Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
“The countdown to farewell has already begun.”
It has been three years since I started covering Kaguya-sama: Love is War! In that time, I’ve read much of the original manga, so I knew this day was coming eventually. But hindsight has a way of snapping together things that seemed unrelated at first glance. Call it reading too much into pure coincidence, call it serendipity, call it the norns at work.
In its sixth episode, the show’s third season finally rounds the bend and gets serious. These more dramatic parts of Love is War! are what the series’ reputation is truly built on. I think it would still be beloved without them, but they help the story to feel larger than its constituent characters. Even for someone far removed from the rich kids’ club of Shuchiin Academy, it can reach out and touch a point in one’s own personal timeline, creating resonances both close and far. That is what this episode, and eventually, this entire arc, is all about. Which isn’t to say it’s a drag, (most of this episode is just as funny as the ones before it) but if there are any clocks ticking in your own life, expect to hear them ever louder as you watch it.
The catalyst here is fairly simple; a parent-teacher conference. A minor rite of passage / perfect-storm anxiety machine that every high schooler goes through a few times over the course of their education. Kaguya’s dad, notably, doesn’t show up to hers.
This is perhaps to be expected from her total piece of shit of a father. A man who is a walking bundle of rotten wood held together by petty spite and pure greed, a nearly elemental incarnation of the phrase “Rich Old Bastard.” A figure who, in the scant handful of lines he’s gotten in the series so far, manages to ooze a crochety, warped old-money unpleasantness that is sadly probably the single most realistic thing about this series. I really quite strongly dislike Mr. Shinomiya, if that’s not obvious.
In any case, the person who does show up is Hayasaka’s mother, Nao Hayasaka (Toa Yukinari), who pulls double duty by both attending her own daughter’s conference and Kaguya’s. We learn here that Hayasaka is a total mama’s girl, which is pretty cute. (If also a bit sad, since their exchange here implies that they spend very little time together.)
There’s also some great work from Shirogane’s dad (Takehito Koyasu), who makes a drop-in appearance for the first time in the season, back to his usual antics of being a total weirdo but genuinely good dude.
But the real important development here is what we hear from Shirogane himself, during his parent-teacher conference.
Immediately, everything else that happens for the rest of the series has this particular Sword of Damocles hanging over it. Shirogane and Kaguya’s time together in actual close proximity is ending. Not just ending but ending fairly soon. The deadline is in sight.
Kaguya-sama is notable in that its central dynamic, the “geniuses’ war of love and brains” that gives it both its tagline and original Japanese title, has faded the farther we’ve gotten from the premiere of season one. It has always felt—I think as much to its own characters as to us—that Miyuki and Kaguya have had all the time in the world to muster up the strength to finally shoot straight with each other. So their occasional throwbacks to that early period have been charming, but not felt urgent. That is no longer the case. This isn’t a slice of life series; the everyday here is not endless, and time is running out.
Give him some credit, our man knows it’s do or die time.
As I’ve gotten older, it’s felt like I should probably be able to relate to these sorts of stories—high school tales of romance and all—less. But the sense of urgency that Love is War! begins to carry from this point forward is universal. I’m 28, many people who read this column are older or younger than I, but who doesn’t feel Father Time breathing down their neck, at least occasionally?
But as we wish Miyuki good fortune and godspeed, we transition into talking about the rest of the episode. Which is, I must note, still very good, but it’s also a lot more conventional for Love is War!, so there’s simply less to discuss. In the second segment, the urgency is alleviated by one of the aforementioned throwbacks to the show’s early days. Kaguya and Shirogane both manage to galaxy brain their way out of inviting the other to a different school’s cultural festival, happening nearby. Even so, you feel for them.
In the third, Shirogane asks for the girls of the student council to help him evaluate himself “objectively.” This is mostly an excuse for wacky misunderstandings, such as here where Miko thinks he’s asking her out.
And also, for Miko and Chika to say mean but admittedly funny things about him.
But Kaguya, who can’t find a single bad word to say, is who ultimately leaves the day’s biggest impact.
Reinvigorated, Shirogane recommits himself to his plan, and it is for us and time to see if it will work out or not. Godspeed, Miyuki, and good luck.
Bonus Hayasaka Screencap: Dare I say, I think this was also how probably at least some of you reacted when Nao Hayasaka made her on-screen appearance, here.
That’s right, readers. I know your bones.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
I knew this day would come eventually.
He wants to express his feelings in rap. Miyuki Shirogane, student council president of Shuchiin Academy, wants to express his feelings through song. No, through performance art, in what is probably the absolute worst medium he could’ve chosen to do so short of perhaps mime. Ask anyone who’s ever been subjected to Lil Dicky; rap and comedy do not mix. Rap and anime have a very uneven track record and historically mix even worse.
A conflux of the three should signal a truly epic crash where Kaguya-sama: Love is War! burns out and never recovers. Improbably, it does not, but that may be because this is A-1’s most impressive production on the season yet, a true cartwheeling display of visual panache put in service of a bizarre pseudo-music video. The music is still very much at its worst the closer it is to actual hip-hop, but at least it’s never unwatchable. The combined first two segments of the episode are basically this Tumblr post, I don’t know what else to say.
