Tag: Kaguya-sama Love Is War

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: OSHI NO KO and The Dark Side of Fame

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.

What a ridiculous act of total, colossal, gutsy arrogance.

I am talking, of course, about the sheer length of Oshi no Ko‘s first episode. Nothing else, just its pure runtime in minutes. 90 of the suckers, basically a shortish movie or longish OVA. Things like that have never been super common, but anecdotally, I feel like they’re even less so these days. And it’s not like this is the Unlimited Blade Works anime here, while this is definitely a highly-anticipated manga adaptation, it doesn’t have the previous history of an existing franchise that something like that did, so the mere act of having a premiere clocking in at over an hour feels like some thrown gauntlet or line drawn in the sand. A statement that, really, this is Oshi no Ko‘s season; anything else that’s around just happens to be airing during it.

Were this almost any other series I’d not give the simple length of the first episode this much thought. (Honestly, I’d probably write it off as a pointless indulgence in most cases.) But Oshi no Ko gets to strive for blockbuster status like that. It is, after all, a story primarily about the vicious gnashing of the pop machine. It only makes sense that it would try to trump every competitor in its field at the moment. That’s how the business works; go hard or go home.

I’ve already spoken at length about the actual staff involved here, so I won’t rehash those points again. Most likely, the question you all have on your minds is more what Oshi no Ko actually is. After all, if you haven’t read the manga and are only keeping up with what I (and similar writers) are saying, you might be a little lost. Isn’t this just a dark take on the idol genre? Kind of like what 22/7 was trying to do? (But hopefully, you know, better than that?)

Well, yes and no. There are really two main stories in Oshi no Ko, and the entertainment industry stuff is definitely the main focus for most of it, but we actually start over on that other plotline instead. And while that one is certainly also caused by the dark underbelly of the entertainment industry, it’s a bit more extreme. Enough so that I’ve seen it written off as shock value, a point of view I don’t remotely agree with but which I do understand. A general word of warning: we’re going to get into some gnarly territory both over the course of today’s column and over the course of me covering Oshi no Ko in general.

But first, let’s lay out where all of this begins.

Here’s a thought experiment for you. Imagine you’re a countryside doctor named Goro Amemiya [Kento Itou]. That must be a pretty tense, high-stakes job, right? Imagine that, perhaps, as an escape from the stresses of your position, you get really into this one singer. You love her songs, her look, just her general charisma from head to toe. In modern internet pop parlance, we’d call you a stan. The person who got you into all this stuff was a chronically ill girl named Sarina [Tomoyo Takayanagi]. She’s gone now, and you admit that perhaps taking up her own obsession with that singer, Hoshino Ai, of BKomachi [Rie Takahashi], is you in some way conflating the two in your mind. With more of a reason than most, perhaps, given a conversation the two of you once had where she asked what you thought about the idea of being born into fame and status; maybe it was just idle fantasizing from a sick girl, but it’s stuck in your mind. And maybe, too, none of this is exactly healthy—despite being a doctor yourself, you aren’t really sure—but you aren’t hurting anyone, and you seem to be a decent doctor, so this is tolerated as an eccentricity of both you and your practice. Things are, broadly, going fine.

You’re this guy. (In the context of this rhetorical device.)

Then, one day, your favorite idol walks into your practice. She is 20 weeks pregnant. You’re a professional, so you keep your emotions—the childish glee of seeing your favorite singer in person, the shock of this particular development—pretty much entirely out of the waiting room. You don’t want to make things worse for her, after all. She seems pretty chipper about the whole thing, and intent on keeping the twins(!) she’s carrying. Her manager and legal guardian is a lot less so, and seems to think that this would cause a scandal that’d end her career (and his own agency). Unfortunately, he is probably right.

I’ll kill the second-person narration here, because I want to make an important aside. To those of us in the US or elsewhere in the Anglosphere, the aspersions cast on an idol who gets married and has kids might seem kind of weird. But, this is how J-Idol culture operated for a very long time and to some extent continues to operate, and while we don’t have the time or space here to get into an entire digression about how deeply fucked up that entire system is, it is worth putting a pin in that fucked-upness, because illustrating that; turning this whole industry over and poking at it all the while, is essentially what Oshi no Ko is about. (Idol culture isn’t actually unique in this way, in any case, and the US has been puritanical about these sorts of things in a similar way far more recently than I think most realize, but we’re getting into asides-within-asides territory at this point, so that’s a discussion for another time.)

Someone who does not abide by this dichotomy; idol or parent, virgin or whore, is Ai herself. Ai gets her first spotlight scene about ten minutes into the episode—yes, we’re not even a half hour in yet—and she is stunning, a lodestar of cheery charisma, and so obviously the kind of person who can make you feel more important just by talking to you.

One of the hardest things to do when creating a story about any kind of entertainment is to sell the entertainers themselves as entertainers and performing artists. Real people can have natural charm, a character within a narrative must be given charm, and it generally serves some purpose. Ai spouts off a monologue about how idols are talented liars, how she loves her job because she gets to put on this façade for people, and how she isn’t going to go public with her kids. She’s going to be both; a good parent and a popular idol. We could never hear a single note from the young woman, and this scene alone would make it obvious how incredibly magnetic she must be. Even as, it must be noted somewhere, HiDIVE’s video for American viewers absolutely fuzzes the hell out of the nighttime backdrop here. It’s pretty unfortunate, but it can’t smother the dusky magic of the scene.

Goro takes his work very seriously. Doubly so, given the status of his patient, and works with her during the remaining 20 weeks of her pregnancy to ensure the best conditions possible. He even starts to think of this as the entire reason he became a doctor. Destiny, in a sense, leading him to help out his—and Sarina’s—favorite idol in her time of need. But if that is destiny at work, then destiny has a strange sense of humor indeed.

One night, after preparing Ai for her delivery, Goro steps out, only to be confronted by a strange man in a gray hoodie who angrily asks him if he’s Hoshino Ai’s doctor. This is alarming for several reasons; the guy’s angry tone, the fact that he’s appeared out of nowhere, and the fact that Ai’s surname has never been a matter of public record. (It’s a Madonna situation but to an even greater extreme, one supposes.) Goro and this man have a brief confrontation, and it ends with our apparent protagonist getting shoved off of a cliff. He doesn’t make it, but as he lays dying, something truly strange happens as his consciousness begins to slip away. His mind flashes back to that conversation with Sarina years ago, about what one would do if they were reborn as a celebrity’s child, and the series gets ambitious in depicting the moment of death-of-consciousness as the truly surreal thing it must actually be; stuttering video, rapid flash cuts to crows and ultrasounds, a hazy, bright filter all over everything.

And then, the moment of Oshi no Ko‘s first big swerve, as Goro dies, and the cycle of reincarnation works its magic. There is no delicate way to put it; yes, the man has been reborn as his oshii’s own son. Yes, it is absolutely a fucking wild way to start this story, a sort of brilliant-bizarre head check that’s given a moment to settle in by the title card drop. But we’re not done yet, not by a long shot.

For a while, after that particular reveal, it seems like Oshi no Ko might become a different anime entirely. Most of what immediately follows is pretty lighthearted, following the misadventures of Ai as she tries to get back on her feet career-wise while taking care of her kids and concealing them from the public at the same time. As Goro—now Aquamarine [Yumi Uchiyama] for the remainder of the show, alongside his twin sister Ruby [Yurie Igoma]—points out, she’s not really equipped to be a terribly effective mom. But rather than criticizing her, the series does paint her as sympathetic. (It also, interestingly, points out that she’s essentially faceblind, possibly the only anime character I can think of who canonically is so.) More generally; this section of the episode is a lot more lighthearted, and is more in line with some of studio Doga Kobo‘s other work. For a few minutes, you can kind of talk yourself into thinking we might have another Helpful Fox Senko-san or something on our hands. Basically, a story about a guy who gets pampered by a woman through contrived supernatural circumstances. Or, at the very least, a zany comedy that just happens to have a stunningly bizarre setup.

The antics that occur during this part of the episode won’t pop that notion, but the pretty gross talk that some of the staff engage in while BKomachi are staging their big comeback performance might. It really is nothing but a parade of denigration; one staff member insults their music, another makes plans aloud to try to hook one of the girls up with his manager, a third makes a leery comment about one of the other girls’ chests and wonders if he can get her to do pinup work. ETC. The intercut of this and baby Aquamarine back at home obsessing over how talented his mama is—and make no mistake, Ai is talented, if she’s charismatic off-stage she turns into a total fucking supernova while actually on stage—is intentional and instructional. These are two sides of the same coin. With a third, even darker aspect coming into focus when we briefly flash aside to the stalker, muttering to himself in a room papered over with Ai posters.

That aside, the show takes some time to add some levity here, sure, and it’s actually intermittently pretty funny in general, although prone to maybe crossing lines it shouldn’t. There is a whole digression here, in fact, between Aqua and an also-reincarnated-from-someone Ruby, about the ethics of babies that host reincarnated souls breastfeeding, that could probably have been cut and no one of note would really have missed it. On the other hand, the whole segment with Aqua and Ruby psyching out their babysitter when she starts plotting to expose Ai to the press is pretty amazing, with Ruby claiming to be an incarnation of Amaterasu and such. That particular scene is even better in anime form than in the manga, so maybe some of the less-great humor is worth it. But the important point here is that OnK does not become a fluffy comedy series. This is still Oshi no Ko we’re talking about, and all of that is followed up by a moment where Ai, namesearching herself on Twitter while already in a low mood about a lack of money (terrible idea, folks!) stumbles onto an account accusing her of being “strictly professional.” That is to say, a performer without any kind of soul or spark. When she performs in concert not long afterward, the tweet sticks to her vision like a filter, literally tinting her thoughts and preventing her from truly being in the moment.

And even the more lighthearted moments have a bit of bitterness to them. To wit; the twins’ babysitter takes them to that concert at their insistence. There, they pretty much wild out in their strollers and, understandably, the sight of two little kids doing idol fan dances catches eyes and someone records it, and it ends up going viral. So does Ai’s big, proud, broad smile when she catches sight of them, and the knock-on effects of the good publicity make her turn toward the rather cynical again; if the people want a specific smile, she can give them one. This is a pro we’re talking about, after all.

