but outside of mainstream action fare things got dicey fast. For every anime that got a solid English dub and ran on Toonami, there were many more that were relegated to DVD releases that tended to quickly go out of print once the initial runs were sold out.
As such, the fate of any anime that was not one of the very few that became a long-running staple of American television (a title held by Dragonball Z, Naruto, Bleach, and that’s kind of it), was, at least to the English-speaking world, generally up in the air. Plenty of anime have fallen into legal limbo in this manner, many of them not even particularly obscure. Obviously, this is less of a problem in recent years, with streaming services snatching up the distribution rights to all manner of anime, new and old, at least one, RetroCrush, even specializes in older anime that other services might not be inclined to pick up. So, at present, the outlook is pretty sunny, right?
But the question, of course, is for how long.
Make no mistake. We live in a largely corporate-run world, and companies do not do things For You, The Fans. They do them to make money. Presently, we are in the midst of a second anime-in-the-Anglosphere boom. There is some evidence that this one is less ephemeral than the rush of 4Kids localizations and Toonami pickups of the 90s, but there is also plenty that it really isn’t. It’s a mistake to assume that just because it has lasted longer so far that it will not eventually fizzle. Consumer trends come and go, and even more than that, besuited executives often make decisions based on charts and graphs that come across to those of us on the ground as, at best, cryptic. This is to say nothing of the fact that the anime industry itself is in a state of perpetual crisis, as the production bubble continues to balloon with no end in sight, something is going to give somewhere eventually. It is mostly a matter of time.
It is not doomsaying then, to ask the question. If, eventually, this bubble pops, and corporations on this side of the Pacific suddenly decide that investing in anime is not profitable for them anymore, what are we to do then?
Well, perhaps it is time to reconsider the role of the media pirate.
To some of you, the very notion will seem ludicrous. It’s not like filesharing has ever gone away, but with the rise of streaming a decent amount of people in the world have convinced themselves that not only is the practice illegal, but that it’s also immoral. I strongly disagree with such a notion to begin with, but in cases like these, where legal access to the media in question is being actively prevented, it goes from a debatably excusable practice to one that is functionally a necessity. We here enter the paradigm of the media pirate as media archivist.
For anime fans, this should be more obvious than to most. Plenty of anime, even with the existence of RetroCrush et. al., have remained in legal limbo in the Anglosphere for years. For instance, if one wanted to watch Cardcaptor Sakura-by-way-of-ReBoot curio Corrector Yui, you were pretty much totally out of luck until very recently. Even then, somewhat sketchy Amazon listings for DVD volumes are not exactly the most accessible method of watching anything. The more obscure a show gets, the more dire the prospects are. Another magical girl anime from around the same time, for example, Cosmic Baton Girl Princess Comet, is simply not available anywhere, barring dubious secondhand BD volume pickups.
I could easily make a whole series of columns out of just listing anime that are not easily accessible, legally, anywhere in the Anglosphere, and sometimes not even in their home country. At this point, filesharing as an ethical imperative becomes almost obvious a conclusion.
Because if we continue to beat the drum of legal availability as king, a situation not unlike what’s just transpired on HBO Max is less of a possibility and more of an eventuality. That’s something we would all do well to remember.
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.
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.
“Idols don’t ‘do the right thing.’ They do what they want.”
I’m breaking a personal rule with this one. Generally speaking, I don’t really like to compare currently-airing anime. Especially not if the main reason they’re being compared is that they share a genre. In my view, people generally vastly overstate the importance of genre and tend to use what should be a guideline as a box to lump dissimilar things together. Or worse, to rag on something for not fitting a particular, narrow ideal of what something in a given genre “should” be. Comparing seasonal anime on the basis of their genre alone is usually pretty basic and uninteresting.
Yet, something about the idol genre specifically reignites an old fire of partisan fandom within me. I latch on to favorites pretty hard, and even I’m sometimes at a loss as to succinctly explain why, both in terms of individual characters and—as this column will go into—entire shows themselves.
So today, I’m letting myself do something I normally wouldn’t; I am comparing two things that I fully acknowledge have little business being compared. Those things being the second season of Love Live! Superstar, about the idol group Liella, and new girl on the block SHINEPOST, about the idol group TiNgS.
But come on! How can I not? We have here two idol anime airing in the same season, appealing to the same groups of people, but with wildly different approaches. One operating from within the established Love Live franchise, and the other, a punchy outsider that evokes 2011’s seminal The Idolmaster. (Bonus points; Superstar is from the long-established Sunrise, and SHINEPOST comes to us from the still relatively young Studio KAI, perhaps best known at this point for the second season of Pretty Derby and last year’s Super Cub. They’re also working on the excellent Fuuto PI this season as well.) One is pure fluff; sunny, goofy, and, in its best moments, purehearted and warm. The other is a down-to-earth look at idols as players in the idol industry, focusing on ground-level character dynamics and getting into the heads of its significantly smaller cast.
So here we go; two idol anime, two very different takes on what that phrase even means in 2022. We will look at them one at a time, and then consider how we might use the knowledge of what each is doing to look ahead into the future.
We’ll start with SHINEPOST, the one I prefer by a fair bit. TiNgS were introduced to the world with their trailer PV toward the end of last year, and it (and the accompanying song, the scintillating banger “Be Your Light!!”), immediately hooked me.
SHINEPOST is a scrappy little anime, one that seemingly rather few people in the Anglosphere are watching. But for my money, it outstrips Superstar in a few respects; it’s more ambitious, and the particular suite of emotions on display here resonates with me more. I don’t think SHINEPOST is a “better” show in any absolute sense—I rarely think of anime in that way, and Superstar has its merits too, as we’ll get to—but it’s easily the one that’s captured more of my heart.
Part of that, I think, comes down to the fact that SHINEPOST has what is for me more relatable character writing. Particularly in the form of Kyouka Tamaki (Moeko Kanisawa, lead for the real-life idol group ≠ME). Kyouka does fall within a firmly established character archetype; she’s straightlaced, serious, a good student, and considers herself very ordinary. She turns to idol work out of a desperate desire to be special, to mean something to somebody as more than just another person. The devil’s in the details here; Kyouka’s desperation to be noticed also gives rise to a farily pronounced self-loathing streak. See, for instance, the way that she convinces herself that she’s not “really” talented in the weeks following a performance of a new song, in which she sang lead, gone awry. Throughout the show’s second major arc, she tries to settle for less, only for that to end up making her feel worse. It’s a punch to the gut. She reaches her lowest point when she slips into a McDonald’s incognito, hoping—and then actively fantasizing—that one of the other patrons will recognize her. It is, and I mean this with no malice in my heart whatsoever, truly pathetic, in the most profound sense of that term. I have been this person; lots of people have been this person, seeking petty validation from random strangers, only then to feel even worse when we don’t get it. It is a truly miserable feeling, the sort of thing that can swallow a performer’s psyche whole if left unchecked.
But SHINEPOST is not a show that wallows in these kinds of things. The point, after all, of showing you what this kind of character is like in the dark is to then lift them out of that darkness. Kyouka’s manager—an important character in his own right—is able to convince her that actively wanting to be special, that selfishly, shamelessly wanting to feel, even if just for a moment, like the center of someone’s universe, is not just okay but is expected of her. That’s where this column’s header quote comes from; and it’s one that will stick with me for a while. Sure enough, when she’s able to get out of her own head and adopt the mentality of just letting herself honestly want what she wants, she absolutely aces the next performance of her song. In doing so, she shoots her biggest fan, the one person to whom Kyouka really is so much more than just another face in the crowd, through the heart. She straight up faints; it’s hard to blame her.
Granted, this is just one particular arc. (Not even the most recent one, as Rio, the spunky short girl of the group, is the star of the current arc.) But it’s illustrative of SHINEPOST‘s character writing strengths, which make the series feel far more grounded than Superstar despite its rather weird high premise. (Would you believe something this good is being sold on the premise that the idol group’s manager can tell when people are lying? He’s a good character and all, but it’s a downright bizarre thing to hook your whole show on.)
Speaking of, let’s pivot to Superstar. Comparing the shows along a character writing axis in particular is rather unfair. After all; the Love Live series has never dealt with the ‘industry’ side of the idol industry, preferring to bubble its wholly fictional school idol concept off from real world concerns, which severely curtails the possibility of any kind of industry drama plotlines. (This despite the fact that, of course, any of the actual idols who voice the Love Live girls are industry professionals who’ve generally had to work very hard to get where they are, but that’s a conversation for another day.) Inherently, this isn’t a huge problem, and a different Love Live series, last season’s followup to Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, managed to turn that lack of serious engagement with what being an idol means ‘in the real world’ into a strength. Nijigasaki envisions, essentially, a utopia, where the distinction between idol and fan is nearly nonexistent and not only can everyone be an idol, but everyone should at least give it a shot. It has a particular kind of rare fervor that you don’t see in most of its peers over on the sunny optimism side of the idol anime spectrum.
