Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
“The light of drifting stars fills the sky.”
The fact is, it’s actually pretty easy to review something bad. Reviewing something that’s mediocre isn’t that hard either; line up its strengths and weaknesses, weigh them and determine if, at least for you, the former outweigh the latter. The real challenge is writing about something great.
And that is part of why this particular Healer Girl recap comes to you a day (possibly multiple days) late. That and a combination of truly fearsome writer’s block. If this column seems a bit less coherent than usual, I do apologize. It’s not in my general nature to “break the fourth wall” during these columns, but sometimes explanations are in order.
In any case, the actual plot of this episode is so simple that it almost doesn’t bear summarizing. Our main trio visit Hibiki’s family in the countryside. There, we learn a bit about her and her family, and a bit about Kana as well. One of Hibiki’s many younger brothers develops a precocious crush on Reimi, which is cute.
We also get an elaboration on the event that made Kana want to become a healer in the first place. When she was young, she had an asthma attack on a plane, and without an inhaler on hand, was in serious trouble. A mysterious healer, who she has been looking for since then, soothed her, thus setting her on the path to becoming a healer.
We find out almost immediately that this mysterious healer is, in fact, the girls’ teacher, Ria, who has just apparently not heard this story before. There’re a few details that don’t entirely line up about this, and I’m not sure if that’s the show trying to deliberately evoke the faulty memory of young children or if they’ll come back to that later. Either way, the reveal is humorously anticlimactic.
After all that, the episode’s real point makes itself known. It’s always been fascinating to me that so much human art is dedicated to depicting the natural world. By all rights, it’s something almost all of us are at least passingly familiar with; it’s the world out our window, or at most, a drive away. Why is it then that we spend so much time writing about waterfalls, so to speak? Why are we so fascinated with the motion of water and the little skipping and wriggling things that live in it? The girls swim in a small river, and I am reminded of my own times doing the same, visiting my father’s parents in the Pocono Mountains. These were not the happiest times for me, but they were simple, maybe that is why a tug that is something like nostalgia pulls at my heartstrings even so.
After the river scene, the girls trek toward a split-apart stone monument that reaches into the sky like the hand of a lost god. By the time they arrive, singing all the while, day’s become night.
The episode’s visual and emotional crux is a pair of landscape shots; the Milky Way rising into the sky like a plume of neon smoke. Later, the constellations that the fireflies within a cave play out on its ceiling and hovering in its air serve as a reprise. They are sights simultaneously familiar and obscure to me; even in my years living in rural Pennsylvania, there was simply too much light pollution for me to ever see that many stars. The night has always been black for me. Not so for Healer Girl, whose devotion to the natural world ranks up there with among the all-time best of its medium; Ghibli films, Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou, Kamichu!
But the sky’s vastness and beauty shouldn’t obfuscate something else important. The Night on the Galactic Railroad namecheck, brought up explicitly in conversation, is what gives this episode its title. And it is casual, but not careless. Galactic Railroad, one of the seminal works of modern Japanese literature—which was, in 1985, transmuted into one of the most stunningly beautiful films ever made—is ultimately a story about death. Recall that only a week ago we saw a man nearly die on the operating table. This week Kana relays her own brush with ill health. Are these allusions a gesture toward the flip side of the show’s very premise—those whom medicine, no matter how fantastical, cannot save—or something else? Or “just” a reminder of the circle of being? All that begins ends, and dust begets dust, and the big wheel keeps on turning?
All this from a pseudo-beach episode that is also very much about how pleasant a trip to the countryside can be may seem like a stretch, but Healer Girl can juggle all these thoughts and emotions effortlessly. Healer Girl feels a lot like Kana herself, able to pull others into its own little world with a prodigal effortlessness. (Another thing we learn this episode, but one which is only dwelt on briefly.)
For precisely these reasons, it is one of the best things airing right now. Nothing else right now makes me feel this strongly or feel this much. I am happy that it exists.
Song Count: Just one for this episode, as the girls and Hibiki’s family are hiking up the mountain.
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 Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hello, anime fans. I don’t have much to say to you this week. I hope you enjoy the writeups below. I had a lot of fun writing about Birdie Wing this week in particular.
Seasonal Anime
Birdie Wing -Golf Girls Story-
If you’re anything like me, you started watching Birdie Wing not because it’s particularly good, but because it’s fucking ridiculous. I am pleased to report that, after a somewhat disappointingly tame (but admirably lesbian) past two episodes, Birdie Wing not only gotten its groove back, it’s also reached utterly stunning new heights of absurdity.
The episode begins with Aoi’s tournament-winning putt being interrupted by a laser pointer to the eye from one of Rose’s lackies. On its own, this is a mildly amusing Dick Dastardly-esque turn. To say things escalate does not do justice to what eventually transpires here.
Post-tournament, Rose immediately calls in the favor she used to get Eve into the tournament in the first place. That favor? She has to win another underground golf game. But not just any underground golf game. Oh no, not just any by a long shot.
This episode’s plot goes so far into pure ridiculousness that I feel tired just typing about it. Things start at, for Birdie Wing at least, normal. The job Eve is called into handle is merely the way that a brewing mob war between Rose’s “patron” Catherine and one of her rivals is being resolved. When one realizes that the term “underground golf” is here meant literally—as in, the golf course is subterranean—they might think “wow, this is pretty absurd. Definitely more so than anything that’s happened in Birdie Wing so far.”
They might have a few seconds to hold on to that thought before Catherine pushes a button and the entire course begins transforming like Autobot City into Metroplex.
They have a “randomize golf course” button! A button to randomize the physical golf course! Like it’s Pokémon and they’re loading in a ROMHack! The terrain is ripped apart, a random little lake is drained, and it reconfigures into a new and novel shape. I am so utterly thrilled to live on the same planet as the person who dreamed up this beautiful spot of true-blue total nonsense. It’s awesome.
And we haven’t even gotten to discuss Eve’s actual opponent yet. Meet Viper, or “Vipère” (Kaori Nazuka) as I will not be calling her because I don’t feel like pasting that accented E every time. Now, every important character in Birdie Wing is two things; one, obsessed with golf, and two, a lesbian. Viper adds a twist on the formula by being an evil golf lesbian, meaning that she’s uncomfortably pushy, wears a ton of perfume, and has a skimpy outfit. In any other show, I’d probably find this character, and her relentless advances on Eve (down to a wager wherein whoever loses has to do what the winner says for a whole day. Yikes.) rather off-putting.
Golfing!
I still kind of do, but it’s hard to entertain any thought of reality when the character in question is named Viper the Reaper. (Yes, she needs two menacing nicknames apparently.) And that she’s playing against our hero on a mighty morphin’ golf course that can bend into any shape its owner wants. I’m not a big advocate of the “turn your brain off” philosophy for campy bullshit—it’s not hard for something to be both entertainingly silly and meaningful—but in this particular case, it might help. If only to save yourself from psychic damage.
Oh, and I should also show you all her golf ball.
Of course there’s a two-headed snake stamped on it. Did you think there wouldn’t be? Have a little faith.
Viper cheats, of course. She’s the villain! Obviously, she cheats! But Eve is able to sniff out her strategy pretty quickly. Literally, because she cheats by having a perfume-scented tattoo that throws people off-balance just enough to disrupt their swings. She gets the perfume to diffuse by unzipping her top, which “explains” why she does that several times over the course of the episode. I want to really, really strongly stress that I am not making a word of this up. This happens. This is real. This is the actual plot of Birdie Wing.
The truly absurd thing is that there actually is a trickle of a genuine theme in here. Eve’s distaste for the bourgeois, despite playing perhaps the most rich-folk-only sport in the world, has become consistent enough that I’m convinced it’s part of the central point of the show. I sincerely hope that the series finale somehow involves Eve destroying golf as a concept and replacing it with something far better, more egalitarian, radical, and lesbian.