Mind you, Ai’s newfound success on stage does not necessarily translate to success elsewhere. She’s given a role in a TV drama, but it’s a bit part, and most of it ends up cut. More important in this scene is a director character [Yasuyuki Kase] who we’ll meet many more times before this series is over, who talks with the quite-precocious Aquamarine about the different kinds of actors and eventually hands him his business card. That becomes relevant when Aqua finds out that Ai’s been so heavily chopped out of the show; he actually calls the director to complain! Even more astoundingly, this actually works out for him. The director explains his side, but does offer Ai another job, this time on a film.

On the condition that Aquamarine be in the project too.

The film is one that calls for a pair of creepy child roles. And it’s here that we’re introduced to the arrogant, crimson-haired child actress Kana [Megumi Han], another character who will become important to this story as it plays out. Initially dismissive, Kana casually insults both Aqua and his mother, assuming that they’re a pair of non-talents that were only added to the film as a favor. When she has to actually act beside Aqua, she’s floored. Less because he’s a great actor for his age and more because he’s able to intuit that what the director wants him to do isn’t really act at all. It’s to just be himself. He imagines the director saying something like “you’re plenty creepy already”—honestly not an entirely unreasonable reaction to a two-year-old who’s this self-assured—and in the process he totally shows Kana up, and she blows up at him, crying for a reshoot because, well, she wants to be the center of attention.

This entire part of the episode is quite good, but it does feel rather like an aside, and it ends with a timeskip. Evidence that perhaps these were originally conceived as three separate episodes and then later reworked as one singular chunk? Who can say. Either way, the format works for what Oshi no Ko is trying to do, marketing ploy or no.

After this, Ruby gets some focus. She is, perhaps unsurprisingly, revealed to be the reincarnation of Sarina, the disabled girl who got Goro into Ai in the first place. We do get into some admittedly dicey territory here; Sarina, it’s clear, wanted to not just admire idols but to be one in her past life, and it was something her disability kept her from. As someone who, for various physical reasons, has also had to forego the performing arts, I do sympathize. I am not sure how others will feel, especially those with conditions that more closely mirror what Sarina actually had. If someone were to tell me they found this a little offensive, I wouldn’t tell them they were wrong to. These things strike different chords—good and bad—for different people.

For me personally, the sheer joy that Ruby explodes with when she discovers that now, finally, she can dance connects with me on a pretty deep level. The show gets very abstract for a little bit here to convey that joy, too, dissolving into ribbons of pure figure and color as Ruby hits idol steps in a mirror. If nothing else, it’s an impressively ambitious bit of visual work.

But, the happiness is short lived, because as the episode closes in on its end, so does something else.

Ai has one other person in her life aside from her family and her manager. We never see him directly, and only know he exists from Ai talking to him through a payphone. But it’s clear from these conversations alone that the person she’s talking to is her ex. Unfortunately, Ai seems to be a pretty terrible judge of character, and her ex also seems to be the person who gave that stalker her hospital address years ago.

How do we know that? Because here, he does it again. The stalker shows up to Ai’s brand new apartment, which he mysteriously knows the location of, and stabs her in the gut.

In the manga, Ai’s death is shocking. An exclamation point, a hurried page turn. Here, given the breadth and depth of this team’s full production weight in the anime, it becomes absolutely heartwrenching. Ai’s slow, pained monologue, wherein she wonders what kind of people Ruby and Aqua will grow up to be, imagining them as an idol and an actor respectively, as she’s literally bleeding out onto her apartment’s floor, is the kind of thing that one cannot really recapture in other words. It’s a tragic, mesmerizing thing, and voice actress Takahashi Rie, herself an idol, deserves every accolade she’ll get for this performance twice over, delivering Ai’s final words in a strained, teary yelp. Ai’s last words to her children are that she loves them—something she has struggled to say, because she’s so used to saying it and not meaning it. Then, content that she was at least able to sincerely tell someone, her kids, that she loves them, she passes on. The stars in her eyes literally black out and vanish. She’s gone. Just like that.

In the days that follow, a bleak, grey wind blows over the lives of those that Ai has touched. Most notably her kids of course, but also her many fans (one of whom, in a moment that for some reason really got to me, is waving a little heart-shaped paper fan that says “Ai Fan for Eternity” on it). The news cycle is less kind, and Ai’s tragic passing is exploited as a public interest story, with Twitterites—in a way that is frankly pretty on-point for that website—gossiping about how it’s not actually surprising that she was killed, given that she was an idol who started dating someone. (Ruby, completely correctly, reacts with a fiery rant about how people who say things like this are usually disaffected lonely people who take out their own lack of luck in love on women in general. Igoma Yurie expresses the character’s bitter anger to a perfect tee, another excellent vocal performance in an episode full of them.)

After only a few days, the public moves on, and a quiet snow blankets Tokyo.

We end on Aqua swearing vengeance; it occurs to him that someone must’ve tipped off the stalker about where exactly Ai could be found, and given Ai’s very narrow social circle, this person—again, probably her ex, and therefore Aqua’s own father—is directly responsible for not only Ai’s death but also that of Aqua’s previous self. Maybe it’s not so strange that the kid basically cracks. The art style changes to accommodate, going into full moving-painting mode as a black flame of revenge is born in his heart, and he asks the director who gave him his first role to raise him in Ai’s absence. Years later, as he and Ruby set out for their first day of high school in what will become the remainder of the series’ “present day”, Aqua [Takeo Ootsuka, in this last scene and for the remainder of the show] still has vengeance on the mind.

This—all of this; the bad jokes, the reincarnation shenanigans, the legit comedic chops, the extensive attention paid to the ins and outs of the entertainment industry, the spotlights so hot they burn holes in the stage, the tragedy, the heartbreak, the death—is Oshi no Ko, a bizarre blockbuster that resonates with everyone and no one. It is an army of one. I have never run into another series that’s truly like it, and I’m not sure I ever will. But in all of its wild mood-swinging glory, Oshi no Ko is also kind of transcendent. That’s not the same as flawless, but but this is the sort of drama you can let yourself get caught up in, if you’re the type. (And I very much am.) That’s why it can pull off things like an hour and a half-long first episode. The show itself has a star quality.

As for our real leads, it’s not really a spoiler to say that, in spite of everything that happens here, both Aqua and Ruby will pursue careers in the industry. Aqua with the hope of finding the man truly responsible for his mother’s death, Ruby to fulfill her and Ai’s dream of her becoming an idol. It’s a long, twisted road, one no one is guaranteed to get out of alive. And all told, we’re only at the start of it. The entertainment industry is a voracious beast that eats its own young, littered with the corpses of those who burned out at the top and those who never made it. Hoshino Ai is, here, in true tragedy, reduced to one of those skeletons. One answer to the question; what does it really mean to be famous?

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, Mastodon, or Anilist, 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. If you have any questions about this or any article, feel free to leave a comment, or pop on over to my RetroSpring and ask me there. It’s up to you!

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, Anime Orbit Weekly, Misc. Anime

Ranking Every 2022 Anime I Actually Finished from Worst to Best – Part 3

“Ranking Every Anime” is a yearly, multi-part column where I rank every single anime I finished from a given year, from the very worst to the absolute best. Expect spoilers for all anime covered.

In some ways, this is the hardest part of the list to write. The stuff I liked pretty much without reservation, but which I still felt didn’t quite make the very top. But honestly, what else is there to say? At this point, you all know what you’re in for. Let’s get to the “solidly good to great” part of the list.

#17. The Case Study of Vanitas: Part 2

Remember 2022 as a banner year for the anime vampire. Two of the three shows on this list that involve them come primarily from the same hand, Tomoyuki Itamura, yet, they couldn’t be more different. 

The Case Study of Vanitas, which entered its second season back in January, is fundamentally a dark fantasy series. It’s tinged with romance, drama, and sly humor, but everything is filtered through the church glass that composes its specific brand of vampiric fantasia. 

Of course, the actual reason, so far as I can gather, that most people like Vanitas, is its shameless sensuality. Yes, this is probably the only thing on the list I’m going to outright praise for being horny, even as it ranks higher on the Problematic-o-Meter than most things I watch. Do you like men? Women? Both? Vanitas has a character or six for you to mercilessly simp for, and I do consider that something of a positive, if done in a way that makes emotional sense, as it does here. The vast reservoirs of easily-flustered bisexuals in the world are an untapped resource, some might say.

But on top of that, Vanitas’ second season also has a pretty compelling actual plot, featuring closed-off secluded worlds of snow, haunted by a twisted take on the already-spooky tale of the Beast of Gevaudan. The series’ gothic sensibility serves it well, here, as the sweetness that lightened up much of the first season turns decidedly sickly. (And even so, there’s still quite a lot of steaminess in the second season. Seriously, if you’re into that kind of thing you owe it to yourself to watch this.)

#16. ESTAB LIFE: Great Escape

If there’s a unifying thread for the anime of 2022, it might just be that a lot of them were really fucking weird. Novelty of premise is pretty easy to come by in anime, a medium that, moreso than many others, is pretty unashamed of its inherently pulp nature and will often race to the bottom to come up with the most bizarre thing possible to get more eyeballs on a project. Even so, Estab Life stands out for strangeness not just of premise but of execution. How many anime this year were both all-CG affairs and had an episode about the Penguin Stasi? As far as I know, Estab Life is the only one.

Sporting some strange mix of the traveler story genre, a droll-as-hell sense of humor, and decent action anime fundamentals, Estab Life surely stands out as one of the year’s most singular offerings, revolving as it does around a group of “extractors” whose job is to spirit away those unhappy with their lot in a bizarro future dystopia to one of the many other future dystopias—a collection of them now makes up what was once Japan. Even the stylistics and actual narrative aside, there simply aren’t too many anime with transgender yakuza magical girls and giant Facebook Like thumbs in them. But maybe you’re the sort who prioritizes character writing, in which case, I would point you to the fact that resident slime girl Martese is a curiously-compelling lesbian slime girl tomboy, team lead Equa is a quietly commanding presence, and even many of the show’s one-off characters are pretty interesting.

Estab Life is certainly not perfect (I am not huge on how Feres, my favorite of the main trio, is the one with by a fair shake the least amount of character development), but it’s compellingly weird and worth a watch. Incredibly, this strange little train hasn’t stopped rolling. We’re allegedly waiting on a mobile game, as well as a film with the tentative title Revenger’s Road. See you again soon, extractors?

