Tag: idol anime

Posted on in anime, Reviews

(REVIEW) To Heaven & Back on a Song: The Soothing World of HEALER GIRL

This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

“These are the beautiful miracles sung by humanity.”

The first thing to know is that Healer Girl was inspired by Symphogear. Comparisons between anime rarely do either work any favors, but for Healer Girl, knowing the name of its stylistic ancestors puts some things into perspective. The Symphogear comparison is merely the most recent in a list that also included Macross and, less centrally, G Gundam.

Ostensibly, these are strange bedfellows for what is at its heart an iyashikei series / sometimes-musical. In practice, it makes perfect sense. Like in Symphogear, the music in Healer Girl is not a background element; it’s diegetic, and the very source of the protagonists’ abilities itself. I’ve taken to calling this sort of thing the “dynamic music” genre, perhaps you have some other pet neologism. In either case, understanding that the music is not just a plot element but what the entire work is built around is key to understanding Healer Girl at all. It’s not a complex series, but there is stuff going on here beyond pretty songs.

Take our protagonists. Three young girls; Kana (Carin Isobe), Hibiki (Akane Kumada), and Reimi (Marina Horiuchi). For the majority of the series, they serve as interns at a clinic run by their teacher, Hibiki’s cousin Ria (Ayahi Takagaki).

A clinic, because as Healer Girl quickly establishes, in its world, the power of music is literal. Carefully-applied musical treatments can literally heal injuries, soothe sickness away entirely, and aid in surgery. This sort of there-is-power-in-the-song thing is something idol anime have been flirting with for years but never really commit to. (A personal frustration of mine.) Part of me enjoys Healer Girl just because it has the stones to actually dive into this idea. At twelve episodes, it doesn’t have the time to answer every question I had (I really want to know what healing music looks like around the world, but the show sadly doesn’t really go into it), but maybe it doesn’t need to.

From that central premise, Healer Girl builds a few strong, simple metaphors. Healing music as art is the easiest to understand, and effectively renders the series as a defense of itself. Taken through this lens, the anime is a series of iterative exercises; how much can art really help with? In the first episode, Kana sings a song to a boy who’s scraped his knee to take the pain away. Just three episodes later, the girls assist in a surgery where someone nearly dies on an operating table, and they face the truly harrowing experience of possibly failing to help someone. Much like conventional medicine, healing music definitely has its limits, but also like medicine, it certainly helps. Is this Healer Girl‘s argument, that art can heal the world, if not by itself, at least in a supporting role? It’s a strong reading, and I do think that’s at least partly what the series is going for.

Consider also the show’s actual music. A lot of people—including myself—initially assumed Healer Girl was going to be an idol series, and it is true that there is an associated idol unit, the Healer Girls themselves. But, if we consider it a part of this idol anime lineage, it’s a highly unconventional one, at least for 2022. In style, the Healer Girls are a lot closer to forgotten ’90s American soft-pop sensation Wilson-Phillips than anything presented in, say, its seasonal contemporary Nijigasaki High School Idol Club. More to the point is the presentation; the titular healer girls don’t really dance, and their songs are not performances. They’re tools. And learning how to use those tools forms the show’s other main theme; the passing of knowledge and love from one generation to the next.

Much is made of the girls’ relationship with their mentor Ria, a well-developed character in her own right. Reimi has a cute, one-sided crush on her, and much is made of her incredible skills. (Which we finally get to see in action in episode 9.) Over the course of the series, Ria guides the girls through simply being her pupils toward being healers in their own right. In the show’s finale, it implies via paralleling that Kana may herself one day take students of her own. It’s rare to see teaching and imparting wisdom treated as something beautiful and graceful, but that just makes appreciating it when a show can properly pull it off all the more important.

