Tag: Gyakuten Sekai no Denchi Shoujo

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [1/3/22]

Hello, anime fans! Happy New Year and welcome to the first Frontline Report of 2022! As I mentioned in my plans for 2022 post, this column is going to remain mostly unchanged entering the new year. Once the seasonal schedule settles, I may move it to publishing on a different day (and we may skip a week at some point in the process), but beyond that, the Report is going to remain familiar, at least for now.

But before we can truly venture into 2022 and the season ahead, I have two anime I’d previously left unfinished from last season. Let’s talk about those, shall we?

Weekly Anime

Mieruko-chan

The first of our cleanups from the tail end of last year; Mieruko-chan was, as far as straightforward manga adaptions go, pretty typical. That is to say, it inherits most of its source material’s weaknesses and only some of its strengths. The good news is that while the more ambitious work that separates a good manga adaption from a merely OK one is largely absent from the series’ first half, it does begin to pick some of that up as it nears its conclusion. This is a series that, far from falling off after its first episode, more or less linearly gets better. Its last few episodes are its strongest, and that brings us to the “Zen arc” that closes it out.

Zen, as brought up when we last visited him, is the substitute teacher for Miko and Hana’s class. He is, in a general sense, weird. Much of the tension of the arc is predicated toward building on the assumption we already have (from his prior appearances in the series) that he’s a serial animal killer. The pieces seem to add up; a rash of missing cats in the neighborhood, his own cold and detached demeanor from other people (including his students), generally suspicious behavior, etc. But one of Mieruko-chan‘s central themes is that looks can be deceiving.

The arc’s climax, in which Zen is almost hit by a car while trying to rescue a cat, and we learn of his past with his abusive mother, is the series’ best handling of anything with real gravitas. Aided by the fact that she literally still haunts him, a situation Miko fixes for him in what is certainly her most proactive move in the whole series. This entire sequence of scenes (which takes up the bulk of the penultimate episode), is the show’s overall highlight.

So, what to make of Mieruko-chan overall? I’ve been rather critical of it in this column in the past (including at the top of this very section), but I maintain my initial impression that what it does right outweighs what it does wrong. I still might point anyone interested in the series to the manga first and foremost, but the visual snap (and consequently, additional narrative weight) added to these last few episodes definitely makes the anime worth watching as well.

Then there’s the characters. Any series that has both serious and comparatively lighthearted components will end up judged on the former over the latter, but Mieruko-chan‘s comedic chops really solidify in this last arc as Miko, Hana, and Julia’s dynamic clicks into its final shape. My main hope for a second season is not as much because I am interested in the resolution of the story arc (although I am), but more because I just want to see these three delightful dummies palling around town more.

(Also, if the subtext between these two isn’t intentional, I’ll eat my hat.)

A shout out has to also be given to the translators here, whose quirky script really helps Mieruko-chan‘s comedy come across in English. Far too many comedy manga and anime end up falling flat when translated “literally,” and it’s for the best they didn’t go with that approach here.

So that’s the long and short of it. Will Mieruko-chan change anyone’s life? No, but it’s solid genre fare in an under-represented genre, and that is more than enough. I think the best thing I can say about Mieruko-chan on a personal level is that despite any criticisms I may have, if they made a second season, I would absolutely watch it. And really, isn’t that the only metric of quality you really need?

Rumble Garanndoll

I think if you wanted to, it wouldn’t be that hard to make a case against Rumble Garanndoll. The series does the stock irresponsible anime-about-anime thing of conflating all human passion (a very broad thing) with passion specifically for this medium (a very narrow thing). You could point to other missteps it’s made along the way (most of which I’ve covered in previous editions of this very column), you could single out how, in the end, its big fascistic villain is revealed as little more than the cosplaying puppet of an even bigger, offscreen fascistic villain who we don’t really get to meaningfully meet at any point.

But the thing is this; I am an anime critic. Emphasis on the first word, not the second. If an anime is mostly about how fucking awesome anime is, I’m going to at least kinda like it unless it’s truly terrible. And Rumble Garanndoll has the appropriate amount of audacity to, say, cap its final arc with the villains attempting to drop the Comiket Center onto Akihabara like a bomb. Even if I didn’t like the series, I’d respect its punch.