#15. Do It Yourself!!

If the adage holds true that to build a city, one must start with a brick, surely the same is true for homes and the furniture that decorates them.

Thus, very broadly, is the premise of Do It Yourself!!, a gentle iyashikei—one of a few this year—about do-it-yourself crafts, mostly woodworking. The series is packed with enough goofy-pun character names that it might give you the impression that this is a slapstick of some sort. (The lead is named Yua Serufu, and her okay-they-don’t-say-they’re-in-love-but-they-pretty-obviously-are-at-least-crushing-on-each-other crush is a girl named Suride “Purin”, who attends a techy academy where she learns how to….3D print things. Goodness.) 

There is an element of that; Serufu herself is pretty dang clumsy, and her pratfalls are treated as amusing slipups more often than not, but DIY!!’s real core is about how making things for yourself is irreplaceable, not just as a skill but as a passion. It’d be easy for the show to swerve from there into a rote “technology bad” message, but it never really even approaches doing so, and there are even a few scenes that showcase synthesis of cutting-edge technology and traditional crafts.

Indeed, the focus is on that spirit of craftsmanship itself, apropos from another visual treat from the studio Pine Jam, whose strong central staff seem to have developed a habit of putting out a show that simply looks amazing about once a year. (Whether that show is any good otherwise is another question, see Gleipnir near the bottom of the 2020 list.) This is apropos too for the year that brought machine art to the public sphere of discourse. It’s a topic that is probably not going away any time soon, but DIY neatly sidesteps any similar question with its own answer; isn’t there plenty of joy to be found in the process of creation itself?

#14. My Master Has No Tail

Is Rakugo having a bit of a moment? Probably not, but My Master Has No Tail airing in the same year that brought us the unexpected Jump hit Akane-banashi made me think. The two aren’t really terribly similar, but they share a key piece of subject matter in the traditional Japanese comedic storytelling art.

Our protagonist, Mameda, is a tanuki infatuated with the art form, since inspiring strong emotions via telling tales is a form of “tricking” people. But what begins as a fairly straightforward comedy / niche interest manga reveals itself to have a beating heart focused on Mameda’s own place in the world, and that of other beings like herself. (Her master Bunko is a kitsune, for example.) In the process, it places not just specifically these stories but, in a broader way, all popular stories, in a specific cultural context. Specific episodes deal with the process of passing artistic traditions on from master to pupil, and with Japan’s transitional Taisho period as a time when old things—both old ways and creatures like Bunko and Mameda themselves—are being lost to the tide of modernism. In this sense, there’s a surprising edge of slight melancholy to My Master Has No Tail.

Even so, this is primarily a comedy, and it’s a pretty good one. Both the rakugo itself and Mameda’s own antics are a light brand of amusing that never feels like it’s overstaying its welcome, even with the series’ absolute dumbest jokes. (One of the character’s nicknames being “Butt”, anyone?)

#13. Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2

It often comes across as a backhanded compliment to say that an anime’s best trait is that it just looks really good. It feels like you’re implying a deficiency in some other area. But if that’s ever the case, it certainly isn’t so for the second season of Princess Connect! Re:Dive, which thundered back after a year’s absence way back in Winter to blow basically every other isekai anime that aired this year out of the water. (It’s the last example of the genre you’ll find on this list, in fact.)

That said; this doesn’t mean that the story isn’t also worthwhile—it’s actually quite interesting, a novel take on the genre that manages to make it feel meaningful and substantive again in a year that was absolutely swamped with mediocre isekai. But, of course, the visuals and the writing go hand in hand. Princess Connect’s sideways spin on the genre means nothing without its phenomenal visuals; in particular, the fight scenes give a real weight to its fantasy heroics in the series’ latter half. What you have with Princess Connect is the Proper Noun Machine Gun on full autofire; the series builds on so many classic tropes, both from isekai and from fantasy adventure in general, that it risks drowning in them. But that never happens, it just builds and builds and builds, until its final stretch lights up into a blazing, spectacular show of fireworks. More than anything, this one is a treat for the chuunis out there. All spectacle, but pure killer, a whirling show of pyrotechnics that is never less than a total blast.

#12. Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club Season 2

The dream lives on! While its younger sister Superstar floundered in the season that followed, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club made a strong return this year. Its second season wasn’t the blow-the-doors-open affair that its first was back in 2020, but the anime’s personable sense of purehearted sincerity remained even as it dipped into ever so slightly more dramatic territory. Old characters paired up into duos while new ones took the spotlight as solo stars, in a turn that somehow managed to do what Superstar failed to despite the higher character count overall. Most notably, two equally-fun polar opposites; the queen diva / secret idol otaku Lanzhu, and the introverted Shioriko, who has to be convinced to not prematurely give up on her fledgling dream of being an idol. Smaller character arcs like “Nana” finally giving up the facade and revealing to the whole school that yes, she is Setsuna, provide a nice cherry on the sundae, tinged with a slight bitterness not rooted in the series itself, but in the news that her voice actor won’t be returning to the role. If she had to leave, this was a good note to end on.

Nijigasaki’s remains a world where anyone can be an idol. There’s a kind of beauty in that, and the show’s strength comes from playing it very well. Even still, 2022 was home to more than one legitimately great idol anime, and I hope you do like idols and other girls who make music, because these aren’t the last ones on the list by a long shot. But first, something a little more….violent.

#11. Akiba Maid War

Is it a yakuza series? A deeply ridiculous comedy? Why not both? In a year of anime making the most out of completely absurd premises, Akiba Maid War might’ve gotten the most blood from its particular stone. On the surface there’s not anything terribly special about something deciding to subvert the old moe’ tropes by making the girls that embody them engage in mob war violence, and if that’s all AMW were doing it would be way farther back on the list. 

On top of that, this is also another entry that feels unstuck in time. People don’t really remember this whole trend anymore, but there was a wave of these anti-moe comedies around the turn of the new millennium, where much of the joke was simply that the characters enacting the absurd hyper-violence were cute girls. Most of them weren’t really particularly funny and have accordingly lost their charge now that the thing they were parodying is simply the norm. Fortunately, because Maid War clearly loves all of its influences, it manages to paradoxically pull off being that kind of slapstick-with-firearms comedy, a fairly played-straight yakuza series, and even sometimes genuinely cute, all without really even breaking a sweat. 

The sheer amount of small touches in this thing helps, too. My favorite example being the fact that most of the one-off maid characters who (spoiler alert, here) tend to get killed at the end of their episode are voiced by famous seiyuu. The crowning example being Aya motherfucking Hirano in the show’s penultimate arc. You don’t get anime that are this singularly their own thing super often. Despite its fairly obvious influences, and the several other interestingly retro anime that aired this year, Akiba Maid War stood in 2022 as an army of one, and accordingly, and this might just be the most underrated anime on the whole list.

#10. Waccha Primagi

The language barrier does strange things to relative popularity between Japan and the anglosphere. For the most part, the anime that are popular over there are popular over here, and vice versa. But there are exceptions, and kids’ shows are a wealth of them. Pretty Cure is the most obvious example, but one of that series’ main competitors, the Pretty Series—no relation—is up there, too. Waccha Primagi, like the other anime in the series before it, is ostensibly a promotional tool for an arcade game. Does this matter at all when evaluating the series? I’d say not really. I’ve never even seen the game in action, but despite that, I love this anime to pieces.

It’s fair to ask why. The fact of the matter is that Waccha Primagi is not the most polished anime on this list by any means, and its nature as a promotional tool means that it can at times feel repetitive. But there is really just something about it. The strange magic-filled world it conjures, where humanity and the animal “magic users” live in parallel to each other but come together to put on magical “waccha” idol concerts? That’s step one. Step two is the sheer amount of heart this thing has; its characters are candy-colored archetypes, but most pop with a rare amount of personality, be they the smug Miyuki, the anxiety-riddled gamer / idol otaku (yes, another one!) Lemon, the sporty Hina, or the princely Amane. Even Matsuri, the comparatively ‘generic’ lead, has an important role to play both as the audience proxy and as the lead for her partner, Myamu, yet another of the show’s most endearing characters.

But a broader picture than all that is Primagi’s actual plot. Waccha Primagi goes to some truly buck-wild places over its four cour runtime. Individual episodes contain straight-up gay confessions, simmering tensions between the human and magic-user worlds that threaten to erupt into full-on war at any moment, light satire of reality TV, a big bad who’s an entertainment and social media mogul, and carefully studied pastiches of the ancient “Class-S” genre of yuri, something with which its young target audience is wholly unlikely to be familiar. By its final stretch, one hardly bats an eye when Jennifer, the local Beyonce analogue, ascends to vengeful Sun God-hood to try to free her girlfriend from a magic diamond prison. And yet, the last two episodes strip all of that back away in an instant, and are hearteningly sincere instead. Waccha Primagi truly can do it all.

There were better anime in 2022, perhaps, but none hit higher above its weight class.

Well, alright, that’s a lie. One did. But we’ll get to that.

In the meantime, in spite of all of its strengths—and more than one kickass OP—Waccha Primagi was still not quite the best idol anime of 2022 either, as we’ll get to. Like I said, it’s been a hell of a year for the genre.

#9. Kaguya-sama Love is War! -Ultra Romantic-

Shot through the heart, and who else could be to blame? Love is War! makes a swing for personal notability by being the only anime to rank in the top ten both of this year’s list and of the one I did back in 2020. Why? Because it’s never stopped being just really fucking good. 

The mind games that gave the series its title finally die down here in the last act of the first half of the series (the second, which goes in some pretty out-there directions, has already gotten off the ground via a theatrical film that we probably won’t get over here in the US for a while). But the show itself doesn’t really slow down for even a second. If anything, the third season is defined even more strongly by fun, stylish visual work, with all of its old tricks acquiring a heart motif that serves as the central symbol of the school festival arc. (In terms of filtering a fairly conventional story through delightfully out-there visual work, it really only had one competitor this year. We’ll get to that.)

