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.
We’ve got something of a first for this blog on our hands with this one. Almost two years ago, I (very briefly) gave my impressions of the first season of Princess Connect Re:Dive. Now, here in 2022, we’re met with season 2. It both feels like far too much time has passed and almost none at all, but that’s the 2020’s for ya.
Season 1 was an out-of-nowhere hit. Far more than just a promotional tool for a then-languishing mobile game, Priconne had a real sense of lived-in coziness to its slice-of-life escapades. Toward the end of the season, when things took a turn for the somewhat more dramatic, it was able to cash in that goodwill and pull off one of the more surprising turns of 2020, hinting at a greater storyline lurking in the background behind all the warm character dynamics and JRPG fantasy aesthetics without losing sight of those merits. That’s a hard thing to pull off, and even if its second season were to totally tank, Priconne would deserve praise on that first season alone.
Thankfully, things seem to be pointing toward season 2 being just as good, if not better. The opening here is just spectacular, with a wide shot of the city that the Gourmet Guild call home that manages to instill it with a sense of genuine gravitas. Having a bespoke studio (CygamesPictures) certainly seems to have its benefits.
If you’ve forgotten the show’s central character dynamic, this first episode is quick to remind you. The curious and gentle Kokkoro (played by Miku Itou, a fairly prolific actress best known to readers of this blog astakt op. Destiny‘s Titan.) is handed a mysterious map that may or may not lead the way to a “legendary seasoning” called the Drops of the Sea. The bold and rambunctious Princess Pecorine (Mao Ichimichi, also widely traveled but probably best known as Iris from Fire Force.) declares that this is a journey the Gourmet Guild simply must embark on immediately.
The fussy and high-strung Karyl (Rika Tachibana, this seems to be her most well-known role.) objects to the prospect of leaving the warm and cozy guild home to go on what might well be a wild goose chase. She is shouted down by the other two reminding her that the guild motto is to seek all the world’s tasty foods. Our ostensible protagonist Yuuki (Atsushi Abe, the most tenured VA among Priconne’s main four, with roles going all the way back to a main role in 2007’s Shugo Chara!), as is his wont, just kind of rolls with the down-shouting. Outvoted 3-to-1, the Guild thus embark on a quest full of adventure and hijinks.
Incidentally, it’s immediately notable that Yuuki can actually speak full sentences now. I don’t remember him having developed (or rather, regained) that ability during the first season, but that might just be my memory reducing him to an always-blithely-smiling caricature who tosses a thumbs up and a grin at basically every situation. In fairness, he still fits that description here, he’s just marginally wordier now.
But lest anyone think that any part of this might mean that Princess Connect has lost its comedic instincts, rest assured that it very much hasn’t. There’s a fun gag here early on where Yuuki briefly seems to have tamed some of the wild-eyed monster wolves that menace adventurers in the area, only for them to basically shout “sike!” and bite him on the arm.
The show’s sense of wonder is intact too. Much of this episode takes place in a forest that looks like a coral reef, complete with fish that swim in the sky. It’s pretty cool! Even if it turns out to be inhabited by fuzzy, poisonous mouth monsters.
The sheer amount of pure fun even in this first episode is pretty astounding. Along their quest, the Gourmet Guild help the ghost of an old adventurer move on into the next life and fly through the night sky in what looks like an ornithopter made of big leaves, straight into the eye of a storm. All of these would be large, multi-episode arcs for most anime, but Princess Connect is able to squeeze it all in its first episode back without it feeling strained. This is the rare half hour slot anime episode that feels twice its length in a good way. A lot happens.
All this to say, there’s really not anyone else doing fantasy adventure anime the way that Priconne is these days, in spite–or perhaps because of–its comedic bent. Yeah, their quest ends with something of an anticlimax (it turns out that they can’t get Drops of the Sea, normally shed by egg-laying giant sea turtles, because the only such turtle they can find is male. Whoops!) but the show’s whole point is that it’s the journey, not the destination. And if you don’t pick up on that yourself, the aforementioned ghost is more than happy to pontificate about it. It’s maybe the only scene in the entire episode that could use a little tightening up, but on the other hand, hasn’t Priconne earned a little self-indulgence? The time we spend with those we love is what’s truly important, and that’s a wonderful thesis for one of 2022’s most anticipated return shows to open on.
I’ve yet to decide on the second anime I’m going to be covering weekly for the winter 2022 season, but regardless of how it shows up, Princess Connect will be on this blog again. There are many more adventures with the Gourmet Guild ahead.
Grade: A+ The Takeaway: If you’re reading this, you’re probably already familiar with the Priconne IP. There’s literally no reason to not pick this up, if that’s the case. If you haven’t seen the first season, get on that! There’s plenty of time left to catch up and watch some of season 2 while it’s still airing.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Lush, rolling green hills. They’re such a piece of staple iconography for a certain genre of summery anime that it’s a bit of a meme in some circles. I don’t think the people behind Akebi’s Sailor Uniform would much care about that. “Irony” is a foreign word to the language this series speaks. It’s all do-your-best’s, believe-in-yourself’s, sunshine and shimmering water. Everyone in Akebi is constantly sort of half-blushing, and always looks like they might break into a grin at any moment. I think in western otakudom this school of anime filmography is more associated with theatrical movies than it is TV anime, but it’s the space Akebi works in, and it is perhaps best understood as trying to achieve that aesthetic. I would not say it succeeds, but it makes an admirable go of it. But before we get into minutiae like production, there are two things I need to disclose up front that may seem random at first, but I assure you both will be relevant.
I went to a Catholic School, and I absolutely hate the sound of people clipping their nails.
As you might guess, Akebi’s Sailor Uniform is about a schoolgirl. A girl entering a private middle school, in fact. This is Komichi Akebi. Our protagonist and, really, in this first episode, the only truly important character. (Voiced by Manatsu Murakami. This seems to be her first time in a leading role.) For reasons we have not been told yet (and which I am sure will be divulged to us at some point in a future episode), Komichi puts a whole lot of value in the idea of going to a fancy private academy and getting to wear a fancy sailor uniform.
On a basic level, I find this kind of hard to relate to, but going by their lavishly drawn house, Komichi’s family seem to be pretty well off. Maybe this is the kind of thing rich kids get really invested in? I went to a Catholic middle school, and my memories of getting the uniforms I needed are largely tied to the unpleasantly stale air inside every uniform shop I’ve ever been in. Maybe things are different in Japan, I don’t know. Komichi’s mother actually makes her uniform for her, which seems like an utterly absurd level of burden to put on the parent, here, but again, maybe this is just what rich families do. I wouldn’t know. She literally cries tears of joy when she finally gets it, which is honestly more funny than anything.