But I do like it! Flaws and all, it’s hard to find major fault with something this damn fun. Our main arc here concludes with Hosomichi finding that even if he can’t feel as strongly for the art itself as other people do, he can feel for those people. That’s a surprisingly mature conclusion for something like this to reach! And that’s not all; we get a lot of good small moments over these last three episodes. Stuff like Hosomichi’s ringtone turning out to be a crucial plot element, and a small arc between Commander Balzac and Mimi (the scientist lady). There’s even a few oddly poignant moments. Like here where she assures Balzac that their own sacrifices–and the mistakes they made during them–weren’t for nothing.

Or here, at the very end of the series, where Akatsuki is astonished to learn that many of the resistance members weren’t even Japanese. Implicitly, a gesture of Garanndoll reaching out to its overseas audience as Akatsuki visibly begins to question the ideas he’s been fighting for this entire time. (In the process, supporting character Ukai is revealed to be American.)

It’s all just very good-natured and fun. There are criticisms one could make of this last arc, especially on the production side (there are a few downright sloppy action sequences here mixed in with the better ones), but why? Rumble Garanndoll set out not to imitate the great anime of the past, but to become one itself. I’m not sure if it quite hit “great,” but it’s certainly a worthy show, and I hope it picks up a following. It deserves one.

And yeah, for the record, I’d watch a second season of this, too. (Especially since the last episode raises as many questions as it answers!) I’m glad this was the last anime from 2021 I finished; I think Rumble Garanndoll‘s attitude is a good one to bring into the new year.

Elsewhere on MPA

The Five Most Magical Anime of 2021

This is outside my usual window for mentioning an article on the subsequent Frontline Report, but I worked really hard on this, and I want as many people to read it as possible. So please give it a look if you haven’t!

Seasonal Impressions: What is THE MISSING 8?

If you want to get very picky, you could argue that the season’s already begun. The Missing 8‘s first two episodes dropped just after Christmas, and I honestly am still just in awe that the show exists. It’s not a TV series, it’s a semi-independent web short thing that is only actually animated some of the time, but it’s worth checking out just for how odd it is.

And that’s about all for our first week of 2022. If you’re finding the year’s start a little thin, I wouldn’t worry. We’ve got quite the week ahead of us with a good number of premieres piled up already. (I’ll probably be covering about one per day, once they start dropping.) I should also quickly mention Ousama Ranking; yes, it will be returning to this column, probably before too long. It’s a great series and I intend to follow it ’til its end. I’m only not counting it as a leftover from 2021 because, well, I tend to categorize anime by the year they end in rather than the year they begin in. A personal preference, I suppose.

What was your last anime of 2021? Do you have any plans for your first of 2022? Let me know in the comments or on Twitter, I always look forward to hearing from you, anime fans!

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

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

Posted on in Uncategorized

The Frontline Report [12/13/21]

Hello, treasured readers! I don’t have much to say this week, but I will remind you to pop on over to the poll to choose what I cover weekly on Let’s Watch sometime before December ends if you’re interested in doing that and haven’t done so yet. Other than that? A fairly short one this week with just two shows, but on the plus side; they’re both anime that haven’t appeared in this column for quite a while.

Komi Can’t Communicate

It’s been quite a while since Komi Can’t Communicate last appeared here. If you’re wondering why, I will remind any returning readers that I am following NovaWorks‘ fansub release, which is going slowly, but remains absolutely worth it because of their inventive typesetting and clear love of the material.

In the third episode, their most recent release, we’re introduced to a new character, Himiko Agari.

She’s kind of…weird. Initially it seems like her main role will be to give Komi a friend who also has pretty severe anxiety. And most of her introductory segment focuses on a miscommunication the two have. (Or rather a lack of one; Komi wants to introduce herself to Himiko but instead just follows her around the school building silently. Which understandably freaks Himiko out.)

And then we get to the climax of the bit and the punchline is…this.

It’s just a bit confusing, really. For one thing, it isn’t much of a joke. For another, this particular shade of Himiko’s personality seems to flip on and off like a lightswitch as the scene demands. This is hardly the quandary that Najimi’s characterization posed, but it is symptomatic of a strange tendency for Komi to sometimes squish its characters down to one-note cutouts for the sake of gags.