Superstar, meanwhile, has what one could easily argue are higher stakes; its main cast are trying to win the titular Love Live. This is, in theory, a fertile ground for, if not the same kind of character drama as SHINEPOST‘s, at least something in the same general ballpark. Instead, though, most of Superstar‘s best episodes, especially here in its second season, have been a lot sillier than the looming presence of any serious competition would imply. One of season 2’s biggest developments so far is Liella expanding to eight (and eventually nine, although we’re not there yet) members. Two of those members, the stoic oddball Shiki Wakana (Wakana Ookuma), and the willful idol otaku Mei Yoneme (Akane Yabushima), recently got an episode all their own.
Shiki and Mei seen here in their natural states of “looking kinda stoned” and “being flustered and embarrassed.”
And while there was some focus on the twos’ relationship with each other (which goes past “best friends” all the way into borderline homoromantic, a plus for some viewers, certainly), the episode was mostly about wacky misunderstandings. It was a very good episode about wacky misunderstandings, but this, and similar examples throughout the series so far have made Superstar feel like a bit of a lightweight in comparison. Cheerful, fun, amusing, but not anything more than that.
Part of this, I think, comes down to Superstar‘s idols themselves. Liella are not by any means a bad group, and I’d put them on par with SHINEPOST‘s TiNgS in a vacuum, but none of its members come close to the sheer magnetism of, say, Nijigasaki‘s Setsuna Yuki or Lanzhu Zhong. You really need a certain level of camp to elevate this sort of story beyond the merely pleasant. And unfortunately, while there is camp and theatricality present in Love Live! Superstar, it’s mostly not from Liella themselves.
Let’s talk about Wien Margarete (Yuina). Or Vienna Margaret, depending on whose subtitles you’re looking at.
Introduced in Superstar‘s third episode as a rival not just for Liella on the whole but for center Kanon Shibuya (Sayuri Date) specifically, she actually hasn’t appeared in person in the two episodes since. She almost doesn’t need to; Wien has an absolutely electric magnetism that, honestly, none of the Liella girls can really match. What you have here is perhaps the classic problem of simply making the antagonist too cool. (And make no mistake, with her sneering dismissal of Liella and the entire Love Live competition, Wien is absolutely a villain, in as much as Love Live ever has those. Kanon frankly even seems a bit scared of her, despite the fact that Wien is literally a middle schooler.)
Granted, if a middle schooler with lavender hair started showing up outside my house to tell me how bad I was at singing, I might be scared of her too.
But at the same time, I’m unwilling to slam Superstar too hard over this. It is entirely possible that in the season’s back half the rest of Liella will rise to the occasion. Their actual talent, both in-universe and, outside of it, that of their voice actresses, is not remotely the problem, it’s just that you can’t beat crazy shit like glowing butterflies, iron clockwork, and a gothic lolita dress adorned with black feathers by being a pretty good idol group. (And honestly the show itself seems to be on my side here; go watch that clip and look at how Liella react to her. Those are the faces of girls who know they’re outclassed.)
Perhaps, then, Liella will meet that challenge at some point. As it stands, they just don’t have this kind of theatricality, but seeing the group transform into the sort of people who could pull that off would be very much worth watching. (If, still, an entirely different universe than what SHINEPOST is doing.)
In a sense, and to return back to our opening question, this is really less a criticism of Superstar and more of an open query. Now that this genre is entering its second full decade of being among the most successful and popular anime subgenres, where is it going? There’s a lot I haven’t touched on here, outside just these two shows. Right now, Waccha Primagi, a children’s anime that blends the idol and magical girl genres has been unwilling to let the possible outbreak of a war between humans and magic users—after the local Beyonce stand-in ascended to divinity and became an angry Sun God, naturally—interfere with its once-an-episode CGI idol performances. Last season, there was Healer Girl, which I would not really call an idol anime, but its dynamic approach to music certainly borrows something from the genre, and which it spun into hallucinatory dream sequences of rare beauty. And this very season, there are a few idol anime I simply haven’t seen; namely League of Nations Air Force Aviation Magic Band Luminous Witches, whose full English title is an absolute joy to have to copy and paste every time and which is a spinoff of the polarizing Strike Witches series, and Phantom of the Idol, which simply by starring a male lead, is already so far removed from almost everything else on this page that it’s almost another conversation entirely.
Perhaps, then, trying to say much about what idol anime will look like next year, in 5 years, in 10, is foolish in the first place. Writing this piece has been an exercise in perspective. Always a valuable thing, and I hope you’ve found reading it interesting as well.
Nonetheless, the fact remains. Whether the rest of the ’20s brings us more stories of passion and drama within the idol industry, and whatever twists they may have, more sunlit visions of a world where anyone and everyone can become the performer they’ve always dreamed of being, or something in between or even farther afield, the idol genre does not look like it’s going anywhere any time soon. People love pop music, and they love pop stars. That much seems unlikely to change.
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!
Before I say anything else, I do want to be clear that yes, “Dreams Come Rued” is this episode’s title. That’s not a typo; it’s “rued” as in the past tense of that word you only ever see in the phrase “rue the day.”
In any case, I think I have maybe not done the best job of conveying how goddamn weird this show is. RWBY: Ice Queendom is an anime that, by now, has taken place mostly within a dream world by volume. And inarguably, one of its strengths is that that world does in fact run on a convincing facsimile of dream logic. Things change on a whim according to the dreamer’s mood and, indeed, changing the dream itself is part of Team RWBY’s plan as they once again venture into the depths of Weiss’ mind, with Team JNPR’s Jaune in tow.
We open with The Funky Four + 1 More here trying a different tack; they defend one of the ice trains that continuously attempts to enter the city from the recurring White Fang attacks. In doing so, they allow one of the trains to enter the fortresslike Winter City for the first time, perhaps, ever. Weiss, notably, has to actually give the order to open the city’s gates and hesitates until the very last moment to do so, a pretty straightforward metaphor for how much difficulty she has in letting other people into her life. She actually visibly is panicking a bit as she has to make the call. Indicative of authoritarian people freaking out when they no longer have pet issues to fearmonger over or just reflective of the fact that Weiss is, like, super tightly-wound? We at Magic Planet Anime ask, is there no reason it cannot be both?
Regardless, the results are pretty magnificent. The city literally transforms around the train as it enters, and despite Weiss’ protestations that the city “will not change” and how she has to make Blake “understand” this, for a while it looks like things might resolve themselves peacefully. Team RWBY hide out of the way while Jaune enters one of the “Silly Prisons.” That’d be the literal cages where the dreamscape versions of Team JNPR are kept, as we first saw several episodes back. Unfortunately—and, call me crazy, I’m getting the impression that whoever wrote this episode is not super fond of Jaune—Jaune ends up unleashing a horde of tiny, chibi Weisses—Miniweissen, we’ll say—who promptly start babbling one-liners like this.
Now he does get ahold of one of those relics—this one yellow—too, but this turns out to be a pretty big fuckup. Frankly, the entire thing has to truly be seen to be believed; it’s nuts. If Ice Queendom was just uncut weirdness like this all the time, it’d probably be my favorite thing airing this season.
Ruby of course interprets the Miniweissen being free to run about as a good thing. And it does initially seem like it might be, because they disable the menacing robot guards from attacking by…infecting them with childishness?
But then they start making a mess of the city, and it rapidly becomes clear that whatever the solution might be to Weiss’ horrible combination of a self-loathing complex, deeply-ingrained bigoted attitudes, and a generally authoritarian attitude towards not just others but herself as well, it was not letting these things out. Before too long, they combine into larger forms—Magnaweissen?—and start levelling buildings and such.
And then, of course, Weiss calls toward the heavens….
“By the power of Studio Shaft, THIS WILL LOOK BETTER ON BLU-RAYYYYYYYYYYY!”
….and promptly unleashes her giant bronze spider mecha. What, you don’t remember that from the original show? (Honestly, I shouldn’t say things like that given that I haven’t seen it. Maybe it is in the original series.)
If I seem to have a lack of things to say here, I think it’s more because this is a transitional episode than anything else. Team RWBY have tried a different approach and it’s gone awry, and we end on a pretty intense cliffhanger as Weiss summons the aforementioned spider mecha. I have no idea where this is going, but I’m excited to find out.
Yeah, okay, maybe she’s a bad person, but the style though. Sheesh.
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!
Well folks, I hope you like reading my opinions on Girls with Guns anime, because we have a full double-writeup this week.
Episode 6 is a weird one, although in the greater context of Lycoris Recoil it’s actually fairly typical, dealing as it does with a mix of action and wacky hijinks. Takina moves in with Chisato as an extra defense against the recent rash of Lycoris killings (we saw one of those in episode 5), mostly to comedic effect, despite the deadly serious situation, and there’s a running gag throughout the episode about Chisato’s preternatural skill at rock-paper-scissors, as well as plenty more gay subtext for those who are watching the series just for that.
But you wouldn’t assume such silliness from how the episode opens; it begins with the DA in crisis. The targeted killings have thrown the agency into disarray, and there’s not much indication that the commander really knows what to do. That’s actually all we see of her in this episode, but it sets the tone for that part of the episode pretty well.
