Tag: Hoshi no Samidare

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch LUCIFER AND THE BISCUIT HAMMER – Episode 4

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers! But you really shouldn’t care in this case. Seriously, don’t watch this.

Ugh.

Look, I’ll give it this much. In a way, the sheer lack of ambition in the Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer anime is almost comforting. Over the past week, I have been dealing with quite a lot of things, most of them relating to my mental health and mostly too complicated to go into here. And there is something strangely reassuring about the fact that, no matter what happens to me, the Biscuit Hammer anime will continue to run for its allotted cours, and it will continue to be totally superfluous the entire time, a general ball of Stay-Puft cotton that will ultimately mean very little to anyone. I could move to another city, I could buy a house, I could get isekai’d, I could become a magical girl in a far-distant fantasy kingdom. I could buy a house in that fantasy kingdom. I could get married to an elf woman and raise four kids in a cottage as some kind of ultimate lesbian power fantasy. None of it would matter; the Biscuit Hammer anime would still be here, and it would still be terrible, the kind of thing that is instantly agreed upon by fans of the source material to “not count” the moment it ends, inducted into those rarified halls of nonexistence next to the Umineko anime and whatever kids meme about “not having an anime” these days. There is, admittedly, a kind of strength in that sort of consistency. It’s an absolutely worthless kind of strength, but, hey, it’s something.

“God’s in her heaven….

On the other hand, its equally-consistent, crushing badness is also just depressing, because it renders actually watching the series an actively draining experience. I didn’t cover last week’s episode, which gave us the end of Yuuhi’s emotional arc with his grandfather, where he both refuses to forgive the man yet wishes for Neu to cure his illness (something that mostly survived intact from the manga), Yuuhi defeating his first golem (laughably bad, given how awful the anime uniformly looks), and the introduction of another main character, Hangetsu Shinonome (Shuuhei Iwase), a goofy self-styled “hero of justice” who appears to know more than he initially lets on (he was pretty obnoxious at this point in the manga, and it’s even worse here). Most of the episode was as ramshackle as anything else so far. Samidare, as seen in Yuuhi’s dream, pulling Yuuhi into a kiss is at least still kind of cute.

And that sentence, right up there, is the last unambiguously positive thing I am ever going to write about Biscuit Hammer on this blog.

This is your brain on Biscuit Hammer

Because other than that, the show still completely fails to sell anything more complex than “people standing in a room and talking,” and sometimes can’t even swing that much. This was true of episode 3. It is also true of episode 4. It will probably be true of every episode going forward. Have I yet mentioned that, because this thing going by BD listings, has the ball-shatteringly absurd temerity required to be this and be two cours long, we’re an eighth of the way through it? Simply by typing that, I feel like I’m trying to escape from a rabid monster in one of those nightmares where your feet feel really heavy and you can’t get proper traction on the floor. In this tortured analogy, the nightmare is Biscuit Hammer‘s deeply pointless, depressing, cynical existence. It is inside of you, just embrace it.

I have, and I have to confess that little of what you just read—and only slightly more of what you’re about to read—has much of anything to do with episode 4 in particular. But in my own defense; how possibly could it? With an anime production this soul-sucking, it manages to somehow sand down the manga’s many quirks and rough edges until the entire thing feels like a single slab of indistinguishable concrete. Frames, then seconds, then minutes tick by. Eventually, the episode ends, and we are closer to understanding nothing but the truest and deepest meaning of the word “tedium.” Biscuit Hammer is a final answer to the question posed in 2000’s Gladiator. No, we are not entertained. I am beginning to wonder if entertainment as a concept is even real.

Since it began, I have also asked myself repeatedly who the Biscuit Hammer anime is for, since it clearly isn’t for people who like anime. There is of course the obvious notion that it’s a cynical cash-grab, but even that makes little sense. This isn’t some huge smash hit we’re talking about here. Biscuit Hammer the manga is a cult classic even domestically, and it’s equally so abroad. Who, exactly, is being cheated out of their money by doing this? Perhaps Studio NAZ themselves, who have apparently subcontracted some or all of these episodes so far—to be honest I haven’t looked terribly hard for details, because who could possibly care?—including the fucking premiere. That’s probably why it looks like owl pellets pickled in fryer grease nine-tenths of the time.