Anyone familiar with the “Chika teaches Miyuki to do something” skits of prior seasons will understand immediately what’s going on here. The twist this time around is that Chika is also completely clueless about hip-hop and has to teach herself before she can teach Shirogane anything. This is admittedly pretty funny, but it does drift into the notion that rap is just funny as a concept, which definitely isn’t true and is usually the domain of a specific kind of bad American cartoons. Although Shirogane’s profound badness remains hilarious. His first try at “rapping” here sounds more like a walrus dying slowly. It physically propels Chika into the air.
The “actual” rap as it eventually develops here is, I don’t know, fine. It’s not the kind of skin-peeling cringiness that I usually associate with rap music showing up in cartoons, which is a positive. Shirogane’s actual song is notably old school, having something broadly in common with the retro pop rap stylings of chelmico. and similar acts.
What is he rapping about? Well, initially this is just followup on that karaoke episode. He wants to convince Hayasaka to be more honest with herself and others and such. We also get a flashback to the karaoke place, where Hayasaka mentions that her job is to “keep tabs on” Shinomiya. Hmm.
In any case, the “musical” segment that follows this is pretty damn impressive, just from a production standpoint. For my money though it’s actually Kaguya herself who has the best song, despite it being probably the farthest-removed from hip-hop music. It also has the best visuals, including a truly inexplicable nod to Queen‘s “Bohemian Rhapsody.” (Maybe it’s a pun? “Rap”sody? I don’t know.)
In the largely-unrelated final segment of the episode, we link back up with Maki.
She seems to be doing well.
In what seems to be a recurring pattern, this section of the episode is a lot simpler and less ambitious than what precedes it. It’s mostly Maki venting to the boys again. Ishigami correctly points out that it’s usually best to be quick on the draw in games of love. The fact that all three people in the room have crushes they can’t own up to having, some more involved than others, casts a palpable irony over the whole thing, something the series itself is very much aware of. Maki’s own regret boils hot enough to burn away the tea Ishigami prepares for her, and Yu and Miyuki nearly give themselves a stroke just imagining the other person stealing their crushes.
All in all it’s a pretty simple segment that serves mostly to close out the episode. And it is nice to see Maki making friends, of a sort, it helps all the comedy at her expense feel less mean.
There’s also a new ED this week, presumably a one-off. Once again done in a totally different stlye from the rest of the show, and also featuring a hip-hop soundtrack. (One that I’d go so far to say is a fair bit better than Shirogane’s rap in the actual episode.) It’s cool, but I’ll welcome the return of the usual ED next week.
Until then, Kaguya fans.
Bonus Hayasaka Screencap: Why have one Hayasaka when you could have five?
I should here note that Hayasaka’s song is probably also the one that comes closest to having any real bite to it. It conveys her increasingly fed-up attitude with Kaguya pretty well. She even has something that might actually qualify as a Bar™ if you’re generous, rhyming that she has so many faces that she feels like “a hydra.”
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Yuu Ishigami has a conundrum. He, with all of his nerdy insecurities, is harboring a crush on one of Shuchiin Academy’s Popular Girls ™. Our boy is distraught by this in a manner not rare for internet natives of his age. He sees the object of his affection, cheer vice-captain Tsubame Koyasu (Haruka Fukuhara) as untouchable and perfect; somebody who lives in a different world than him and is forever beyond his reach.
He has plain black hair. She has quirky anime hair complete with a two-color gradient. It could never work between them!
Ishigami’s situation would be unenviable even in a normal school. Obviously, he’s not entitled to Tsubame, and what she thinks of him we don’t currently know. But the unspoken, yet, obvious, underline here is that Ishigami’s biggest obstacle to getting Tsubame to consider him as a romantic option is actually himself. Namely his own lack of self-confidence, not any inherent difference between them. Were he in any other high school on Earth, he might get advice that actually reflects that reality. But, he is a member of Shuchiin Academy’s student council. And the person who first pries the knowledge of this crush out of him is none other than our title lead, Kaguya Shinomiya.
Kaguya, I genuinely believe, has nothing but the best of intentions when she tells Ishigami that women are attracted to power, so his first step should be to gain “clout” of some kind. (She suggests gunning for a Top-50 placement in the upcoming exams.) Now, Kaguya may not entirely be wrong in suggesting this course of action—it certainly will attract peoples’ notice if one of the school’s worst students is suddenly out-scoring most of his grade on exams—but anything she says should be taken with a grain of salt. We know, but Ishigami unfortunately does not, that Kaguya comes from a deeply broken home. The Shinomiya Family has drilled into her the importance of regarding others only as tools for self-advancement. And while it’s true that she’s shed much of that programming by this point in the series, the roots of such a dog-eat-dog hypercompetitive mentality are hard to pull out. She’s still approaching this from the wrong point of view by encouraging Ishigami to change himself rather than simply be honest. (Of course, as the series itself humorously points out, that’s as much a reflection as her own unwillingness to be honest as anything else.) Regardless of what happens next, we should keep Kaguya’s upbringing, and how it informs this advice of hers, in mind. Although it is worth noting that she does realize that he needs to do something, or else….well.