In any case, Eve wins after figuring Viper’s trick out, naturally, and her one order to Viper is for the evil snake golf lesbian to drive her to Nafrece Golf Course by 5am. So that she can meet Aoi for a final game before the latter goes back to Japan. (I neglected to mention that that’s a running B-plot throughout this episode. Can you blame me? There’s a lot going on.) She just barely misses Aoi, who is straight-up heartbroken. How do we know that? Well, Eve finds something on the golf course. I’ll let the series speak for itself here.
Golfing!
Even when Eve tries to prove that she got there by shooting golf balls at Aoi’s plane as it takes off, Aoi still screams and cries that she’s a liar. End episode, roll credits.
I’m tired of beating around the bush. There’s a lot of good to great stuff airing this season, but Birdie Wing might be the best. If it’s not, it’s at least in the conversation. What else is going this hard for so little reason right now? Nothing, and that’s why Birdie Wing can’t be beat.
The Executioner and Her Way of Life
Some anime’s strengths are subtle; their merits only become obvious either upon repeat viewings or prolonged contemplation. And then, on the other end of the scale, are those where just watching them can feel like repeated kicks to the ribs. Guess where The Executioner and Her Way of Life falls?
That breath-snatching immediacy is a very subjective thing, of course. But I feel it in a real and present way with Executioner. The most recent episode is, from start to finish, a slow-churning nausea in the stomach, the knowledge that something is about to go very awry, and then a chop to the throat when it finally does. Menou loses everything she’s held important, both new and old, in an instant, and the episode stops dead at the end of its run on what might be one of the most evil cliffhangers I’ve ever seen.
I don’t actually feel comfortable detailing the episode at length. I intend to cover the fallout of all this in more detail next week. For now, take this fiery impression as yet another recommendation to watch Executioner if you aren’t already.
Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club – Season 2
In which Karin and Ai try in vain to comfort a depressed girl.
I’m being flippant, but that really is what the plot of last week’s Nijigaskai High School Idol Club boils down to. One of Ai’s friends, recently recovered from some nonspecific long-term illness, is out and enjoying her freedom again. But oh, she’s sad because Ai’s become a successful singer while she was gone, and she feels left behind. Look: I’m sympathetic, I’m a blogger, I do not have an exciting life and I sometimes envy people who do more outwardly interesting things. That’s a valid feeling, and as a base for creating an interesting character, you could do some strong things with it.
The question is whether it works in the context of this show, as a mostly self-contained story that takes up the better part of its fourth episode. And the answer is no, because what this plays out as is everybody involved—Karin, Ai, Ai’s friend, whose name I have already forgotten—just kind of being a downer to each other for about 12 minutes. I could recap the specifics for you, but there’s really no point. None of this seems like it’s going to have a big impact on the series, none of it reveals anything new about Karin or Ai, and the girl in question is certainly not an interesting character on her own.
You have depression.
There’s also a bizarre B-plot wherein Ai tries to get Karin to form a group with her, which Karin initially doesn’t want to do. That seems like it might have lasting implications, and perhaps draws a parallel between Karin and Lanzhu. But it’s made a moot point at the end of the episode when they decide to group up anyway, under the pretense that they’re “rivals” on-stage, “competing with the same song.” That does not make any sense. You don’t need me to tell you that. It’s also totally unimpactful, since we only have known Karin feels this way for about half an episode by the time she changes her tune. Also; at one point, Karin tries to comfort Ai when her friend’s being down makes her consider quitting being an idol at all. Her approach here is hilariously dickish, and completely whiffs as an intended emotional moment.
Immediately after this scene Karin says that if Ai quits being an idol, she’ll steal all her fans, including her friend. This, somehow, is what gets Ai out of her funk. In a better context this could actually work. Here it mostly just seems like someone remembered they had to get these two on stage together by the end of the episode.
The good news is that the music itself is still there. The duo of Ai and Karin (yes, they team up anyway, despite all the talk. They even get some very sharp matching outfits) perform the insert song “Eternal Light” for the music video portion of the episode, under the name DiverDiva, and instantly it becomes pretty easy to forgive any missteps the show might be making. These, at least, are still consistent highlights, even if none have quite reached the highs of Setsuna’s total fucking barn-burner from season one yet.
For my money, if we want to indulge their “idol duo who are rivals” bit, Karin absolutely smokes Ai on the song. She just has the more powerful voice by a good margin and Ai’s admittedly dexterous rapping doesn’t really make up for that. But hey, I may be biased.
Eventually it all turns out fine, and Ai’s friend officially declares herself to be Ai’s fan also (which is a fucking weird thing to do, but whatever, it’s an idol series.) She redoubles her commitment to working overseas (in what capacity, we never learn), and says something about how Ai inspires her. That’s all fair enough, but we again run up against the problem of none of this seeming to much mean anything. Are we ever going to see this girl again? The last thing this show needs is more characters, especially if they’re totally extraneous.
After the credits roll, we’re quickly introduced to another new character who will presumably make her proper debut next week. She, though, is an actual idol—that’s not pointed out explicitly and, frankly, it doesn’t need to be, you can just tell from her two-tone hair and cocky attitude—and I feel like her contribution to the show will, by its end, massively dwarf that of Ai’s little friend here. (This is without mentioning other far more interesting running plot threads. Lanzhu’s inevitable upcoming face turn, Shioriko Mifune (Moeka Koizumi)’s likely eventually becoming an idol. ETC.)
Plot detours are normal for seasonal anime, so none of this spells the end for Nijigasaki as a series or even for this season of it specifically. I intend to find out today if this is merely a rough patch or the start of a recurring problem. (Nijigasaki actually airs on Saturdays, but, because of my schedule, I can rarely get to it earlier than Sunday evenings.)
Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie!
I won’t pretend I have a ton of value to say about Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie!, my obligatory after-the-season-starts pickup. It’s an entrant into the growing “romcom about a valid straight couple” genre, and one I like. It is, admittedly, a series of extremely limited ambitions. (Which only makes sense, given that it got its start as four-panel gimmick strips on Twitter.) But that actually works in Shikimori‘s favor, a lot of the time. The series is relentlessly pleasant enough that it almost operates on the same wavelength as an iyashikei anime. You turn it on, you enjoy the lovey-dovey vibes between main characters Izumi (Shuichirou Umeda) and the titular Shikimori (Saori Oonishi) for about 22 minutes, including whatever particular antics they get into this week (and there are certainly antics to be had), and then you turn it off. It’s not a particularly complicated show.
I mostly wanted to shout it out here for the most recent episode, which showcases two things I really like. One, and the more low-key of the two, is the show’s smart eye for set design. All of the places about town that our cast end up in feel tangible, yet nostalgic. The mall in particular is sure to trigger nostalgia for a lot of people.
Secondly, I really like the fact that every member of the cast seems to be casually bi. Izumi himself has mulled over the idea of his girlfriend as a boyfriend before, but this episode spotlights said bi vibes more directly with Nekozaki (Misato Matsuoka), who spends much of the flashback sequence she stars in freaking out over how hot she thinks Shikimori is.
And there’s a post-credits scene where Shikimori herself gets flustered by Izumi’s mom. (They take a cooking class together. It’s a long story.)
It’s very easy to be unkind to a romcom, as a queer critic. Especially one where the main couple are straight. And I have definitely seen my fair share that just make me want to puke. (An impression you could be forgiven for not getting from this blog, given that I don’t tend to write about anime I dislike and never finish.) But I do think that for what it’s trying to do—which is admittedly not much!—Shikimori is pretty good. My hope is that I can provide a bit of a counterbalance to the show’s small but definitely present antifandom. And if you’re not watching Shikimori, well, it’s a busy season so I certainly understand, but consider penciling it in if you want something to help you unwind.
Poor Ishigami can never seem to catch a break. I feel bad for the guy a lot of the time. Oh yeah; and the last part of the episode with Chika sleeping over at Kaguya’s place is great, too.
Fun fact: I believe this is the longest article title anything on this site has ever had. It’ll probably be a long while until something else breaks that record. Anyway, yeah, this manga is great. It’s got lesbians, cool fantasy nonsense, and swords. What else do you need?
And that’s all for this week, folks. See you tomorrow for the Healer Girl recap.
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!