Let’s briefly talk about Majima (Yoshitsugu Matsuoka). Majima is the weird terrorist who’s been behind these Lycoris killings. We learn in this episode that he’s probably working for Mr. Alan (whether he knows that is an open question at this point), and that he has a pretty short fuse, threatening his cohort, the hacker Roboto, if he can’t get him what he wants soon enough. What does he want? To smash the DA. To be honest, if that motive were welded to a more developed character, you could very easily make the case that Majima is actually the good guy. But Majima is not much more than a cartoonish killer with a grudge at this point, and frankly, he’s not a terribly interesting antagonist. (At least not in this episode, but we’ll get to that.) His being the bad guy is easy to chalk up to the show’s rather simple political principles. He is a functional counterforce for Chisato, though, which is enough for this episode specifically. He becomes interested in our hero when Roboto inadvertently shows him some footage of her roughing up some would-be assailants, and from then on it’s mostly ravings about “balance.” Although there is one interesting reveal snuck in here; that Chisato is, or at least Majima thinks she is, an “Alan Lycoris.” It really doesn’t seem like our protagonist is actually working for Alan, so what that means, beyond Alan’s brief allusion to her being a “genius of killing” back in episode 4, is fairly up in the air.
The actual section of the episode where Majima and Chisato fight is strongly done, and LycoReco makes a much-needed comeback on the production front after the visually iffy episode 5, here. The fact that Majima’s favored method of attacking Lycorii starts with “run them over with a Lambo” is still deeply silly, but it at least looks suitably dramatic and menacing this time around. Most notably with this shot, where it does actually look like Chisato might be seriously injured or worse. (She is, of course, fine. No one can stop an anime high school girl with a firearm.)
Things do get dicey enough though that Takina has to intervene, although not before we get a pretty great “hero and villain fistfight while surrounded by chanting goons” scene. I’ve always loved that particular trope, it’s an easy way to inject some grit into a story. (And the between frames of a full-on slugfest are inevitably hilarious.)
There are some other interesting bits in here. For one, we get yet another piece of the puzzle as to the question of what exactly happened back in episode 1. Today we learn that the person who hacked the Radiata system—and thus, indirectly lead to Majima’s people getting their hands on the names and faces of the Lycorii he’s been hunting down—was in fact Walnut, AKA our very own Kurumi. This is basically treated like a serious but ultimately goofy mistake on her part by most of the cast, which is as odd as it sounds. The only resulting consequence being her offering Takina a tearful apology and promising to help them see the case through to the end. I feel like I’m beating a dead horse whenever I bring this up, but this show’s oddly undercooked ideological framework really just lends a weird air to developments like this, and a few other “gags” throughout the episode. It’s the show’s most serious writing-side weakness, but admittedly, Kurumi committing a serious crime being treated as an Uh-Oh Whoopsie is actually kind of funny.
This is also the presumable inspiration for episode 6’s midcards, which I will not otherwise get a chance to include here, and which really remind me of that “girl being homoerotically bullied” meme that used to go around tumblr.
Do you think someone on the staff just made this as fanart, originally? I do wonder.
We close with Takina finally beating Chisato at roshambo, with her residence at Chisato’s place on the line, although not before the latter gets her hopes up.
….And, elsewhere, with Majima swearing vengeance against this “interesting” Lycoris he’s met, thrilled that he’s found someone who can “strike a balance with him.”
Which brings us to episode 7.
Episode 7 is not only much stronger than the comparatively weak 5 and 6, it’s probably the best episode of Lycoris Recoil so far, despite forgoing one of the series’ usual strengths. (That is to say; there aren’t really any cool extended action scenes in it.)
Part of this is down to a simple shift in focus; I haven’t made a secret of the fact that I’m a bit down on Lycoris Recoil‘s worldbuilding and the assumptions that it uses as foundations. That’s still true, but this episode foregrounds a more interesting and more directly interpersonal series of conflicts that makes that a fair bit less relevant. You can think of this as the show “zooming in”, if you’d like.
Our plots here are twofold; one follows Majima and manages to make him a fair shake more interesting than he’s been since his introduction, and the other follows Chisato, who, via an unintentionally sneaked look at a phone, manages to learn more about herself and the operation that saved her life than she probably wanted to.
Majima’s plot is the more straightforward of the two, so we’ll knock that out first; he spends much of this episode running around on Roboto’s orders. All to advance some grandiose plan he has to encounter Chisato again, who he has quickly developed a dangerous obsession with. We also learn, somewhat surprisingly, that Majima was present at the much-discussed Radio Tower Incident, and in fact claims credit for “breaking” the tower in the first place. What this might mean is still unclear, but he did meet a certain deadly, familiar-looking Lycoris back then, which immediately adds a layer of the engagingly personal to his fixation on Chisato.
On the other hand, maybe this is just The Flatwoods Monster wearing a schoolgirl uniform.
His half of the episode ends with him and his band of thugs shooting up a police station, and attaching a bugged USB stick from Roboto to one of their computers. (Which is presumably somehow connected to the Radiata, to be honest this is the episode’s only plot point that I’m still a little unclear on.)
Chisato, meanwhile, happens to glance at her boss Mika’s phone one day at the cafe’. One can see why the message would catch her interest.
As much as what follows is about Chisato, it’s also about Mika. I haven’t really talked a lot about Mika in these columns, but he’s actually probably my favorite member of the adult cast. For one thing, cast diversity has badly backslid in anime over the past 20 years, so it is just nice to have a Black character who is a normal part of the narrative instead of some weird stereotype. But more than that, he’s an interesting mentor figure in his own right, past episodes have alluded to a checked past with the DA, gesturing toward the notion that Mika is not entirely the kindly man he seems.
This episode does not pull any kind of secret villain reveal, but it does confirm that, yeah, the guy used to work in the truly unpleasant part of the already-unpleasant secret government agency. Namely, because one of his buddies was Shinji Yoshimatsu. The mysterious head of the Alan Institute who I’ve accidentally previously only been referring to by his pseudonyms, I think. Anyway! That is the guy that he meets up with at Bar Forbidden, the amusingly named members-only lounge mentioned in the text message.
Initially, some of the cast (especially Takina) think that it’s possible that he might be meeting up with the commander, assuming it’s a strictly business affair. They find out the actual truth of things once they infiltrate Forbidden in, I’ll say, a very Chisato way.
Where in the world is Chisato Sandiego?
As they find out, Yoshimatsu and Mika go way back. On the one hand, we get pretty explicit confirmation that they used to be more than just friends. (Quoth Chisato, who sounds like she’s speaking from experience; “love comes in many forms.”) And Yoshimatsu attempts to psych-out Mika in an elevator on his way out. Both by acting all domineering and then by pulling back and explaining the reasons for his actions.
He, as we already more or less knew, was the one who funded her operation after the Radio Tower Incident, and did so because of Chisato’s natural talents. Those talents go unnamed here, but it doesn’t take a genius to infer that he’s referring to her skill as an assassin. Skill she hasn’t really put to use since returning to work as a Lycoris and switching only to non-lethal arms.
Here again we do kind of run smack into LycoReco’s fundamental writing issues. Lycoris Recoil seems to think switching to non-lethal ammo is a much bigger deal than it actually is. Yes, it’s great that the child soldier isn’t wantonly killing people (anymore), but she’s still a child soldier. An unsolved problem remains.
Or does it?
The series has not been shy about portraying Yoshimatsu as a villain. This is the first episode we get that really humanizes him at all, and what we learn is hardly flattering. Chisato confronts Mika and Yoshimatsu, although unfailingly politely. She learns about why she was saved, and even though she does not show it in any way but the most subtle, it’s very clear that this bothers her on a deep level. And I imagine that with Majima setting plans in motion to cause full-on disasters to attract the attention of his favorite Lycoris, her commitment to the bare minimum baseline even of just not killing will be tested in the episodes to come.
While that is not the comprehensive breakdown of the toxic structures that put all this in place that many were hoping for from Lycoris, it is meaningful. In the episode’s closing moments, she hangs up her Alan Institute pendant inside her closet, implicitly locking that part of her identity away. She is clearly bothered by what she’s been told here, even if it’s not in her nature to make that obvious. Hopefully, the next time we see the pendant, she throws it out for good. (And Mika, certainly, feels like he’s failed Chisato in some way by letting her find out about this. I really do think the two have an endearing surrogate father / daughter sort of thing going on, and you really feel for him here.)
Making things worse is that Yoshimatsu tosses this comment toward Takina, possibly hinting at a future wedge between the two. (Even if not, Yoshimatsu is clearly trying to make one.)
The episode ends on a brilliant little match cut; Chisato hanging up her pendant with Majima idly dangling his in the air as he plots his next move. This is the most alive Lycoris Recoil has felt for a few weeks, and whatever happens next, it’s sure to be explosive.
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!
Does anyone else feel like this storyline is dragging just a bit?
Far be it from me to say that the show is spending too much time on the titular Ice Queendom arc, it’s just that it’s taken a bit of an odd direction, and I’m not sure what to think.
“En garde, I’ll let you try my Wu Tang style.”