At least she’s self-aware.
She does, at least, wisely shoot down Ishigami’s ideas for “ultra romantic” confession gestures, including such bizarre notions as leaving themed flowers on Tsubame’s desk every day for a week and presenting her with a half-empty photo album and expressing a desire to “fill it up with pictures of us together.” That much is probably the right call.
Now, let’s be clear here. Regardless of any romantic intentions, Ishigami improving his grades would hardly be a bad thing. He spends the second third of the episode studying, and it’s explicitly pointed out to us that it’s not the thought of wooing Tsubame so much as simply the fact that Kaguya actually believes he can improve that motivates him to try his hardest. Recall that not many people have ever expressed even that much faith in Ishigami before.
But, in a recurring theme for Love is War!—and honestly, Aka Akasaka‘s work in general—simply wanting something is not enough. Despite his best efforts, Ishigami places only around the 150 mark. An improvement, to be sure, but a far cry from his attempted coup of the grade rankings. He is absolutely devastated. (“So bitter that blood might as well shoot out of his eyes”, in the words of the Narrator (Yutaka Aoyama).)
But, of course, failure is not the end. Kaguya confronts Ishigami, getting him to admit that he is torn up about this, and he will try his damnedest to do better next time. Kaguya approves, although (jokingly?) warns him that the “kid gloves” of her study help are coming off.
It is interesting to me, in a series that is very firmly in the romance genre, how well Kaguya and Ishagami’s relationship is written. They’re certainly not romantic partners—and many romance anime neglect to depict friendship as much more than a steppingstone to love at all—and honestly, they don’t seem terribly close as friends in the typical way one imagines such a relationship. But they clearly care for each other; Kaguya would not spend as much time trying to push him as she does if she didn’t. Ishigami, in turn, would not care about those attempts if he didn’t on some level like and respect Kaguya. It’s an interesting, tangly relationship, which makes it feel very real. The two have come along way from Ishigami frequently suspecting that Kaguya was trying to kill him back in season one to a true kouhai / senpai pair.
I do fear I’ve perhaps made this entire part of the episode sound overly serious or even dour. In truth it’s not much more so than any episode of the season so far, but I think the character work here is interesting enough to devote the bulk of the column to. The gags are great throughout, here, of course, but that’s par for the course with Love is War! I particularly like this little nod to a fact we know about Shirogane; his tendency to shadowbox when psyched. Showcased here when he again scores the #1 spot on the exam rankings.
In any case, the final third of the episode is about Chika and Kaguya FaceTiming with Shirogane while sleep deprived.
There’s nothing particularly complicated about this segment, which brings the episode to a fun close that avoids being a trifle. Chika stays over at Kaguya’s place for a sleepover. She meets “Mr. Herthaka”, yet another of Hayasaka’s alter egos. This one has….quite the backstory, as we soon learn.
But really, the highlight of the evening comes when, through a series of convoluted misunderstandings, Chika gets the idea that Shirogane and “Mr. Herthaka” are romantically involved. In doing so, she resurrects a proud, ancient tradition perfected by her ancestors.
A completely unironic nosebleed gag in an anime in 2022? Nature really is healing.
The episode ends on a sweet note, though. Kaguya, very much past her usual bedtime and barely able to think straight, nearly tells Shirogane that she’s into him, only to pass out mid-sentence. A little frustrating? Maybe, but I can’t help but find it adorable. Will these two colossal nerds ever truly have the courage to own up to their feelings? Perhaps we’ll find out next time, Kaguya fans.
Oh, and before I forget, the Bonus Hayasaka Screencap. How about the chart of the many faces of our favorite blonde maid that we get at the episode’s end?
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Here’s the first line in this week’s episode of Kaguya-sama: Love is War -Ultra Romanic-.
Pretty bad, right? Of course, because this is this show, it quickly becomes obvious that Nagisa Kashiwagi (Momo Asakura), the short-haired girl there, is overreacting, and that her boyfriend, fellow C-String character Tsubasa Tanuma (Taku Yashiro) is not actually cheating on her. But he has been spending time with another female student, one Maki Shijo (Kana Ichinose), Kaguya’s distant relative and perpetual loser of the love games that the entire rest of Shuchiin Academy seems to be caught up in. And that’s suspicious enough for both Nagisa herself and for Kaguya. This leaves Miko to play the role of the straight man. Pity her.
As always, -Ultra Romantic- spices up what was a fairly straightforward scene in the manga with all kinds of weird audiovisual tricks. When Kaguya and Nagisa both immediately conclude Tsubasa is cheating, their halves of the table are “squished together,” and their voices are run through what sounds like a flutter filter. A pretty effective way to convey that Miko, the only reasonable voice at the table, feels like she’s losing her mind.
When the topic turns to the fact that the accused were recently at a karaoke booth together, Kaguya of course immediately changes her tune, only for Miko to agree that that is solid evidence of cheating, since “people often do indecent things at karaoke.”