Ask any parent, even completely mundane admissions interviews are stressful. School admissions interviews are nowadays mostly the domain of college applicants and the ultrawealthy, but they used to be more common. And as with anything involving both parents and teachers, they are nerve-wracking for all involved. The Forgers, though, aren’t just any parents. We don’t actually explicitly learn if they pass the interview for Anya to get in to the prestigious Eden Academy or not in this episode, but let’s say the forecast is positive. With one…minor exception.
Before the interview itself, the Forgers—along with dozens of other hopeful families—must make a first impression on their way through the academy’s courtyard and to the halls where the interviews are being held. Even this early on, the academy has eyes on them. Recurring character Henry Hendersson (Kazuhiro Yamaji) makes his debut here as one of the school’s housemasters. Hendersson observes the Forgers, along with the other families, from a tower overlooking the courtyard, and we instantly get a pretty good idea of his character. He’s an odd man, obsessed with his personal ideal of “elegance”, but despite what may be easy to assume, he is not the antagonist of this episode. It only gains one of those in its second half.
First, though? Cattle stampede.
Yes, in what I am convinced simply must be a Revolutionary Girl Utena reference, a stampede of random livestock breaks out in the courtyard. Why does Eden Academy have a farmhouse? How did the animals break out of it? Who knows! Stop asking such silly questions. What’s really important that Yor takes out the leader of the herd with, ahem, “yoga techniques.”
Golfing! Wait, wrong series.
Also, the Forger family changes outfits twice over the course of this first half of the episode, once when helping a little boy who’s fallen into an open storm runoff(!) and then again after the cattle attack. Mr. Hendersson is first impressed, and then slightly terrified by all this.
The interview itself is of course the episode’s real focal point. For the most part, it goes well. Hendersson is joined by two other interviewers; the mild-mannered Walter Evans, and this episode’s true antagonist, a vindictive, recently divorced, woman-hating jackass named Murdoch Swan.
The interview mostly goes according to plan. Anya professes to hobbies such as “going to moozeums” and “eating the opera,” and calls her father “a spy-cialist in mental health.” Loid and Yor convincingly recite their canned backstories about meeting at a tailor shop (which is, to both’s benefit, mostly true). Anya even adorably says that she’d give both of her parents “a perfect 100 points,” and that she wants to be with them forever. All seems to be going very well.
And then Swan asks this.
And Anya starts crying. Which makes perfect sense when you remember that she’s a small child being bullied by bitter, snide snake in the grass who takes out his frustrations with his own personal failings on other people. The situation, shall we say, escalates. Loid barely restrains himself from clocking Swan directly in the face—and smashes a nearby mosquito hard enough to crack a hardwood table in two in the process—to say nothing of Yor, who genuinely looks ready to kill the man.
Yor Forger in the process of figuring out, in real time, how to murder a man with a vase and flowers.
About the only thing that stays her hand is Loid taking his “fake” family and simply leaving. His parting remark, something to the effect of not being interested in a school that bullies children as part of its educational system, would be cutting if Swan was the sort to be hurt by such things. But perhaps predictably, he doesn’t really care. (Original mangaka Tatsuya Endou deserves a lot of credit here, Swan is exquisitely hateable.) But this stain on the academy’s honor is enough to piss off Hendersson, who, after the Forgers depart, finally gives Swan what’s coming to him.
Elegantly done.
The episode basically ends here, with a tearful Anya apologizing that she couldn’t do better at the interview. All three Forgers are now worried about the future of their family, and it’s only the knowledge that Hendersson was on their side during this whole mess that prevents this from being an out and out downer of an ending. I called the forecast positive in the opening paragraph because I am quite sure that the Forgers will be fine, but they don’t know that yet. Their concern for each other is sweet. (Frankly, it trumps what I’ve seen from many “real” families in my day, but that’s another conversation altogether.)
We will find out next week, of course, if Anya’s chances of getting into Eden Academy are really as dashed as they all think. Until then, anime fans.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Yuu Ishigami has a conundrum. He, with all of his nerdy insecurities, is harboring a crush on one of Shuchiin Academy’s Popular Girls ™. Our boy is distraught by this in a manner not rare for internet natives of his age. He sees the object of his affection, cheer vice-captain Tsubame Koyasu (Haruka Fukuhara) as untouchable and perfect; somebody who lives in a different world than him and is forever beyond his reach.
He has plain black hair. She has quirky anime hair complete with a two-color gradient. It could never work between them!
Ishigami’s situation would be unenviable even in a normal school. Obviously, he’s not entitled to Tsubame, and what she thinks of him we don’t currently know. But the unspoken, yet, obvious, underline here is that Ishigami’s biggest obstacle to getting Tsubame to consider him as a romantic option is actually himself. Namely his own lack of self-confidence, not any inherent difference between them. Were he in any other high school on Earth, he might get advice that actually reflects that reality. But, he is a member of Shuchiin Academy’s student council. And the person who first pries the knowledge of this crush out of him is none other than our title lead, Kaguya Shinomiya.
Kaguya, I genuinely believe, has nothing but the best of intentions when she tells Ishigami that women are attracted to power, so his first step should be to gain “clout” of some kind. (She suggests gunning for a Top-50 placement in the upcoming exams.) Now, Kaguya may not entirely be wrong in suggesting this course of action—it certainly will attract peoples’ notice if one of the school’s worst students is suddenly out-scoring most of his grade on exams—but anything she says should be taken with a grain of salt. We know, but Ishigami unfortunately does not, that Kaguya comes from a deeply broken home. The Shinomiya Family has drilled into her the importance of regarding others only as tools for self-advancement. And while it’s true that she’s shed much of that programming by this point in the series, the roots of such a dog-eat-dog hypercompetitive mentality are hard to pull out. She’s still approaching this from the wrong point of view by encouraging Ishigami to change himself rather than simply be honest. (Of course, as the series itself humorously points out, that’s as much a reflection as her own unwillingness to be honest as anything else.) Regardless of what happens next, we should keep Kaguya’s upbringing, and how it informs this advice of hers, in mind. Although it is worth noting that she does realize that he needs to do something, or else….well.
At least she’s self-aware.
She does, at least, wisely shoot down Ishigami’s ideas for “ultra romantic” confession gestures, including such bizarre notions as leaving themed flowers on Tsubame’s desk every day for a week and presenting her with a half-empty photo album and expressing a desire to “fill it up with pictures of us together.” That much is probably the right call.
Now, let’s be clear here. Regardless of any romantic intentions, Ishigami improving his grades would hardly be a bad thing. He spends the second third of the episode studying, and it’s explicitly pointed out to us that it’s not the thought of wooing Tsubame so much as simply the fact that Kaguya actually believes he can improve that motivates him to try his hardest. Recall that not many people have ever expressed even that much faith in Ishigami before.
But, in a recurring theme for Love is War!—and honestly, Aka Akasaka‘s work in general—simply wanting something is not enough. Despite his best efforts, Ishigami places only around the 150 mark. An improvement, to be sure, but a far cry from his attempted coup of the grade rankings. He is absolutely devastated. (“So bitter that blood might as well shoot out of his eyes”, in the words of the Narrator (Yutaka Aoyama).)
But, of course, failure is not the end. Kaguya confronts Ishigami, getting him to admit that he is torn up about this, and he will try his damnedest to do better next time. Kaguya approves, although (jokingly?) warns him that the “kid gloves” of her study help are coming off.
It is interesting to me, in a series that is very firmly in the romance genre, how well Kaguya and Ishagami’s relationship is written. They’re certainly not romantic partners—and many romance anime neglect to depict friendship as much more than a steppingstone to love at all—and honestly, they don’t seem terribly close as friends in the typical way one imagines such a relationship. But they clearly care for each other; Kaguya would not spend as much time trying to push him as she does if she didn’t. Ishigami, in turn, would not care about those attempts if he didn’t on some level like and respect Kaguya. It’s an interesting, tangly relationship, which makes it feel very real. The two have come along way from Ishigami frequently suspecting that Kaguya was trying to kill him back in season one to a true kouhai / senpai pair.