Being “unrelatable” is not a huge problem for popular art. I have never been imprisoned in a magical tower, but I like Tower of God just fine. I’ve never been a multi-millionaire, but I still listen to Rick Ross. That’s not the issue. But Akebi’s Sailor Uniform leans really hard on the–to the series, apparently self-evident–idea that sailor uniforms are near-religious symbols of prestige, class, coolness, and self-improvement. It is totally foreign to my experience, and for this reason and a number of others (which I’ll get to), my strongest impression of Akebi is not qualitative, it’s merely that this show is really freakin’ weird. Deceptively so, even, given its simple premise.
For example, the visual approach I mentioned in the opening paragraph? It actively works against the show. Akebi looks nice in a general sense, especially the backgrounds. But it doesn’t nail the look it seems to be going for, which has the effect of making everything look just a bit “off.” The characters themselves are hit hardest here, with their constant blushing and mix of old-school and contemporary design tropes making them look like stoned aliens in some cuts. The whole thing just feels strange.
The series’ take on Osamu Dezaki’s “postcard memory” technique dives full-on into the uncanny valley.
Maybe this is the lingering memory of Cocoon Entwined influencing my perception, but I almost expected something sinister to happen at some point over the course of this episode. Nothing ever does, and I don’t think it ever will, but the fact that I even entertained the possibility speaks to the series’ bizarre feel. Not helping things is the leering camera, which seems to treat Komichi herself with an almost fetishistic level of attention. Despite the fact that the show is, on a surface level, not as “horny” as the other series I covered today, I felt slightly uncomfortable way more often when watching it.
Some of this, admittedly, might be the point. But that “might” is doing a lot of heavy lifting.
In the second half of the episode, Komichi learns that, somehow, she got the design for the uniform she was supposed to give her mother wrong. Sailor uniforms are what the girls at the academy wore when her mom went to school there, but nowadays they wear blazers. (Sidenote here; for my money the blazers look way nicer and also more comfortable, but that’s just me.) Improbably, the school’s principal lets her wear the old uniform anyway, even though it will make her stick out like a sore thumb. Komichi understandably worries about being bullied about this, because teenagers are assholes.*
The fact that this woman actually kinda looks like the (extremely mean) principal I had at school does make me wonder if some part of Akebi is meant to distress me specifically.
When she actually gets to school–very early, and way before most other students–she meets Erika Kizaki. (Played by Sora Amamiya, who has been in a bunch of things but most recently of note to readers of this blog, was Yachiyo in Magia Record.) Erika does not notice Komichi when she enters the room and continues obliviously going about her morning ritual. Which consists of clipping her toenails and then sniffing the clippers.
I really want to be clear that I am not taking anything out of context here.
What the fuck.
On this incredibly bizarre note, they strike up a friendship. It’s nice, I suppose? I can buy that they genuinely get along, at least, which is important. There’s little else to the episode, and Akebi ends by establishing itself as the rare anime where the main characters do not sit by the classroom window.
To some point, I think the characters’ general strangeness may be intentional. A “wow, look at all these weird girls finding friendship with each other. Isn’t that adorable?” sort of thing. And hey, I guess it is cute, in a way. But the show’s general feel–something I acknowledge is very much based on a lot of things that vary from person to person–make it feel almost unsettling.
To be quite honest, I have basically no idea what to make of Akebi. If any of this sounds interesting, maybe check it out. Or even if not, maybe check it out, maybe my entire perspective here is just wildly off-base. I don’t know. For me, the entire episode just gives me very strange vibes, and I do not think I will be watching more Akebi. I’m sure Komichi herself will be fine, but I have no real wish to follow her story.
Grade: Sixth The Takeaway: ???
*If you are a teenager, and not an asshole, I apologize for the generalization, but I’m speaking from experience here.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
You wanted it, you got it. When I put out the word for my first-ever community survey to help me pick a series to cover this season, My Dress-Up Darling was easily the most popular choice, with 47% of the vote. (The next-highest show was a full 15 points lower.) Admittedly, I was a little surprised by this! Romance anime tend to be divisive just in concept alone. But being only passingly familiar with the Dress-Up Darling series prior to the anime’s premiere, I figured there must be a good reason behind the enthusiasm. And having seen the first episode, I still think that, but I want to take things a bit non-linearly and get into what this column will actually be for My Dress-Up Darling. I’m out of my wheelhouse in more than one sense for this one, so bear with me.
What I mean is; I think it’s very easy to construct an uncharitable narrative around works like this. I myself am pretty romcom-skeptical most of the time. The exceptions are outliers like Kaguya-sama: Love is War! that also dip their toes into other genres and are just generally more ambitious than the norm. I like Dress-Up Darling, at least so far, but “ambitious” is not a word I’d apply. To wit, throughout this first episode, we hear only one internal monologue, that of our nerdy male lead Wakana Gojo. (Played by Yu-Gi-Oh! VRAINS veteran Shouya Ishige.) He seems to regard not just women but other people in general as enigmas. And he gives off a vaguely self-pitying vibe. To be honest, for a decent chunk of the episode I found him a bit annoying, only changing my mind when he started nerding out toward the end.
Then there’s Marin Kitagawa, (Hina Suguta, in her first major role) our female lead and Gojo’s love interest. Marin, being both a gyaru and a pretty huge nerd, is treated as an exotic anomaly. This character archetype–the “surprisingly nice gyaru who happens to share some of the male lead’s interests”–is a standard trope of its own by this point. That’s without getting into the fact that the camera nakedly leers at her from time to time (in shots that mostly seem like they’re from Gojo’s perspective.) How, in the final part of the episode, Gojo is rewarded for meticulously pointing out how bad Marin is at sewing (a traditionally feminine craft.) Etc. etc. You get the picture.
I want to be careful in how I phrase this, because I do genuinely think that others’ work is just as valuable as mine, and I can imagine people–especially other critics–having sharply divergent opinions on this series. I want to respect those opinions.
To put it bluntly, we are not really going to be grappling at length with that side of Dress-Up Darling. I think these issues (to the extent that they are issues, I think some are more serious than others) permeate the medium, and some of them are endemic to popular art in general. I could hold Dress-Up Darling accountable for not addressing them, but I think that would be an unrealistic burden to place on what is at its core an extremely simple series. Given the choice to be negative and rake a series over the coals for its faults or to praise it for what it does well, I will generally choose the latter. (And frankly, I have written more than enough negative material on this blog recently. It’s unfair, but it’s hard for me to hold much against a series airing in a season that also contains Police in a Pod.)
None of this is to say I am excusing these issues entirely, and if I think Dress-Up Darling has committed some particularly notable offense I will mention it, but it is not what I’m going to be focusing on. Because I think at what it sets out to do, Dress-Up Darling is pretty good so far. To be totally honest, I would just rather talk about that.