The whole thing turns out to be a misunderstanding, of course. Maki and Tsubana had spent the day together because the latter wanted help picking out a six-month anniversary gift; an extremely cheap-looking heart necklace. All girls present—including Chika, who happens to arrive just as this is all happening—think it’s hopelessly tacky. But Nagisa loves it, so this particular sketch ends on a happy note. At least, for her. Not necessarily for everybody.
If you’re next thought, for some reason, is “but what about Maki?” Do not fret, Love is War has you covered. As mentioned, Maki is the loser of Kaguya-sama‘s cast. She, as we learn here, has been crushing on Tsubasa for months, maybe years, and is all burnt up about Nagisa hooking up with him, so seeks out the Student Council’s advice on the matter. Specifically, that of Shirogane and Ishigami. (Irony of ironies, you may remember Nagisa and Tsubasa only got together in the first place because of Shirogane’s advice, way back in season one. If you don’t, the show explicitly calls attention to it, so no worries.)
Maki is a somewhat pitiable character. She’s basically Kaguya herself minus the charisma and most of the status—she takes a lot of pride in being a member of a minor branch family of house Shinomiya—down to the fact that they have similar mannerisms. This segment of the episode is less heavy on the wonky visuals, although there are still certainly some. Especially when the series needs to draw comparisons between Maki and Kaguya.
Ishigami has an interesting role here. He completely cuts through all of Maki’s anime trope defenses, eventually getting her to drop the tsundere act, but also making her pretty sad in the process when he outlines how being someone’s second girlfriend is different than being their first.
But eventually, the two do convince Maki to at least make an earnest attempt at telling her crush how she feels. She also does explicitly say that even just talking to someone about this makes her feel a bit better. I’ve never been entirely able to love the Maki mini-arc, maybe because she reminds me too much of a few people I’ve met over the course of my life whereas most of the other romantic misunderstandings in Kaguya are firmly in goofier territory. Nonetheless, she does get a last laugh here, as she’s about to leave (and as Kaguya enters), this happens.
Of course, to keep the show’s main plot going, Shirogane can’t exactly just say that it’s because Maki reminds him of Kaguya.
The third and final segment of the episode is a classic “Chika sets up a game” sketch.
The series has done these since near the start of season one, and they’re always fun, so I’m happy to see them make a return. Chika’s grand plan for this particular round is to play a common group date game. (Called the “Ten Yen Coin Game.” It’s basically group truth or dare without the “dare” part and restricted to Yes/No questions.)
Chika has never struck me as all that interested in romance, quite unlike the entire rest of the cast. Indeed, a throwaway line in the manga seems to imply she’s aromantic, whether or not she was deliberately written as such. But she does love games, especially if she can use them to fuck around with people, and that is precisely what she does here. She even brought a lie detector along, just to make sure no one tells any fibs.
The questions quickly take a turn for the heavy as soon as it’s Ishigami’s turn to ask. This is, of course, played for comedy. But damn dude, asking people if they secretly hate you is not generally a great strategy toward making sure they don’t. (One person answers yes anyway, probably Miko. Ishigami promptly breaks down in happy tears that it’s only one person.)
Miko isn’t much better, asking if they really need her around. And when no one answers no, she’s also absolutely ecstatic.
Ishigami tells her that she shouldn’t go on group dates because she’s so easily swayed by flattery that she’d be an easy mark. It’s a little rude maybe, but honestly, it’s solid advice.
As for Kaguya and Shirogane, you can probably guess that they use the game to convolutedly try to scheme into getting the other to confess their feelings. It does not work out, although both leave the game on a positive note. As they clean up, Shirogane feels the need to make it clear to Kaguya that nothing, you know, happened during that whole karaoke incident. Kaguya believes him, though she doesn’t make that totally clear.
The episode ends on a sweet note, then. But I can imagine that some of you might be hungry for this plot to move along a little faster. I can’t say when, but I do have a hunch that more substantial developments are on the horizon. There’s only one real way to find out if that’s true though, so to that end, I’ll see you next Friday, Kaguya fans.
Bonus Hayasaka Screencap: This one was hard. Hayasaka isn’t actually in this episode at all other than a brief flashback scene (and I feel like that doesn’t really count.) So instead, have a shot of her appearance in this season’s ED, a wonderful fantasia where Shirogane and Kaguya are star-crossed lovers on opposite sides of a war in a faraway steampunk kingdom. The whole thing is just Shirogane’s dream, of course, but he does have quite the imagination, doesn’t he? Anyway, Hayasaka sells the soldier look quite well.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
With its first short, Kayua-sama: Love is War -Ultra Romantic- foreshadows a pattern. Like last week’s premiere, this week’s episode starts with a short focusing on Ishigami and Miko. It’s too early to say for sure if this pattern will continue, but the routine as established here is certainly fruitful ground for comedy, so personally I hope it does. Even just Ishigami and Miko’s self-aggrandizing alone is pretty funny.
It does not take a terribly deep reader to understand that Ishigami and Miko don’t get along terribly well. The student council—as well as Miko’s own friend / “handler” Kobachi Osaragi (Rina Hidaka)—are naturally concerned about this. It hurts the student council’s image if its members are seen bickering, and beyond that there’s a general agreement that life would be easier if these two would just stop being at each others’ throats all the time.