I do fear I’ve perhaps made this entire part of the episode sound overly serious or even dour. In truth it’s not much more so than any episode of the season so far, but I think the character work here is interesting enough to devote the bulk of the column to. The gags are great throughout, here, of course, but that’s par for the course with Love is War! I particularly like this little nod to a fact we know about Shirogane; his tendency to shadowbox when psyched. Showcased here when he again scores the #1 spot on the exam rankings.
In any case, the final third of the episode is about Chika and Kaguya FaceTiming with Shirogane while sleep deprived.
There’s nothing particularly complicated about this segment, which brings the episode to a fun close that avoids being a trifle. Chika stays over at Kaguya’s place for a sleepover. She meets “Mr. Herthaka”, yet another of Hayasaka’s alter egos. This one has….quite the backstory, as we soon learn.
But really, the highlight of the evening comes when, through a series of convoluted misunderstandings, Chika gets the idea that Shirogane and “Mr. Herthaka” are romantically involved. In doing so, she resurrects a proud, ancient tradition perfected by her ancestors.
A completely unironic nosebleed gag in an anime in 2022? Nature really is healing.
The episode ends on a sweet note, though. Kaguya, very much past her usual bedtime and barely able to think straight, nearly tells Shirogane that she’s into him, only to pass out mid-sentence. A little frustrating? Maybe, but I can’t help but find it adorable. Will these two colossal nerds ever truly have the courage to own up to their feelings? Perhaps we’ll find out next time, Kaguya fans.
Oh, and before I forget, the Bonus Hayasaka Screencap. How about the chart of the many faces of our favorite blonde maid that we get at the episode’s end?
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!
Today on Healer Girl: someone almost dies on an operating table!
Yes, really!
I can’t pretend this is an entirely unexpected turn for the show. It’s been fairly clear from the jump that the practices of “vocal medicine” and, you know, normal medicine are well entwined. On its own, then, it’s not strange that Healer Girl would eventually involve someone doing Actual Serious Surgery in an Actual Hospital Setting. But I am surprised that the show went there this early. The girls have just acquired their assistant’s licenses, as they remind us at the top of this episode with Kana’s amusing bragging.
Putting them in a medical setting this dire seems like skipping a step. Especially, since, as the first part of the episode hilariously demonstrates, none of them are even really used to seeing blood. (They end up “training” by watching a bunch of splatter horror flicks, an idea that strains credulity. It’s very funny to watch them freak out, though, so I’ll let the show have this one.)
Plus, on the other hand, the girls are not doing the surgery. (Thankfully.) Instead, our heroes’ assignment here is to provide live music during a surgery, with the idea being that it calms down the surgeon and assistants and helps them focus. Healer Girl has mostly been pretty good about not pitting its own fantastical branch of medicine against the mundane thing so far, so this arrangement is smart on that front, as well.
Not that everyone feels that way. Ria is fine with it. Shouko, her assistant, is fine with it. And of course, our protagonists Kana, Reimi, and Hibiki are all (eventually) fine with it. But one person who isn’t is the actual operating surgeon. Not because of any “this isn’t real medicine” ideological conflict—something I have to admit I became worried about when the character was introduced—but simply because this is his first surgery, too, and he thinks his skills are being belittled.
Despite his distaste, he goes along with it. (The person in charge of his department favors experimenting with live music in a surgical setting and is an old college classmate of Ria and Shouko’s, so really, he’s outnumbered and outranked.) And for a while, it seems like everything is basically fine. The girls sing in shifts, with each of them ducking out and letting the other carry the tune for a while to rest their voices and get some water at set intervals.
Then, just as he’s about to finish up, the surgeon notices that the issue with the patient is far more widespread than initially realized, and they need to do more than they initially planned. This goes badly. As in, “shots of the heart rate monitor going down and one of the nurses yelling ‘he’s critical!'” badly. In keeping with how we’ve seen this work before, the girls’ song-environment promptly falls to pieces under the stress, all three of them are shaken. But crucially they don’t actually panic. Instead, Reimi pulls Kana back in to the song with what might be my favorite two-line exchange of the whole season so far.
Healer Girlreally loves imagery of ground and earth being knit back together after a cataclysm, this is the second of these “song spaces” to invoke that particular visual trope, and it looks even better here than it did two episodes ago when Ria comforted a pregnant woman. Angels fly from the skies and return everything to a serene—and slightly surreal—calm.
In terms of the actual surgery, a more experienced doctor intervenes and fixes the patient up. Crisis averted; everything is fine.
The girls take the well-earned time to bask in a job well done, and Ria is relieved that she didn’t actually have to intervene, praising the girls for their good judgment and level heads. The grumpy doctor, if you were wondering, does eventually thank the girls for their services, though only in a rather brusque and abrupt way. (You ever stepped in front of someone’s car while they’re pulling out of a parking lot? Not the best idea, usually.)
More importantly, back home, the girls text each other in the episode’s epilogue. Kana thanks Reimi for encouraging her. It’s a cute, warm end to another casually dazzling episode. How does Healer Girl make it look so easy?
Song Count: Just one, technically, this time around, but what a song it is.
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 Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hello, anime fans. Once again, I’ve got a couple short writeups for you below, and some links to my work of this past week below that. Don’t have much else to say this week! (Still dealing with Medical Issues™) So please, do enjoy.
Seasonal Anime
Estab-Life
Before we talk about the episode of Estab-Life that actually aired last week, I want to discuss the first one again. Why? Because the show has actually gotten an English dub, and against all odds, a solidly good one. The real stars of the production our are leads, Julie Shields is a touch stiff as Equa, but given the character’s weird nature that only makes sense. Alexis Tipton‘s take on Feles really gets the “always at least a little fed up with everyone’s nonsense” aspect across splendidly, and the dub impressively manages to amp the ship teasing between Equa and Feles up even more. Martes, played here by Sarah Wiedenheft, is also done very well. Wiedenheft’s take on Martes’ fake-drunk rambling near the conclusion of episode one is a particular highlight.
The supporting characters are also dubbed well throughout, and Anthony Bowling‘s take on the robot buddy Alga sounds totally different than the original JP dub but in an interesting, transformative way. He’s gruffer, here, and his snarky side made more obvious. Good performances require a good director, of course, and it’s probably thanks to ADR Director Jeremy Inman that all of this comes together so well. All in all, a solid dubbed start to the series that I hope will give it a somewhat wider audience, it deserves one.
This week’s episode is leaner than that explosively weird premiere. Essentially; Equa has a cold, so the rest of the team needs to extract their client (a wheezy otaku) without her. They fail to do so, because their mission devolves into bickering and they don’t communicate with the client terribly well. What they seem to not quite get—but Equa definitely does, as she demonstrates when she shows up anyway toward the episode’s end—is that the Extractors’ main goal is to give their clients some agency. Without doing that, they can’t accomplish anything else, either. I suspect this theme will come back around as the series enters its second half.
The Demon Girl Next Door – Season 2
It took a bit, but it seems like the second season of The Demon Girl Next Door is starting to find its footing. The first segment of episode 3 is about Shamiko learning to use the computer (and then, more specifically, Twitter). Gags like this are arguably old hat at this point, but the execution here is pretty good, starting from Momo’s “Magical Girl Lesson on Internet Literacy.”
The pair’s inability to be honest with each other is also brought back, here. Both want to connect with the other on social media but can’t get themselves to directly say it, which leads exchanges like this, where Yuuko tries to be sincere.
Only to course correct moments later.
In the episode’s second half, Momo takes Yuuko’s ever-present, normally statue-bound ancestor Lilith (Minami Takahashi) on an outing to a health spa. This is mostly an excuse for the self-proclaimed Witch of Eternal Darkness to annoy the magical girl. There’s a few moments of genuine bonding in here, too. (This is also the best-looking part of the episode. I’m a sucker for the shadowless technique.)
….but of course, this being Machikado Mazoku, that much is also rolled into a gag, where Momo promptly uses the newfound knowledge that Lilith is scared of the dark to blackmail her.
It’s good that the series seems to be finally stabilizing after a somewhat rough first two episodes. (They were hardly bad, but the lack of structure was noticeable.) Next week promises to get the ball rolling on the show’s actual plot once again, something I quite look forward to.