And of course, capping it all off, is that scene. Spoiler alert, but not really, right? A first kiss raised to such ridiculous, whirlwind heights of idealized romance that it could get just about anybody’s heart pounding. In Kaguya‘s case, it was enough that it called for a really fucking funny Gundam homage. (Mute that video, just as a heads’ up.) Truly, the character there—Karen, a minor character in Kaguya-sama proper but the lead of one of its spinoffs—is all of us. The real question is what Kaguya and Shirogane are going to do now, with the entire direction of their lives solidly changed?

We’ll find out before too long, I’m sure. The first kiss never ends, you know.

#8. Call of The Night

If The Case Study of Vanitas was a little too gothic for you, and My Dress-Up Darling’s particular brand of steaminess didn’t really get you going, maybe this particular ode to nocturnality, originally from the pen of Dagashi Kashi author Kotoyama, would be up your alley, as an interesting and unexpected midpoint between the two.

In Call of The Night, we have a romance that doubles as an apply-as-you-please metaphor for the outsiders of society. Normal people do not walk around their city in the middle of the night and get entangled with vampires. This is your first clue that CoTN protagonist Kou Yamori is not, in fact, a normal person. What kind of “not normal” is a sort of grand, moving-target metaphor that resists any single easy interpretation; I’ve seen him described as neurodivergent, as a closeted queer person, and as several other things beside. The fact of the matter is that, as a living symbol, he’s all of these and none of these. His relationship with Nana is certainly charged, but charged how is kind of an open question until the series’ final act, where it turns on its head and reveals that, more than anything else, this is a simple “you and me against the world” sort of tale. The kind I’m a sucker for. The fact that it all takes place almost entirely at night—daylight is a rare intrusion reserved for flashbacks and a tiny handful of other moments—makes it look amazing. This is certainly the most visually impressive series LIDEN FILMS have ever made, and wouldn’t you know it, much of that is on director Tomoyuki Itamura, who not only also did The Case Study of Vanitas a number of spots back, but in years past has done an absolute ton of work on the storied Monogatari series. The guy loves his horny vampires; I can only respect the hustle.

And hey, Call of The Night is probably also the year’s only anime to make compelling use of Japanese hip-hop for its soundtrack, Teppen’s OP theme notwithstanding.

#7. Birdie Wing -Golf Girls Story-

SolidQuentin was a prophet, because Birdie Wing -Golf Girls Story- is some hitherto-unknown kind of genius. 2022 was stuffed with anime that leaned heavily on sheer WTF factor; Estab Life, Akiba Maid War, etc. None could swing as much iron as Birdie Wing. More than anything, the golf girls’ story just doesn’t give a fuck what anyone thinks, which in a lesser anime could be a weakness, but here, it makes the show’s many disparate elements—illegal underground golf tournaments with morphing golf courses, characters who want to be good at golf with an enthusiasm that would put the average shonen protagonist to shame, a huge amount of rich girl/working class girl yuri subtext between its two leads, an incongruous fixation on referencing Gundam—feel whole. Birdie Wing feels like a dimension-hopper from a timeline where “irony” as a concept was just never invented. Every single thing it does is completely sincere; it knows it’s funny, but it’s not a joke. It’s camp, in its purest form.

And truly, the only real point of reference for things that feel like this is stuff like Symphogear. The main difference is that by downsizing that genre’s enormously campy energy to be about something as deeply trivial as golf, Birdie Wing makes the argument that maybe everything is this trivial, and maybe we deserve to have huge feelings about it anyway! Maybe our world isn’t so different from one where people play ludicrously high-stakes golf games with lives and pride alike on the line!

Every time I’ve written about Birdie Birdie, I’ve brought up “Nightjar“, its utterly insane choice for an ED, which carries a full-throated, big-hearted sincerity that, juxtaposed with a show that were even the tiniest smidgen more self-aware, would scan as a deliberate joke. But no, that is the beauty of Birdie Wing; this shit is as serious as your life, do not make any mistake. The only reason Birdie Wing isn’t even higher on the list is that it’s not finished yet. Season 2 airs in Spring, are you ready to tee off again? I, personally, cannot fucking wait. If it hits as many holes-in-one as the first season did, there is a very real chance that it will top the list next year. That’s not a threat; it’s a promise.

#6. BOCCHI THE ROCK!

Here it is, the hardest cut from the Top 5. I did not labor over a single decision on this list more than whether to include this in the Top 5 or put it down here as the “highest honorable mention.” Fun fact; by the time you read this, I have swapped it with the show at #5, by my own count, four times. This was a hard decision. Not the last of those on the list, but probably the one I’ve thought about the most.

In general, there were a solid handful of really fucking good music anime in 2022, let’s just lay that on the table. We’ve already seen a couple, and this isn’t the last one we’ll see on this list, but BOCCHI THE ROCK! might be the most unexpectedly successful. Not in purely commercial terms—although it did well in that regard, too—but in terms of setting up an artistic vision and then following through expertly. Few anime this year not only had this much style but used it to such compelling ends; it might actually beat out the third season of Love is War! on that front. No mean feat, considering how easily that anime turns its own medium into putty in its hands, too.

I will be honest, BOCCHI placing this high on the list is something of an act of course-correction, as well. I liked BOCCHI throughout more or less its entire run, but I really only started appreciating what it was trying to do—and thus, really loving it—pretty late, episode 9 or 10 or so. By that point, the Fall 2022 season was on its way out and I felt that I hadn’t even remotely given the show its well-earned due. But if Kessoku Band are a fill-in act, they’re a pretty damn amazing one, so don’t make the mistake of assuming I don’t love them or that this is a pity award, nothing could be farther from the truth.

BOCCHI THE ROCK!’s main point is to watch the title character, Hitori, alias Bocchi, herself grow as a person. She begins as an anxious wreck in the vague shape of an internet-famous guitarist and, by the end of the season, she’s still that, but she has not just a band but friends now. The thing is, if BOCCHI had simply adapted its manga straight, we would not be talking about it very much at all. Instead, BOCCHI THE ROCK’s real strength comes from the utterly absurd stylistic tricks it pulls out to pave the road along Hitori’s emotional journey.

Essentially, BOCCHI THE ROCK is unafraid to treat its characters as props. It’ll stick them on popsicle sticks and wave them around like this is His & Her Circumstances. It’ll render Hitori in chunky 3D and hurl her at a wall of gray blocks. It’ll turn her into a slug because sometimes when you’re this wracked by anxiety you really do just feel like a slug. It’ll have her slip out the bounds of her character outline like Jimmy from Ed Edd N Eddy just so she can look how a panic attack feels. Incredibly, at no point does it feel like BOCCHI is mocking Hitori herself. This is a relatable, we’ve-all-been-there sort of humor, one for the true otaku. This emotional power chord resonated with so many people that BOCCHI eventually overtook even long-anticipated shonen manga adaptation Chainsaw Man on MyAnimeList, in a come-from-behind victory for the socially anxious everywhere. (It doesn’t beat that series out on this list. But what is my blog compared to the will of the people, really?)

At the end of it all, you realize that Hitori is nothing more than an ordinary teenage girl; nerdy, talented but incredibly anxious, in serious need of a shoulder to lean on. And the series’ biggest trick is the ability to roll all that wild craziness into a gentle push on her back; before you know it, she’s shredding onstage. They grow up so fast.

I stressed a lot over that BOCCHI cut in particular. Hopefully the cult of the box of oranges won’t be too upset.

Tomorrow; the best of the best, the top 5 proper.

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, Mastodon, Cohost, Anilist, or Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to browse by category.

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

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 12

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

Heart to Heart! — Let your burning love reach everyone!

– Hoshin Culture Festival Motto

How do you open the two-part finale to your long-running love story? How about your heroine turning to stone and shattering? That’s the visual that Kaguya-sama: Love is War! opens on as its third season draws to a close; girl to granite to rubble. Why? Because Miyuki Shirogane is going to Stanford, and Kaguya Shinomiya knows she can’t stop him. And moreover, knows she shouldn’t.

It’s a visual metaphor, obviously; Kaguya-sama has loved those since it started and it certainly isn’t going to stop using them now. But, the literalization of the sentence “she was shattered by the revelation” gives you a pretty good notion of what we’re all in for here. If Love is War, this is the conflict’s turning point, where the generals and foot soldiers alike earn their medals.

Spare a thought for Hayasaka, who has been mostly-unwillingly playing both roles for ages now, and is who Kaguya goes to for comfort and advice as her carefully-laid plans for a full year of dating fall to pieces. Shirogane isn’t just going to Stanford, he’s graduating a year early to account for cross-Pacific grade differences. For us, it’s an elaboration as to why he’s been acting like time is running out, if it weren’t already obvious. For Kaguya, it’s a sledgehammer to the face. Love is a battlefield, and she’s been ambushed.

Hayasaka, again in her role as a beleaguered advisor, needles her mistress. If the day has to be today, then the confession of feelings—that old Japanese pop media trope so ingrained into the anime landscape that it’s practically part of the scenery—has to be perfect. Kaguya tries different phrasings, Hayasaka shoots almost all of them down. It’s amusing, yes. Kaguya-sama fully empties its bag of visual tricks here; starting with cheerleader-based how-to-confess diagrams and references to the ancient “yukkuri shitte ne” meme.

But the real emotional heft obviously comes when Kaguya-sama reigns it back in. As Hayasaka and Kaguya talk, the room is bathed in a scarlet sunset, and the core point the maid makes is simple; there aren’t any easy outs. Kaguya just has to tell the president how she feels about him somehow. There can be nothing else.

There is just one problem; in order to confess to the president, Kaguya has to find him, first.

In the meantime, theirs is not the only story freefalling through youthful confusion. As she searches high and low for Shirogane, Kaguya catches sight of Ishigami and Tsubame, which serves as a crossfade over to their side of the cultural festival.

Ishigami remains as oblivious-self-conscious as ever, paranoid about coming across as a “creep” for having a command of flower symbology while at the same time being still wholly unaware that what he intended as a simple kind gesture has been taken by Tsubame—and indeed the whole student body—as a declaration of romantic love. Here, Tsubame begs his patience, but because he doesn’t really know what she’s talking about, things get muddled; intentions swept off the ground in the December breeze, and the half-punchline that is Ishigami’s continued unawareness can only do so much to pop the winter evening ambiance. Unintentionally, Ishigami gives Tsubame until March, when the cherry tree they’re standing under blooms, to truly answer his feelings. The gymnast is surprised by his mental fortitude, and the whole sequence is funny, but also very sweet in its own way.