It is clear by now that we have to start reaching for the really, really dramatic and hysterical words to describe this adaption; words like “butchery,” “desecration,” and “unwatchable piece of shit.” It is equally clear that it exists for no purpose beyond pleasing some nebulous cluster of bean counters. Episode 4 continues this pattern because this anime was made by people who want to hurt you. Lucifer and The Biscuit Hammer is trapped inside the content mill, and we along with it, as the mill is bleeding to death.

Even the one bright spot of the anime adaption, the one thing it could not totally snuff out, Samidare herself, a wildly compelling character, is mostly gone in this episode, because Samidare herself isn’t really in it. What do we get instead?

Oh boy.

I am so glad you asked, friend.

This, you see, is a comedy episode. It’s a ” ” “comedy” ” ” episode in that this is the one where the adaption does what it’s been doing since the premiere, taking the manga’s jokes—there, admittedly a weak point, but a necessary reprieve from the more intense moments—and stretches them out, grotesquely, like a serial killer binding a book in human skin. This episode is so dreary, so empty, so totally devoid of joy that the fact that it’s trying to be funny somehow makes the entire thing harrowing on an existential level.

You probably want me to actually, you know, recap the episode. But honestly? Why? What is worth covering here? Toward the end there is some of the talk about what it means to be an adult that would, eventually, form one of the manga’s main themes. But that’s a small portion of an episode that is mostly just the most flatlined shonen jokes you can possibly imagine trotted out like they’re somehow still fucking funny and executed in the driest, dullest, most visually depressing fashion possible. If there is a Hell for anime critics, it looks something like this episode; surreal and nightmarish in its mundanity, but not in a way that you could mistake for even a passing second for interesting. None of it is even remotely funny. Obviously it isn’t. You know what’s funny? @LyricalGarfield, a twitter bot that replaces Garfield dialogue with random song lyrics. That’s comedy. You want to have a good time? Go read that for 20 minutes, skip this show entirely, and thank me later.

Yes, you’re getting Family Guy-style cutaway gags mid-article right now. That’s how done I am with this fucking anime, if the swearing didn’t give it away.

At some point I feel like I’m either dipping into Seanbaby territory or just repeating myself. What is there to say? The show fucking sucks. The jokes are shit. It looks like shit. (Seriously, why the fuck does half this show have the color palette of an FPS game from 2005?) The pacing is shit. It’s conceptually shit. The only thing that’s not entirely shit is some of the character writing, which is of course a strength inherited from the manga. Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer, the anime, is a rare TV anime that could be improved upon by animating it less. And we know this because the manga is, of course, completely static and yet manages to have more weight and motion to it than the thing that is, you know, made of moving drawings.

When the Biscuit Hammer anime premiered I unflatteringly compared it to a variety of my personal bottom-of-the-listers. Pride of Orange, Magical Girl Spec. Ops. Asuka, etc. I also did something very silly, which was say that this show is not as bad as those. This was, in hindsight, totally wrong. It’s absolutely as bad as those. It might be worse! Because while Puraore is constantly, actively unpleasant, at least it is not an adaption of a cult favorite beloved by many people. If Biscuit Hammer is not “worse” than Puraore (or other, similar anime), it is at least more insulting. Every single moment of the Biscuit Hammer anime feels like an act of deliberate malice on the show’s part. It feels as though it’s going out of its way to be the worst version of itself.

Above: for your consideration, one of the most error-prone episodes of the original Transformers cartoon, straight from Hasbro’s official Youtube channel. I have seen this episode, and I would watch it a million times before watching this episode of Biscuit Hammer again. Also, can you tell I’m just embedding random garbage at this point? You probably can.

And let’s be serious here; it will not improve. That just isn’t going to happen. Sometimes shows pick up after a weak premiere, but something like this, where it’s clearly just visual shovelware that exists for no real reason? Genuinely, literally zero chance. It would take divine intervention. It might get worse, mind you. But better? No, absolutely not. Biscuit Hammer has a shovel and a dream of digging to China, and friend, you and I will not be the people to stop it.

So that’s where we are. Four episodes into Biscuit Hammer‘s anime adaption and that is how I feel about it. I often say that I hate writing things this negative, and I usually do, but honestly? This is one of a vanishingly few cases where I’m actually rather satisfied with myself for doing so. Because it deserves this! It really does! It deserves much worse, frankly! I hope Studio NAZ‘s employees all quit en masse because they found some better place to work and the show has to be cancelled. I think that would be the only fitting end to this utter fucking travesty.

Do you guys remember that episode of Steven Universe where the Crystal Gems fused into Alexandrite so they could fight Malachite, and also there were a bunch of little watermelon guys? That episode was dope.