Summer Time Rendering
Somewhere in the Pacific, there’s been a death on the island of Higotoshima. A tragic accident; a girl drowning at sea while saving another from the same fate. Shinpei Ajiro (Natsuke Hanae) returns there—to his home—for the first time in two years to pay respects to the departed; his sister by all but blood, one Ushio Kofune (Anna Nagase). For its first fifteen minutes, it’s all atmosphere. The palm trees hang huge and crooked like hangman’s gallows, and the summer sun beats down a heat so hot it’s oppressive.
Every bead of water—from tears to air conditioner condensation—is placed with elegant finesse. At night, Ushio’s own sister Mio (Saho Shirasu) stares at her own house from outside, like she’s a stranger. The island goes eerie. Something is in the air. This is Summer Time Rendering.
Eventually, something like an explanation creeps forward, though not without a payment in blood. The so-called Shadow Sickness, a haunting via doppelganger that ends with the victim being killed by their own double. This, it seems, is the island’s secret. By the time Mio’s holding herself at gunpoint at the end of the episode, everything’s spun into freefall. Shinpei gets a bullet to the brain for his troubles, only to wake back up on the same boat he arrived on the previous day.
Who can say, really, where all this is going? Summer Time Rendering is not going to be a regular fixture of this column. (It’s being held in streaming jail, for one thing.) But I may cover it occasionally. In truth though, if you want to see what happens, you’ll just have to seek it out for yourself. Good luck.
Ya Boy Kongming!
Over the past few weeks, Kongming has strategized and schemed his way into getting Eiko, his friend, client, and the idol singer he’s an unashamed fan of, into bigger and bigger placements. Last week that culminated in stealing the thunder of a popular indie band at a pop-up festival. Here, Eiko presented with a choice. She’s invited to a second festival of a similar size. Or, the festival-runner making this offer explains, a truly massive summer music festival, but there’s a catch on that one. She needs 100,000 likes on social media. Eiko, no longer content with taking the easy route, opts for the latter option, to the amusement of the festival organizer and the comical distress of her boss.
Kongming brainstorms several solutions, but one is to hire other personnel to join Eiko’s backing band / form a group / etc. Specifically, he suggests “a mighty rapper.”
This is an interesting obstacle for a series like this to hit. Hip-hop and anime are uneasy bedfellows and trying to integrate one into the other usually results in—at best—offputting results. And as someone who’s a lifelong fan of both, I feel pretty qualified in making that statement. (Not for nothing will I never cover Hypnosis Mic on this site.) But there are degrees here. “Rapper” is vague, does Kongming mean an actual, full-on hip-hop artist? Or more of an EDM / pop rapper, someone constant late ’00s / early ’10s Billboard Hot 100 presence Flo Rida? In either case, there’s a lot of leeway. To put it another way; chelmico. aren’t Lauryn Hill. Calliope Mori is not Paul Wall. “A rapper” can be a lot of different things. What does the show actually mean when it says it’s going to involve one?
For the time being, it seems like neither Kongming the series nor Kongming the person are actually interested in answering that. Kongming spends several nights (it’s not clear how many exactly) chatting up a hypebeast outside of the club he and Eiko still both work at. The scene contrasts the two’s approaches for this stretch of time; Eiko hustles with her singing at home, Kongming seemingly skips out on his duties to go party early in the morning. Eventually, when Eiko confronts him about this, he convinces her to come with her one night to a club in Roppongi (an area of Tokyo I mostly associate with being the setting of the truly god-awful Speed Grapher. But it’s hard to hold that against the place). Kongming rubs shoulders with quite a few people while out, including a ripped Black American who speaks no Japanese, several girls who are club regulars and seem to think Kongming is cute, and the aforementioned hypebeast guy. None are the mentioned “rapper.” We don’t meet them here at all, and they remain a question mark for the series, for now.
Eventually, he explains to Eiko, all of this is “intel gathering.” He’s trying to read the scene, and the two resolve the minor misunderstanding over bowls of udon, after the club.
The climax of this scene sees Eiko reveal the full scope of her ambitions to Kongming; she doesn’t want to just be a singer. She wants to perform at the world’s largest EDM festival. A concrete, but absurd, goal, for someone who is still at this point a fairly unknown pop singer from Tokyo. This is, she says, the first time she’s ever told anyone she wants to do this.
Kongming thanks her—he also lightly reprimands her over her continued lack of self-confidence–and there are no hard feelings here. At episode’s end, Eiko passes Kongming her phone, and asks for his thoughts on her new song. The credits creep down the screen as 96Neko‘s voice hisses out of the tinny iPhone ear buds. I could describe how I feel about the song, but how Kongming feels is a lot more important.
She is, of course, embarrassed by this high praise. But it’s a good reminder of why anyone is watching this show in the first place. Yes, the premise is funny. But what Kongming is actually about is how one person can be so moved by music that they need it like a fish needs water—again, Kongming’s words, not mine. Kongming may be the one to put Eiko on the path to stardom, but he needs her, too.
I picked up a third seasonal. Why? Because I really, really love Healer Girl, and I hope to contribute in some small way to it becoming even a little more popular. That’s genuinely it.
A downbeat turn from Spy x Family this week. Comparatively, anyway; there are still a lot of great little character moments in here, and it’s worth watching for those alone.
And that’s all for this week. See you next time and keep out for an additional article on Tuesday in addition to the Healer Girl recap on Monday, this week! It marks the return of a column we haven’t seen around here since last year. I hope you’re all excited.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Spy x Family takes a slightly more relaxed, downtempo turn this week. Really, that’s fine, with two cours split across half the year, the series has time to stretch its legs. As such, “Prepare for the Interview,” its third episode, only briefly involves any actual forward plot motion. It’s mostly scene-setting, and an opportunity to put the Forgers in a genuinely domestic context. If only, perhaps, to endear us to them further so that later, when this status quo is threatened, we feel all the more sympathetic. (Not to be cynical about it, that’s just good storytelling.)
We can basically break the episode down into a couple different kinds of scene. There are scenes where the Forger “family” achieve the illusion of domesticity, there are scenes—usually immediately following that—that break said illusion to comedic effect, and there are finally the scenes that actually move the show’s core narrative forward. All three are important in different ways, and there is groundwork laid here that’s sure to pay off later.
The actual interview bit is a fairly minor part of the episode, coming after Loid and Anya help Yor set up in their new, collective home. (Everyone has their own room, which we’re shown in detail. More importantly, we’re reacquainted with Anya’s plushie Mr. Chimera.)
They briefly try some interview practice right away, but it doesn’t go particularly well. I like this little gem here, Yor’s response to the question of what her “parenting philosophy” is.
The bulk of the episode simply revolves around the Forger family having a nice “upper-class outing.” Loid reasons that maybe getting some culture will help.
This is all on the quiet side, but there are still some pretty great gags in here, like Anya briefly getting scared of Yor when the latter has a stray thought about how she once accidentally hugged her brother too hard and cracked his ribs. Anya’s pretty great in general in this episode. She expresses shock when Loid bluntly tells her that she didn’t really help get the house ready for Yor to move in, she falls asleep at an opera, and at an art museum, this happens.
Yor gets in a few good gags too, mostly revolving around her character tic of blushing whenever something related to violence is around. (At one point she fiddles with a knife at the restaurant they’re at. At the museum, she gets all dew-eyed over a painting of a beheading.)
There are a few more serious scenes as well, such as Anya getting a bit of esper overload when the family hangs around a political rally and has to be escorted away.
The episode’s focal point, though, comes when the trio, taking in some fresh air at a small overlook, happen to see a purse snatcher rob an old woman. Loid, being naturally inclined to not draw attention to himself, doesn’t initially do anything, coldly commenting that the woman should’ve been more careful. It’s Yor who springs into action, and while Loid is eventually the one who takes the crook down (Yor loses him), the old woman thanks them both. Loid thanks Yor for inspiring him to action, and she blushes, which leads to another astute observation from Anya.
The episode concludes with more interview practice, and the promise that we’ll see the real thing next week.