So, you may ask, now that I’ve spent six paragraphs running in circles, what does it set out to do? Oh, you know, boy meets girl. Simple stuff.
Fundamental to understanding Dress-Up Darling is understanding that Gojo is a turbonerd, but not just any kind of turbonerd. If we were dealing with a garden variety otaku, Dress-Up Darling would be a lot less interesting. No, Gojo makes outfits for traditional Japanese dolls. His grandfather, who he lives with, makes Japanese dolls. It’s kind of their whole thing.
Having a rather niche hobby that he devotes quite a lot of his spare time to, Gojo does not have any friends. And often when an anime says something like that, it’s an exaggeration. But as far as I can tell, no, Gojo literally has no friends. There’s even a mean/funny moment as he’s walking to high school mid-episode where another guy runs up to him and playfully smacks him on the back. Naturally, it turns out that this is a rando who thought he was someone else. Ouch.
Teenagers, being in general, assholes*, notice Gojo’s lack of friends, and generally both are hesitant to talk to him and take advantage of his timidity to dump classroom chores and such on him. Gojo is sad about all this, because he feels he’s being ostracized for having a niche interest. This being a romance anime, you can probably guess what jolts him into self-improvement.
Here’s a hint; this is one of the most hilariously on-the-nose meet-cute sequences I’ve ever seen. Marin trips and falls while entering the classroom, and somehow rockets over to Gojo’s seat, entering his life like a near-literal bolt from the blue. It is, in every sense of the word, incredible.
If this happens to you, you may be entitled to financial compensation.
This is, even more remarkably, not actually the meeting that gets them talking. Between this and that, we do get some additional insight into Marin’s character, which has the benefit of making her not just a complete slate for geekboy projection. (Among other things, she turns down guys who make fun of her for being a nerd. That’s pretty smart! Although damn, it’s sad that she’s already had to learn to recognize negging despite being, like, what, fifteen? Sixteen?)
The real meeting comes later, when Gojo’s sewing machine at home breaks and he comes up with the brilliant idea to use the school’s apparently abandoned home ec. room’s as a substitute. Surprise! Marin has had this same idea.
The expressions in this show are pretty great.
Not to work on doll costumes in her case, but cosplay outfits. They get to talking, and Marin surprises Gojo by being interested in his dollmaking hobby. She, in turn, shows him the cosplay outfit she’s been working on. (In what is probably the most unapologetically horny scene in the entire episode, given that she changes clothes in front of him with only his word that he won’t peek. Marin, honey, I’m glad that you like the guy but be a little more cautious!) The aforementioned Gojo-criticizing-Marin’s-sewing scene happens, and Marin, of course, counters that hey, if Gojo’s so good at sewing, why doesn’t he make her cosplay outfits? (When you think about it, aren’t cosplay outfits just doll clothes but person-sized? No, they aren’t, but that’s the premise this entire anime is built upon, so just roll with it.)
I’m going over all of this pretty briskly, but Marin’s genuine enthusiasm for Gojo’s dollmaking is, really, quite endearing.
The sub track has Marin refer to the doll as a “little hottie,” which is one of my favorite pieces of translation work of the season so far.
It’s probably the single most important emotional beat for this episode to nail, and it does so admirably. And, yeah, even this early on the two are transparently pretty into each other. I’m not afraid to say it’s cute.
So that’s Dress-Up Darling. Or more accurately, its first episode, “Someone Who Lives in the Exact Opposite World as Me.” (A line from one of those vaguely annoying inner monologues I mentioned.) If I were grading this like a first impressions article, I’d probably give the show a B or so. It has some issues, but I like it overall. (I worry I’ve come across as perhaps rather sarcastic in this article. Some of that is on purpose, but I did genuinely enjoy this episode.)
This, of course, isn’t a first impressions article. Like I said, anime fans, you wanted it, and you got it. Dress-Up Darling will return to this column next week.
See you then.
Extremely important bonus screencap: Marin’s clique of friends goes unnamed here, but I wanted to give a shout out to this girl. I have no idea if she’ll ever be important to the plot of the series, but I love her two-tone black and red hair. That’s a look.
*If you are a teenager, and not an asshole, I apologize for the generalization, but I’m speaking from experience here.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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.
I went into CUE! extremely skeptical.
The opening three or so minutes of the seriesare–quite literally–another show entirely. This is a cold open. Mid-genre pastiche, as an unnamed green haired heroine and her male companion flee a flying fortress aboard a speedboat. It’s a legitimately really cool throwback to a bygone era of science fantasy shoujo action anime that counted classics like The Vision of Escaflowne among its number. It’s an opening unlike anything the season has offered so far.
This isn’t what CUE! is actually about, though.
CUE!, you see, is an anime about anime. Its cast are voice actors, and that opening scene is a series our protagonist–Haruna Mutsuishi–is working on. In series like these, I am always immediately led to wonder about the actual women voicing these characters. Is it surreal to voice a protagonist whose ambitions are an exaggerated, cartoon take on your own? Maybe it’s oddly reassuring, knowing that people care about, at least, some version of your story? I can only speculate. Regardless, that is our actual starting line with CUE!
In the minutes immediately following that cold open, things don’t look terribly promising. No longer needing to be a convincing pastiche, the animation stiffens. More pertinently, as Haruna arrives to her new job at a voice acting agency (named AiRBLUE, which is vaguely obnoxious in a true to life way), we are introduced to a truly silly number of other girls. Fifteen actresses in all, with the agency’s actual staff bringing the character total up to 18. Each gets only a vanishingly small few seconds to introduce themselves. Most prove themselves to fit into various archetypes; there’s a chuuni who says she’s from Hell, a nervous girl, an overly brash girl who doesn’t quite seem to get what’s going on, etc. etc. You get the picture; we’ve been here before.
All of these are, frankly, pretty bad signs. Sometimes an anime can handle a cast this large even on a fairly tight time budget, but it’s rare. Most things are not The Idolmaster. Last season, the atrociously dull Pride of Orange couldn’t manage to properly characterize a comparatively modest six. What hope, then, does CUE! have, even at twice that show’s length?
Well, here’s the thing. Sometimes the only thing you actually need to make a series tick, at least for its first few episodes, is a single good trick up your sleeve. And CUE! has a great one.
Our characters’ time at AiRBLUE kicks off with an unexpected, on-the-spot script read. The script? Hamlet, specifically a conversation between Hamlet himself and Ophelia, rendered in the sub track back into period-accurate Elizabethan English. Having your characters read a Shakespeare play is an absurd idea. When last year’s Kageki Shoujo!! did it in its last few episodes, it was a flex, a demonstration that all these characters had become so known to the audience that they could each deliver convincingly distinct takes on a literary classic. (Romeo & Juliet, there.) CUE! deciding to do it in its first episode is an act of monumental hubris. But this is where the aforementioned trick up CUE!‘s sleeve comes into play; the series cheats a little bit.