Even the soundtrack gets in on this. Komi‘s OST tends to slide into a gentle sway full of plucked guitars and soft strings whenever it wants to sell a genuine “friendship moment.” But it’s just as quick to cut the music entirely if it can subvert that for a quick joke. In general, this all still works a lot better here than it did in the source material, but it’s a notably odd sensation nonetheless, and prevents the show from flowing well at times. Does Komi want to have a core of real, warm compassion for its characters, or is everything just a setup for a parade of gags? One gets the sense that the series itself doesn’t quite know the answer, and on the occasion that it tries something, and it falls flat, that tends to be why.

What tends to work a bit better than the personality gags are situations where the humor comes from Tadano (or one of Komi’s other friends) attempting to help Komi socialize more, and inadvertently speeding into a brick wall in the process. That’s more or less what happens with the final segment of this episode, where Najimi invites the two of them to play a chant game. Style checks of the Pokémon anime and some classic “comedy anime treats a mundane activity like a shonen battle” humor follow, and it’s genuinely great.

You don’t need to know that the studio behind Komi Can’t Communicate is OLM, who have also done the Pokémon anime since it premiered in 1997 and made a hot-streak return to non-primetime anime production this year between this series and ODD TAXI to find this funny. But, hey, now you do anyway.

Elsewhere, a bit about cellphone-related anxiety taps in to the sort of universal cringe-beholding-cringe feeling that tends to make the best sort of this kind of comedy tick. All of this, of course, is accentuated by the visual treat that the series continues to be. It remains one of the best-looking anime of 2021. (An aside should be made also to also again shout out Komi’s voice actress, Aoi Koga, who gets barely two actual lines in this episode but still manages to somehow make the character burst with personality even when she’s mostly communicating through wordless single syllables.)

So if it’s rough around the edges, maybe that’s worth sitting through for the moments when it really shines. Komi is an odd one, and if it hasn’t entirely kept that “must-watch” mantle from its premiere, it’s at least a worthwhile watch regardless.

Rumble Garanndoll

It’s been a while since we last checked in with Rumble Garanndoll. To be fair, the fact that it airs on Mondays makes covering it here a smidge inconvenient. (By the time this article goes live, the “next episode” will already have aired.) Nonetheless; I’ve kept up with it intermittently. My opinion on the show’s merits (of which it has quite a few) and flaws (same) has evened out into thinking it is a solid little action series with a quirky aesthetic bent that, as a nice bonus, has something to say. This is roughly how I felt about BACK ARROW from earlier this year–also a weird mecha anime–although I think Rumble‘s self-aware otakucore vibes might fit with how I like my media a little better. (Which probably says nothing good about me, but oh well.)

Since I last wrote about it, Rumble has introduced a third (and presumably final) Battery Girl; Misa “WerdCat” Kuroki. Misa is the youngest of the Battery Girls and, in a refreshing change of pace, looks to Hosomichi more as a surrogate older sibling than a romantic interest. Her story manages to squeeze some life out of the ancient “pa went missing one day and never came back :(” trope, to surprisingly affecting….er, effect.

I remain undecided on the main visual metaphor here, a bright red linker cable, of the sort that was used to connect handheld consoles in the pre-WiFi era. (Specifically the consoles that show up here are NeoGeo Pockets. Presumably the Gameboy would’ve been too mainstream.) Much of these episodes’ plots revolves around an attempt to find one in the dungeons under Akihabara (yes, there are dungeons here. Don’t question it.) And in the flashbacks when we see Misa’s father go missing, they are the only thing fully colored in the otherwise sepia tone scenes. It’s a silly visual symbol, but this is just the frequency Rumble operates on, and one must accept it if they wish to enjoy the show.

Similarly, when Misa takes control of the Doll itself, turning it into “Cat Three,” the series manages the impressive task of making a giant robot-sized kotatsu table look rather cool as it turns into an artillery platform. Rumble Garanndoll is nothing if not devoted to its shtick.

Y’know, like, nya?

The main antagonist of this arc, Yakumo Kamizuru, is also intriguing. Perhaps best described in a nutshell as a “fascistic shrine maiden who is also a mecha pilot,” Yakumo is one of the show’s more interesting antagonists. She retreats at the end of the arc, despite only minutes prior disparaging the entire resistance as “failures” and “losers”, chuckling to herself as she does so. Her name, an apparent allusion to Koizumi Yakumo, is interesting to me. The historical Yakumo was a Greek-Irish-American who eventually settled in Japan after developing a fascination with its culture in the late 1800s. (And much besides, he’s an interesting figure.) If I may wander into fan theory territory here, I do wonder if this is meant to indicate that our Yakumo here isn’t actually from “True” Japan. Perhaps she’s a defector originally from “Illusory” Japan. Her general attitude belies an interest in older Japanese culture. So part of me wonders if, assuming this is true, she didn’t defect just because she was bitter about people caring more about modern pop culture than older things. (I may of course, be wildly wrong. But hey, if I make a called shot about this, I want the credit.)