The question, of course, is how to get them to get along. To that, both Osaragi and Our Protagonist Miyuki Shirogane have some ideas, and it’s this particular round of harebrained schemes that drives the first short. The visual style is great here; much of this segment is animated almost as if the characters were still models on popsicle sticks. Elsewhere, when the plan to reconcile the two is explained, we get this particularly cutesy illustration to demonstrate.
The first idea here is for the two to complement each other on their good points. Ishigami can pull that off just fine, though not without effort. Miko, though? Well.
The suggestion to have the two clean each other’s ears (ew) is similarly ill-fated. The position Miko and Ishigami end up in while doing this simply cannot be described in words. Not by me, anyway.
It’s like he’s changing the world’s crankiest lightbulb.
Eventually, it’s Osaragi who figures out the solution (or at least, something resembling one) when she points out that it’s fairly common for teenagers to pretend to dislike someone if they’re actually harboring a crush on them. This causes Miko and Ishigami to be style-shifted into something that, to me, evokes a horror manga page that’s been colored in and then left out in the rain. The two promptly turn into autotuned, canned phrase-repeating robots to complete the transformation.
As with any comedy, relaying this kinda kills it, but it’s really funny to watch, and it’s also a nice reminder of what Love is War! can pull off, stylistically, when it wants to, even in service of something very goofy.
Most people will not be talking about the first segment of the episode, though, I imagine. Because the second and third are combined to make a single longer story, and it is a doozy.
Before we get into why, it’s helpful to briefly discuss Ai Hayasaka, probably Love is War!‘s most important supporting character, frequent recipient of fandom “best girl” awards, and perhaps most prestigiously of all, subject of the Bonus Hayasaka Screencap segment on this column. Hayasaka is an interesting and useful character for many reasons. She’s Kaguya’s right-hand woman and is frequently pulled into her schemes. She’s something of a stand-in for the segment of the audience who got sick of the actual “love is war” gimmick of the manga a long time ago. And, increasingly, she’s a touch bitter about her life situation.
Hayasaka, as we all know, is Kaguya’s maid. Kaguya, being a rich mostly-shut-in from an abusive family, lives a life that was quite unhappy until recently, in-show, but it is still a privileged life, regardless of that. And Hayasaka’s entire situation is a manifestation of that privilege. She has little say in her own day to day activities. In many previous episodes, Kaguya has come up with some ridiculous idea that she thinks will make Miyuki confess his deep-held feelings for her, and Hayasaka has been used as a tool in those ideas. She’s even adapted an entire alternate identity in service of Kaguya’s scheming. Kaguya, it’s important to note, does not heap these responsibilities on Hayasaka out of malice, really. She’s simply ignorant—willfully or not is hard to say—of the nature of the extreme power imbalance in their relationship.
All of this means that in this episode, when one of those schemes is a bridge too far and Hayasaka acts out entirely of her own free will, it’s completely understandable, even if you don’t dislike either her or Kaguya. (And just speaking for myself, I’m very fond of both characters.)
The premise is pretty simple. Miyuki gets invited to a karaoke mixer without entirely understanding what he’s getting into. Kaguya is paranoid that he’ll get whisked away by some bombshell before the two of them ever have a chance to hook up, so she orders Hayasaka to slip into the mixer as well. Incognito as her alternate identity, following up on the fourth episode of last season. She is less than thrilled about this.
Those with sharp memories might recall that the last time Miyuki and Hayasaka met, Hayasaka was on a dare to win him over, if she could. The details of this have become a bit foggy since I last saw the episode, but Hayasaka seems to have taken the fact that she couldn’t do it pretty hard. (That much was evident even at the time, but perhaps how hard wasn’t totally clear.) When they meet again here, Hayasaka awkwardly refers to their past meeting as Miyuki having “dumped her.” In general, she’s pretty cold to him for a minute, here. (It’s hard not to have some real sympathy for Miyuki during all this, in fact.)
It’s notable that when Hayasaka’s turn at karaoke comes up, she picks a forlorn love song to sing. A galloping, Eurobeat-y monster of a thing that she sings the utter hell out of. (I don’t know if Hayasaka’s regular voice actress Yumiri Hanamori is doing the vocals or if it’s someone else. Either way, I must say I hope the dub covers the song as well, given that Hayasaka’s dub actress Amanda “AmaLee” Lee is an accomplished singer with a real talent for belting.) The show briefly becomes a pastiche of the kind of heartbroken, theatrical nonsense that the videos for this sort of song specialize in.
Miyuki and Hayasaka also get into a long talk about honesty, in one of the more revealing character moments for the both of them. Miyuki puts forward that Hayasaka always seems like she’s putting on an act (and, indeed, in the context of the two’s interactions, he’s entirely right.) The camera is close to his face, and the background goes solid white as Hayasaka asks if he could really show people his true, honest self. But even more tellingly, a bit before that, the camera “pulls back,” peeking into the karaoke room through a cracked door, and she says this.