And look, all this writing about what the show means, and I’ve barely told you anything about why you might want to watch it! The simple truth is that, like most of Studio 3Hz‘s productions, the show is just damn good-looking. It’s beautiful, colorful, wonderfully vibrant, almost a living thing itself, in a way that is truly rare and all too easy to take for granted. That vibrancy makes Healer Girl something to be treasured. Naturally, it translates to the soundtrack as well; Healer Girl is at most half a musical, but enough of the show is sung—including incidental dialogue, in some episodes—that if you enjoy that medium, you’ll like Healer Girl as well.

And on top of that, it’s simply fun to watch. Rarely are anime fans starving for some classic slice-of-life antics, but Healer Girl‘s are a particularly well done set thereof. The show is very funny when it sets its mind to it, and not working in that mode 100% of the time only renders it more amusing when it does.

There’s even a pastiche of an old, old slice of life trope, the obligate “high school rock band” episode—episode 7, here—that’s been sorely lacking from most modern anime for a whole generation at this point. I have to admit, seeing one in this day and age made me nostalgic, so I suppose that’s another emotion that Healer Girl can effortlessly tap into.

Because of this kaleidoscopic emotional approach, Healer Girl‘s characters feel truly alive as well, even comparatively minor ones like the girls from the rival healing clinic (of course there’s a rival healing clinic), Sonia (Chihaya Yoshitake) and Shinobu (Miyu Takagi).

And, of course, we should discuss Healer Girl‘s visual ace in the hole. The girls don’t merely sing; the world changes around them as they do, a literalized, visualized version of the consensus fantasy-reality created by the most powerful music here in the real world. But in Healer Girl‘s universe, it can change the world in a truly direct and immediate way, and these bubbles of magic are called image songs. Episode 9 is the best showcase of them, where we see Ria greatly aid a surgery with hers; she influences literal events by manipulating abstract visual material within the image song. In doing so, she herself is a metaphor for the real impact of art in our own world. It’s a curious, but justified little thematic mobius strip, something that impressively never feels pretentious or self-impressed. Healer Girl knows what it’s doing, maybe that’s why there isn’t a weak episode in the whole thing.

The only real tragedy about Healer Girl is that its strongest moments are those where it instills pure awe in the audience. And that, unfortunately, is not something I’m truly able to replicate in text format. You will just have to take my word for it, that my jaw dropped more than once throughout the show, that I teared up a few times, and that several episodes—particularly episode 5 and the latter half of the finale—left me frustrated, although in a strangely positive way, over my inability to fully convey their emotional impact in mere words. You will just have to see it for yourself, and if you haven’t, I again strongly recommend that you do.

If there’s justice in the world, Healer Girl will be a watershed moment. But even if it inspires nothing, even if this artistic lineage ends here, I find it impossible to imagine that it will ever lose its potency as a work unto itself or, indeed, as a healing tool.

There is often a desire—spoken or not—in seasonal anime watching culture for something to get “another season.” Healer Girl, however, was clearly crafted with just these twelve episodes in mind. That renders the show small, certainly, but it does not rob it of its power. In a way Healer Girl is like the over-the-counter medical records mentioned in the first episode. It will soothe your sickness if you let it; simply rewind the tape and play it all back again. One more time; if you feel it, it’ll heal you.

If you’d like to read more about Healer Girl, consider checking out my Let’s Watch columns on the series.

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, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: SELECTION PROJECT

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.

As a critic, it’s a terribly annoying thing to feel unsatisfied with a work that doesn’t actually do anything wrong. But, the profession’s one requirement is honesty. And I can genuinely say that I just can’t find it in me to care all that much about Selection Project.

Here’s the thing; not just anybody can make an idol anime. The genre is more brittle than I think many realize. One needs a strong, well-defined and delineated cast, strong writing, and of course good music to make a truly good idol anime. But on top of all that, we the audience need to have a desire to see the cast succeed. It’s hard enough to do that when the main characters are all part of the same idol group. Doing it while the cast are part of an X-Factor-style competition, as is the case here, feels borderline impossible.