Before we get into the writing side of things though, an administrative note and some production observations. For the former; your girl is really sick with something that is hopefully not COVID-19. So if my commentary is a little harder to follow even than usual, I apologize.
As for the production; Ice Queendom has never been a particularly consistent-looking show. Even in the case of the premiere, one of the episodes (the third) looked much better than the other two. Given the spellbinding episode 4 I held out some hope that things might even out a bit, but two episodes later and we’re kind of back to where we started on this front. Some cuts look really good, but there’s a general sense that no one is really steering the ship. It’s not just things like very obvious CGI rigs being used for mid-distance shots (and even the occasional closer-to-the-camera cut), it’s a general lack of consistency. Some cuts look like they haven’t really been entirely finished, and this episode’s directing wanders down the weird cul-de-sac of manga-style panel cut-ins, a quirk that’s appeared throughout the series but is used to the point of abuse here, sometimes to disguise the fact that not much is really going on in a given scene.
Why do I feel like I’m watching an episode of The Pink Panther all the sudden.
There are also a few bizarre cases of directorial wonkiness straight out of Bakemonogatari, such as a scene where Yang and Blake talk over the phone while the latter evades monsters, but the latter’s side of the conversation is rendered entirely by cutting to a still image of her phone and replacing whatever dialogue might’ve been said with a bitcrushed electronic shriek. This really seems like it’s foreshadowing something, but nothing comes of it this episode. Interesting visually? Absolutely, but baffling in-context.
All this said, I still wouldn’t actually say the show looks bad. Occasional parts of it do, certainly, but that’s really the overall thing; it’s super uneven. (Maybe I’m just being nice because compared to the show that this one replaced in my weeklies, Ice Queendom might as well be Night on The Galactic Railroad.)
The writing, similarly, falls back into a much choppier mode after a few episodes of mostly holding it together. The episode’s actual plot is solid enough; Team RWBY attempt to defeat the Night Grimm lurking within Weiss’ subconscious and fail, getting expelled from her head yet again in the process. We see some good stuff along the way; like the very ship bait-y way that Weiss refers to Ruby as being “precious” to her, a couple solid (if, again, inconsistent) fights, some cool locales (including a floating snake statue wrapped into an infinity symbol that is only on-screen for a criminally short few minutes), and the return of the chibi doll gadgets from episode 4.
But there’s a strange thing here where the character interactions seem to imply a much greater depth to these relationships than what we’ve actually been shown. How long have Team RWBY actually known each other in this continuity? A few days at most? Interesting tidbits like Weiss possibly resenting / respecting / something? Blake for her dream-self’s habit of sneaking into the inner castle of Winter City only to escape again really seem like they’re playing off of some long-simmering tension….but we saw these characters meet, and it seemed fairly obvious to me that Weiss doesn’t like Blake because she has some bigoted attitudes that she’s not dealing with very well. (The series offers a not-entirely-convincing alternative explanation. We’ll get to that.) So, this entire notion just comes across as strange. Much like the odder visual moments, these scenes are interesting in isolation but lack any apparent further meaning in their actual context. It’s a little hard to buy that Weiss’ problems with Blake are somehow solely personal when she’s dressed like that.
More promising are the relationships centered around Ruby, who is by this point seriously doubting her capabilities as a leader and questioning if she’s really a good fit for the position at all. An interesting dynamic is brought to the fore here where Yang actively tries to flatter Ruby’s leadership in order to improve her mood, but it doesn’t really seem to be working and I suspect that Ruby is cognizant of her older sister’s obvious ulterior motive in, you know, seeing her baby sister happy.
The episode’s first half caps with a fight against “Negative” Weiss (that’s the Weiss within the dream, you see), who is actually defending the Nightmare Grimm hidden within the center of her own mind, either very much corrupted by it or acting on her own impulses in ways that aren’t immediately apparent. (Possibly her desire to appease her father and live up to the family name, or the watchful eye of her “brother,” who has continued to fly around as a bat throughout these episodes.)
In any case, Ruby gets a rather nasty cut from some of the Grimm’s thorned vines shortly after being explicitly warned about that exact thing. That will probably come back around later, if I had to guess. So, you know, keep an eye on it.
Team RWBY lose the fight, and are again expelled back to the real world. Exorcist-witch-coolest character in this entire franchise-sage Shion tells the girls that they’ll need to make their third try count; if they fail again, Weiss probably won’t make it. But, there’s some time before Shion can send them back in, so they should formulate a plan. Instead, they each split off on their own and talk with other characters. The second half of the episode thus centers around Team RWBY’s respective conversations with a bunch of minor characters who are mostly not worth caring much about.
The exception here is Yang’s chat with the robotic Penny (I don’t think we’ve been explicitly told that she’s an android or something, but it’s pretty obvious), whose talk about dreams as “maintenance” gives Yang the bright idea to perhaps try actually changing Weiss’ dream itself.
I like Penny. She’s very round.
Later, we learn this is actually a viable plan, although Weiss herself will have to perceive the changes as an improvement.
Ruby gets the short end of the stick in terms of talking to actually interesting characters, since she ends up sitting with Team JNPR from episode 3, whose leader (I think?) Jaune is the guy who was first infected by the Nightmare Grimm in the first place. The entire team is there, including Nora, who has a hammer, and Whoever This Guy Is.
No, seriously, who is this? Was he even in any prior episodes? I don’t remember him.
But! Ruby tells them that they—or at least, their dream counterparts—are present in Weiss’ dream as well, which gives Team JNPR the idea of perhaps tagging along. Again, this turns out to be viable. So hey, Team RWBY is two for two.
And then there’s Blake.
Blake meets up with her friend Sun (Tomoaki Maeno), the blonde Faunus first introduced in episode 3. Their little talk…rubs me the wrong way. Throughout their back and forth, Blake confesses that she wants to help Weiss change for the better (admirable enough), and then compares Weiss’ own dislike of her to the motives of the still-active section of White Fang, which makes no sense whatsoever. Even setting aside the borderline-repulsive implications there about what that may be trying to say (or inadvertantly be saying) about real-world political situations, on just a very basic level, one person’s prejudice is not comparable to the goals of a liberationist organization, which is what White Fang seems to be. Like, I almost feel like I’m way off in the weeds by even saying this, only because it’s so obvious; those fundamentally aren’t the same thing! They’re not even similar! It makes no sense to compare them! Ice Queendom of course just carries on like this is all a given, and Blake’s part of the episode’s back half ends with her redoubling her efforts to try to “change” Weiss. Sure, whatever. I like Blake as a character on a basic nuts-and-bolts level; she’s a stoic “cool girl” with raven hair and a pair of kitty ears, that’s hard to fuck up, but I really wish Ice Queendom would hand her a plot that’s not this.
I feel a little bad harping on this point so hard, especially because I know secondhand that this is a writing weakness inherited from the original RWBY rather than something that this series’ writers came up with. But still! It’s kind of a wild thing to do, right? There’s “having an inherited problematic background element in your show” and there’s “actively drawing attention to it.” This is the latter, and I really hope that the show either finds some way out of this little fox’s den it’s written itself into or it just stops trying to deal with this entirely. Obviously, the former would be better, but the latter would be decent compensation. To be fair; there is a glimmer of hope for the Blake situation specifically; Sun points out that Blake might be thinking about this the wrong way. The fact that Dream-Blake (who we don’t see directly, since our Blake is taking her place within the dream) seems to be such a thorn in Dream-Weiss’ side implies that Weiss thinks about Blake a fair bit. He puts forward that perhaps she’s just frustrated that she can’t understand Blake very well, implying that it may be because Blake isn’t someone Weiss understands—or even thinks she understands—and is thus beyond Weiss’ “control.” This has some weird implications all on its own, but simply as a relationship between two characters it makes way more sense than the stab at a political angle.
His name is Sun as in Sun Wukong, by the way. Get it, because he’s got a monkey’s tail? Ahaha. Worldbuilding!
In fact, it rather makes me wish that said angle weren’t present at all, because if it weren’t, Blake and Weiss’ cat-and-mouse relationship would actually be quite strongly written. As it stands; it’s iffy, but perhaps it’ll pick up, the series is only half over, after all.
As for the episode itself; it ends with Team RWBY headed back into the dream. Most likely with Team JNPR shortly following, but we don’t actually see them enter it here, as the credits roll before that can happen.
I worry I’m giving off the impression that I dislike this show. There’s a trap you can pretty easily fall into as a critic where you end up just listing everything you dislike about something, even the things you genuinely quite enjoy. I wouldn’t call Ice Queendom an anime-of-the-year contender or anything, but it’s a solid series on a moment-to-moment level, and it’s consistently entertaining. You can get away with a lot if you manage to just work as a fun piece of cheesy action, and Ice Queendom is pretty good at that.
To six more weeks thereof, or perhaps even more.
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!
In its fifth episode, Call of The Night refocuses on its first thought as a creative work. Namely, that Ko is down absolutely awful for Nazuna, and is maybe a slight bit in denial about it. Just a smidgen. The series recenters the two’s dynamic here, as after several episodes of also palling around with Akira, she’s entirely absent from this one. Thus, it’s just Nazuna and Ko.