Yet, perhaps the most damning thing I can say about the show is this. Six months ago, we knew roughly what was going to air in the 2022 Summer season, and the Biscuit Hammer anime was perhaps the thing I was most excited for. I am not the kind of person who is afraid to hype myself up for things, and the way that that initial optimism has been, nearly methodically, shredded to ribbons by this production is just astounding. I am deeply, deeply sad for every single person involved with this project, from Satoshi Mizukami himself all the way down to individual in-betweeners. Let me be polished-glass clear; even if this were an original production, it would still be a very bad show. But the fact that it is an adaption of a pre-existing property, one that many people love, makes the entire thing stink of true tragedy.

A final observation; I mean no disrespect to that franchise in spite of how I’m sure this will come off, but there is no real reason that between the two, the anime based on RWBY should be, at this moment in time, more visually interesting and more compelling on a moment-to-moment basis than the one based on The Lucifer & Biscuit Hammer. (And I do feel that it’s fair to compare these two things in an at least loose sense, given that they are airing in the same season and thus directly compete with each other.) Yet, that is where we are.

Oh wow, look at that, an actually-relevant image embed! In this article? Who’d’ve thought.

And it is for that reason that coverage of RWBY: Ice Queendom will be replacing Biscuit Hammer as my third seasonal weekly for the 2022 Summer season. Don’t get me wrong; I have a fair few problems with Ice Queendom, some of them fairly serious. But I am, without exaggeration, 100% confident that it will be a better experience to watch, to enjoy with my community—that is to say, you all—and to write about than Biscuit Hammer has been. If literally nothing else, it has a color palette beyond “grey, brown, and occasionally red.”

For the few of you who enjoyed these couple recaps for their ranty qualities, I do apologize for any disappointment. I know I promised during the premiere that I’d stick with the show until the end, but in my defense, that was before we knew we were getting two cours, and I’ve also gone through a fairly major life event since then. I just don’t have the energy to keep doing this week after week.

As for Biscuit Hammer itself, I don’t intend to continue watching it. If you do, I’d suggest petitioning a higher power to extend their cosmic reach into the production process. But if that’s the route you’d take, I’d say you should pray to the devil. I don’t think God will be listening for this one.

….and all is right with the world.”

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch LUCIFER AND THE BISCUIT HAMMER – Episode 2

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Special Notice: As I established in the very first entry of this particular Let’s Watch column, I maintain a belief that this anime is very bad. I strongly encourage you to read the Lucifer & The Biscuit Hammer manga instead.

This week, we see an arguable improvement from Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer‘s slipshod anime adaption, in that it is mostly bad in ways that are simply unflattering as opposed to ways that are out-and-out depressing.

The story of this episode is basically a miniature training arc, but I’m not going to condescend to anyone reading this by pretending you need me to recap that. Yuuhi gets it in his head that he should be more manueverable. Sure. The real question is whether or not Biscuit Hammer has meaningfully picked up at all from last week. The answer is just barely “yes,” but not in a way that inspires terribly much confidence going forward.

The truly maddening thing is that there are moments where it mostly works. But they’re so fleeting and scattershot that their presence more highlights how woefully deficient every other part of this adaption is than it does say anything truly positive. Unsurprisingly, most of these pinpricks of light revolve again around Samidare.

Near the front end of the episode, she works out as part of her apparent training regiment by doing pushups while Yuuhi sits on her back. It’s cute. Granted, it was cute in the manga, but it’s worth pointing out when something actually manages to come through mostly-unscathed. (Strap in, that’s what a lot of this column—both today’s entry in particular and in general—are going to be going forward.)

I tried to come up with some pun about how this is a visual metaphor for Samidare carrying the whole show on her back, but I couldn’t quite get there. Maybe you can.

Another instance comes when Yuuhi asks her a very reasonable question: why does she want to destroy the world? That is, after all, a ferociously violent thing, if you really think about it. Her response here—as in the source material—is cryptic, but illuminating, painting her as selfish and egomaniacal to a rare degree. (Do remember, this is our heroine, here.)

But that selfishness is exactly what makes her so interesting as a character. Again, this largely being a writing-side decision, it’s something the anime can’t entirely squash, even if this entire scene is a lot flatter and less impressive than in the manga. A lot of these shots actually look better as stills than in motion. (Which is saying a lot, because they’re not exactly painterly in this format either.) As with last episode—and I imagine, many to come—there are a few moments like this where you can squint and see the echoes of a much better version of this story in there. But that one has to work so hard to do so speaks to the problem.