All this is to say nothing of the most recent episode, the ninth.

Episode Nine takes place almost entirely at a festival organized by the Resistance. In some anime, this would be a filler episode. Here, it leads directly into our presumable final confrontation (there are, after all, only three episodes of this thing left).

Much of the episode revolves around a ramen stand, where Hosomichi meets an in-disguise Captain Akatsuki Shinonome and, of course, the stand’s owner. Said old man (who goes unnamed here) serves to show us both what life is like for the older ordinary residents of Akihabara, including why they might join up with the resistance in the first place, and to start a conversation between these two opposing people.

Now Rumble has to be careful here, because we’ve never really been given a look inside Akatsuki’s head, and there has been prior to now little reason to not believe he’s simply a garden-variety authoritarian. Here, he gains some character detail as he veiledly explains his own point of view to the ramen shop owner (and to Hosomichi.) The danger of doing this of course is always that your work’s audience might end up sympathizing with the fascist; an especially real possibility here at the end of the episode when a drunk-off-his-ass Anju (that’s Hosomichi’s “boss” if you’ve forgotten) shows up, makes a huge show of representing the resistance, and starts bullying the ramen shop owner. My main hope is that this is obviously enough meant to not be a real criticism from the show’s end of the resistance, so no one will take it that way.

The shop owner himself, incidentally, may go down as one of the great relatable anime characters of the year. At least to me.

Amen, brother.

And lastly, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention Rin and Hayate’s meeting here. We get to see sadly little of it and it’s most likely setup for something in the next episode, but they make a rather cute couple. (Which a random doujin shop owner voiced by Mayumi Shintani actually mistakes them for.)

The final confrontation is set to take place just outside what looks an awful lot like Tokyo Big Sight, AKA The Comiket Building. Which, honestly, where else would Rumble Garanndoll finish?

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

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

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [11/15/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.

Hello folks. Quick programming note before we get started here: Frontline Report is going to be a Mondays column from now on, since it fits a bit better with my schedule. This week’s column is, we’ll say, medium length? And primarily about Rumble Garanndoll. Listen; some weeks you don’t choose the anime, the anime chooses you.

Hope you’re all doing well out there, anime fans.

Rumble Garanndoll

Most anime that suffer from the problems that Rumble Garanndoll did a few weeks back are not helped by introducing more characters. Especially not if they’re also girls with some amount of tease-y maybe-chemistry with the male lead. Yet, doing just that has put the series back on track, and its past two episodes are probably the most interesting the show has ever been. If nothing else, Rumble Garanndoll thus continues to defy expectations.

Last week’s episode, its fifth, concluded the miniature story arc of Yuki Aoba. Second-introduced battery girl, and quite possibly Japan’s last surviving idol singer. The natural self-doubt that comes with being an entertainer is compounded by the wildly difficult circumstances of Garanndoll’s setting, and so Hosomichi’s task is to get her back on track when she briefly gives the idol life up. It would be easy to do this by appealing to her imagined responsibility to her fans, or to simple nostalgia for better times, and Hosomichi does in fact try both. What eventually wins her over though is the fact that Yuki as an idol is how she’s happiest with herself, anyone else be damned. Her fans love her because she is a flawed, human person, not because of the artifice. This being Garanndoll, all of this climaxes with Yuki’s own version of the reconfigurable titular mecha–the Rabbit Two–blasting a True Army general to the ground with a rabbit-shaped beam made out of pure Idol Energy. As always, Rumble Garanndoll is at its best when it’s being least subtle.

And speaking of that, the show’s sixth episode is….well, it certainly is something.

I’ve previously commended Garanndoll for its general worldview as one of the show’s strengths. But if one ever thought that it was holding back, today’s episode tosses all subtlety to the window. This is very much a “backstory” episode, and an interlude between the series’ more bombastic moments. But in between usual interstitial fare like fun character interactions (and here, a harem series dynamic that only just manages to stay on the right side of the endearingly cheesy / annoyingly irritating divide), we get Rumble Garanndoll’s take on Japanese Nationalism.