Studio Doga Kobo have, of course, tried anyway. Selection Project‘s first episode, as I said, is not by any means bad, but something feels palpably missing from the whole affair. On a production level it’s certainly professional. The animation is clean and at times characterful, and the character designs are distinct from, at least, each other. Conversely though, they’re not terribly anything new overall. “Solid, but not amazing” is the operative phrase here.

Probably the most interesting shot in the episode is this neat bit that loosely evokes Abbey Road.

The opening here tries to tug at your heart strings from the top. We (very briefly) learn that our lead, Suzune, used to be hospital-bound and used the in-universe Selection Project show itself as a form of escapism. We even briefly see her watch her own favorite idol, Akari Amasawa, win the first season of the show. There’s clearly an intent to portray Akari’s music touching Suzune’s heart, and to pass that sensation along to the viewer, but something about it just fails to connect. Maybe it’s just that this entire scene is very short. Maybe it’s that the song, “Just One Yell”, sounds just enough like “Eat the Wind” by Yorushika (one of my favorite Japanese pop songs from last year) to be distracting. Maybe I’m just cynical. It’s hard to say.

Perhaps the issue is that from that opening scene, everything about Selection Project‘s first episode (with one minor exception, which we’ll get to) feels almost too neat. It has a near-mechanical predictability to it. Watching a fully-committed genre show tick along can absolutely be a good time, but generally they need to at least try to do something to set themselves apart from the pack. Selection Project airing in the same season as the still-ongoing current Love Live installment, and just days before the premiere of the premisewise-bonkers PRIDE OF ORANGE certainly does it no favors here. It is perhaps just a little too straightforward to truly stand out.

The way this most obviously plays out is with the characters. Suzune is a very standard main character for this genre; she’s earnest, hardworking, and passionate with light brown hair and a light, airy voice. Even in a trainwreck like say, last year’s crushingly disappointing 22/7, the main character was different enough from the ISO standard to be memorable. Suzune really isn’t. She looks like the lovechild of any number of idol anime protagonists. Her most distinguishing feature is probably that she has a ponytail, and while she’s certainly cute enough, that’s not really a great sign.

The other characters don’t fare much better. One we briefly meet, Nodoka, is defined solely by her love of sweets, after which she predictably voices a worry about the show having a “weight limit.” Another, Ao, is a sporty tomboy with short hair whose parents are gym freaks and whose one bit of characterization here is someone else telling her that she should be careful to not sweat too much, because her makeup might run. Probably the most notably distinct is the catgirl-inspired Shiori, who may have the unenviable task of carrying the series on her back if her costars don’t develop more interesting personalities soon.

Y’know, like, nya?

All of this would be easy enough to roll with if Selection Project gave you much of a reason to care about any of these people. And maybe it will, in the episodes to come, but Suzune’s general lack of any kind of hook is a much bigger problem. But, lest it come off like I’m being way too hard on this show, I will give it credit, because there is one trick that it pulls off toward the episode’s conclusion that points to some possible interesting developments.

As it’s her turn to sing “One More Yell” in order to try to pass the regional semi-final of the in-universe Selection Project series, Suzune falls to the ground and nearly faints. She actually loses the audition to her apparent friend Seira, who herself seems uncomfortable with winning. Now, Seira is not on Selection Project‘s poster art (which you can find all over the internet). So it seems likely that, some way or another, Seira is going to have to drop out or be disqualified, and Suzune will sneak in to the final round of the competition that way, the remainder of the show taking place there. But it at least shows some willingness to break with convention. The closing shot is her walking home alone with her rolling suitcase. It’s the only bit of Selection Project‘s desperate attempts to make you, dear viewer, Feel Things, that actually works.