It’s only after the two part that Ishigami gets some sense of what he may have actually done. A festival play recounts the legend that gives the culture festival its heart motif, and our boy comes within striking distance of figuring out that giving hearts out is an implied romantic gesture. Still, the second Tsubame herself takes stage in the play, all rational thought goes out the window for Ishigami, and he promptly stops thinking about it.

But, even if things between them don’t work out, one gets the sense they’ll both be fine in their own way.

Back at our main story, though, Kaguya is lost in her own little world as she prepares to light the culture festival bonfire via flaming arrow. She manages an impressively skippy internal monologue the entire time, as We Want to Talk About Kaguya! leads Karen and Erika cameo off to the side of the scene.

I wonder if Aoi Koga gets paid by the word.

Karen will write a doujin about this later.

But the bonfire-lighting itself is swept aside as the mysterious “phantom thief Arsene” makes his presence known; the papier-mâché dragon jewel is gone, and the thief’s calling cards float in the air en-masse as a shadowy silhouette cuts a looming figure against the night sky.

Of course, no one but us knows that Shirogane is behind all this just yet. Notably, Fujiwara tasks herself with solving the mystery, only for her grandiloquent proclamations of her own genius to dissolve into a puddle as it becomes obvious that most of the ‘clues’ she’s found are either her own inventions or deliberately planted to throw her off. This is Kaguya’s puzzle to solve, and there’s only one actual hint.

Karen, in what is to my recollection her single most substantial contribution to Kaguya-sama‘s story, points out that the small calling cards are made of flame-resistant paper. This sets Kaguya’s own mental wheels a-turning, because that kind of care and preparedness reminds her of a certain someone, and it does not take long for the rest of the game to click into place.

And to give us all just the slightest airbrake of comedy before rocketing into its last half hour, Kaguya-sama then pulls out the one-two punch of “Kaguya dropped the plastic heart she was going to give Shirogane” and “Kaguya does not know how coffee machines work.”

Very good, Miss Shinomiya.

Shirogane, meanwhile, is starting to get flustered. The usual pattern of his where he does something extremely teenager only to cringe himself half to death the following day beginning to kick in as the second day of the culture festival ends. The narrator puts it best; the final battle of this war of love is to be a fistfight.

Kaguya-sama: Love is War!‘s season finale is a fucking hurricane of romantic imagery.

Shirogane’s plan is grandiose, ridiculous, ostentatious, and the sort of thing that only a heartsick teenage boy could dream up. It leans hard on narrative convenience—the strings he’d have to pull make no real sense, and the post-hoc explanations given here don’t really either—and hard on pre-built character sympathy. If someone did this kind of thing in real life and you read about it in the news, they’d be a horrible creep and you’d hate them. This is a “proposing on the Jumbotron” gesture blown up to ridiculous fantasy proportions.

But that of course is part of the beauty of fiction. Kaguya and Shirogane love each other very much; we know this, and have known this. It’s been obvious to everyone, including much of the show’s own cast, for, at this point, real-world years. Anything that moves the needle at all is good. But this? This is insanity. Beautiful, wonderful, romantic insanity. If love is a sickness, Shirogane’s case is terminal.

He uses some mechanical doohickey to pop a massive balloon, sending scores of heart balloons out into the air above the festival, held aloft by the heat from the bonfire, the December night breeze, and the fact that anime is the highest form of art. Shirogane’s winding internal monologue about how he really wants Kaguya to confess first because he needs to feel equal to her only half makes sense, but that doesn’t really matter. None of the obvious little holes in Shirogane’s plan really matter. Do you see how hard Kaguya’s blushing? I got contact flutters from watching this. Frankly, I’m a little envious.

It would be one thing if it stopped there, but it does not.

This isn’t usually what one means when they say “popping the question,” but it certainly feels comparable.

Really stop for a second and think about what he’s asking there. Think about these two characters and their respective situations, think about the enormity of what he’s asking her to do. Even on its own, studying abroad is a huge undertaking. Studying abroad at Stanford University is quite another level beyond that. Doing so in Kaguya’s specific situation is yet another step beyond that. This is an absurd ask. Kaguya says as much.

She says yes anyway. An implicit fuck-it-all to her own upbringing and, really, her entire life up to this point. She doesn’t even really hesitate. She’s giddy, if anything.

They kiss. Obviously, they kiss. On top of a clocktower, hearts surrounding them in the air.

Elsewhere on the festival grounds, Hayasaka blushes like crazy once she realizes what’s going on, and Miko Iino, alone on patrol, is the only one not present at the bonfire. Ishigami brings her a recording—and a plastic heart trinket, for the lost and found—a much more subtly sweet moment that contrasts nicely with the star-scraping, wild gesture that Shirogane’s just pulled off. Could there be something between those two someday? I don’t think it’s impossible. (It will certainly be funny if Ishigami, the character that Kaguya-sama‘s least pleasant fans attach themselves to out of a misunderstanding of his character, ends up having to choose between two women who are into him, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.)

And just like that, the festival switches off like a lightswitch, and we cut to the morning after. There is a postscript of sorts here; it’s very funny, and sweet in its own way, featuring a rare appearance from Kaguya’s childish “Kaguya-chan” personality. But with all I’ve said here, recapping that bit as well would feel a little pointless. It made me cackle out loud at one point, so you can consider that an endorsement.

It’s a valid question to ask; where, if anywhere, does Kaguya-sama: Love is War! go from here?

Well, not long after the episode aired in Japan, we got an answer of sorts. Whether that’s another season being announced, an OVA, a film, no one really knows yet. But Kaguya and Shirogane’s story doesn’t end here, and that’s the important part. I will spoil nothing, but there is much of the manga left to cover, so I am very curious as to what’s being planned. Kaguya-sama will appear here on Magic Planet Anime again, that much is almost a certainty.

But for now, the romantic rollercoaster ride has come to an end. Until next time, Kaguya fans.

Results for Today’s Battle: Mutual Victory

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

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

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

Two Dreams in the Council Room: The Other KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR! Anime

I have written a lot about Kaguya-sama: Love is War! over the years. Before this site even existed, I wrote about it for GeekGirl Authority, and then did so again for its second season. This season I’ve been following the third, writing about it here all the while.

But one thing I’ve not discussed is the second, other anime hidden in plain sight in Love is War! I am talking, of course, about the combined storyline presented by the Season 1 and Season 3 EDs.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-BqnGXABAw

Unique to the anime, and with no real equivalent anywhere in the manga, these two EDs tell a wordless, fantastical otherworld version of Love is War!‘s central storyline, blown up to epic fantasy proportions despite their limited runtime. They cross Love is War!’s basic ideas with a setting that begins at Studio Ghibli and ends somewhere out near Starship Trooper. It’s a strange, singular thing, and I love that it exists.

Metatextually, they are presented as a pair of dreams. One had by Kaguya in the student council room as she dozes off after a day of hard work, and the other had by Miyuki in what appears to be the cafe` from season 2.

In this version of the story., Miyuki Shirogane is no student, he’s a plane mechanic. And Kaguya’s status as a “princess” appears to be far more literal, with all that implies. She’s also not human, possibly alluding to her namesake‘s nature as a princess from the Moon. By their nature, neither short has a terribly complex story. Indeed, the lack of any dialogue makes the specific events depicted in each ambiguous to some degree, but there’s no denying that they are telling a story, and that they do fit together.

Like her mundane counterpart, otherworld Kaguya appears to have her heart shut off from the world, and her only real companion is her maid, Hayasaka.

But it seems like some version of the student council did exist here at one point. A brief flash of a framed picture is all we get, but it’s enough to make the conclusion that Kaguya had bonded with these people—just like she did in the real show—only to have them taken away from her.

This frames what follows in a fascinating way; something like a mutual plan, by both this “aviation club” and Kaguya and Hayasaka themselves (the latter takes up a rifle here and looks perfectly at home holding it.) Kaguya escapes from the massive zeppelin all of her lonely isolation shots took place in, and literally sprouts fucking angel wings as she flees. In the pivotal, romantic clincher, she grabs on to Miyuki’s hand as he flies past in a biplane.

Ishigami and Chika are there, too, to give their approval. Kaguya is sometimes hard on these two, especially Chika, so it can be nice to have even small reminders that, yes, she really does care about them a lot.

And the short ends on a shot of Kaguya waking up in the council room, giving her friends a warm smile.

The second ED—again, from the third season. The second season’s ED was nice in its own way, but doesn’t connect to this story—is stranger and darker. Some amount of time has clearly passed, and Kaguya, here specifically marked out as an alien, has been once again spirited away by her people. The opening shot of the ED shows her coronated with a wicked crown that seems to change her very body and soul, a blunt and evocative metaphor for her abusive upbringing from the main series, and the “Ice Kaguya” persona she once put on to escape it.

So, what choice do our heroes have? Pulp sci-fi splash screens spring to life as they spell out the operation.

Miyuki broods as he remembers those he’s met over the course of what seems to be a rather long war (more questions unanswered, there). Hayasaka, Iino, and what appears to be his own family. But when the Earthlings arrive, there’s no time to reminisce; they come up against swarms of monster bugs, lead by Kaguya herself from the chair of command.

There’s a ton of movement in this microscopic fight scene—it really is only a few seconds—bullets fly and, at one point, Chika takes a shot to the head (don’t worry, she’s fine).

Through the furor, Miyuki can only think about one other person on the battlefield. An injured Hayasaka gives him Kaguya’s hair ribbon, and he dashes forward like a madman, leaping, seeming to knock the crown off, and tying her hair back into a ponytail. The spell is broken! Mission successful.

The dream ends here, and we see the real Miyuki’s eye pop open as Kaguya gently wakes him up.

Isn’t all this just adorable? That Miyuki fantasizes about being this romantic hero archetype rescuing the princess from the enemy’s clutches? Isn’t it adorable too, that Kaguya dreams of being rescued by him, even if she does a lot of the work herself, in her own dream? There is a lot of warmth between the two even in just the short few seconds they interact with each other at the end of the second ED.