The episode actually opens in Nazuna’s apartment, where we learn that the vampire version of waking up in the middle of the night is waking up in the middle of the afternoon. (This is where the show puts its allotted few scant minutes of actual daylight per episode. I have noticed that in restricting its usage of normal sunlight so heavily, Call of The Night basically inverts the usual day/night dynamic of most anime of this sort. It’s a neat trick.) Here, she does things like miss a FedEx delivery, paly a video game she’s not really that invested in, and other such Normal Things for people who are teenagers or young adults to get up to.
She seems a bit lonely, underneath that teasing vampire facade, but perhaps I’m just projecting a touch. Most importantly, she visits a bath house, and from there the episode’s plot springs.
You see, she’s only in the bathhouse for a little while when she gets a beep from Ko. As such, she leaves in a hurry, and when she meets Ko, her hair is all down and soft-looking.
This causes Ko to become self-conscious of the fact that, oh yeah, this pretty lady who sucks his blood every night is attractive, and he kind of falls down the stairs of being awkward and being aware that you’re awkward but not really being able to do anything about it for the remainder of the episode. When Nazuna sinks her fangs into him, perhaps finding his squirming cute, she actually bites him so hard that he cries out in….well, I’ll leave cries out in what up to you, dear readers. Suffice it to say, this is the hardest that the series has yet leaned into the whole “bloodsucking as sex” metaphor.
Sometimes I feel obligated to try to come up with clever captions for these pictures, but I really don’t know how I’d make this more of a sex joke than it already is.
Would you believe the two end up at a love hotel by accident? Yes, just like that episode of My Dress-Up Darling from earlier this year, and I’m sure I’m neither the first nor last person who will compare the two. But while I found that episode to be one of MDUD’s weaker forays, this episode—and this part of it, in particular—is surprisingly nuanced. More or less; Ko is definitely attracted to Nazuna, he knows that, and she knows that. Apparently, drinking someone’s blood lets a vampire get a sense of their thoughts and feelings via taste. This is a weird and cool bit of worldbuilding tossed in here, perhaps as a metaphor for Nazuna’s being generally more experienced than Ko is.
More to the point; Ko feels bad about his attraction, because he does genuinely consider Nazuna a friend, and those feelings rest uneasily together in his mind; he feels like he’s, to quote the subtrack directly, doing something “immoral.” Nazuna, interestingly, waves the entire notion off. Be immoral, she says. That is what nighttime is for, after all. The only thing she cautions him against is “being lazy about [his] emotions.” Feel anything, but feel honestly.
It’s hard to know if the show herself will still be backing her up there in six weeks, but it certainly is for now. Later on, the topic of conversation turns toward other people whose blood Nazuna has sucked, and Ko, perhaps predictably, gets a bit jealous. (She tells him, in an apparent attempt to make him less so, that she also sucks women’s blood. One might call her bi-neck-sual, if they had a love of awful puns, and I very much do.)
Nazuna also reveals, upon taking Ko back to her apartment, that her job is actually how she meets most of the people whose blood she sucks. What is her job? Well, she is a “professional cuddler.”
Yeah, really. I did not know this was a thing either. Maybe it isn’t! Who knows?
What that seems to entail is a kind of non-sexual prostitution where she wears a slightly revealing nurse getup and gives people massages or the like while lying down with them but, pointedly, without actually doing anything beyond that. Frankly, I am a little torn here. Part of me thinks this is a bit of a cop-out. There isn’t anything wrong or immoral about sex work and I feel like that might’ve made more sense given the episode’s whole theme. On the other hand, it might make Ko and Nazuna’s relationship seem even dicier than it already is, so maybe it’s fine that they didn’t go that route. Who can say?
Nazuna proves herself to be pretty knowledgeable about massage work. (Watching this part of the episode honestly kind of made me want one myself. I do have pretty stiff shoulders.) She’s also, as we’ve long known, very adept at relaxing Ko, and just when she’s about to sink her teeth into him yet again, her door bell rings, and the episode’s denouement makes an abrupt swerve into cringe comedy.
The person at the door is one of her regular customers, and Nazuna is—or at least claims to be—far too tired from massaging Ko to actually help her out. So, Ko will have to do it in her place, using the knowledge Nazuna’s imparted to him.
Cue the credits!
Yes, on that particularly odd cliffhanger, today’s episode ends, promising next week’s will be perhaps a bit heavier on the wacky hijinks side. (Although honestly, who knows? This show is a bit hard to predict.) Overall, I like this episode. I know some folks find Nazuna and Ko’s relationship rather unpleasant, but for my part, I think the show manages a decent job of selling it as being good for both of them. This episode serves as a sort of back to basics, while also progressing that relationship along. The night keeps calling, why would Ko stop answering?
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!
The show about a character associated with the color red is dead! Long live the show about a character associated with the color red.
Yes, in stark defiance of all logic and frankly even my own personal preferences, I have officially made the jump. I am going to be covering RWBY: Ice Quendom from this point forward instead of Lucifer and The Biscuit Hammer, which, frankly, I just don’t want to think about that anime anymore.
So, I won’t! By more or less coincidence, I covered the surprisingly great episode 4 of this very show just the other day here on MPA. As such, anyone who’s read that and my impressions article on the premiere is totally up to speed. Let’s get into it without any further delays.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, this episode isn’t quite as visually consistent as last week’s. What is surprising though, at least to me, is that it also doesn’t mark the end of the whole “Weiss’ Nightmare” arc, indicating to me that Ice Queendom is willing to invest a fairly significant amount of time into this story. (Even if it ends next week, that’s still three episodes; as many as the combined premiere!) Even with the visual wonkiness, which reaches a nadir with a botched scene transition about 11 minutes in, in mind this remains an interesting arc, and I’m curious to see how it eventually ends.
Something we don’t get here is the teased Ruby / Weiss fight from the end of the last episode. In a bit of a bait-and-switch, Shion actually pulls Ruby out of the dream before much else can happen. Team RWBY regroups in the real world, spending the first 7-ish minutes of the episode planning their next move.
Pictured: Regrouping (most of image), Weiss looking hilariously dead (top left of image).
Notably, when Ruby notes that it really seems like Weiss genuinely doesn’t like her, her teachers (including Shion!) are rather dismissive of the notion, chalking it up to interference from the Nightmare Grimm. I do wonder who’s right here, or if it’s a 50/50 sort of thing. We see evidence for both ideas throughout the episode. (Most shows would take the easy way out by revealing Weiss to be a good person “deep down” all along and thus sidestep having to thoroughly unpack the rest of her emotional baggage in the real world, time will tell if Ice Queendom is “most shows” or not.) We also learn, on an unrelated note, that diving into a dream world requires you to have a cute little mummy doll made of you.
I was going to crack a joke about how these seem like real merch, but I think they literally might be? I think one of my younger brothers owns a Blake one. I may be misremembering.
For the second dive into Weiss’ dream, all three members of Team RWBY tag along. The only other thing of note that occurs in the waking world is the folks from Team JNPR (still hate that name, by the way) checking up on her. Jaun makes a….weird comment, before our heroines set off.
Hey bud? What the hell are you talking about?
In the dream, Yang and Blake find that unlike Ruby, Weiss’ subconscious has mostly made them stronger. Blake’s weapon has been reconfigured into some wild grappling hook thing (and she’s been given a cute redesign, too), and Yang is so strong that she can knock trees flat in a single punch. Ruby laments getting the short end of the stick, it’s a fun little scene that also seems to betray who among the team Weiss has a kind of begrudging respect-of-strength for.
The dreamworld is as bizarre and goofy-dystopian as ever. With the notable exception of the grim, repeated White Fang attacks on the ice trains (which seem to happen basically constantly and are definitely indicative of some deep-held, fucked-up stuff on Weiss’ part).
A more fun thing about this kind of setting is that it invites you to try to puzzle out every little detail and its significance. Why does Weiss’ subconscious feature, for instance, storefronts filled with road signs? Why is there a musical number at about the 13-minute mark, with notably wonky and off-model animation, where a caged Pyrrha sings about how lonely she is? (Okay, that one’s pretty easy to figure out, but still, what the heck?) What of the strange shadow people that toss themselves into a frozen fountain?
And what, also, of her mysterious advisor, a living candleflame that seems to constantly dangle a bizarre carrot on a string in the form of a place of “true rest” in front of her face? Is this character part of Weiss’ own mind, the Nightmare’s influence made manifest, or is there not even a meaningful distinction anymore? What is pretty obvious is that the “resting place” being a frozen coffin is pretty damn ominous, as are the thorned vines that encircle Weiss almost any time she’s on screen.
Eventually, Ruby and Yang hear an announcement over a PA system. An announcement that they are “missing” and need to be recaptured. They actually allow themselves to be captured, and to be returned to the living prison where the “Sillies” are kept so they can’t cause any harm. (Specifically, the door to the jail is alive. His name is Sleepy Klein. This is delightfully weird.)