Yeesh.
Between this and her thinly-veiled complaining about her “little sister’s” terrible personality (she admits she’s gotten better recently, but it feels like an afterthought on her part), it is pretty obvious that Hayasaka is dealing with some serious headsnakes, and not dealing with them well.
And then, as Miyuki goes to leave this—admittedly, incredibly awkward—situation, pondering perhaps if he should start being more honest with some people in particular, a weird, leery creep starts harassing Hayasaka. Nothing actually happens, thankfully, and Miyuki is able to make up a quick excuse to get her out of the room.
Here though, things take another turn. Hayasaka’s particular mix of feelings; a genuine crush on Miyuki, her resentment over how Kaguya keeps treating her, and perhaps just a general sense of being fed up with how her night is going, convinces the Shuchiin Academy student council president to slip away with her into a different karaoke room. One she just booked. For the two of them. Alone.
She’s not shy about relaying exactly what she’s doing to her boss, either, with the magic of tiny transmitter earrings. (One of many, essentially, spy gadgets, that’s Hayasaka’s been given by Kaguya over the years.) After all, she says, it was Kaguya who first came up with the “try to seduce Miyuki” dare in the first place. What is Hayasaka doing but trying again?
Kaguya then takes a moment to realize that she has created the exact problem she was looking to prevent.
A crueler show would either stop the episode dead here or, even worse, twist this into a major rift between the characters. We don’t get that here, instead, Kaguya has the rather sudden realization that Hayasaka has been very angry this entire time.
Nothing gets past this one.
But, as she often does, Kaguya cooks up a scheme. This one involving her very own secret weapon.
Kaguya’s plan to have Chika barge into the room Hayasaka and Miyuki are in is not exactly sophisticated, but there’s no reason to believe it wouldn’t work. Before Chika even gets there though, Kaguya makes the mistake of trying to eavesdrop. The tension of the prior 10 or so minutes unravels in an instant thanks to a string of frankly hysterical misunderstandings. All you really need to know is that Miyuki was singing, and then rapping (itself a recurring gag.) To Kaguya, it sounds as though Hayasaka is talking about….something else. Things get even worse when Kaguya actually barges into the room (conveniently, while Miyuki is using the restroom and thus isn’t present.)
The misunderstanding cleared up as it possibly could be, Kaguya escorts Hayasaka out. With Miyuki still in absentia, the poor guy.
By the time Chika finally shows up, the mere mention of the president’s legendarily awful vocal abilities—which she knows more about than anyone else, mind—is enough to get her to turn on her heels and immediately leave.
And in case you were wondering what lesson Miyuki took from all this?
As for Kaguya and Hayasaka, the earlier subtext of the episode is brought directly to the front. Hayasaka straight up says she’s jealous of how happy Kaguya’s been lately. The two more-or-less reconcile here, at least for now, but—very, very minor manga spoiler here—this is not the last time this is going to come up, as we’ll eventually see. Love is War! has a way of looping back on itself with regard to things like this.
All told, this is probably the strongest second episode of anything that’s yet gotten one so far this season. If anything it’s actually better than the premiere, which was also quite good but was squarely comedic.
Now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for. It feels a little odd to put a Bonus Hayasaka Screencap in a writeup for an episode almost entirely about her, given how many other Hayasaka Screencaps I’ve already shared with you today. Still, I do have a pair that I couldn’t otherwise find a place for. Enjoy this from-behind shot where Hayasaka engages what I call her “trolling mode,” as she “explains” what karaoke clubs are like to Kaguya, and the art style shifts to accommodate.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Kaguya-sama: Love is War! returns like it never left at all. Mercifully, unlike the second season, 2020’s Love is War?, the third is marked by an actual, distinct subtitle: -Ultra Romantic-. The first episode is, of course, excellent, and we’ll get to the how’s and why’s of that momentarily. First though, it feels right to simply appreciate the familiarity, here. Speaking just for myself, with as much of a gamble that any given anime season can be, it’s nice to have one or two things that you’re pretty damn sure are going to be great.
Eventually, this season will likely delve into the more dramatic parts of Kaguya-sama‘s storyline to an even greater degree than the second season did. I’m not sure what the reception will be–like many popular romcoms, Kaguya‘s wide popularity does not always shield it from backlash–but for now, it’s simply nice to have it around again. Since the second season concluded, the only real drop of Love is War! we’ve gotten was a short OVA from last year, which, frankly, is best left unremembered.
It’s natural to wonder, all this in mind, how something this widely anticipated marks its dramatic return, and the answer is very simple.
One of the characters completely embarrasses herself in a very funny way.
Keep an eye on the camel, it will be relevant momentarily.
Miko Iino (Miyu Tomita) and Yuu Ishigami (Ryouta Suzuki) are perhaps Love is War!‘s second-most important pair of characters, after the leads. -Ultra Romantic- chooses to open on a somewhat lowkey note by focusing on the two of them for the episode’s first “short.” (If you’ve forgotten; Kaguya-sama tends to divide its episodes, with only rare exceptions, into three “chunks” of about equal length.) The core premise with this one is very simple. Have you ever accidentally left your headphones slightly unplugged? Especially while listening to music you don’t necessarily want others to know you listen to? No? Just watch this short, then. It encapsulates the feeling of total, day-ruining embarrassment perfectly.