When we get our first Hamlet/Ophelia pair–the spacey ex-child actress Mahoro Miyaji as Ophelia, and AiRBLUE’s talent coach as Hamlet–the reality of the recording room falls away. In its place, an expansive medieval castle.
CUE!’s opening fakeout was no fakeout at all. It is a recurring technique the show seems to plan to use going forward, literally transporting its characters into the stories they’re acting out as they do, cutting back and forth between those fantasy-worlds and the tense, actual line reads they’re doing in the real world, with other characters observing and commenting as transparent ghosts within the “play.” It is a blast to watch. It’s probably the quickest a series has ever won me over.
Mahoro and the talent coach’s take on Hamlet is fairly traditional. What really kicks the episode past “solid” and into “arguably brilliant” is what happens after. In an incredible bit of economic character-building, we see very brief excerpts from other Hamlet/Ophelia pairs. (One girl reads Hamlet like a snotty shonen protagonist, which is hilarious. Sadly, we don’t get visual aids for these shorter reads.)
And then there’s the pair that Haruna herself is involved in. alongside the ponytailed tomboy Maika Takatori. (The two seem to hit it off really well, to say the least.)
The easy thing to do here would be for Haruna and Maika to do essentially what Mahoro did, to transport herself mentally to a sprawling medieval castle and give a fairly traditional line read.
Haruna and Maika do not do that. Instead, we get this.
Another shoujo fantasy daydream. I’ll give you this, okay? Maybe I’m just easily impressed, but I love shit like this. In the moment that Haruna and Maika act out their scene, they are not themselves, they are an epaulette-adorned girl-prince and her heartbroken sorceress(?) princess. It’s gay as hell. It’s theatrical in a way that completely transcends its production. It’s amazing.
There isn’t actually much more to the episode after this scene, but does there need to be? This is a point made and taken; this is what CUE! is about. The act of performance itself transports us to whole other worlds, and truly inspiring performers can bring these worlds to life for their audiences. That is a hell of an opening statement for a gacha game adaption that, as far as I can tell, rather few people had any serious expectations for, to make. Almost impossibly, CUE! earns the right to make it, in this scene alone if nowhere else. Obviously, CUE! did not invent this particular trick, but it uses it damn well, and it makes for a knockout finish to its first episode.
Also: Shippers eat your heart out.
The episode ends with the promise that next week our girls are going to be auditioning for something called Bloom Ball, which looks an awful lot like a magical girl anime. I can’t wait.
Also: out of lack of anywhere else that mentioning this little tidbit fits, I will do so here. It’s interesting that the comparative inexperience of the characters is mirrored in at least some of the voice cast. As far as I can tell, this is the first major role Haruna’s VA– Yurina Uchiyama–has ever had.
In any case, keep an eye on this one.
Grade: A The Takeaway: I am hesitant to call anything a truly essential watch this early in the season. What I will say is that CUE!’s first episode is a genuinely impressive piece of showmanship that I think nothing so far has really matched. I would recommend almost anyone reading this at least check said episode out.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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.
I’m not going to sit here and pretend I quite understand the “die-and-reincarnate” school of the isekai genre. I have liked a few of them in my time, but generally in spite of that central conceit, not because of it. In The Land of Leadale is fairly genre-typical. Somewhere in Japan a power outage at a hospital cuts the life support systems, and a patient passes away. She is reborn into the titular MMO as her elf avatar Cayna. It’s fairly standard stuff, although there are a handful of caveats here to separate us from the most basic spins on the genre.
For one, Cayna doesn’t simply get zooped into the game as she remembers it. 200 years have passed, and she can’t use her foreknowledge of the game to just cheat her way out of any bad situations, Otome Flag-style. (Not a knock, I quite like Otome Flag.) This also gives us a central mystery, which prevents Leadale from feeling like it’s aiming for a pure wish fulfillment vibe that it probably couldn’t pull off.
The visual work on this thing is, to be nice, a bit simple. But the series makes the intriguing decision to strive for a pseudo-retro look, especially in gag faces and chibi cut-asides. It’s a small thing, but it does help the anime stand out a bit, and turns the lo-fi production into a charm point instead of a detriment.
If you can’t practically hear the “ha ha ha ha!” radiating from this image, we are from different generations of anime fan, to say the least.
About that central mystery: because Cayna’s been MIA for so long, Leadale is both not as she left it and seemingly not in great shape in general. When she plonks down a stack of silver coins the innkeeper at the inn she’s staying at hurriedly tells her to not flash so much money. Later that night, she’s nearly robbed in her sleep, with only bit of magic that she presumably set up beforehand preventing such from coming to pass. We do gain some insight into what’s gone on in Leadale in the intervening 200 years, but it’s not much. This is all we get.
Cayna seems to adjust pretty quickly. Again, not rare for this genre, although the few cuts back to her pre-reincarnation life are bizarrely depressing for a show that’s otherwise fairly cozy and upbeat. There’s also a funny bit where she learns (from a magic tower guardian who talks like a delinquent schoolgirl) that because of something she did in the game some time ago, she has kids. Frankly, as someone who tends to play video games pretty fast and loose, the idea of things I do in them having long-term consequences is terrifying, but that’s just me.
If it seems like I’m struggling a bit to come up with things to say here, that’s because I kind of am? In addition to this not being my genre, In The Land of Leadale is a fairly slight series in just about every respect, at least so far. It has some charm, but not much else. On the other hand, I’m loathe to condemn something that is so outside of my usual wheelhouse to begin with, to say nothing of the fact that this is a series that’s clearly not trying to make a bombastic first impression. If any of this sounds appealing to you, maybe give Leadale a shot. Its first episode is, if nothing else, a breezy and pleasant watch. (Those cuts to the hospital aside. Again, this is a weird genre convention that I don’t totally understand.) You could certainly do a lot worse.
Grade: C The Verdict: If you like simple, cozy slice-of-life style isekai maybe give this one a look. Otherwise, you can pretty safely pass on it.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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.
There are many reasons that people are generally distrustful of the police. A lot of those reasons are fairly complex and rooted in longstanding authoritative structures, some of which have pretty nasty roots. In the US, there has been a concerted movement to, as consumers, move away from media that depicts police officers in an unambiguously positive light. The neologism “copaganda” was coined for this exact purpose, to make it clear to others that yes, depicting cops as superhuman arbiters of justice (as is the case in numerous cop shows) is kind of a problem. “Copaganda” generally is applied as a label to tonally serious fare, but comedies, such as say Brooklyn 99, aren’t immune either.