Blake, meanwhile, notes that Weiss’ announcement doesn’t mention her at all, and wonders if there’s just not any version of her in the dream at all, although Weiss mentioning a “woman in black” to her dream advisors would seem to indicate otherwise.
Ruby and Yang’s “prison” is a lot more like their dorm room than anything, and it’s filled with things Weiss likes. Some of these inclusions are rather telling.
In it, the two find a mysterious “artifact” (a red chess knight), which Shion helpfully informs them could possibly help them reach farther into Weiss’ mind and wake her up. Blake finds one too, while infiltrating the inner fortress of Winter City in a more conventional fashion. She breaks Ruby and Yang out of their prison, but Yang stays behind so that Sleepy Klein won’t get suspicious.
The episode then ends much like last week’s; after Blake and Ruby discover a new, strange part of the palace—a vast, spacious hallway lit by purple lanterns—Weiss discovers and confronts them, again an obvious setup for a fight next week. This time, though, she seems to have much more of an issue with Blake being there than Ruby, because her final comment in this episode is pretty straightforward about how she, or at least this particular part of her, actually feels about the ‘B’ of Team RWBY.
And on that note of extremely blunt bigotry, we cut directly to the credits!
It’s a little hard to know how to take all this. Weiss is, pretty obviously, a genuinely prejudiced person, and it’s not like it’s not worth exploring how she deals with that and, presumably, eventually rids herself of those notions. But even if “hatred of fantasy beast people = racism” wasn’t already a very difficult, if not impossible, metaphor to make work well, the extremely abstract approach taken here—with the dream world and all—might make it even harder.
What’s worse is that this arc, for all it does do right, is definitely going out of its way to paint Weiss as a victim, rather than as a perpetrator. The simple fact of the matter is that she is of course both. Being one does not excuse the other. (Note also how little of this arc has actually been about Blake so far, even though she’s the one who Weiss has this irrational bias against.) Some part of her does seem to recognize that what she’s doing is wrong, but her desire to “be worthy of the Schnee name” is overriding it, and she’s hurting people in the process. I would really like to see her have to actually deal with that and try to actively make amends somehow.
Of course, if Ice Queendom does simply take the easy way out and play the “Weiss was actually secretly a good person the entire time” card without any further development of the character, that will be disappointing. Strangely enough though, the fact that I’m even invested enough that I could eventually be disappointed is still a huge improvement over the premiere.
I think breaking down the places where the cracks show in the series’ writing is just the responsible thing to do, and it does legitimately bother me to see something trotting out this particular bit of hackery in 2022 (not that it’s ever really gone away. See Bright, infamously and somewhat recently), but on a moment-to-moment level, Ice Queendom is actually working a lot better now than it was during the premiere. (Which, to be fair, handled the Faunus stuff even worse, so maybe there’s a correlation there.) There is certainly more than enough room for Ice Queendom to go up from here, and I really hope it does. As it stands, this has gone from, frankly, a pretty bad show, to a solidly decent one. I would really love to see it get even better.
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 cover Lycoris Recoil last week, but thankfully, the fourth episode was fairly minor. Mostly, it was a character-building exercise; Chisato and Takina being cute together at an aquarium and things like that. There was one major actual plot development though; the introduction of a new villain, an explosion-obsessed Joker-y type who blew up a train, killing a bunch of Lycorii in the process. Also introduced (or re-introduced? I don’t recall) were a pair of disgruntled police detectives, frustrated at being kept out of what actually happened in the subway. They turn up again here too, though only briefly.
This week’s episode is, in a phrase, a bit of a series low point. It’s not bad, but there are moments here that raise concerns about where all this might be going. To start with a fairly minor detail (a sin, I know), let’s talk about those detectives. They have no idea about a solid 90% of what goes on in Lycoris Recoil. The show portrays both as well-meaning bumblers, who are in over their head by trying to look into this conspiracy stuff at all. But at the same time, it draws a very sharp distinction between them and, say, the DA. These ordinary cops are perhaps, in Lycoris Recoil‘s opinion, the good ones. It’s the shadowy secret agents who control the government that are the bad guys.
To put it bluntly, this is a problem. Not because it’s Bad Politics™, but because it’s just not much of a notion at all. Even if you think a strong police force is a good thing, a statement I very much disagree with, you would, I think, be forced to concede that “cops should be good” is not much of a stance on anything. It’s not so much a point of view as a statement of the trivially obvious. “Cops are good, unlike the shadow cabal that controls the government” is full-on conspiracy theorist shit that has nothing to do with reality, although whether LycoReco actually believes that or is unintentionally saying such as a byproduct of its genre (it would not be the first show, or even the first anime this year, to do this) is not yet clear.
Now to be very fair to LycoReco, maybe that’s not where this is going. There is some palpable dramatic irony to Abe saying, upon having a brief run-in with Chisato, that it “doesn’t matter what’s being covered up” as long as “kids like [her] can live at ease.” Obviously, Chisato does not live at ease, specifically because she both is one of the things being covered up and is actively helping out with the covering. It’s totally possible the detectives are just meant to be a bit of comedic relief. And if so, that’s fine, and I’m just underestimating the show here. But on the other hand, I have very much gone broke on assuming anime were trying to something more involved than they actually were before. So really, who knows?
The main plot of the episode doesn’t really help elucidate matters, because this is, if not the weakest plot so far, definitely the oddest.
As is usual for LycoReco, things start out simple and then get very complicated. Initially, we’re led to believe that the client-of-the-week for this episode, a Mr. Matsushita (Teruo Seki), simply wants to tour his homeland of Japan one last time before he passes away. You see, Matsushita has been living abroad for the past 20 years because an assassin murdered his wife and daughter, and has been trying to finish the job for some time. He’s also severely physically disabled, is kept both alive and mobile by a suite of mechanical devices that are integrated into his wheelchair, including a speech synthesizer and a pair of hi-tech goggles that are evidently connected to the internet. (To be honest something about this depiction strikes me as vaguely offensive? But I’m not physically disabled, so I will pass the question of if that’s so to people who are.) Early in the episode, Chisato bonds with him over the fact that she also relies on a machine to stay alive, an entirely artificial heart (not a pacemaker, as she’s quick to correct). Naturally, this is supplied by the mysterious Alan Institute, who seem to have their hands in just about everything that goes on in Lycoris Recoil.
This conversation also establishes that however her artificial heart works, it doesn’t actually beat. So no, Chisato’s kokoro does not, in fact, go doki-doki.
Throughout most of the episode, Chisato and Takina—mostly the former—play tour guide. These scenes are pretty cute, although I point out with some trepidation that there are bits that look noticeably rougher than LycoReco has so far, which is a touch worrying. (There’s also a lot of leaning on various characters’ mid-distance models, which is less worrying, but is a bit funny.)
Of course, Lycoris Recoil is not a show about taking calm riverboat cruises and nice visits to local temples, even if it does a pretty good job of dressing up as one here.
And before we get to why it’s not that, I’d also be remiss to not mention that Takina gets very curious about Chisato’s heart during the aforementioned cruise, which leads to a Moment.
But enough of that. Did you guess that the assassin who tried to off Mr. Matsushita 20 years ago would show up as this episode’s primary antagonist? If you did, come collect your prize, because you were correct. “Silent” Jin is an interesting but decidedly minor character—true to the name, he only speaks a few words here, all in the last minute or two of the episode—a former colleague of Mika’s and consummate professional who is actually able to get the drop on the Lycorii. Not that it saves him from eventually getting his ass handed to him when Chisato is able to confront him directly. The roughness of the rest of the episode doesn’t apply as much to the action sequences, and there are a couple pretty great moments, although nothing that tops the whole “bullet dodge shuffle” bit in episode 2.
It’s been a great week for stills depicting rumpled skirts here on Magic Planet Anime.
But after they catch Jin, Chisato and Takina learn that, oh dear, Mr. Matsushita’s actual request is that Chisato—specifically Chisato—kill him. For revenge reasons, of course.
Chisato, being something of a pacifist-by-technicality, objects to this, but before anyone can really get their point of view spelled out in full, Matsushita’s life support is remotely deactivated. Do you feel bad for him yet? Well, don’t. There is no Mr. Matsushita, and this episode’s entire premise rests on a massive lie. As the folks at the cafe eventually discover—and we learn along with them—the man actually in the wheelchair was a helpless, lifelong addict who was, apparently, basically just straight-up kidnapped. Everything else; the voice coming out of the synthesizer, the actual movement of the wheelchair, etc., was done remotely. The entire point, all along, was getting Chisato to kill a guy.
Which of course then brings us into the question of who did all this and why. A few stray statements made by “Mr. Matsushita” as he’s trying to get Chisato to off Jin, coupled with something that was said last week, may clear things up. Specifically, it seems that the enigmatic Mr. Alan (not to be confused with that Youtube fellow who thought Turning Red should mention 9/11), who was probably the person who gave Chisato her new heart in the first place, thinks Chisato is a—the show’s words here—“genius of killing.” The Alan Institute, as the show’s gone over more than once, helps out extraordinary individuals in difficult situations. Perhaps Mr. Alan thinks that Chisato is the Picasso of murder and is trying to push her into taking up her craft again.