I want to highlight this shot in particular. Whoever keeps deciding to juxtapose Samidare and Yuuhi against the vast, ominous shadow of the Biscuit Hammer itself should be working somewhere else, because they at least have an idea of what they’re doing. Even with the somewhat “starfield on the side of a van”-y quality to the backdrop, it’s way more visually striking than anything else in the show.

Samidare also gets probably the only half-decent bit of action in the show so far, where she chucks a fucking car at this week’s golem. (Yes, there’s one in this episode too, get used to them.) It’s not choreographed terribly well but, hey, it’s hard to completely mess up someone tossing a car.

Elsewhere, the series’ decisions are sometimes simply confusing. For instance, in the image below, Yuuhi is contemplating his grandfather’s ill health, and also on his own weakness. We can deduce from what we already know that Yuuhi’s grandpa is not a great guy, and we get the details not long after this scene, so he’s probably pretty conflicted in this shot. Why, then, is the soundtrack a full battery of chuga-chuga-chaw heavy metal guitars? Was the audio editor just taking the piss?

The annoying thing is that the last leg of this episode largely works pretty well. The dread Yuuhi feels toward his grandfather is explained as largely the result of said grandfather being a genuine abusive shithead. Those chains we keep seeing as imagery aren’t metaphorical, they’re trauma flashbacks literally intruding into the reality of the show, as Yuuhi was once literally chained up and locked in a closet for a few days by his grandfather. It’s really no wonder that when he gets news of his grandpa’s bad health here he’s very reluctant to go see him.

The impact of that abuse is something Biscuit Hammer handles with a surprising amount of nuance, given even more detail here as Yuuhi himself falls sick from trying to leap across the local river (it’s complicated), and has to have Samidare tend to him. But the entire time I watched this, even feeling as I do that it’s the part of the episode that works best, I couldn’t help but wonder how much of that feeling is holdover from the manga.

I largely think the print pacing works better here, because cramming both Samidare’s little speech a bit farther up this page and this whole thing about Yuuhi’s grandfather into the same 22 minute space just feels unpleasantly jumbled. I obviously cannot say this for certain, but I feel like this episode probably does not hit nearly as convincingly for someone who isn’t already familiar with these characters.

Thus we settle into what I think will be the story of the Biscuit Hammer anime’s entire run (which might well be two cours, going by the BD listings). Moments of brightness left over from the manga’s original structure intercut with an awful lot of unimpressive-to-outright-awful visual production.

I am, then, judging Biscuit Hammer as much on what it represents as what it actually is. I remain unconvinced that there is any reason for this anime to exist beyond someone trying to do a quick IP flip to raise some money. The open question is whether it will eventually succeed even as something that nakedly unambitious, whether it will at least be a competent obvious cash grab. So far, the answer to that question feels like a flat “no.” Even the scenes in this episode that mostly work only do so by inheriting the manga’s existing strengths. There is not a single thing here that enhances or even meaningfully changes the source material. In the weeks to come, we will see if it remains so thoroughly pointless.

Biscuit Hammer Scorecard for This Week:

Times Samidare Literally Carried the Show: 2
Bad Perv Jokes I Didn’t Bring Up in The Main Body of The Text Because There’s Already So Much to Complain About: 1
Scenes that Actually Kind of Work for a Period of More Than a Few Seconds: 1
Lizard Moments: 3
Samidare Cuteness: 10/10

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 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, Misc. Anime

Announcing the Summer 2022 Let’s Watches

That’s right, we’re doing this in style now.

I’ve changed my methodology for these a few times over the past couple seasons, but this time it’s very straightforward. After voting myself to break a tie (something I’ve not had to do in any previous community poll, things were much closer this season than they’ve been in any past season), I took a screenshot of the final vote tally at around 10PM last night (I checked again this morning just to make sure nothing had changed, don’t worry). I will be covering the top three shows, because honestly, I’ve been at a bit of a loss for what to cover this season. Putting it in the fans’ hands is a simple and practical solution.

Why don’t we make it a bit of an event? Here are the winners, starting from the third-place winner, and working up to the first.

Third Place: Call of the Night

Filling in the “exceedingly horny rom-com” gap that must have been left in all your hearts following the end of My Dress-Up Darling a season ago, Call of the Night is an interesting one. I read a very small bit of the manga for this, back when it was new. I liked it but failed to keep up with it (I am very bad at keeping up with manga), so I’m going into this just-shy-of-blind. Still, what I do know is promising. Take the Sentai blurb, for instance.