If I don’t seem to have much to say about this episode that’s because, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a terribly important one. Other than that scene with the thief, this one is best enjoyed by just hitting play and letting it wash over you.
Until next time.
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!
Here’s the first line in this week’s episode of Kaguya-sama: Love is War -Ultra Romanic-.
Pretty bad, right? Of course, because this is this show, it quickly becomes obvious that Nagisa Kashiwagi (Momo Asakura), the short-haired girl there, is overreacting, and that her boyfriend, fellow C-String character Tsubasa Tanuma (Taku Yashiro) is not actually cheating on her. But he has been spending time with another female student, one Maki Shijo (Kana Ichinose), Kaguya’s distant relative and perpetual loser of the love games that the entire rest of Shuchiin Academy seems to be caught up in. And that’s suspicious enough for both Nagisa herself and for Kaguya. This leaves Miko to play the role of the straight man. Pity her.
As always, -Ultra Romantic- spices up what was a fairly straightforward scene in the manga with all kinds of weird audiovisual tricks. When Kaguya and Nagisa both immediately conclude Tsubasa is cheating, their halves of the table are “squished together,” and their voices are run through what sounds like a flutter filter. A pretty effective way to convey that Miko, the only reasonable voice at the table, feels like she’s losing her mind.
When the topic turns to the fact that the accused were recently at a karaoke booth together, Kaguya of course immediately changes her tune, only for Miko to agree that that is solid evidence of cheating, since “people often do indecent things at karaoke.”
The whole thing turns out to be a misunderstanding, of course. Maki and Tsubana had spent the day together because the latter wanted help picking out a six-month anniversary gift; an extremely cheap-looking heart necklace. All girls present—including Chika, who happens to arrive just as this is all happening—think it’s hopelessly tacky. But Nagisa loves it, so this particular sketch ends on a happy note. At least, for her. Not necessarily for everybody.
If you’re next thought, for some reason, is “but what about Maki?” Do not fret, Love is War has you covered. As mentioned, Maki is the loser of Kaguya-sama‘s cast. She, as we learn here, has been crushing on Tsubasa for months, maybe years, and is all burnt up about Nagisa hooking up with him, so seeks out the Student Council’s advice on the matter. Specifically, that of Shirogane and Ishigami. (Irony of ironies, you may remember Nagisa and Tsubasa only got together in the first place because of Shirogane’s advice, way back in season one. If you don’t, the show explicitly calls attention to it, so no worries.)
Maki is a somewhat pitiable character. She’s basically Kaguya herself minus the charisma and most of the status—she takes a lot of pride in being a member of a minor branch family of house Shinomiya—down to the fact that they have similar mannerisms. This segment of the episode is less heavy on the wonky visuals, although there are still certainly some. Especially when the series needs to draw comparisons between Maki and Kaguya.
Ishigami has an interesting role here. He completely cuts through all of Maki’s anime trope defenses, eventually getting her to drop the tsundere act, but also making her pretty sad in the process when he outlines how being someone’s second girlfriend is different than being their first.
But eventually, the two do convince Maki to at least make an earnest attempt at telling her crush how she feels. She also does explicitly say that even just talking to someone about this makes her feel a bit better. I’ve never been entirely able to love the Maki mini-arc, maybe because she reminds me too much of a few people I’ve met over the course of my life whereas most of the other romantic misunderstandings in Kaguya are firmly in goofier territory. Nonetheless, she does get a last laugh here, as she’s about to leave (and as Kaguya enters), this happens.
Of course, to keep the show’s main plot going, Shirogane can’t exactly just say that it’s because Maki reminds him of Kaguya.
The third and final segment of the episode is a classic “Chika sets up a game” sketch.
The series has done these since near the start of season one, and they’re always fun, so I’m happy to see them make a return. Chika’s grand plan for this particular round is to play a common group date game. (Called the “Ten Yen Coin Game.” It’s basically group truth or dare without the “dare” part and restricted to Yes/No questions.)
Chika has never struck me as all that interested in romance, quite unlike the entire rest of the cast. Indeed, a throwaway line in the manga seems to imply she’s aromantic, whether or not she was deliberately written as such. But she does love games, especially if she can use them to fuck around with people, and that is precisely what she does here. She even brought a lie detector along, just to make sure no one tells any fibs.
The questions quickly take a turn for the heavy as soon as it’s Ishigami’s turn to ask. This is, of course, played for comedy. But damn dude, asking people if they secretly hate you is not generally a great strategy toward making sure they don’t. (One person answers yes anyway, probably Miko. Ishigami promptly breaks down in happy tears that it’s only one person.)
Miko isn’t much better, asking if they really need her around. And when no one answers no, she’s also absolutely ecstatic.
Ishigami tells her that she shouldn’t go on group dates because she’s so easily swayed by flattery that she’d be an easy mark. It’s a little rude maybe, but honestly, it’s solid advice.
As for Kaguya and Shirogane, you can probably guess that they use the game to convolutedly try to scheme into getting the other to confess their feelings. It does not work out, although both leave the game on a positive note. As they clean up, Shirogane feels the need to make it clear to Kaguya that nothing, you know, happened during that whole karaoke incident. Kaguya believes him, though she doesn’t make that totally clear.
The episode ends on a sweet note, then. But I can imagine that some of you might be hungry for this plot to move along a little faster. I can’t say when, but I do have a hunch that more substantial developments are on the horizon. There’s only one real way to find out if that’s true though, so to that end, I’ll see you next Friday, Kaguya fans.
Bonus Hayasaka Screencap: This one was hard. Hayasaka isn’t actually in this episode at all other than a brief flashback scene (and I feel like that doesn’t really count.) So instead, have a shot of her appearance in this season’s ED, a wonderful fantasia where Shirogane and Kaguya are star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of a war in a faraway steampunk kingdom. The whole thing is just Shirogane’s dream, of course, but he does have quite the imagination, doesn’t he? Anyway, Hayasaka sells the soldier look quite well.
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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Okay, yeah, we’re doing this.
Healer Girl, if you’ve not seen my prior post on it, is an absolutely mesmerizing little series from Studio 3Hz. It’s about girls who sing to heal people. Songstress-doctors. Idol-medics. Whatever compound term you care to come up with. It is the best anime airing right now, and even though I have basically no “good reason” to cover it from a practical point of view—it’s not that popular from what I can tell, which is a tragedy I hope to play some small part in fixing—I definitely have a good reason from a personal point of view. I love this series; it’s a sparkling, scintillating ocean wave of pure joy.
So, this is the only warning you’re going to get. If you’re averse to just straight-up fangirling, this is probably not a column you’ll enjoy. But if you aren’t, well, welcome to the cult.
We’ve missed an episode, but thankfully Healer Girl‘s second was not too complex, so we can quickly run through it here. The episode introduced two new characters; the stuck-up Healer prodigy Sonia Yanagi (Chihaya Yoshitake) and her assistant / friend, an aspiring composer named Shinobu Honosaka (Miyu Takagi). The former is obsessed with trying to show up the clinic that our main girls work at, and essentially strong-arms her way into the story as their self-declared rival. The latter just sort of goes along with it. These two will doubtless play an integral role in the story going forward, as will another fact established in episode two—that Healers panicking can adversely affect their ability to treat patients—so that’s the gist of what we skipped by my not covering episode two.
Episode three is about our girls studying for, taking, and waiting for the results from, the stressful medical exam they need to pass in order to become certified Healer Assistants. They spend most of the episode’s opening half studying for and/or panicking about this. Particularly Kana, whose pharmacological (there’s a fun word) knowledge is sorely lacking. Because this is Healer Girl, the episode actually opens on the three studying by singing. Remember; this is also a musical. I’m particularly fond of the bit where one will call out a music term and another will sing back the definition. It’s wonderfully bouncy. Toe-tapping, even.
The series manages the difficult feat of showcasing the three’s personalities through their singing alone. Kana is Healer Girl‘s ostensible lead character, but it’s really more Reimi who is the “leader” of their little clique, and her forceful, almost rock singer-ish vocal style and fuller timbre emphasizes that. Kana, meanwhile, has a peppier and lighter tone, which fits her status as the not-too-bright lead. Hibiki, the most mature of the three, actually has the highest tone, but it only serves to reinforce her playful, never-taking-things-too-seriously nature.