There are a few other positives and things that are at least interesting to point out. For one, the show’s direction is quite nice. There are a number of fun visual tricks it uses throughout this episode to stay on the engaging side of the line. For another, there is a probably-deliberate overtone of weirdness baked in to the Selection Project series-within-a-series itself. There’s a brief moment of near-literally religious reverence for Akari, who we learn died in the car crash “at the height of her career” (the show’s words, not mine) some years ago.

Is she praying to the dead idol? Because that would make Suzune kind of awesome. If also very creepy.

And while he’s incredibly obnoxious, the show-within-a-show’s bear-like mascot character does inject some flavor into things. It makes things feel a little weird, and for a show that really needs something to stand out, weird is good.

So yes, it’s wholly possible that Selection Project will develop better character writing, or alternately will fly wildly off the handle and become at the very least, a compellingly strange show. But it’s far from a given, and for that reason I don’t think I could really recommend this series to anyone but idol genre diehards. But of course, the joy of seasonal anime is that the future stands unknown before us. Who knows, maybe I’ll be eating my words in only a few weeks’ time.

Did I mention Shiori has a butler? Forget the whole idol competition, I want a show about these two.

Grade: C
The Takeaway: A pass for anyone but dyed-in-the-wool genre enthusiasts. Might be worth your time in a few weeks if it picks up some positive buzz.

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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 is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.

Posted on in anime, Other Posts, Seasonal Impression Roundups

The Dream is Over – Brief Personal Reflections on THE AQUATOPE ON WHITE SAND

The two girls met in the ruins of damaged dream

When I was eighteen, I wanted to be a rap producer. In hindsight, with the self-awareness I now have nearly ten years later, it was a stupid idea. Like a lot of people whose ambition far outstrips their capability, I went to school for this doomed little fantasy. Perhaps predictably, I barely lasted six months, and a decade on the only thing I have to show for this part of myself that I mostly keep buried from public view is a lengthy bandcamp page of music no one listens to and a cloud of student debt that will loom over me for the rest of my life.

I bring this personal anecdote up not to needlessly self-deprecate, but to explain something about The aquatope on white sand, and how I find myself unexpectedly relating to it. Fundamentally, most popular fiction that deals with aspiration deals with fulfillment of that aspiration. It makes for an easy-to-plan story arc and it concludes in a satisfying ending. Your protagonist(s) want to become a dancer, or a singer, or an actor, or whatever. Across some amount of story-units, they struggle and fight, that distant mountain still in reach, and they eventually achieve their dream. In anime a common manifestation of this particular story-type is that of the idol anime genre (of which there is one airing right now), relevant here because aquatope‘s protagonist, Fuuka Miyazawa, is a former idol.

And that “former” is very important here. Fuuka begins aquatope with her brief career as an idol already in the past tense, her departure from the industry uneventful but bitter. (Its depiction in the first episode reminded me no small amount of one-off character Mana in Oshi No Ko.) She is adrift for much of the first two episodes, eventually settling in with the other lead, Kukuru Misatino, simply because the latter is willing to take her in. She’s hired by Kukuru’s aquarium, which is in financial tatters, and threatens to close at the end of the summer season.

At the tail end of the second episode, Fuuka realizes that even if she cannot fulfill her dream, she can help Kukuru with her aspiration of keeping the aquarium open. Where all of this will eventually go is not yet clear–aquatope is planned for a nowadays-rare two cours, so it has plenty of time to stretch its legs–but it’s clear that the series fundamentally understands that Fuuka’s renewed sense of purpose here is just as valid as her original goal to become an idol. That’s important, because the easy thing to do here would be to try to route her back into the industry, and treat that as the only valid form of “fulfillment”. That aquatope doesn’t do that is an excellent sign. (And gives me a lot more faith that its supernatural elements, which I haven’t mentioned up ’til now, will have some greater point, as opposed to merely being window dressing.)