There are a lot of places Lycoris Recoil could take this. We don’t know enough about Alan to make strong statements on what (if anything) he’s supposed to specifically represent, yet. The fact that he’s a billionaire and grants aid to people only to then take that to mean that they owe him their entire life certainly can be read a very specific way. But it also wouldn’t be at all hard for Lycoris Recoil to back off of that point of view entirely. (It would not be the first work of fiction to fail to properly analyze the underlying problems of an evil billionaire.) It still feels too early to call, even as we approach the show’s halfway mark.
The episode ends with two very different scenes, and I think that the contrast between them can serve as a useful metaphor for the crossroads which Lycoris Recoil currently stands at.
One is the worst scene in the entire show so far; a nameless Lycoris is assassinated in the dumbest fashion imaginable by the Joker-y terrorist I mentioned at the top of this article. He runs her over with a car and then has a bunch of anonymous goons riddle her with bullets in the middle of a random nighttime street. It’s comically abrupt, comes out of nowhere, and seems to serve no real purpose but shock value. (It’s also easily the ugliest scene of LycoReco so far, which doesn’t help.)
The other, which happens immediately after, takes place back at the cafe. Takina, now alone with Chisato, rests her head on her chest, fascinated by her lack of an audible heartbeat. (Whether she has ulterior motives, well, that’s a matter of interpretation.) Takina justifies her doing this by saying that no one else is around, and Chisato raises no further objections. The two simply lie there, enjoying each other’s company, and Chisato remarks that her quiet artificial ticker is “cool.” On that very much true statement, the episode comes to a low-key close.
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! But you really shouldn’t care in this case. Seriously, don’t watch this.
Ugh.
Look, I’ll give it this much. In a way, the sheer lack of ambition in the Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer anime is almost comforting. Over the past week, I have been dealing with quite a lot of things, most of them relating to my mental health and mostly too complicated to go into here. And there is something strangely reassuring about the fact that, no matter what happens to me, the Biscuit Hammer anime will continue to run for its allotted cours, and it will continue to be totally superfluous the entire time, a general ball of Stay-Puft cotton that will ultimately mean very little to anyone. I could move to another city, I could buy a house, I could get isekai’d, I could become a magical girl in a far-distant fantasy kingdom. I could buy a house in that fantasy kingdom. I could get married to an elf woman and raise four kids in a cottage as some kind of ultimate lesbian power fantasy. None of it would matter; the Biscuit Hammer anime would still be here, and it would still be terrible, the kind of thing that is instantly agreed upon by fans of the source material to “not count” the moment it ends, inducted into those rarified halls of nonexistence next to the Umineko anime and whatever kids meme about “not having an anime” these days. There is, admittedly, a kind of strength in that sort of consistency. It’s an absolutely worthless kind of strength, but, hey, it’s something.
“God’s in her heaven….
On the other hand, its equally-consistent, crushing badness is also just depressing, because it renders actually watching the series an actively draining experience. I didn’t cover last week’s episode, which gave us the end of Yuuhi’s emotional arc with his grandfather, where he both refuses to forgive the man yet wishes for Neu to cure his illness (something that mostly survived intact from the manga), Yuuhi defeating his first golem (laughably bad, given how awful the anime uniformly looks), and the introduction of another main character, Hangetsu Shinonome (Shuuhei Iwase), a goofy self-styled “hero of justice” who appears to know more than he initially lets on (he was pretty obnoxious at this point in the manga, and it’s even worse here). Most of the episode was as ramshackle as anything else so far. Samidare, as seen in Yuuhi’s dream, pulling Yuuhi into a kiss is at least still kind of cute.
And that sentence, right up there, is the last unambiguously positive thing I am ever going to write about Biscuit Hammer on this blog.
This is your brain on Biscuit Hammer
Because other than that, the show still completely fails to sell anything more complex than “people standing in a room and talking,” and sometimes can’t even swing that much. This was true of episode 3. It is also true of episode 4. It will probably be true of every episode going forward. Have I yet mentioned that, because this thing going by BD listings, has the ball-shatteringly absurd temerity required to be this and betwo cours long, we’re an eighth of the way through it? Simply by typing that, I feel like I’m trying to escape from a rabid monster in one of those nightmares where your feet feel really heavy and you can’t get proper traction on the floor. In this tortured analogy, the nightmare is Biscuit Hammer‘s deeply pointless, depressing, cynical existence. It is inside of you, just embrace it.
I have, and I have to confess that little of what you just read—and only slightly more of what you’re about to read—has much of anything to do with episode 4 in particular. But in my own defense; how possibly could it? With an anime production this soul-sucking, it manages to somehow sand down the manga’s many quirks and rough edges until the entire thing feels like a single slab of indistinguishable concrete. Frames, then seconds, then minutes tick by. Eventually, the episode ends, and we are closer to understanding nothing but the truest and deepest meaning of the word “tedium.” Biscuit Hammer is a final answer to the question posed in 2000’s Gladiator. No, we are not entertained. I am beginning to wonder if entertainment as a concept is even real.
Since it began, I have also asked myself repeatedly who the Biscuit Hammer anime is for, since it clearly isn’t for people who like anime. There is of course the obvious notion that it’s a cynical cash-grab, but even that makes little sense. This isn’t some huge smash hit we’re talking about here. Biscuit Hammer the manga is a cult classic even domestically, and it’s equally so abroad. Who, exactly, is being cheated out of their money by doing this? Perhaps Studio NAZ themselves, who have apparently subcontracted some or all of these episodes so far—to be honest I haven’t looked terribly hard for details, because who could possibly care?—including the fucking premiere. That’s probably why it looks like owl pellets pickled in fryer grease nine-tenths of the time.
It is clear by now that we have to start reaching for the really, really dramatic and hysterical words to describe this adaption; words like “butchery,” “desecration,” and “unwatchable piece of shit.” It is equally clear that it exists for no purpose beyond pleasing some nebulous cluster of bean counters. Episode 4 continues this pattern because this anime was made by people who want to hurt you. Lucifer and The Biscuit Hammer is trapped inside the content mill, and we along with it, as the mill is bleeding to death.
Even the one bright spot of the anime adaption, the one thing it could not totally snuff out, Samidare herself, a wildly compelling character, is mostly gone in this episode, because Samidare herself isn’t really in it. What do we get instead?
Oh boy.
I am so glad you asked, friend.
This, you see, is a comedy episode. It’s a ” ” “comedy” ” ” episode in that this is the one where the adaption does what it’s been doing since the premiere, taking the manga’s jokes—there, admittedly a weak point, but a necessary reprieve from the more intense moments—and stretches them out, grotesquely, like a serial killer binding a book in human skin. This episode is so dreary, so empty, so totally devoid of joy that the fact that it’s trying to be funny somehow makes the entire thing harrowing on an existential level.
You probably want me to actually, you know, recap the episode. But honestly? Why? What is worth covering here? Toward the end there is some of the talk about what it means to be an adult that would, eventually, form one of the manga’s main themes. But that’s a small portion of an episode that is mostly just the most flatlined shonen jokes you can possibly imagine trotted out like they’re somehow still fucking funny and executed in the driest, dullest, most visually depressing fashion possible. If there is a Hell for anime critics, it looks something like this episode; surreal and nightmarish in its mundanity, but not in a way that you could mistake for even a passing second for interesting. None of it is even remotely funny. Obviously it isn’t. You know what’s funny? @LyricalGarfield, a twitter bot that replaces Garfield dialogue with random song lyrics. That’s comedy. You want to have a good time? Go read that for 20 minutes, skip this show entirely, and thank me later.
Yes, you’re getting Family Guy-style cutaway gags mid-article right now. That’s how done I am with this fucking anime, if the swearing didn’t give it away.
At some point I feel like I’m either dipping into Seanbaby territory or just repeating myself. What is there to say? The show fucking sucks. The jokes are shit. It looks like shit. (Seriously, why the fuck does half this show have the color palette of an FPS game from 2005?) The pacing is shit. It’s conceptually shit. The only thing that’s not entirely shit is some of the character writing, which is of course a strength inherited from the manga. Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer, the anime, is a rare TV anime that could be improved upon by animating it less. And we know this because the manga is, of course, completely static and yet manages to have more weight and motion to it than the thing that is, you know, made of moving drawings.
When the Biscuit Hammer anime premiered I unflatteringly compared it to a variety of my personal bottom-of-the-listers. Pride of Orange, Magical Girl Spec. Ops. Asuka, etc. I also did something very silly, which was say that this show is not as bad as those. This was, in hindsight, totally wrong. It’s absolutely as bad as those. It might be worse! Because while Puraore is constantly, actively unpleasant, at least it is not an adaption of a cult favorite beloved by many people. If Biscuit Hammer is not “worse” than Puraore (or other, similar anime), it is at least more insulting. Every single moment of the Biscuit Hammer anime feels like an act of deliberate malice on the show’s part. It feels as though it’s going out of its way to be the worst version of itself.