While distrust of police is a broader issue, the circumstances that lead to this willful withdrawal from certain kinds of television are fairly specifically American. Japan’s law enforcement has its own issues–ones I’m largely wildly unqualified to speak on–but as an American viewer even the goofiest show that revolves around the police is a hard sell. (This is one of the reasons I’ve never even tried to watch You’re Under Arrest!) I try to judge every anime I cover as fairly as I can, but if I seem unduly harsh on Police in a Pod, MADHOUSE‘s latest, do keep in mind there are reasons for that. Taking art on its own terms is important, as a critic, but it is pretty much impossible to step outside of your own head.
All of which would matter a lot more if Police in a Pod required any nuance to discuss. Here’s a secret about popular art in general; you can get away with a lot if what you make is actually good. Easily impressed eggheads like me will heap praise on things for being difficult or messy because they engage with problematic concepts while still being compelling. We do it all the time. Frankly, we probably do it too much. But you absolutely have to nail the qualitative aspect. Failing all else, you have to at least be interesting.
Police in a Pod is not good. Or interesting. Or for that matter, much of anything.
This series’ first episode is so utterly fucking unfunny, so lacking in charm or really any other merit, that it practically writes an article about itself. Where to start with this wretched little thing? Let’s be nice and start with one of the tiny handful of things it almost gets right. Our main character, Mai Kawai, is a box cop. She joined the force because of the pay and because she failed the exams for every other civil service job she tried, she wants to support herself and her dad and police work was the only way to do it. She honestly seems to have a bit of a self-loathing issue about it, going by some stuff she says in this episode! She also complains a lot about how police work is hard and no one respects her, which, gosh, I can’t imagine why.
‘One of the very, very few things that could redeem this conceptual wreck of a series is if it ended with Mai quitting police work entirely, something she actually considers (but sadly doesn’t follow through on) in the episode’s opening minutes. It’s a real shame, she could perhaps enter a more respectable and fulfilling field. Like gravedigging. Or insurance fraud. That won’t happen for reasons I will shortly make apparent, but hey, it’s fun to dream.
So, our main character is baseline sympathetic, that’s one thing done…we’ll say mostly right. What about her partner, Seiko Fuji, the series’ other main character?
Sigh.
Folks, I’m going to break a rule of criticism and go on a tangent about my upbringing here, please bear with me.
My uncle is a police chief. He was a big figure in my early life, and I hate the guy. He’s a miserable man who fights with his wife, gets drunk on Mike’s Hard Lemonade, complains about both other cops and the “civilians” he’s ostensibly sworn to protect, and says racist bullshit about minorities when he thinks he’s in comfortable company. He is a fucking loathsome human being and every single day I am grateful for the fact that, since I’ve moved out of state, I will likely never see him again.
I feel like Seiko and my uncle would get along great.
Seiko’s main personality trait seems to be that she is helpful to peoples’ faces and then bitches about them when she thinks no one is listening. Because this is a “comedy series,” people–usually Mai–often are listening, and their mechanically predictable “wow, how could you say that?!” reactions to her petulant, entitled nonsense are supposed to be funny. They are not. Seiko–and honestly, Police in a Pod itself–seems to think that interactions between police officers and the public should consist either of cops bullying criminals both petty and serious into pants-pissing terror, or innocent citizens fearfully cowering in submission as they, say, accept a $150 ticket without complaint. Seiko is openly disdainful of the idea that she should be a positive presence in her community, or even just be nice to people. She’s a deeply unpleasant character. If this is supposed to be satirical it doesn’t come across, it just seems like the show happens to be following a total asshole because it thinks she’s funny.
I will admit that I have a hard time with characters like this in general, but when you put them in a position of authority and their abuse of that authority is the entire joke? That goes over a line from “artistically unpleasant” and crosses straight into “genuinely fucked up.” It boggles the mind that something this much of a non-entity artistically could muster up the gumption to actually be offensive, but Police in a Pod somehow manages it over the 20-odd minute runtime of its first episode.
None of this is to say that Police in a Pod actually seems to like Seiko. When jokes are made at her expense, they tend to look like this, and her total lack of reaction is notably weird.
But she’s never actually punished–even in a comedic way that would fit the show’s ostensible tone–for her arrogance or her bullying. That’s breaking a pretty basic comedic rule, a sort of “what goes up must come down” of character arrogance. In of itself, that’s not terribly surprising, because on top of everything else, Police in a Pod is a terribly staid production. Nothing has any real pop, there aren’t any interesting cuts or visual tricks. Even the soundtrack is boring. Were its premise not so gallingly tone-deaf, it would be hard to muster up much an opinion about this series at all.
Lest you think I’m being too hard on Police in a Pod, one of the vignettes here sees Mai–the more sympathetic of the two leads, mind you!–essentially explain and endorse a slight twist on Broken Windows theory to a bunch of school children. (Her explanation as to why it’s bad to ride doubles on a bike is that it will show criminals that they’re free to break rules in the area. This is provably stupid; the reason to not ride doubles on a bike is because it’s fucking dangerous. Just saying that never occurs to her, for some reason.)
I could go on, but I think I’ve made my point. If anything worse than this manages to come out this season, we are in for a truly dire time indeed. Don’t watch this show. It’s miserable.
Grade: F The Takeaway: Irredeemably unfunny and lacking in any other merit, this series is to be avoided at all costs.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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.
There’s gonna be a recurring narrative throughout some of these impression posts this season, possibly this year on the whole, and it’s not a particularly positive one. CloverWorks are doing a lot of anime in 2022. More than one studio can reasonably handle. I put the blame on CloverWorks’ corporate masters at Aniplex more than the studio themselves, but this fact is going to loom over every single anime they produce this year, including a number of highly anticipated adaptions. If any of those adaptions bottom out, the general public will not be kind.
Tokyo 24th Ward, however, is not one of those adaptions. It’s an original production, and comparisons to a thoroughly divisive anime CloverWorks made almost exactly a year ago–and my own favorite anime of 2021–are inevitable. These comparisons will do Tokyo 24th few favors. Tokyo 24th is not Wonder Egg Priority. It has weaknesses, even this early on, that WEP never did, and its strengths are completely different. They are whole worlds away from each other.
Consider this. The first half of the first episode features parkour and graffiti that digitally inserts itself into a city, signifiers of flash and style. But also, it opens with an arson attack and a solid five-minute run of the episode takes place at a funeral mass. It’s a bit inscrutable.
Here’s a question though: a single episode in, is that really a problem?
Set the question of whether this will be a good anime aside for a moment. It will absolutely be an interesting anime. Even the episode’s first (and worse) half is weird. It’s fairly slow, there’s a winding narrative voiceover about the alternate history the show takes place in (boring), and a lot of fucking annoying waffling on what it means “to be a hero.” Main character (and presumable cousin to Yomogi from SSSS.DYNAZENON) Shuuta Aoi failed to save someone–his friend / maybe love interest / other friend’s sister Asumi Suidou–in that arson attack, you see, during a time where he and his buddies (the other two main characters; reckless Ran Akagi and uptight political heir Kouki Suido) had a habit of playing hero and trying to solve others’ problems. They got in over their head.