To state the obvious; I would, of course, watch or read the absolute hell out of a spinoff that elaborated upon this story. But even as successful as Kaguya is, that seems unlikely. So, it remains, just these few minutes, like tiny jewels.

In general, I’ve always believed that Kaguya is at its strongest when making bold, sweeping, romantic gestures. It is at its weakest when it attempts to delve into gender psychology and make too-broad statements about the nature of love or sex. One of the reasons that these two EDs work so well is that they’re entirely the former, distilling down all of Kaguya‘s strengths and casually eliminating all of its flaws into just a couple combined minutes of excellence. There is nothing else like it, and as I already mentioned, I’m just happy that it exists. Hopefully you are too.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 11

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

We knew this day would come. There’s been a fire burning in Miyuki Shirogane’s heart since we first learned that he’d be transferring abroad for college, probably since before then. Hourglasses wait for no one, and Miyuki and Kaguya’s dynamic has shifted fairly drastically since the first season, or really even, the earlier parts of this season.

Episode 11 is, top to bottom, filled with the actions of a man who knows he’s running out of time, and running out of time fast. We learn at the very end of this episode that the transfer to Stanford is not some far-off thing, he’s been accepted. And will be skipping his last year of high school. Shooting for the moon is no longer an option; it’s a necessity.

But as much as this episode does to pour the powder in and light the fuse, the long-awaited confessionary gun does not fire just yet. That’s for next week’s episode, a double-length finale. This week, there’s a lot of tension, a lot of buildup, and, thankfully, still quite a lot of jokes. A ton of great visual tricks here, too, most of which I don’t have the space to discuss individually.

We begin with what I’m fairly sure is a deliberate throwback to the back-and-forth antics of season one. Kaguya visits a balloon tying table, which ‘just so happens’ to be staffed by Shirogane. Obviously, she wants him to make her a balloon heart, but in her own mind she still can’t just say that, leading to her giving out an increasingly ridiculous list of things that the balloon can’t be, culminating with her arguing that flowers are animals. (It’s complicated.)

Notably, in this and a few other nods to the first season’s structure, Kaguya and Shirogane’s roles are reversed. It is now Kaguya who is at a distinct “disadvantage” when it comes to playing these little games. Notice, for instance, how things turn when she finally gets her heart balloon, and finds out that you don’t pay for them with money like you do any of the other designs.

Whoops!

Flustered, she slaps far too much money down and flees. It’s funny, but it does also show that Kaguya and Shirogane are really no longer even doing the same thing. When they both thought they had all the time in the world to work this out, the stakes were relatively low. Now that Shirogane, at least, knows that that’s not the case, he has much less to lose. (Arguably, he never had anything to lose in the first place other than perhaps a misplaced sense of pride, but you know how teenagers are.)

Eventually, Kaguya encounters Tsubame, who is having a tough time figuring out how to respond to Ishigami’s unintentional confession. Specifically, figuring out how to turn him down. She’s used to turning down playboy types who think they’re entitled to her, but Ishigami’s confession was (from her point of view, see last episode’s recap for how this whole mixup happened), sincere and straightforward, and that’s not something she knows how to deal with.

It’s not even, really, that she doesn’t like Ishigami. She just doesn’t know him very well, and is concerned that being in a serious relationship would damage other areas of her life.

Kaguya, always with a minor in villainy, initially assumes that the person she’s talking about must be someone else—and thus one of Ishigami’s rivals—and in the process she very nearly convinces Tsubame to shut him down in perhaps the worst way possible.

Thankfully things eventually clear themselves up. Kaguya and Tsubame eventually find themselves spying on Chika, who deals with the out-of-the-blue confession that she gets by challenging her would-be beaux to a quiz and then spouting koans at him.

There’s also a short scene where Iino very nearly gets sweet-talked by a pair of random incidental characters. Girl really needs to be more careful (thankfully Ishigami is there to bonk her on the head).

The remainder of the episode sees Kaguya run into Shirogane again. He promptly invites her to walk around the festival, and once again, Kaguya does not entirely know how to deal with Shirogane’s suddenly much more blunt personality. When she asks him if people won’t get the idea that they’re on a date, to which he promptly responds….

….again, he knows he’s running short on time. All of this is fairly interesting in that outside of the context of Kaguya-sama as a series itself, it wouldn’t be that notable. But within that context, knowing what we do about both of these people, Shirogane’s sudden comparative boldness is pretty striking.

This includes, for example, taking her to a fortune telling booth manned by a girl known for asking questions that border on the lascivious. Meet Yume Atenbo (Ai Kakuma). She’s what some sorts of people, a long time ago, would’ve called a one-scene wonder. She gets in, does her thing, and gets out. She’s kind of amazing, an opinion I definitely don’t hold in part because she’s dressed up as a witch and my Twitter account is called “Jane the Anime Witch.”

She needles the two to the point of, frankly, harassment. (As always, romcoms are not a good place to get your notions of proper romance or just behavior in general from, kids.) But she does also drop this particularly interesting bombshell in between all the quips about how Kaguya will make a great wife.

Is she just messing with them? Is she playing cupid? Does she have actual supernatural insight somehow? Who knows, but no matter the method, she is actually right, as we’ll come to see. She also compares Kaguya to pure water; someone whose very nature changes depending on who she surrounds herself with. (I would argue this is true of all people to some extent, but that it’s truer of Kaguya than most would not necessarily be wrong.)

The both of them flustered (but definitely happy), Kaguya and Shirogane spend much of the remaining day together, after a hilarious sequence where the two narrowly avoid having their date ruined by random interference from their friends. (My favorite of these involves Iino, who is hungry, and gets abruptly drafted into a soba-eating contest out of nowhere before she can even talk to the two of them.)

Near the end of the episode, Kaguya has this absolutely adorable thought.

The only thing putting a damper on this happy ending is what I mentioned back up there in the very first paragraph. Shirogane needs to talk about something serious, and it’s not what Kaguya would’ve wanted to hear.

Can they make it work out somehow? Will Shirogane actually find the nerve to confess his love? Will the mysterious phantom thief stealing up all the heart balloons ever be caught? (Yeah, that whole plot runs throughout the background of this episode, too. It’s why Chika’s in her Love Detective uniform up in the banner.) All of these questions and more will be answered next week in the finale. See you then, Love is War fans!

Bonus Hayasaka Screencap, which I have been shamefully forgetting to do: Here’s Hayasaka giving a full-on idol performance during the school festival.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 10

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

This week; festival stuff, beginning with the haunted house that was teased at the end of last week’s episode. Even in just this opening scene, we get a lot of interesting xx. Kaguya and her cousin Maki alike prove to be cowardly within the haunted house proper, and when we flash back to how all the spooky 3D sound (yes, 3D sound) was recorded in the first place—by subjecting Miko to it—and we get maybe the only Love is War! segment that might cause untoward awakenings in certain viewers. Seriously, if you showed some of these stills to someone out of context they would very much get the wrong idea.

Thankfully I’d never do that to my loyal readers.

More to the point, back in the present, Miko catches a couple making out in the haunted house and as a result the attraction gets separated into two lines; one for boys, one for girls. By coincidence, this also ruins Ishigami’s initial plan for getting an ideal opening to confess his feelings to Tsubame, so he has to do something else instead.

On the spur of the moment, while visiting a class cafe, he wins a gigantic heart-shaped cookie for her, with the intent that doing so would just be a nice gesture. Dramatic irony ahoy, he is unaware of the whole “eternal love” urban legend, singled out by the narrator as one of about 10% of students who doesn’t know about it. This leaves Tsubame a blushing, mess, and, flustered, she runs off screaming that she needs time to think about his inadvertent confession.

And friends, let me tell you, I am someone who is pretty sensitive to second-hand embarrassment. Ishigami accidentally(!!) confessing to his massive crush on Tsubame in front of her own class, a good 20 or 30 people, did not just make my skin crawl, it made my spine shuffle around like a deck of cards. I could feel my teeth conspiratorially whispering “get a load of this guy” to each other. My hair stood on end and metamorphed, Bayonetta style, into that one meme of girls at a college party looking awkwardly at the camera. The cringe is real, and it is inside of Ishigami. I have not felt this bad for the guy in quite some time.

Later in the episode, Shirogane and Chika wonder aloud about Ishigami’s chances. Shirogane is hopeful, admittedly because if Ishigami isn’t successful, it might ruin his ability to pull off his own forthcoming confession. Chika, meanwhile, says Ishigami “doesn’t have a prayer.” Comedic rudeness aside, she does think pretty hard on Ishigami’s chances, despite her initial assessment, including grading him on “points” and trying to put herself in Tsubame’s shoes a bit. This facet of Chika has always been pretty interesting to me. What she’s doing here—treating romance between two people as an object of amusement or for study—is fairly representative of someone with a para-romantic personality. If she’s seriously interested in any crush or anything of the sort of her own, we don’t hear about it here, and I’m pretty confident we never will. (This does have the unfortunate effect of sidelining Chika any time the anime starts focusing more heavily on its dramatic side.)

My armchair psychoanalyzing of Chika aside, she indicates that thinking on it more, she actually does think Ishigami has a chance, and it is always nice to see her being genuine.

Elsewhere, we’re reintroduced to Moeha, who you may or may not remember as Chika’s younger sister. She’s also basically Chika But Sadistic, although that angle of her personality is toned back here, since this segment focuses on her newfound crush on Shirogane.

Yes, Shirogane now has another girl who thinks his dead-eyed sleep deprived stare is the sexiest thing in Japan. There’s even a great moment where Kaguya, who is initially very hostile upon finding out about this, has a “could this be one of my people?” sort of reaction as the two gush about that very feature of his.

Before that, it’s Chika who tries to sabotage the relationship, by demonstrating how terrible Shirogane is at various things. She picks a pretty random task—juggling—and sets him to do it, assuming he’ll be as awful at that as he was at singing, rapping, playing volleyball, and however many other things. Naturally, because of the laws of comedy, he’s actually pretty fantastic at juggling. And the three or four other things Chika tries to have him do.

That particular segment ends with this, a casual reminder that Moeha has a particularly warped personality. But hey, at least she’s funny about it.

Post-credits, we find out that someone’s stolen all the heart-shaped balloons at the festival! Truly, an unprecedented crime! The heist of the century! Who could our culprit be?