Above: for your consideration, one of the most error-prone episodes of the original Transformers cartoon, straight from Hasbro’s official Youtube channel. I have seen this episode, and I would watch it a million times before watching this episode of Biscuit Hammer again. Also, can you tell I’m just embedding random garbage at this point? You probably can.
And let’s be serious here; it will not improve. That just isn’t going to happen. Sometimes shows pick up after a weak premiere, but something like this, where it’s clearly just visual shovelware that exists for no real reason? Genuinely, literally zero chance. It would take divine intervention. It might get worse, mind you. But better? No, absolutely not. Biscuit Hammer has a shovel and a dream of digging to China, and friend, you and I will not be the people to stop it.
So that’s where we are. Four episodes into Biscuit Hammer‘s anime adaption and that is how I feel about it. I often say that I hate writing things this negative, and I usually do, but honestly? This is one of a vanishingly few cases where I’m actually rather satisfied with myself for doing so. Because it deserves this! It really does! It deserves much worse, frankly! I hope Studio NAZ‘s employees all quit en masse because they found some better place to work and the show has to be cancelled. I think that would be the only fitting end to this utter fucking travesty.
Do you guys remember that episode of Steven Universe where the Crystal Gems fused into Alexandrite so they could fight Malachite, and also there were a bunch of little watermelon guys? That episode was dope.
Yet, perhaps the most damning thing I can say about the show is this. Six months ago, we knew roughly what was going to air in the 2022 Summer season, and the Biscuit Hammer anime was perhaps the thing I was most excited for. I am not the kind of person who is afraid to hype myself up for things, and the way that that initial optimism has been, nearly methodically, shredded to ribbons by this production is just astounding. I am deeply, deeply sad for every single person involved with this project, from Satoshi Mizukami himself all the way down to individual in-betweeners. Let me be polished-glass clear; even if this were an original production, it would still be a very bad show. But the fact that it is an adaption of a pre-existing property, one that many people love, makes the entire thing stink of true tragedy.
A final observation; I mean no disrespect to that franchise in spite of how I’m sure this will come off, but there is no real reason that between the two, the anime based on RWBY should be, at this moment in time, more visually interesting and more compelling on a moment-to-moment basis than the one based on The Lucifer & Biscuit Hammer. (And I do feel that it’s fair to compare these two things in an at least loose sense, given that they are airing in the same season and thus directly compete with each other.) Yet, that is where we are.
Oh wow, look at that, an actually-relevant image embed! In this article? Who’d’ve thought.
And it is for that reason that coverage of RWBY: Ice Queendom will be replacing Biscuit Hammer as my third seasonal weekly for the 2022 Summer season. Don’t get me wrong; I have a fair few problems with Ice Queendom, some of them fairly serious. But I am, without exaggeration, 100% confident that it will be a better experience to watch, to enjoy with my community—that is to say, you all—and to write about than Biscuit Hammer has been. If literally nothing else, it has a color palette beyond “grey, brown, and occasionally red.”
For the few of you who enjoyed these couple recaps for their ranty qualities, I do apologize for any disappointment. I know I promised during the premiere that I’d stick with the show until the end, but in my defense, that was before we knew we were getting two cours, and I’ve also gone through a fairly major life event since then. I just don’t have the energy to keep doing this week after week.
As for Biscuit Hammer itself, I don’t intend to continue watching it. If you do, I’d suggest petitioning a higher power to extend their cosmic reach into the production process. But if that’s the route you’d take, I’d say you should pray to the devil. I don’t think God will be listening for this one.
….and all is right with the world.”
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.
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.
I really did not think I’d ever be writing about this show again. I didn’t make a secret of the fact that I wasn’t super impressed by RWBY: ICE QUEENDOM‘s premiere. When discussing that first episode, I called the show a mess. In that context, I meant it negatively; a slapdash, hacky story given a wildly uneven production that felt like it was being carried on the backs of individual boarders and animators rather than being directed with any strong sense of purpose. I stand by those statements as they hold to episodes 1-3, which together made up the series premiere on Crunchyroll, and they might still hold true going forward, but we’re not here to talk about any past or future episodes of this show. Not today. Today, here, in the very first of the new Anime Orbit columns, I’d like to talk about episode 4, the first new episode since the series began its normal weekly airing schedule.
Because 4 is something else entirely. To really just lay the matter on the table; it’s really good. In a way that feels a whole universe removed from what Ice Queendom had been doing up until this point. The actual plot here is very simple—one of the ‘Nightmare Grimms’ introduced in episode 3 gets its hooks into Weiss, and it’s up to Ruby to rescue her from the confines of the resulting dream-prison—but the way its presented is another beast entirely. If nothing else, Ice Queendom deserves some sort of “most improved” award here. This is lightyears ahead of what the first three episodes were doing, both in terms of visuals and, to an admittedly lesser extent, writing.
When we were introduced to the Nightmare Grimms concept (not a name explicitly given to them in-dialogue, but I can think of nothing else to call them), the first person they afflicted was Jaune. Who is, just speaking honestly, not a character who particularly endeared himself to me when he first showed up a few episodes ago. Jaune’s mental world was also not terribly interesting, to my recollection.
No one could make the same criticism of Weiss’. Her inner world is an absurdist dystopia monitored by living propaganda posters of her father Jacques and robots that greet each other with a bizarre salute of “Big Nicholas!”. It’s a massive walled factory town surrounded by blizzard-stricken bluffs, allegedly part of a wider “Empire”, where it always snows. Huge trains made of ice run unknowable cargo in and out of the city, only to be set upon by White Fang-affiliated bandits. Everything here seems jumbled up in guilt, insecurity, paranoia, and inherited prejudice. It doesn’t make Weiss seem like a particularly great person—and it’s not like the show needed help in that regard—but for the first time, it makes her sympathetic.
This entire thing is still mess-y, mind you, and I doubt Ice Queendom is going to really reckon with the inherent problems at the core of the whole “Faunus” analogy, but you can consider episode 4 a study on the difference that the addition of a single Y can make. For certain, it holds your attention in a very immediate way; one more comparable to all those other great SHAFT shows than anything in the first three episodes.
Helping to build the dreamy atmosphere are lots of little details, like Ruby’s scythe-gun not working the same way it does in the real world because Weiss is mistaken about how it’s put together. (Weiss seems to be under the impression that the gun is on the handle, which isn’t true. The first time Ruby goes to fire it in the dreamworld, she hits one of the robots behind her because of this, accidentally firing it backwards.) The little dream-gadgets Ruby can use via a payment of magic coins connected to the mysterious witch-exorcist (Shion Zaiden, played by Hiroki Nanami. We met her in episode 3 as well) helping them try to pull Weiss out of this thing are great, too. Using the coins, she can conjure up phone booths to talk to Shion for advice, she can summon decoy “chibi” Rubies who run around and repeat various things she’s said, etc. It’s strange and fun in a way that’s just an absolute joy to watch.
This is RWBY Chibi, right?
It’s not all fun and games though. As mentioned, there’s a distinctly dystopian / authoritarian bent to Weiss’ dreamscape. Winter City is a cold, hostile place.
A place where Ruby learns about the horrors of capitalism.
Even the few seemingly-friendly faces that Ruby meets turn on her the instant she’s declared a “dummy” (which Weiss’ subconscious seems to use as a catchall for people who can’t be trusted) by the regime, and she’s spied on for much of her stay by Weiss’ brother Whitley….who is also a bat here. (It’s a dream, just roll with it.)
Perhaps the most revealing scenes are the ones from Weiss’ own perspective. She is the city’s dictator, and sure enough, her outfit here has her rocking a militaristic overcoat and shades, making her look like some cross between Douglas MacArthur and Esdeath from Akame ga Kill!
I couldn’t get any good stills of her with the sunglasses actually on. So, in order to preserve the hilarious reference above, I’m going to need you to just imagine them. Picture an old-school smoking pipe in her mouth while you’re at it, really complete the look.
But she’s as trapped by the long shadow of her father—and the ancestor to the both of them, the ‘Nicholas’ referred to in the robots’ salute—as anyone else. When she reads reports off of a giant computer screen in her castle at the center of the city, a massive hologram of her father appears on the ceiling to berate her for her many perceived failures. Most especially, of course, letting this “Ruby” girl run free. This is what leads to Ruby’s branding as a “dummy,” and sets up their actual confrontation at the end of the episode, which builds both on what’s established here and the friction we already know exists between the two of them. Their battle starts here, but doesn’t end, implying this intriguing arc will have at least one more episode.
It’s worth looking forward to. In addition to the many things about Weiss herself we learn, there’s no denying the sheer mood of this thing. Perhaps my favorite moment actually comes not from either Weiss or Ruby, but from Shion, who offers this very true and absolutely fascinating piece of advice when Ruby calls to ask for help, concerned that Weiss secretly hates her.
If it can keep delivering moments like that, and like the more openly bizarre turns in this episode, Ice Queendom will be worth keeping up with. It remains to be seen if this marks a new direction for the series or if this is merely an anomaly. But for the first time since the series premiered, I’m optimistic. You should be, too.
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 