Also, I suppose, naive as it may be, that I just see a commonality between myself and Fuuka. Criticism, or at least the mode of criticism I prefer to write in, is nothing if not the promotion of someone else’s dream. Uncountable hours go into any even remotely professional anime production, it is not a stretch to say that one making it to screen is the culmination of not just one dream but many. My approach makes for decidedly less interesting television, of course.

In its attitude toward Fuuka we find the first traces of what I suspect aquatope will eventually forge into its core thesis; the idea that in selfless lifting up of others’ passions one can find a way to rekindle, or reshape, their own. I am quite confident that by the series’ end, Fuuka will have found something new that fulfills her and brings her life meaning. And, yeah, I do relate to that, as someone who has turned this strange hobby that I picked up on a whim into a kind-of career without ever consciously planning to, I empathize with Fuuka quite a lot.

Beyond my own personal emotional mire; character writing this delicate is a rare thing, and while plenty of anime are good natured, not nearly as many can work in shades of compassion that are this subtle. aquatope is one to keep your eye on.

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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 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

Paper Hearts & Lies – What Does 22/7 Think It’s Doing?

22/7 started this anime season promisingly. It presented us with a pretty simple premise. An idol series turned sideways–the members of the idol troupe brought together not by happenstance, but by the government, working on the orders of a mysterious artefact called The Wall.

A literal plot device in many ways, The Wall was the main draw of the show for a certain segment of people (myself included) who were curious to see how the thing factored into what seemed like it was willingly aiming for being a weird and subversive series. Instead, 7 episodes into its 12-episode run, 22/7 seems hellbent on ignoring its own central premise in favor of what it’s becoming apparent are some major writing problems. Barring some kind of huge twist, I feel confident in calling them such.

Some of this seems like it was inevitable. For whatever it may be trying to do artistically, 22/7 has the problem of needing to promote the actual 22/7. The Yasushi Akimoto-backed idol group after whom the project is named. This isn’t the first time he’s dipped his hand into this kind of multimedia hydra. Those who’ve seen bizarre “well, Symphogear did well” idol anime-in-space AKB0048 should be familiar with some of this. But AKB had the benefit of trying to be fun, not subversive. With 22/7‘s more ambitious focus, its problems are more apparent.

The most recent episode (the 7th) focuses on Jun. As is now the show’s formula, the episode takes Jun–a character we’ve hitherto learned little about–and cuts between expositing her backstory and her doing some Wall-mandated task. The idea, in theory, seems to be that this interpolation draws parallels between where the idol started out and what they’re doing as part of the group. This episode, in fact, in a vacuum, is actually very good at that. I think this makes it all the more interesting to examine this episode as opposed to a more obviously-mediocre one (last week’s episode was downright lame and featured an apparent message that was somewhere between noncommittal and cowardly) because it shows how all the great directing in the world can’t entirely salvage poorly-thought-out writing.

Jun has to fill in for her groupmates–all of them–due to them coming down with food poisoning. What this means is that a day crammed full of various idol minutiae is now the sole responsibility of a single person. The show’s writers decide to play this comedically. While we could sit here and ruminate on the idea of playing an idol overworking herself to the point of exhaustion as a joke and how that might not be a particularly great idea for various reasons, we’ll let that one slide. It’s honestly the least of this episode’s issues.

One of this episode’s good points is the abundance of Very Good Jun Faces.

Jun, we learn, had what is either very severe asthma or something similar to it as a child. She was often hospitalized and could rarely attend school. A major underpinning of this series’ structure is that to a one, every girl whose past has been explored so far has a tragic one. In a pretty specific way, too, but we’ll get to that.

During one particular hospital stay, she meets Yuu. Yuu is everything that Jun, disillusioned with the world and deeply depressed by her isolation from her illness, is not. Eternally happy and optimistic, the two apparent opposites soon become friends as Jun is taken by Yuu’s philosophy that life is like an amusement park and that one should live every day to the fullest.