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

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

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime

So OSHI NO KO is Getting an Anime, Let’s Talk About That

“Perhaps the next time you read about Oshi no Ko on this blog, it will be about an upcoming anime adaption.”

I don’t want to say “I called it.” But I’m actually lying, because I totally do want to say that.

To be fair it did not take a genius to know that this day would come eventually. Oshi no Ko is popular, well-liked, written by one of the new greats in his field and drawn by another in hers (Aka Akasaka, also of Kaguya-sama: Love is War! and Mengo Yokoyari, of Scum’s Wish, respectively). Nonetheless, I’m glad that it has. Oshi no Ko is like very little else; a dark, intense examination of the entertainment industry and what it means to be famous from almost every angle on one hand, and a strange, and occasionally even off-putting supernatural mystery on the other. As a kaleidoscope of tones and emotions, Oshi no Ko goes significantly farther, even, than that other manga Akasaka is known for, and Yokoyari’s illustrations really sell the series’ more out-there elements. It’s not flawless—what is?—but I love it a lot.

But of course, we’re not here to talk about the manga, which I will not spoil over the course of this brief article. (I did that pretty thoroughly when I wrote about it last year, so fair warning if you end up reading that article.) We’re here to talk about the upcoming anime. Let’s go over what little we’ve learned over the two days since its announcement. (I’m quick on the draw for this stuff, ain’t I?)

First, the studio; Doga Kobo. Those familiar with DK might think them an odd choice for a series like this, and, honestly, that was my first reaction, too. Doga Kobo are more known for laid-back slice of life series or lightweight romance anime. They are not the first studio that comes to mind when one thinks of intensity or drama, but the pairing makes a sideways sort of sense.

Over the past few years, they’ve begun branching out a bit with somewhat more serious endeavors like Sing “Yesterday” For Me and Selection Project. But interestingly, even some of their “fluff” has gained a visually compelling edge recently. Just last week, an episode of the pleasant but normally unremarkable Shikimori Isn’t Just a Cutie shaded the show over with rain and intense emotion by focusing on the story of a minor side character, and that show’s opening animation depicts a dimension-hopping adventure that is totally unreflective of the show itself. To me, these are possible signs of restless talent, a notion backed up by the fact that said opening animation’s director—Saori Tachibana—will be the assistant director on the Oshi no Ko anime. I am eager to see if I’m correct about all this or not.

As for who she’s assisting, here it’s worth circling back around to the Selection Project connection. (The Connection Project.) Because that show’s director, Daisuke Hiramaki, is also directing this show. I will admit to not having been terribly taken by what little I saw of Selection Project, but I did appreciate the show’s visual moodiness. Something that, if Hiramaki brings to the Oshi no Ko project, I think will suit the series well. Character design—a broad role despite the simple name—is being handled by Kanna “kappe” Hirayama, who also helped direct the Shikimori OP. I don’t envy her for having to help translate Yokoyari’s art style to motion, but my impression is that she’s up to the task. The only real question mark for me here is Jin Tanaka, mostly known for scripts and whose other series comp credits don’t have much in common with OnK. Still, needless to say, I am optimistic about the staff in general.

I’m honestly not super much of a production hound in this way most of the time. (I usually prefer going into an anime with as few preconceived notions as possible, but for an adaption of a manga I’ve read a good chunk of that’s already impossible.) But I will take anything as an excuse to get excited. There is a lot wrong with the anime industry, but when things align just so, there is a lot of fascinating, compelling art that comes from it as well. I am hoping the Oshi no Ko adaption can contribute to that tradition.

We don’t know a ton else about the series yet. Trailers, release dates, etc. are all things of future concern. For now, all we have is our hopes, our dreams, and the single picture of Ai that graces this article’s banner, where she stands alone under a smoldering spotlight, one finger pointing to the sky, singing her heart out to an audience of anonymous faces who lift cherry red glow sticks like antennas to heaven.

This is not the last time I will write about Oshi no Ko on this site. I intend to cover the anime weekly once it starts airing, at the very least, and I may well make another “hype” article like this when the proper trailers start dropping. I have one character in particular I’m eager to see adapted to the silver screen (those of you who’ve read my previous article on the manga already know who I’m talking about, most likely). But mostly, I am just happy that an excellent manga seems like it’s going to get a worthy adaption that lives up to—perhaps even elevates?—the source material. It’s the least Oshi no Ko deserves.

See you then.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 9

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

The culture festival is underway, and with it, Kaguya-sama: Love is War! drops the most lavishly-directed episode of its third season so far, with a dizzying array of style cuts and other interesting visual tricks. Despite that, we’re mostly going to be talking about the actual plot of the episode; three separate plotlines progress here, and I suspect that it wouldn’t be wrong to consider this the first part of a four-part finale. There’s a lot of ground to cover here (and for me personally, it’s already rather late in the day, whoops!), so let’s get started.

We actually begin with a flashback. An interesting choice, and one that establishes that the next few episodes are going to cut this plotline—set a year prior to where the series is at now—with the show’s present day. Here, we meet a far more bitter and burned-out Shirogane than the one we’re used to. One who hasn’t yet met the girl he’ll eventually devote so much of his time to, and one who is understandably fed up with Shuchiin Academy’s student body of rich kids, future heirs and heiresses, and so on. He isn’t wrong to feel this way, something I don’t think the show quite gives enough attention. But it is clearly hurting him emotionally, and he needs something to bring him out of that slump.

It’s here that we’re introduced to Shuchiin Academy’s previous Student Council President, an androgynous fellow that the anime gives a stylish purple undershade to his otherwise plain black cropped hair.

The former Council President is a mysterious guy, and we don’t really get the full picture behind him here. What’s important though is that he wants to recruit Shirogane to the Student Council. Why? Well, he describes Shuchiin Academy as a walled garden (true) and thinks that having someone who can look at the wider world with a “level gaze” would be an advantage. He probably isn’t wrong, there must be a reason, after all, that Shirogane eventually succeeds him. (In spite of the prejudice against “outsiders”, ie. people who didn’t come to Shuchiin directly from its associated elementary school, that we’re informed of here.) Shirogane is understandably skeptical, a skepticism expressed by an interesting visual detail; Shirogane idly picks at the decoration on the expensive ceramic the President serves him tea in when the two have their little meeting.

Before Shirogane’s even agrees to being recruited, the President has him help clean out a mucky pond on school grounds, and Shirogane understandably wonders if he isn’t just being taken advantage of. He doesn’t have time to wonder for long, though, as a genuine near-tragedy strikes as one of the girls cleaning out the pond falls in. Apparently the water is deep enough that drowning is a real risk, and everyone present wrings hands over what to do as the girl thrashes in the water. Everybody except, of course, a passing-by Kaguya, who leaps into the water without a moment’s hesitation and rescues the girl handily.

And so, Shirogane falls for Kaguya.

Kaguya-sama leans on the shadowless technique for emotional moments so often that it’s practically an internal cliche for the series. And yet, I love it every time.

Not because of her status or looks, but because of her decisive and bold nature. That may seem strange to us, the audience, given that we know Kaguya as much for her flustered pull faces, her hilarious but self-defeating exercises in denying that she has a crush on the Shirogane, etc. But the fact remains that this is the Kaguya that Shirogane first fell for; the sort of person who’d leap to rescue someone else without a second thought. And it makes sense, in a way. To step into the show’s narrator’s shoes for a moment; people are often attracted to those who possess characteristics they themselves lack. Shirogane seeing Kaguya as someone more driven and strong-minded than himself and eventually striving to meet her on that level makes perfect internal sense.

There is some interesting immediate aftermath here. Shirogane chastises himself for being indecisive and makes a mental comment to himself that it “doesn’t matter” if one was born rich or gifted, what matters is the ability to take action when it’s necessary. I’d argue this little aside is the one thing in the scene that doesn’t really work. One of Aka Akasaka‘s few notable weaknesses as a writer is an implicit conservative streak1 in some of the basic assumptions his work is built on. Here, he seems to have neglected that those born into comfort or otherwise advantaged have much more ability to learn the skills to become “decisive” in the first place. Shirogane, as a working-class student from a poor family who has nonetheless accomplished quite a lot from sheer drive, would be well aware of this.

Nearby, Kaguya tries to brush her own heroism off. Hayasaka praises her, but Kaguya claims it was just the obvious thing to do; the girl she saved is the daughter of a newspaper mogul, and being able to call in that favor someday might be important. It’s not impossible that Kaguya is telling the truth here and she really was acting out of, essentially, selfishness, but to me it seems more like the sort of mental gymnastics we’d eventually come to know her for. We could, if we wanted to be uncharitable, read her last comment here—to the effect of, “no one really does anything for anyone else without wanting something in return”—as the writer’s own beliefs. But to me, it seems more plausible that she’s again just denying her own feelings. Akasaka does seem to keenly understand how growing up in the sort of environment Kaguya did can mess with you.

All that in a flashback, which contrasts heavily with the Kaguya we see when the show returns to present.

A Kaguya who is wearing a Taisho-period traditional Japanese woman’s costume as part of her class’s cosplay cafe, yes.

Shout out to Mocksune Miku in the back, there.

This segment, which primarily focuses on Kaguya’s misadventures in said cosplay cafe, is probably the least “important” of the three here. But it does feature the return of the Ramen Guys, an advantage that cannot be so easily discounted. It also features Hayasaka “cosplaying” as a maid; ie., her normal, actual self.

And they interact, too, of course. The Ramen Guys insult Kaguya’s coffee pouring technique while complimenting Hayasaka’s (in one of the show’s oddest visual gags to date, they’re drawn as though badly greenscreened onto a backdrop depicting a galaxy. I think this may be a spoof of old educational programming, but I don’t know enough on the subject to comment.)

Ratio.

Kaguya counters that she can pour an expert cup of tea, at least, and is promptly taken up on her offer. All this causes Kaguya to miss interacting with Shirogane, which was her entire hope in working for the cafe in the first place.

But, one of the Ramen Guys (yes, I will keep capitalizing that) notes that Kaguya’s tea is so good that clearly she’s been perfecting it for a single specific person. He notes this very loudly, while Shirogane is relatively nearby, to Kaguya’s immense embarrassment.