Wracked by insomnia and wanderlust, Kou Yamori is driven onto the moonlit streets every night in an aimless search for something he can’t seem to name. His nightly ritual is marked by purposeless introspection — until he meets Nazuna, who might just be a vampire! Kou’s new companion could offer him dark gifts and a vampire’s immortality. But there are conditions that must be met before Kou can sink his teeth into vampirism, and he’ll have to discover just how far he’s willing to go to satisfy his desires before he can heed the Call of the Night!

Sentai Filmworks

That’s really quite a lot to fit into your high premise. And it’s not like vampirism as a metaphor for coming of age—especially the less wholesome parts of that whole process—is anything new, but I do think this really has the potential to be something special. Whether or not it will actually deliver on that is another question, of course.

I do also want to point out the involvement of Tomoyuki Itamura in the director’s seat here. Just earlier this year, he wrapped up his work on The Case Study of Vanitas, a completely different horny vampire anime. That show is very good (if certainly not without a couple issues), so it gives me hope that Call of the Night will similarly be so. I suppose we’ll all find out together.

Coverage begins on July 8th. (If you’re reading this the day it goes up, that’s a week from today.)

Second Place: Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer

Ahahaha. Oh no.

This one getting as many votes as it did quite surprised me. If nothing else, you can take its presence here as evidence that I didn’t tamper with the vote in any way, because I actually wasn’t planning to watch it at all, at this point!

I love the original Lucifer and the Biscuit Hammer manga. It’s one of my favorite action manga full stop, actually, and that’s mostly because of its deep characterization and solid thematic core. But it’s also because Satoshi Mizukami is a goddamn genius, and everything he draws is gorgeous. The only other anime he’s ever had a strong hand in, Planet With, did manage the incredibly tall ask of translating his distinct visual style to animation. Because of that, it managed to stand out in a year that was absolutely stuffed with great anime.

But that was in 2018, four years that might as well be four centuries ago, given all that’s happened since. Now, it is 2022, and the Biscuit Hammer adaption is being handed to a studio of little note (NAZ, they did Sabikui Bisco earlier this year alongside the similarly named Studio OZ), a director who is basically a total unknown (Nobuaki Nakanishi), and a series compositor best known for an utterly infamous flop (Yuuichirou Momose, of My Sister, My Writer notoriety). Combine that with the utterly hideous key visual sitting at the top of this entry, and a pair of trailers best described as “absolutely terrible” and “okay I guess”, and this one is going to be an active challenge to get through, barring some miracle. It would not be the first time that Mizukami has drawn blood from a stone, but no one should be expected to pull that sort of thing off twice.

I guess we’ll find out if it really is that bad or if all this doomsaying will look foolish twelve weeks from now soon. Coverage begins on the 9th.

First Place: Lycoris Recoil

What is Lycoris Recoil?

The interesting thing about an original series that’s yet to premiere is that it can, in our hearts and minds, be literally anything. Lycoris Recoil has had Key Visuals and trailers and all the usual accoutrements that come with being a TV anime in the modern day, but no one really seems to have a good grasp on its character. Will it be lighthearted? Dark? How big of a role does the cafe` we know is a central setting point of the story play? The chrome pistols and spider lilies in the above KV art certainly imply something sinister is going on, and “Lycoris Recoil” itself is a two-language pun combining the scientific name of the spider lily with just one inevitable consequence of firing a gun. But all of these things raise more questions than they answer, and we’re all going into this show with little to go off of but our own notions about what makes art interesting.

To me, this is fascinating. I can recall an upcoming original series capturing the public imagination in this way twice in recent times. The first time, we got Wonder Egg Priority, an anime I dearly love, but that’s an opinion that puts me firmly in small company. The second, we got Sonny Boy, which I also really like, and is also divisive (although much less so). Putting Lycoris Recoil in that company is probably attaching unrealistic expectations to it; if you want my earnest guess, I’m thinking this will be more of a piece with anime like Princess Principal or the underrated RELEASE THE SPYCE than either of the aforementioned. But honestly, who knows?

Well, we will pretty soon. Lycoris Recoil premieres tomorrow. Coverage will begin then, barring some unexpected circumstance.

See you then, anime fans. But, as a parting item of interest, here is the entire top half of the poll, if you’d like to see what else got a lot of votes. I am particularly surprised at how well Uncle From Another World did.

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 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.