Naturally, the incident at the arson fire puts a stop to all that, and by the time of the show’s present the three have drifted apart. Shuuta has become a NEET living above his mother’s bakery, Ran is a Twitch streamer / graffiti artist whose creations “hack” themselves into the city, and Kouki enjoys the privileged but miserable existence as the son of the titular 24th Ward’s mayor during a transitional period from self-rule toward integration into Tokyo proper.
They live very different lives, and the funeral mass is the first time in ages they’ve all been in the same place. A subsequent and by chance meetup at a local restaurant serves to highlight how little they have in common anymore, and there is frankly way too much puffed-up talk about each characters’ worldview, especially Ran and Kouki’s, given their very different stances on authority. This indicates a solid underlying political sensibility, but the series does not handle it in a compelling fashion in this first episode. It feels surprisingly dry.
Then, just when things seem like they’re going to get boring, all three friends get a phone call apparently from the dead Asumi. The ensuing scene is a surreal headtrip wherein the camera literally dives into our characters’ brains, and Asumi’s ghost beats the three of them over the head with a lightly modified version of the Trolley Problem while a bunch of gaudy VFX fire off and make the whole thing look like a fever dream. It’s insane. It’s instantly memorable. It is by far the best moment in the whole episode.
But that’s not to say that what follows it is any slouch either. Suddenly dialed in to some supernatural force (Ran later speculates that it’s some kind of “brain hacking” which, hey, sure), the three realize that this is no mere thought experiment here. There is actually an out-of-control train that is going to run over an innocent person–their friend Mari, plus her dog–and if they stop it in the wrong way, the train will derail, killing everyone aboard. This extremely misses the point of the Trolley Problem, which is intended to be a theoretical ethical dilemma. I would also argue that since it gives the episode a sense of urgency and direction, that that does not matter in the slightest.
The three engage in some real superhero bullshit, and Tokyo 24th improbably backs up all that “what is a hero? 🤔” silliness from the first half of the premiere. Shuuta, in particular, is incredible here. He’s faster than a speeding bullet and more powerful than a locomotive, although the sick-ass roof-running he pulls off here isn’t something Superman would ever do.
I won’t bore you by describing their methodology in detail, but with their powers combined, our heroes save the day. It’s cheesy in the way a lot of the best anime are. It rules.
The episode ends on a down note, though. With Shuuta assuming that the phantom phonecall means Asumi is still alive. Ran is skeptical, Kouki–Asumi’s brother–is downright insulted by the idea, and the two almost come to blows. Personally, I’m on Shuuta’s side here, since he seems to be the only one who actually understands what sort of show he’s in.
So that’s what actually happens in Tokyo 24th‘s first episode. How it happens is another matter. Production-wise, and despite the director’s own concerns, it looks pretty good so far. But it doesn’t really look conventional. There’s a real love of flashy scene transitions here, and there’s also a trick that recurs a number of times where cells are directly layered over each other to give the appearance of events “popping in” on top of each other. It takes some getting used to, and it makes shots look over-crowded in still form, but I’d grown more fond of it than not by episode’s end. It works best when deployed with more lighthearted or more action-oriented scenes. When used against a more serious, dramatic, backdrop, it just looks silly.
My hope is that Tokyo 24th Ward manages to hold things together against all odds. This is a weird anime, and that’s a good thing to be in a season that so far looks to mostly be rather conventional genre fare. (Not that there’s anything inherently wrong with that, either. But it helps Tokyo 24th stand out.) Who knows what we’ll be saying about this anime in six weeks, but I’d say it’s worth keeping an eye on.
Also: who the hell was this?
Grade: B The Takeaway: Skepticism because of the whole CloverWorks situation is entirely warranted here. But, if you’re looking for something that’s just weird and fun to look at and aren’t too concerned about whether or not it ends up being a masterpiece, this is probably worth checking out.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The 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.
Good day, anime fans. I don’t have terribly much to say this week in the lead-in. Here’s some thoughts about an anime I’m a bit mixed on, one I really like, and one that I….just feel like I have to tell people about.
Mieruko-chan
I have always been a bit of two minds about the Mieruko-chan anime. I thought, and still think, that its positives outweigh its negatives, but it is admittedly difficult to evaluate a show that contains a somber, heartstring-tugging story about a teacher’s failed pregnancy in the same episode where the lead at one point pisses herself in fear. That’d be episode 8, and that’s Mieruko-chan in general. Something tragic and something funny (or “funny”, in this case) within the span of minutes of each other and seeming like they don’t quite go together.
One could argue this reflects the chaotic uncertainty of life in general. Normally, that is in fact exactly what I would say, and I have said similar things about other shows with this kind of tonal yo-yoing. But there are a lot of anime out there that pull this off than Mieruko-chan does, and it just doesn’t fit together properly much of the time. Increasingly, I just wonder if this is the sort of series that should’ve stayed in the manga format.
On the other hand, occasionally it does hit it out of the park. Episode 9, the most recent as of when I’m writing this, is about 50% about Miko and friends visiting a haunted house. Realizing that she can here react to whatever she sees however she likes, Miko revels in the chance to scream her lungs out. Much to the confusion of Julia, her also-able-to-see-ghosts sometimes-rival whose inability to perceive the larger spirits that torment Miko has given her a very inaccurate idea of what our lead is actually like. (Julia is probably my favorite character in general, it must be said.)
So, I don’t know, maybe the show is fine as it is. My hope is that the transition into the arc about Zen Toono, a substitute teacher at Miko’s school, will signal the start of a more interesting run as the series enters its final few episodes.
Perfectly nice, I’m sure.
Ranking of Kings
Last week dropped a bombshell; through some dark magic, King Bosse was back, in the body of his son Daida. Meanwhile, as Bojji trained in the underworld, he appeared to now be able to split boulders with his fists. We get a fair amount of explanation relating to these developments here, but as in basically any good ongoing piece of serial fiction, they raise as many questions as they answer.
We open on a flashback with a young(ish), not-yet-King Bosse negotiating with, wouldn’t you know it, the great red devil who showed up when he passed away a number of episodes ago.
His wish? To be the strongest. The demon’s reply? He can’t conjure power out of nowhere, but if Bosse had a family, he could steal it from a blood relative. Bosse, thus, finds the strongest giant woman in the world and proposes to her. (In doing so, he performs a perfectly understandable action for sinister reasons. Quite a jerk, King Bosse.)
This, as we learn (though it’s not hard to figure out), is Bojji’s biological mother. What exactly happened to her after the tiny prince was born is not revealed here, though it’s hard not to assume the worst. Bosse carves out his own realm in what seems to be just a few short years.