Miko sits down to study after chewing Ishigami out for not doing the same. Her case here is actually worse, because what she’s listening to isn’t music at all. It’s ambient sounds. First, fairly normal (soft rain noises). Then, somewhat odd (the sounds of a construction site). Then definitely odd (the loud braying calls of a camel). And finally, outright embarrassing (ASMR recordings of a bunch of “heartthrobs” telling the listener that she’s a good girl and is doing her best).
Dissecting humor like this tends to kill it, so it’s not nearly as funny in the retelling. But Love is War!‘s ability to simply ramp up a joke like this is easy to underappreciate. The final blow comes when the rest of the student council returns. Ishigami–in-line with his habit of falling on the sword for others, no matter how trivial the reason–then deliberately leaves his music leaking for all to hear. (The track must be heard to be believed. Its lyrics consist entirely of “moe moe kyun kyun.”) Only for Miko to then scold him, talk about how embarrassed she is for him, and then promptly not realize that her phone is also still leaking audio.
Fatality.
The second segment is more frantic and uptempo. Love is War! has repeatedly used a trick of directing comedic scenes revolving around misunderstandings–or the leads’ attempts to get each other to confess their feelings–like high-suspense thrillers. The approach makes its triumphant return here, as the technological inexperience of title character Kaguya Shinomiya (Aoi Koga) ensnares her in a trap laid by the greatest adversary of any modern woman. No, not her love interest / rival Miyuki Shirogane (Makoto Furukawa). I’m talking, of course, about read notifications. Kaguya leaves Miyuki on read because she’s just so happy to have gotten a text from him. Miyuki can see the notification but, obviously, not her reason for doing this. He is a bit panicked.
Another key part of Love is War!‘s appeal is that it understands how to involve the foibles of modern life in its scenarios. Many anime only touch on technology briefly, but this entire segment rests on a social stress stemming entirely from what is supposed to be a convenient feature of instant messaging platforms (LINE here, rather than iMessage itself) but, is more often than not, a total headache. On the character side of things, there’s also Kaguya’s far more tech-savvy maid Ai Hayasaka (Yumiri Hanamori), who could explain all this to Kaguya, but opts not to. Hayasaka has long served as something of a stand-in for the section of the audience that wishes Kaguya and Miyuki would just knock it off and kiss already. It’s hard to imagine that fact not playing some role in her decision to not bother here. Even so, for the second time in the episode, second-hand embarrassment plays a big role.
The whole thing is resolved with a lie and minimal social casualties, but not before Hayasaka gets hit with quite the death glare.
Continuing the escalation, the third segment is the goofiest of all. The impetus? An arm-wrestling tournament, started by Chika Fujiwara (Konomi Kohara), but certainly not ended by her.
This is probably the short with the least to talk about, which is a shame because in spite of the lack of any pesky things like “emotional resonance” or “forward narrative development”, it’s pretty fucking funny. It’s also the most visually engaging of the three, integrating a grab-bag of visual tropes from fighting games and shonen anime (especially Dragonball Z). Conceptually, rendering something ridiculous by welding it to shonen tropes is nothing new. (Hell, Birdie Wing did it only a couple days ago.) But as it has in prior seasons, what sets Love is War! apart is sheer commitment to the bit. We even get a battle shonen-esque vaguely plausible-sounding explanation for our protagonist’s extraordinary abilities. Kaguya wins the tournament. Why? Well, she’s in the archery club and bow drawstrings are heavy, helpfully illustrated by a cute callback to season two’s OP.
It’s hard to be too surprised when the entire thing caps off with what I’m fairly sure is a Cho Aniki reference after Kaguya wins. Why wouldn’t it? The show’s grip on reality is loose at the best of times, and when it goes headlong into full surreal comedy mode it feels like it can do just about anything and have it make sense. A giant pile of muscle men, why not?
Sadly, not everything is entirely smooth sailing. While the actual show remains as great to look at as ever, this is the second romcom this season to be afflicted by a pretty bad case of subpar typesetting. The translation is as good as it’s ever been, but there is enough text on screen that plain multi-tracking (one up top and the other on the bottom) just doesn’t cut it anymore. I will still be covering the anime weekly as it releases officially, but if the more patient among you were inclined to wait for fansubs I would completely understand.
As for this episode? It’s a solid return for the series. Some might take issue with the series not launching right back into The Heavy Stuff ™, but we’ll get there soon enough. In the meantime, I can again speak only for myself, but I’m happy to just be along for the ride.
Ah, and since I like to make a habit of including a small something extra for folks who make it all the way to the end of the column, please enjoy this Bonus Hayasaka Screencap. A recurring feature from this point forward.
I’m sure some of you will be looking forward to that.
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 Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
The Manga Shelf is a column where I go over whatever I’ve been reading recently in the world of manga. Ongoing or complete, good or bad.These articles contain spoilers.