Of course, the show’s spoken dialogue is full of personality, too. During a study session, where Kana and Reimi stay overnight at Hibiki’s room at the clinic, Kana recounts a story about why she’s so bad at learning about medicine, and I really cannot do justice to her completely absurd excuse except to reproduce it in full.
Any Discord servers out there looking for a :NotLikeKana: emote?
To which Reimi correctly replies.
In general, the whole “study scene” does a lot to remind us that, while it’s true that these girls have an extraordinary and very important job within the context of their world, they’re also still just teenagers. (And frankly having to take a medical licensing exam when you’re in high school sounds like an utter nightmare.) Given how important it is for any “slice of life” anime to make its characters feel human and relatable, this is pretty important.
There’s also an interesting scene where the three visit a shrine (to pray for success on the test, natch) and Hibiki, witnessing some miko perform a kagura, wonders aloud if Vocal Medicine works by faith. Reimi even mentions that the exact mechanisms by which it functions are obscure, even though it’s been proven to work. (This part is less absurd than it sounds, given how opaque the precise workings of even a lot of chemical medicine were and, in some cases, still are.) If you were being really uncharitable, you could maybe spin this into Healer Girl promoting pseudoscience or faith healing. Suffice it to say, I think such a reading would be an extreme stretch.
Boxing at shadows aside, the shrine scene (and a sung-over montage immediately after it) transition us into the second half of the episode. Here, the girls have already taken the exam and are simply waiting for their results. The stress from the waiting has made them, shall we say, a bit off-key.
I’ve been there, girls.
Ria (the girls’ teacher, and the Healer they’re assistants to, if you’ll recall), decides to try to get their minds off of things. How? By entering them in a town sport and field competition. Why not?
The girls sing all of their dialogue in this second half of the episode in an amusingly flat, slightly off tone, to illustrate how tired they are. This continues—with slightly more spirit in the singing—even when Sonia shows up to cause a general ruckus and gets on Reimi’s bad side by dissing Ria. Naturally, the two decide to settle things by seeing which team between the two of them can score more first-place leis. (They give out leis instead of medals at this competition. I don’t know.)
I really must make it totally clear that Reimi’s half of this whole exchange is sung. It’s great.
Things are neck in neck, until the grand prize for the overall competition winner is announced. You may wonder what a mere county meet could offer as a compelling first prize. I will tell you in three words; Enormous Dog Plushie.
The injection of pure motivation this provides is instantaneous and noticeable.
This is also how I feel about large plushies.
Reimi wants it too, since conveniently apparently Ria collects merchandise of this character and this is another chance for everyone’s favorite blonde lesbian disaster to get in good with her teacher (in her own mind, anyway). With the spirit of competition raised to even greater heights than before, Sonia also starts singing. (Her second number in the show, in fact, after her Healing Song from last episode.)
But Reimi and Sonia’s fired-up neck and neck competition ends up not mattering. Because apparently Hibiki, who quickly overtakes both of them from behind, is a musical Speed Force user or something of the sort.
The competition ends with the giant plushie going to Hibiki. She promptly sends it to her many adorable younger siblings, meaning no giant plushie for Reimi to give to Ria. Don’t worry, though, because Reimi did win the second-place plushie, and gives that to Ria instead. Ria is duly grateful and hugs her student, thus giving Reimi specifically a very happy ending for this episode.
After the ED, we see that the girls also did, in fact, pass their exams. It’s a heartwarming note for the episode to end on. And, for us here at MPA, an apropos one, too.
Song Count: Two full songs in the episode’s first half. The girls’ dialogue is almost entirely sung in the back half, as mentioned, depending on how you want to count that.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Anime Orbit Weekly is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
New title, same old format. I don’t have too much to say, this week, despite the title change. I’ve been going through some medical stuff (which I’ll not bother to recount in detail here) over the past two weeks, so I’ve been a bit tight on time. Nonetheless, I hope the below writeups will slake some of your curiosity as to the current goings-on in the more esoteric corners of the seasonal anime universe. And beyond, as you’ll see.
Weekly Anime
Birdie Wing
Birdie Wing‘s second episode is surprisingly, almost disappointingly, tame compared to its utterly ridiculous first. Expecting it to top its premiere would’ve been unreasonable, but I don’t think the same is true of hoping it’d keep that same energy up throughout the course of its run. The second episode, unfortunately–and to paraphrase a friend–is just golf. The presentation still leans into the absurd and showy, but the actual shots here are not anything that defies description. They are just golf shots; very good golf shots, golf shots that would be notable if they were pulled off by a real person. But there’s no passing betwixt train cars or bouncing off of rakes here. Most of the episode takes place on a regular green course. (Albeit, one with an admittedly nasty L-shaped design.)
Fly true, Pac-Man.
Instead, Birdie Wing makes the puzzling decision to get a bit more psychological. This isn’t an idea wholly devoid of merit; throughout the episode, our protagonists Eve and Aoi are contrasted in numerous ways. In their literal playstyles, yes, but also their entire personalities. Eve is cynical and mercenary, her only real motivators are money or the rare thrill of a genuine challenge. Aoi is studied, formal, and has a genuine love of the game. (Tellingly, her mother is a CEO.) The two are total opposites. Consequently, they fascinate each other, and that is what Birdie Wing‘s second episode chooses to focus on, not the theatrics of its first.
We do still get a lot of shonen-y, sports anime-adjacent guff here about how Aoi is an “innocent tyrant” who “crushes people with her smile.” Read: people find her sincerity disarming. Most of this comes from her manager. (If Aoi herself is even aware that she has this effect on people, she doesn’t really show any sign of it.) But the thing is this; all this stuff is kinda funny. It’s not actually interesting. Those are different things, and I think Birdie Wing may be confusing the two. It might become genuinely interesting later on, but Birdie Wing hasn’t earned this kind of self-indulgent character study yet, there are a lot more basics to be snapped together about what this show is even about, and frankly Aoi isn’t a complicated enough character to warrant all this. It really feels like the series is getting ahead of itself. Although, it should be said that Aoi’s fangirling is at least cute.
In its final third or so, after Aoi and Eve’s match, things take a turn back toward the more pleasantly ridiculous. Eve busts up a rigged trick golf game (sure) and then confronts another wonderfully absurd character; new addition Rose Aleon (Toa Yukinari). Rose is….a golf mob boss? I guess? Continuing the show’s already-a-tradition of affixing “golf” to the start of various professions and pretending that that’s a thing. Rose and Eve’s banter is fun, but the end result is that she sets Eve up in a tournament where she can play against Aoi. In my view, this makes Rose something of a golf lesbian wingman.
My hope is that when we get to the actual tournament(s?), the show will regain some of its visual oomph. Until then, this is a decent but only marginally compelling episode to bridge two parts of the story. Hopefully, Eve and Aoi can bring each other happiness. You know, through golf.
Golfing!
Estab-Life: Great Escape
One show that has not had any issue keeping up the WTF factor is Estab-Life. The peculiar Polygon Pictures product premiered and then released two more episodes almost immediately. It’s been two weeks since then, and as such, we’re already up to episode 5, almost halfway through the run of what is easily the season’s weirdest show. Previous episodes have involved yakuza bosses with dreams of magical girldom, KGB penguins, and a whole lot of lesbianism on the part of little Martese. This week’s episode continues the tradition of being unmistakable for any other show airing right now.
Unfortunately, this is probably also the weakest episode of the series so far. It’s the farthest Estab-Life has ever leaned into comedy, which feels odd to say, because the entire show sometimes feels like a prank being played on the viewer. If it is, this week is a bit of a mean turn. Have you ever wanted to watch an entire 22-minute episode of TV based around the fact that some people think the word “pantsu” is really funny? I haven’t either, but apparently one of Estab-Life‘s writers did.