That is Bosse in the distance, walking away from a whole battlefield of dead orcs. In some anime, this would be a way to show how cool he is. Ousama Ranking is not such an anime.
This sequence, and much of Ousama Ranking in general, seem to contemplate the cruelty of power. If one has to do such terrible things to become so strong, what can one possibly do with their strength that’s actually worth it? And does it not inevitably lead to the pursuit of power for its own sake? After Bojji is born, Bosse swears that he will ensure a future for the prince where he wants for nothing. It’s safe to say, given the present, that he didn’t succeed. But there is a marked disconnect between Bosse as we see him in the past and Bosse as we see him returned in Daida’s body. The influence of his vizier Miranjo1–a flesh-and-blood person in these flashbacks but trapped in Daida’s mirror in the present–may have something to do with it, but it’s hard to call definitively.
We also catch up with Domas and Hokuro. Their relationship here changes quite rapidly. It develops from Hokuro trying to kill Domas for his treachery and failing, to Domas rescuing a to-be-executed Hokuro from Queen Hilling’s wrath out of apparent guilt, to Domas being ordered by Bosse–who makes himself known to the swordsman–to destroy a cave to the underworld that exists beneath the castle. Ousama Ranking‘s pacing has been brisk but quite good so far, and this marks the rare occasion where it’s a bit too fast. This seems like the sort of plot that could’ve carried its own episode. Although, I will note, there’s no reason to suspect that Domas and Hokuro’s partnership won’t continue to change. Their interactions in this episode end with Domas promising to train Hokuro. Training he claims Hokuro will sorely need for the task ahead of them.
Finally, there is Daida. Yes, it would appear that the blonde prince is still alive. Although what state, exactly, he’s in, is quite ambiguous. The final moments of the episode conclude with him waking up in a totally black void. He stumbles around, wondering if he’s been imprisoned somewhere, but the total lack of any features seems to imply his prison his more metaphysical in nature. Spare a thought for the ambitious prince, he’ll need it.
As for Bojji? Well, the little big man’s training is complete in this episode as well, though this is one of the show’s episodes where Bojji assumes a minor role in his own show. (Not a bad thing, but notable.) Perhaps his newfound power can help him rescue his brother? Maybe because Bojji came by his strength honestly he won’t fall into whatever pit of ambition Bosse ended up in? It’s hard to say. All we know for certain is this; The Ranking of Kings continues, and somewhere nearby, a devil grins.
Waccha PriMagi!
A new face on this column, and one that’s quite the watching experience.
I’ve been following Waccha PriMagi since it aired. But it’s something I watch with friends on the weekends, so I haven’t really ever thought of it as something I intended to write about in this column. And my knowledge of the larger Pretty Rhythm / King of Prism (I’m not even sure which name is “more correct”) meta-franchise which it’s a part of is quite limited. But I really feel like I need to just tell somebody how utterly bonkers this show is. To record it for posterity so that a hundred years hence, someone can know that yes, this was a real thing and yes it really was like this. God help us all. Or maybe international superstar Jennifer help us all. In the show’s world they seem rather interchangeable.
She’s like if Beyonce` was blonde and had the most generic name ever.
The actual premise isn’t much to stretch the brain here. Matsuri, our protagonist, likes idols and wants to be one. One day, the magical cat girl Nyamu appears and helps her become one. There’s a competition to see who’s the best idol, pretty standard stuff for the genre aside from the magic element, and even that is not really where the weirdness comes from.
No, the weirdness comes from two things. For one, the gaudy character designs. The girls, especially in-costume, look like they’ve been shot with a glitter cannon by Lisa Frank, and there are enough pride flag colors snuck into character designs that it feels like an intentional easter egg on the part of a character designer rather than simple coincidence. Even the comparatively “dark” designs like Lemon’s gothic lolita ensemble are just so much. This is a strength, not a weakness, but it’s a level of audacity in character design that is rather rare, and it takes some getting used to.
Secondly, there is the writing.
Good god is there the writing.
I wouldn’t dare to say that Waccha PriMagi is badly written. It’s a kids’ show, and it’s not for a 27 year old college dropout who writes a blog for a living. It is however, definitely hyperactively written. Compared to it, co-seasonal Tropical Rouge Precure (which is also for young kids, mind you!) looks downright sedate. The simple quantity of things that happens in a given episode is through the roof, and episodes tumble into one another as though the entire series were a single long film. There is little of the episodic nature often associated with kids’ anime. This shit has continuity, and it has the audacity to expect you to remember it all. (Or maybe it doesn’t, given that the most recent episode, the tenth, is a recap episode less than a dozen episodes in.)
Is any of that a problem? Honestly, not really. The series’ sheer chaos works in its favor. Most anime take a fairly straight line from point A to point B. Waccha is content to doodle all over the map on its way there, which is why it took ten episodes for us to get a concise explanation of what the tournament that will presumably drive much of the rest of the plot actually is. This would be annoying for a shorter anime, but as Waccha is an annual it seems safe to assume it will run for a full four cours (landing somewhere between 42 and 50 episodes by its finale), so it has plenty of time to figure out petty things like “plot” and “making sense” later.
What it does excel at, chaotic as it is, is character interaction. The characters in this are great. The sole exception I’d maybe make being our actual lead, Matsuri, who I find a bit of a cipher outside of her idol fangirling. (Even then, she’s pleasant and charming, just not to the level of the other characters.) Nyamu is a total brat, something like a land-bound cousin of TroPre’s Laura La Mer. There’s a cool senpai in the form of Hina, whose day-glo raver look could maybe dull some of the surprise from learning that the song from her first concert kinda slaps.
Seriously, why does this sound like something that would dominate the radio in 2007?
Then there’s Miruki, a baldly two-faced little conniver who would be absolutely detestable if she wasn’t so damn funny. It’s here worth noting that these characters all have their own animal companion friends. And hers is a decidedly stoned-looking bear. And finally there’s Lemon Kokoa, my personal favorite character. I should also take a minute to mention the incredibly good official subtitles this thing has, with full credit to translators Natalie Jones and Nathan Lopez. They’re a bit loose, which some purists may dislike, but they add a lot of color to the show by incorporating modern stan terms, including “stan” itself, “bias,” etc. I mostly bring this up because Lemon is an idol otaku, and also just generally a reclusive, anxious wreck of a gamer girl shut-in. When she and her friends (read: her MMO guild) show up, the translators also take the opportunity to tangle in some modern internet slang. Which leads to the decidedly surreal experience of seeing, say, a phrase like “big mood” in an anime.
Lemon is just below the frame, having passed out from the immense stress of being perceived.
She also has easily the best outfit in the series, the aforementioned gothic lolita dress patterned after the stained glass in a cathedral. A friend described her debut song as sounding “like Touhou music,” and I couldn’t agree more. It also rules.