As they depart, the taller of the two Ramen Guys wishes Kaguya well in her love story. He even briefly meets Shirogane, noting that he is “the one.” (Of course, Shirogane has no idea what he’s talking about.)

Kaguya, meanwhile, notes that she’d really like to get a bit of lead up if she’s going to confess her feelings to Shirogane at any point during the festival. Similar thoughts, meanwhile, are had by someone else.

Shirogane’s segment is the briefest of the three here, but it’s also the punchiest, and the only one in which a substantial development occurs. Before that, though, he gets to pal around with Maki, who spends these couple minutes just being a complete bummer in a very funny way.

But she also offers some genuine advice; suggesting that Ishigami ask Tsubame, who’s apparently into scary stuff, to the rather intense Haunted House one of the classes is putting on. (There’s an amusing, but also kind of sad, “I lead others to a treasure I cannot possess” sort of dynamic going on with Maki the Matchmaker here.)

There are some more shenanigans crammed in here, including a deeply awkward scene in which Maki’s former crush and his girlfriend show up. (Ishigami mentions that the latter gives him “sinister” vibes. I’m not sure if this is a callback to that whole business from early in the season where she thought her boyfriend was cheating on her, or some sort of foreshadowing. Given the bizarre visual style shift that accompanies the immediately preceding scene—that’s it in the header image—I think it might be the latter? But it’s hard to say.)

But in the end, Ishigami actually does ask Tsubame to the haunted house. Not without effort and not without some awkwardness, but hey! He did it! And she even agrees to go with him! (Whether she’s aware of his intentions or not is an entirely different subject, of course.)

Look at him, he’s like a happy puppy.

We don’t see that haunted house date here. (Although what little we do see of the haunted house looks pretty cool, and is shot like a found-footage horror film.) The episode ends on what’s essentially a cliffhanger.

So, until next week, Kaguya fans.

1: I here mean the term only in a general sense. I do not know the details of eg. Akasaka’s voting record, etc. Nor, frankly, do I wish to.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 8

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

I’ll level with you, dear readers. (And hopefully do so without belaboring the point.) My life has been very hectic lately and I do not know how consistent my Let’s Watch columns will be in the coming weeks. But! I want to still write them when I have enough time and energy to get them together, especially when they’re about important episodes. And this week’s episode of Love is War! is very important. (Arguably, from this point forward, they all are.) It’s also just pretty damn good, but that’s par for the course with Kaguya-sama.

We’ll be pretty much skipping the first segment this week, which is a funny-sweet little vignette about Shirogane’s terrible fashion sense. It’s cute, but it’s not hugely important to the rest of the episode.

Instead, the latter two segments of the episode form a fairly distinct whole. Throughout, we must keep in mind one central fact.

Yes, the heart. Symbol of romance throughout the world, it plays a key symbolic role in both the in-universe Hoshin Culture Festival and this arc of the series itself. We learn why in the second segment of the episode, where Tsubame happily explains the frankly rather grim legend that the festival draws its iconography from, in which a sick princess is cured by a prospective lover sacrificing his own life in order to give her his heart to make a poultice.

Still, in Kaguya‘s world, as in ours, a story’s meaning can change over time. In-universe, Kaguya speculates that the legend might’ve emerged as a way for a ruler to validate her own rule, to which Tsubame lightheartedly calls her quite the realist. Her tune changes, of course, when Tsubame also explains that giving someone a heart-shaped object at the festival is said to ensure eternal love. She gives the example of her own brother, who recently married someone he first met at the festival. By this, Kaguya is swayed.

Almost immediately, she begins to puzzle out how to slip Shirogane a heart-shaped object, something with a heart pattern on it, anything that would both “count” for the legend but also not give her away. She ponders some truly silly stuff, here.

These are the usual Love is War shenanigans, until, suddenly, they aren’t.

Kaguya reflects here and is able to actually admit to herself for the first time that, yeah, she does actually have a thing for Shirogane. More importantly, she’s able to admit it to Hayasaka, who is shocked at her actually owning up to her own feelings for once. She wonders what exactly she’s afraid of; she knows Shirogane likes her, after all, so really this should be a simple thing. Eventually, she flatly rejects the very premise of the series itself as she mulls over some of Hayasaka’s advice.

But years of being trained to bury one’s feelings are not so easily undone, so she does not make a move here. Not yet, and not now.

She does hear about someone else’s moves, though. Ishigami is planning to ask Tsubame to the festival, even if the much-mythologized “love confession” comes a bit later, the truth of the matter is that Ishigami very much realizes that Tsubame’s graduation marks a deadline for any hope of his telling her how he feels. Kaguya is up against a similar time limit, although she doesn’t yet know that. (Ishigami has also only just learned that Tsubame is even single, which is a whole small subplot in of itself that’s tied up here.)

Average 11th grader realizing they might get to hold a girl’s hand.

The scene here is wonderful, and I maintain that Kaguya and Ishigami’s friendship is actually one of the best parts of Love is War full stop. Even if Ishigami is rejected, he will have gotten his feelings out. No more regrets for our favorite gamer boy.

And perhaps that lights a fire in Kaguya as well. But we’ll have to wait for next week to learn more.

Until then.

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

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

Posted on in anime, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch KAGUYA-SAMA: LOVE IS WAR -ULTRA ROMANTIC- Episode 7

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

Today we hit perhaps the densest episode so far of Kaguya-sama: Love is War!‘s third season. -Ultra Romantic- has not been shy about plot thickets before this point, so that’s saying something, but we’re introduced to three new characters and two new plotlines here. That’s a lot to take in all at once; enough so that this episode actually has four segments instead of the usual three. (If you wanted to split hairs, you could say the last two are more like two parts of the same segment.)

We open with a pair of familiar faces, though. Mito Iino and Yuu Ishigami are, once again, the characters we’re riding along with for the opening segment. They’ve been assigned to the planning committee for Shuchiin Academy’s cultural festival, making this the second anime episode I’ve covered in a row about that topic. (Although the one in Healer Girl wasn’t a pre-Winter Break festival like this one is.)

But this is Shuchiin Academy, home of the sons and daughters of Japan’s wealthiest and most important families, must of course have a suitably grandiose cultural festival. The planning involved here must be an absurd undertaking, and one does get that sense even though we only see a little bit of it here.

Both leads for this segment have an ulterior motive; Miko, for reasons we haven’t really had explained in full yet, really wants the festival to cap with a roaring bonfire. Ishigami, meanwhile, is trying to impress Tsubame, who is also on the planning committee. Ishigami has dealt with some of these people before, during the sports festival from last season, but Miko very much hasn’t, so she feels rather out of place.

And arguments break out over what the slogan for the festival should be, starting with several….creative suggestions from Ishigami’s ostensible romantic rivals, other boys on the committee.

This is probably also the worst the series has ever suffered from the official release’s subpar typesetting.

I believe this is also our formal introduction to Rei Onodera (Yuuki Takada), yet another member of the committee and one who initially clashes with Miko.

Miko’s able to stand up for herself though—including getting everyone on board for her bonfire idea—which is a nice way of showcasing some character development on her part. Ishigami offering to help is much the same.

The second segment deals with another pair of new characters, Karen Kino (Madoka Asahina) Erika Kose (Ayaka Asai). Well, they’re not new characters exactly. Karen and Erika, in addition to being the stars of the spinoff manga We Want to Talk about Kaguya!, have actually had several small appearances dating back to the beginning of the show. And I do mean the beginning. Karen was actually the very first character to get a voiced line in the entire series, other than the narrator.

Here they mostly go about and interview various folks about the upcoming festival. This includes Tsubame, who gets a little sequence showing off her gymnastic skills, and also mentions that there’s actually a legend associated with the cultural festival.

And later, when they interview Shirogane, he alludes to another tradition associated with the festival. A “prank” usually played by the student council that involves installing a giant papier-mache orb on the school roof.

They also interview Kaguya herself, who they promptly lose their entire minds over.

As the title of the spinoff focused on them implies, the two are both down absolutely horrible for Kags. It’d be enough to make me feel a little bad for them if they both didn’t also spend time swooning over, respectively, Tsubame and Shirogane. They’re fun, and they get a lot of entertainingly wrong ideas about what Kaguya is like.

(The fact that Kaguya is an absurdly prodigal archer and has been chosen to light the bonfire that the cultural festival committee worked so hard to get approved by firing an arrow at it makes their total misfires about her personality a bit easier to understand. Still, knowing what we do about her, they’re pretty funny.)

They also interview the game club, which is mostly an excuse for Love is War to once again show off how weird Chika and her (mostly offscreen) other group of friends are. One of them goes full chuuni while explaining their grand plans for the festival, which is animated like something out of Kill la Kill for presumably no real reason other than because it’s funny.

(This joke is also a nod to the origins of Love is War! itself. It’s a commonly known bit of fan trivia that the ancestral pitch for what eventually became Kaguya-sama was a death game manga.)

And lastly, what would an episode of Love is War be without Shirogane being comically inept at something? This time it’s balloon tying.

I don’t need to tell you that his inability to make funny balloon animals leads to him wallowing miserably on the floor, which nearly guilts Chika into helping him. (A decent chunk of the scene is also shot like a moody drama for, again, no real reason but amusing stylistic clash.)

It is notable that this time, though, he actually leaves before Chika can do her whole demon trainer / mom shtick on him. Instead he keeps practicing on his own, this time in the student council room. Kaguya, who is also there, has a hard time because of this, given all the balloons popping.

Here, Love is War pulls of a neat trick of flipping this usually comedic template—which it’s used several times at this point, including once before in this very season—into Shirogane genuinely reflecting on what he sees as his own shortcomings.

But, of course, Kaguya doesn’t see it that way. To her, this is Shirogane’s charm; a dedication in the face of challenge regardless of what that challenge is, be it large or, as in this case, small. The warm, full smile she gives him (and us, given that the scene briefly switches to his POV), is probably the most sincere we’ve seen in the whole show so far. This alone would justify the entire segment even if it weren’t already pretty good.

Things swing back to the comedic for the episode’s final few minutes, in its final scene.

Initially, it seems like Shirogane’s apparent incompetence here can be explained away by the fact that he was using old balloons. But then he tries the same method with brand-new ones, and they promptly pop as well.

Hang in there, Fujiwara.

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.