Most of the episode is frankly not worth recapping, at least not in detail. The gist is that the undergarments-forbidding cluster is the location of their new client; a priestess in the religion of “the Goddess” who rules over the cluster. That goddess? The Statue of Liberty in a bath towel. Obviously.
Unfortunately, a lot of this just gets put toward the end of making Feres uncomfortable because she doesn’t want to go commando in public. At one point she is publicly shamed for this, at another she is felt up by robots. It’s not great!
Me too, girl.
The episode is home to some solid action scenes though (where Feres is at her best), and we find out upon the episode’s conclusion that the cluster administrator changed their mind about the “no underwear” rule. This is absurd, of course, but the idea that administrators even can change their minds is a new one to our cast. Including to Equa, who’s otherwise seemed to know just about everything. Things like this save the episode from being truly inessential, and I doubt this marks any kind of serious downturn, but it’s definitely the least fun of Estab-Life‘s episodes so far.
The Executioner & Her Way of Life
Executioner remains one of the most purely compelling shows of the year so far. For an action anime, its production values lean more toward “solid” than groundbreaking, but Executioner’s real appeal is in its intrigue-laden story. Since we last spoke about Menou and her way of life, she’s picked up a co-protagonist, the otherworlder Akari Tokitou (Moe Kahara). Akari’s “pure concept”—the show’s name for the magical superpowers every otherworlder has—is time manipulation, although as far as we know, she doesn’t actually know that, believing that her powers relate to healing.
There’s reason to be suspect of that assumption, but before we get to that, it’s worth mentioning this episode’s actual plot. In concept it’s not anything new; terrorists intercept a train for dubious reasons, are killed by the heroes in the process. The execution is fairly interesting, though. In particular, the show sidesteps having to show any actual terrorist tactics by giving the terrorists….poison gems in their stomach that merge them all into a blood monster when they die. That’s a new one to me.
The train is nearly crashed by the terrorists’ plot, and a mysterious ripple of magic ends up helping Menou out. She later openly muses on the possibility that she actually failed to stop the train and Akari rewound time. I found the direct pointing of this out a little on the nose, but the idea itself is interesting. Akari in general is a bit of a riddle; she seems too genuinely cheerful to be out-and-out manipulative, but her body language—particularly a tendency toward owl-eyed, watchful stares—and some of the things she says hints that there is more to her going on than simply being a naive new arrival in the show’s world. I look forward to learning what, precisely, is going on with her.
The bloodthirsty princess Ashuna (Mao Ichimichi), introduced last episode but given more of a spotlight here, is also worth highlighting. She and Momo end up squaring off atop the roof of the train and eventually fall off it entirely. Executioner is perhaps not an amazing-looking anime, but the action setpieces are solid, and in particular the magic effects look quite nice. Momo manages to make a, I suppose, chainsaw-dagger? Out of a length of metal chain.
That’s pretty rad, and it’s hard to too harshly criticize a show that’s willing to go that ridiculous in spite of being otherwise pretty serious in tone.
This is very much a minor episode for Executioner, but I wouldn’t be surprised if much of what’s brought up here comes back around eventually. So far, the writing has been tight enough that I’d be more surprised if it didn’t. If you’re not watching this one, I’d really recommend picking it up.
Non-Weekly Anime
Wow, there’s a heading I haven’t broken out for a very long time. In fact, I think I’ve only ever used it once before? In any case, I do occasionally find it pertinent to write about a show I’m watching “on my own time,” at least a little bit, in spite of its marginal or nonexistant relevance to the seasonal hype cycle.
Witch Craft Works
A romance-action-comedy-drama anime apparently originally salvaged out of a rejected yuri manga pitch, Witch Craft Works is really something else. It’s an interesting illustration of how much the anime zeitgeist has changed in just the short time since it originally aired (the show is from 2014, so it’s not quite yet 10 years old.) It’s also noteworthy for being helmed by a true puzzle-box of a director; Tsutomu Mizushima. The man’s works are frequently separated by light-years in terms of genre, theme, and even just quality. Some of which is explained by most of his stuff being adaptions, but still, his credits include everything from Bludgeoning Angel Dokuro-chan to ANOTHER, CLAMP adaptions Blood-C and xxxHOLIC, modern ecchi landmark (for better or worse) Prison School, banner “girls and military hardware” show Girl und Panzer, even also-ran early ’10s slice of life hit Squid Girl….the guy’s an enigma, a sort of curious anti-auteur. I find him interesting, even if he seems to bat 50/50 on whether or not the stuff he adapts is actually good.
As for Witch Craft Works itself, the premise is a light novel-esque unfolding origami box of absurdity. Our main character, Honoka Takamiya (Yuusuke Kobayashi) may be a meek and average high school boy, at least at first, but his love interest, the high school “princess” Ayaka Kagari (Asami Seto), is anything but. What starts as a fairly simple “how did she fall for him” premise, a la this current season’s Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie, quickly reveals itself to be something way weirder when we learn that Ayaka is a witch embroiled in a simmering war between two factions–her own Workshop Witches and their rival Tower Witches. Full disclosure; it’s actually a manga adaption, but I associate this sort of rapid-fire proper noun machine gun approach more with light novel adaptions. Perhaps just a personal bias.
The witch factions are where the action element kicks in, and the show is excellent at this. Every episode crackles with energy, and the magic is made to look truly wild and dangerous, backed up with the sort of super blown-out, loud-as-fuck, almost dubstep-ish sound design that I sorely miss from this era of anime. Ayaka’s magic in particular is given a lot of attention, which makes sense, she’s a fire witch, and fire is an ideal showcase for flashy visual effects.
Eventually, Honoka takes a more proactive role in his own defense—oh yeah, that war between the witch factions is over him, we only know the vague reasons as to why at the point I’m at in the series—and dons a witch outfit as well. In general, Honoka and Ayaka have an absolutely great dynamic, and it really feels like almost nothing has been changed from the pre-draft lesbian versions of the characters, down to Ayaka calling Honoka her “bride,” “princess,” and a number of other pretty explicitly feminine terms, with Honoka only occasionally and wealky protesting. Ayaka herself makes the icy-cool kuudere archetype seem fresh again. She also gets a lot of funny lines, delivered in total, profound deadpan.
In general, Witch Craft Works is great at pulling off character concepts that sound middling or even outright bad on paper. Even the annoying brocon character—a trope I normally cannot stand—is pretty good here. It’s hard to hate someone who’s as much of a loopy firecracker as Kasumi Takamiya (Ai Kayano), and her crazy magic (she can summon giant teddy bears, what’s not to love?) helps too. In general, the costuming is also excellent, with almost every important character—and many non-important characters, like the Tower Witch quartet who serve as the show’s Team Rocket analogue—having absolutely ridiculous fits that perfectly telegraph their personalities..
All in all, the show is a ton of fun. I don’t know if it’s going to keep that up as it heads into its more serious second half (I’m at the exact midway point, having watched episode six previously), but even if it doesn’t, it’s worth recommending off the strength of its truly outrageous opening half alone.
I spend a lot of time thinking about Kaguya-sama: Love is War! in basically any season it airs in. Maybe overthinking it. The result is rather wordy columns like these where I often spend as much time on individual episode chunks as I do on whole episodes of other shows. Still, I hope y’all appreciate the writeups. I enjoyed this episode a good deal, and I’m interested in the long-term implications of its character development for Kaguya and Hayasaka.
This is a weird comparison that I doubt anyone else has ever made, but Spy x Family actually reminds me a tiny bit of the aforementioned Witch Craft Works. Mostly just in the fact that both are action-comedies with a romance angle that are tons of fun and deliver a steady stream of thrilling absurdities every episode. The styles are different—Spy x Family is a lot slicker and is comparatively more subdued than WCW—but I feel like the similarity is there. I love covering this show and I hope to continue to for quite some time. Also; the OP, formally introduced this week, absolutely rules. I link it in the article above, clearly you should go read it just for that reason alone. 😉
That’s about it for this week, everybody. I can’t promise what the size or distribution of next week will look like, given that I’m still going through the aforementioned health stuff. Still, I hope you enjoyed this week’s AOW. See ya starside.
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.
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