Yes, the logo behind her says “Radiant Abyss.” It says that because Lemon is cooler than all of us.
I don’t expect I’ll cover Waccha PriMagi often on this column, and it may well never appear here again. As I said, it’s more of a fun weekend watch with friends for me. But! I should stress that if you can find some folks to watch it with, it is immensely fun. (I imagine watching it solo unless you’re a sugar rush’d-out ten-year-old might be a bit much. But you’re welcome to experiment and see if I’m wrong.) Waccha absolutely drips with style and personality. Sometimes when you’ve got so much of that, common sense takes a back seat. Personally, I think it suits the show just fine.
1: I am admittedly not fully sure if this is intended to be her actual name or is some sort of title. In Japanese the character is apparently only referred to as “Mahou no Kagami”, which I believe simply means “Magic Mirror”, so I’m not entirely certain what’s going on there.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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 again, anime fans. I don’t have terribly much to say in my lead-in here. It’s been a bit of a week and I’m a bit struck by the winter blues. I hope you won’t begrudge me that this week’s column is only about two shows. For what it’s worth, I think they’re some of the best that have aired this year. One of 2021’s great stories comes to an end and another begins to hit its stride….
The Heike Story
A common nugget of wisdom holds to show, not tell, when weaving a story. But it’s a false dichotomy in some ways. In the Heike Monogatari, now concluded after eleven weeks, the showing and the telling are one in the same. Never has this been more true than in the series’ final act, where Biwa, fully embracing her role as a chronicler of fate, tells us of the Heike’s demise as we see it happen; two perspectives unified like the visions from her own mystical eyes.
The series’ finale is a thing of beauty. The Heike Clan make their final stand in a battle at sea. They lose, as we knew they would from day one. Many, including the young Emperor, cast themselves into the sea. It is not what you’d call a happy ending.
A common criticism I saw of Heike Monogatari during its airing is why, exactly, Biwa did not “do more” to help the Heike who are, after all, her adopted family. As a critique it makes some sense on the surface. She can see the future, and if anime has trained us to expect anything it’s that those with heterochromia and mysterious powers will intervene to stop bad things from happening. But I cannot help but think this is a simplistic view of both Biwa’s personhood and her situation. She is a witness to history; as we all are, in spite of whatever unique talents we may or may not have. Many of us could “do more” to change things with our own talents, yet we do not. If it is a character flaw on her part, it is one most of us share.
And then there’s the series’ moral, such as it is. A fundamental truth of the world; all things are impermanent. Everything dies, empires rise only to fall. What remains are the stories we pass down and the feelings we hold with us. That, truly, is all.
This is a theme that has run through some seventy years of anime history, but if one wanted to find contemporary examples, they would not need to look all that hard. Surely critics who have studied more classical literature than I have will point out that this is a “very Japanese” and “very Buddhist” theme. Perhaps these things are true, the series is based on a historical epic after all and such things are very much informed by their era and place. I also think, though, it may also be a warning against self-importance akin to what we often grant ourselves here in the Anglosphere. We treat ourselves as living at history’s end, but it continues to happen every day in spite of us.
Heike Monogatari‘s true triumph is to delve into the minds of those gone by; to make the past feel real by showing us the human beings behind history’s academic brushstrokes. In doing so, it reminds us that we are all mortal, and we are all witnesses. Like Biwa, many of us will live to see the fall of all kinds of empires. The only question is whether we will deign to sing about it.
I don’t usually pick shows up mid-season, but Ranking of Kings (known as the somewhat snappier Ousama Ranking in its home country) just didn’t give me much of a choice. “Positive buzz” is one thing, but Ranking on a pure visual level does not look like most anime. This is a reflection of the source material, which seems to draw both on a western-influenced fairy tale book influence and on older strains of anime, not many of which have particularly many artistic descendants in the modern day. So provably, even speaking aesthetically, Ranking stands apart from the usual seasonal grind. This would be interesting on its own, but without a strong story to back it up, it wouldn’t be worth much. Thankfully, Ranking stands as a buzzer-beater candidate for one of the year’s most unique anime from just about every angle. Its visual style could fool one into thinking it’s a happy, straightforward story, but the truth of the matter is that it’s more of a deliberate contrast against the complex character writing and political machinations that our lead, the Deaf Prince Bojji, finds himself caught in.
It’s an utterly fascinating little show, and eight episodes in I can confidently say I have no idea where it’s going to go from here. But what I can do is tell you where it’s been. Doing so alone should be enough for any skeptics to hop aboard the Bojji Train before it’s too late.
Our setup is pretty simple. Bojji is the eldest son of Bosse, the king of a nameless kingdom of which he was the founder. In the show’s opening act, Bosse dies, leaving the question of succession a difficult one. Bojji is Deaf, physically small, and has the misfortune of living in a distinctly fantasy-medieval setting. (Ranking effortlessly pulls off letting us into Bojji’s inner world without any spoken dialogue, but many of the adults around him tend to treat him with vague disdain, or at best, an infantilizing overprotectiveness.) He’s also not much of a swordsman, despite the guideship of his trainer Domas. Though interestingly, he’s great at dodging, a skill that has yet to quite pay dividends narratively but is sure to later.
In contrast to Bojji, there is his younger half-brother, Prince Daida. Daida is much more in the image of a traditional heir to the throne than Bojji. It is thus unsurprising that when Bosse passes away, the kingdom’s council of advisors votes to install Daida as the king instead of his older brother. One might initially think that the story’s central conflict will come down to Bojji’s quest to reclaim his rightful throne, and it may still circle back around to that eventually, but something that simple would not do justice to the sheer amount of stuff this series has covered so far.
For instance; adding fuel to the movement to replace Bojji as the heir apparent is that when Bosse passes away, a massive red devil appears and gestures at the prince. What does this mean? We still don’t know a good half-cour later.
Which is good, because that’s how you build some genuine mystery. Details like this are packed into every minute of Ranking’s runtime and things are only explained directly if absolutely necessary. As a watching experience, it’s engrossing, and doesn’t have much recent competition. I haven’t even brought up Bojji’s plus-one, his shadowy friend Kage who the prince won over with his kindness, and whose obligate backstory episode is one of the show’s highlights.
Some of this attention to detail might come down to Ranking‘s runtime; it’d feel rushed were it only one cour, but it’s thankfully two. (This sadly puts it out of the running for my top five list I’ll be publishing at the end of December. I’m sure the folks at Wit Studio are just heartbroken.)
I have to admit that I considered doing a writeup of this week’s episode as well, but in deference to those who have perhaps not started watching the show yet but might find it interesting based on what I’ve said, I will not do so. Next week, though, you have my promise! Stay strong in the meantime, Prince Bojji!
He’s a mighty little man.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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