Yes, you read that right.

It will shock no one who’s been following the series that it’s not a worldview the show holds in high regard. But even I was rather surprised at how blunt this sequence is. The conceit here is that one of the resistance’s members has smuggled in a propaganda film from the so-called True Country. There’s been some indication that they were from another world / another timeline / something like that. What’s made clear here, as the black-and-white war reel opens with a declaration that it was made in Year 90 of the “Eternal Showa Era,” is that this other world is one where Japan (and by implication, their allies as well) won World War II. Quite literally, the Japan of Rumble Garanndoll has been invaded by its own fascistic past. If that’s not quite condemnatory enough, here is what resistance commander Balzac says, word for word from the English sub track.

And coming in for the final blow is this interjection from Hosomichi’s “boss,” probably the most morally questionable character on the protagonists’ side of the show.

He perhaps has a talent for understatement.

The propaganda video itself is all monochrome authoritarian bluster. Captain Akatsuki Shinonome, our running background antagonist, decries the people of Garanndoll’s Japan–the declared “Illusory Country,” a heavy-handed erasure of the worth of millions of people–as failures with a “loser mentality.” If the show’s drawn lines from otaku culture to antifascist resistance have ever seemed silly (and I wouldn’t blame anyone for thinking they were), it’s worth noting that the rhetoric here is rooted in real examples. Moral panics about pop media permeate conservative regimes on both sides of the Pacific.

The propaganda film itself is eerily well-done, too. All monochrome except, of course, for the politically-charged imagery of blazing pink sakura blossoms.

Lest you think I’m giving the show too much credit for the “obvious” stance of being pro-democracy and freedom and anti-authoritarianist and censorship, I would point out that it is vanishingly rare for any country’s popular media to engage in such an openly condemnatory way with the dark parts of its own past. Nor does being “obvious” detract from its relevance and importance in a period of time where fascist talking points are increasingly resurfacing worldwide.

All this in the same episode that has a rather silly and drawn-out bath scene. What can I say? The show contains multitudes.

Mieruko-chan

In its more comedic moments, Mieruko-chan can struggle somewhat to justify its own existence as an adaption. At most things that make the series what it is; the creeping tension cut with enough comedy to keep it from being overwhelming, the manga is simply the better option. What Mieruko-chan the anime does offer though, if episode six is any indication, is a real treat on the rare occasions when the supernatural is helping Miko, in as much as it ever does.

The “Shrine Gods” chapter is adapted here, and it’s easily the standout sequence of the series so far. Miko bears witness to a pair–and then a trio–of shrine deities exorcising one of the most frightening phantoms she’s yet encountered. All while Hana remains naïve to the entire affair; fiddling with her phone camera and talking about Instagram while what’s essentially a horror’d up version of a shonen fight scene happens mere feet away. It’s funny, sure, but in moments like this Mieruko-chan feels like it’s exploring something a bit more worthwhile than the more disposable episodes of the anime adaption so far. Let’s hope it keeps that up.

Manga

Spy X Family

Wow, I know! A manga entry in a week where I’m not doing an actual manga shelf column. There’s a reason for that, though. I don’t have a ton to say about Spy x Family. I think it’s cute, charming, and funny. I picked it up again (after something of a false start a year or two ago) because I was interested in checking out the upcoming anime adaption. I can definitely see where enhancements and changes might be made, in particular with regard to Anya’s very good habit of looking incredibly smug. (And of course, I am very eager to see the beautiful Lor in animated form. 😊) Other than that? Everything you’ve heard about this one is true, I recommend checking it out if you have a chance.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Let’s Get Ready to RUMBLE GARANNDOLL

Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.

A majority of this year’s real marquee anime have been pretty serious affairs. Analyses of the human psyche, explorations of shared generational trauma, things of that nature. Even the great final conclusion of the Neon Genesis Evangelion saga, Thrice Upon A Time, among the medium’s defining achievements this year, fits in here. And that’s all well and good! There is an important, well-earned place for that sort of thing in popular art. But if you’ve felt like something was missing–something simpler, something closer to the root of why people tend to like cartoons in the first place–Rumble Garanndoll may just be what you’re looking for.