Do keep in mind that this is not told in a single contiguous chunk. We cut back and forth between this narrative and the comedic scenes of Jun running hither and tither filling in for her groupmates several times. Including some scenes of her pulling off spot-on impressions of the rest of the group. These are actually pretty damn clever, and to the episode’s credit, they do a great job of building Jun’s character. As said, our girls really seem to only get one episode apiece to really take the center stage, so economy of character is important.

Back in the past, Jun and Yuu become close friends. The subtextual framing is vague, but things like sneaking to karaoke and singing a love song together, listening to music together via the ol’ “you get one earbud and I get the other” trick, and exchanging paper hearts, seem to at least broadly imply that that relationship may have even moved beyond that, or at least was starting to. Especially given that much of this is shown in an honestly beautiful montage set to a wonderfully twee slice of idol pop balladry called “Fortune Cookie of Love”.

This all seems well and good, right? She clearly made, at the most conservative interpretation, a very close friend, and she’s doing alright nowadays, what with being in an idol group and all.

Well, no points for guessing how this all ends.

Yuu eventually gets sicker. She does not make it. Jun miraculously gets better. A life for a life, is the framing.

The depressing part is that through this plot twist, the directing remains great. The animation, too, is probably the highest-quality seen in the series so far. Character acting well beyond the series’ standard is present here, and it’s clear that whoever wrote this envisioned it as a huge emotional climax, where we learn “the real reason” why Jun is the way she is. How it’s so beautifully tragic, etc. etc. etc. etc. It’s all nonsense, of course. There is nothing beautiful about two young girls having their bond with each other severed by sudden death, no matter how the survivor copes.

Yuu’s death happens first, and Jun is depressed for a while. As she has every right to be.

Then she gets the news that her asthma–or whatever it is, because being specific with your life-impairing anime illnesses risks making your characters too relatable I suppose–is in recession. She tries to find a sort of solace in this development, but while the show tries to frame this as valid reasoning, were Jun a real person it would be clear to me that she is lying to herself as a coping mechanism.

This is kind of fucked up. Not that I blame the character (that’d be nonsensical) but seriously, who writes this and thinks it’s deep?

In a vacuum, this entire plot line is at most, mildly unpleasant. Tragedy can happen to anyone and there is value in examining that tragedy, and I’m on record as being a fan of melodrama if it’s employed to productive ends. However, 22/7‘s bad habit is the repetition and specificity of its victims of tragedy and what form that tragedy takes, and what that reveals about the people who made it.

To lay it on the table; of the four 22/7 members whose backstories we’ve been told so far, 3 have another woman that was important to them who has since died. In Sakura’s case it was her grandmother. In Reika’s, it was her mother, who died shortly after she was born. Of course, we’ve already relayed Jun’s story. And even Miu, the series’ ostensible protagonist, became an idol in part to support her own sickly mother. I would be wholly unsurprised if said mother passes away sometime during the series.

To say that all of this taken together is “problematic” seems like flattening the issue. This is a very specific kind of ugly writing, one that tries to conflate “women’s stories” with “women suffering”. It’s insidious and unpleasant.

Yet, in the interest of fairness, I don’t think this episode is devoid of merit. Or indeed, bad at all. Its directorial element makes it go down a lot easier than it otherwise would, and the episode director deserves credit there.

To be even fairer, it is possible this is all building up to a grand reveal. There are, in fact, enough vague outlines of what you could call hints to imply, if you squint, that somehow this is all The Wall’s doing. That would be a twist for the ages, and would go some way to redeeming this whole saga, depending on how it was handled.

Yet, somehow, this feels like wishful thinking. Even this episode’s ED animation ,which shows Yuu and Jun happy together in some pastel dreamscape, feels like a cruel joke. It’s probably not meant as one, but one gets the impression that in a general sense, no one writing for 22/7 quite knows what they’re doing.

If I am wrong, and this all turns out to be a gigantic fakeout, I will be more than happy to eat my words. I suppose the weeks to come, alone, will tell.