This one fits in a curious tradition of self-aware otaku escapism shows. The first episode points toward commonalities with series such as Anime Gataris and the Akiba’s Trip anime or even The Rolling Girls. (Hell, Kill la Kill arguably fits in here.) Effectively, anime that serve as defenses of themselves and by extension the entire medium. You need to be careful with this kind of thing, because it’s easy for it to drift off into self-absorption. No one truly thinks that anime is the most important thing in the world, but the magic of good anime is that it can make us feel like it is, if only for half an hour or so at a time. This monumental task; essentially to both be entertaining and justify its own existence at the same time, is what stands before Rumble Garanndoll. Lesser anime have crumbled in the face of this challenge. But Rumble Garanndoll is willing to try anyway, as evidenced by the existence of its frankly hilarious “OTAKU ISN’T DEAD” tagline.

It’s too early to say definitively if Rumble Garanndoll pulls the whole thing off, but we’re off to a good start. Our lead is Hosomichi Kudo, ex-otaku and–this isn’t a joke–employee of a host bar. He takes his glasses off in order to avoid having to look his clients in the eye while he talks to them and has the opening theme of an in-universe anime (the fictional Sea Emperor Zaburn) as his ringtone. While he is clearly meant to be, to some point, You, Dear Otaku, he has more personality than the blander end of the Protagonist-kun spectrum. There’s a big gulf between that and being an actually great main character, but it’s progress. He may get there.

Chug!

As for our setting? Just the usual. A Japan that’s been divided in two by a fascist, art-hating oppressive state lead by a guy who can’t be older than 20 or so. He inherited the position, and the state is called the “True Country”. Just so you don’t have any illusions about who the bad guys are here.

Sure you are, bud.

The other half of that “two” is the Fantasy Country, which, although it’s not explicitly spelled out here, seems like a dystopic extension of modern Akihabara. (We do learn that specifically one thing is from Akiba, which we’ll get to.) The first episode opens with the True Country invading the Fantasy Country, via squat, diminutive mecha that might remind viewers of 2019’s similarly-titled Granbelm.

A lot happens during the invasion, but the main thing is that a lone rogue mecha dares to stand up to the invaders. Its name is Shark One. It’s a blue, adorable thing, and it’s kept active by an AI-droid-thing-it’s-not-totally-clear yet called a Battery Girl. The one who controls Shark One is named Rin, and she is just great, an instantly-likable little firecracker of a character who spends much of the episode as a moeblob and is willing to open up to Hosomichi because they both like Zaburn. (Being voiced by Ai Farouz helps a lot to sell the whole thing.)

Hosomichi, of course, soon finds himself in Shark One’s cockpit. There’s a lot of great back and forth here between him, Rin, and his former manager, who is tagging along for the ride. Occasionally punctuated via phone call or megaphone by the hilariously-named Commander Balzac, who seems to serve as the leader of the resistence that Rin and Shark One represent. That he kinda looks like an aging Kamina is probably not a coincidence.

This entire sequence, frankly, is charming as all hell. It also, impressively, manages to stay on the right side of self-aware, with Hosomichi and Rin’s mild embarrassment at having to scream “SHARK CAVALIER!” at the top of their lungs being the only real example. (Even that is more charming than anything.)

Crucially, it’s cut with this little bit of dialogue. The message is clear, and twofold. There is firstly the text itself, and then the subtler implication that Rumble Garandoll is not content with gesturing toward great anime. It wants to be a great anime. You don’t plant a thematic flag front and center in your first episode unless you’re very self-confident.

The aftermath of all this, of course, sees Hosomichi recruited into this (as of now, still nameless to us) resistance. The journey has just begun, for him and for us alike. We also meet Rin in her non-chibi physical form for the first time, rocking a Mega Man-inspired blue suit. She and Hosomichi have a brief squabble. Is a first episode ending on that note cliché or timeless? That, really is the question.

Art, at its absolute best, can inspire and connect us. Most anime don’t commit, full-tilt, to that aspiration. And most anime that do commit don’t succeed. (Pour one out for 2018 boondoggle Darling in the FranXX.) Will Rumble Garandoll get there? It’s really quite hard to say. But it’s possible, and for some, possibility alone will be enough. Certainly it is for me.

Grade: A-
The Takeaway: For a certain kind of person–and you know who you are–this is a must-see. Most others should at least give the first episode a watch unless this kind of thing just strongly isn’t your cup of tea.

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

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