What does it mean to be famous?
Like, what does it really mean?
To some extent, that is the driving question behind Oshi no Ko. Billed as an exploration of the dark side of the entertainment industry, it chronicles the brief life and consequent death of one Ai Hoshino, an idol, the center position of a decently-popular group called B-Komachi!
Technically, that she dies is a spoiler. But is it so surprising? The entertainment industry is littered with corpses, both figurative and literal. Burned-out rockstars, child actor has-beens, disbanded indie idol groups, rappers who never made it, abandoned Youtube channels and shuttered TV studios, and on and on. Ai Hoshino is just one of those skeletons. Oshi no Ko centers the curious circumstances around her rise and fall, and how it inspires those who she leaves behind. The series is built around a rather harsh truth; the white hot light of fame burns bright and short. Some people get a second act, most do not.
The entertainment industry is a pretty fucked up one. Oshi no Ko‘s initial thesis is that to participate in it, one must be an adept liar. A seller of fantasies , yes, but what’s not explicitly spelled out but is equally important is that one has to lie to themselves, too. The industry is an ouroboros that devours dreams, and it is only a very rare and lucky few who escape it both alive and with those dreams intact. It is against this rather dire backdrop that Oshi no Ko eventually settles, but how it begins is actually quite far from all this; from the point of view of two idol fans, a chronically ill girl named Serina and the doctor who took care of her.
Ai Hoshino, face of the idol group B-Komachi, is pregnant with twins. Goro, the doctor, who lives in a small town in the Japanese countryside, is in charge of her care, as she’s chosen to keep the children despite the difficulties she’ll inevitably face. He vows to help her as best he can, because one of his patients–the aforementioned chronically ill girl–was a dedicated fan of the idol. Circumstances twist, and he is run down by a stalker and murdered, mere minutes before Ai gives birth. He and his former patient are thus reborn as Ai’s twins; Goro as Aquamarine, a boy, and Serina as Ruby, a girl.
It’s a very strange conceit to use as a launchpad for this sort of thing. It raises a lot of questions and only half-handwaves the twins’ borderline-supernatural talents as entertainers. Things only get more complicated when the very same stalker eventually kills Ai, on her 20th birthday. The young reincarnates’ lives are rocked by the tragedy, and they develop into very different people as a result. Aqua seeks to find his biological father–and possibly kill him, given that he has reason to believe Ai’s death was indirectly his fault–while Ruby seeks to become an idol just like her mother. Yin and Yang, blue and red.
This whole premise is only intermittently relevant. Oshi no Ko really shines when it’s exploring the many, many pitfalls of showbiz. Mangaka Aka Akasaka has said that he prefers to character-write by starting with a broad template and “filling” the characters in over time, but here the characters are so complex that it’s hard to assign any template to them at all. Witness, for example, Akane, a prodigal theatre actress with a fragile personality, a strong perfectionist streak, and an intense affinity for deep method acting. That’s a lot to even pay lip service to with a character, that she–and indeed, basically every major character–can balance all this or something like it in a way that feels natural is pretty amazing.
Yes these really are pictures of the same character. In Akane’s defense, she’s an actress, after all.
But that’s a strength, and a strength is meaningless if it’s not in service of something. Oshi no Ko, thankfully, knows what it’s doing. Far more than simply a condemnation of the entertainment industry (with a focus, though not an exclusive one, on acting and idol work), it is an examination of it. As keen as the series is to portray the truly loathsome–such as a recurring producer character–for what they are, it goes through even greater pains to examine the inner lives of each and every one of its entertainers. That is what transmutes the strong character writing from simply a strength into what is almost inarguably the manga’s core. Through its writing, Oshi no Ko is able to explain why these characters want to be famous, and how that desire is exploited by the industry around them. It’s at times a rough and upsetting read.
And I do worry that I’m making this manga sound like a drag through and through. The truth of the matter is that for as much complex character exploration and heavy subject matter it gets into, one trait that Oshi no Ko does share with Akasaka’s more well known manga–Kaguya-sama: Love is War!–is that it knows when to cut the more serious plot developments with some humor. Oshi no Ko is incredibly funny when it wants to be.
Just go with it, you know?
And also to this point, in the rare event that someone leaves the entertainment industry alive on-screen in Oshi no Ko, it’s treated as a sad thing but not a bad one. The blow-you-down superstar debut of Ruby’s idol group is contrasted with a brief vignette where we see a former idol quit the business for good. The juxtaposition gives the latter a stunning sense of finality.
But while Mana’s story ends here, it really seems like it’s only the beginning for Ruby and Aqua. Given Love is War!‘s length, it seems a fair assumption to make that any ending to this manga is a long way off.
And look, all of this about the plot and themes and I’ve barely mentioned the art! Akasaka and Mengo Yokoyari–best known as the artist behind Scum’s Wish–make an incredible pair, and the emotional heavy lifting is carried as much by Yokoyari’s beautifully expressive art and the wonderful, clever panel composition as it is the writing. It’d be very hard to capture Oshi no Ko‘s look in an anime, though I’d be fascinated to see a properly-equipped team try anyway.
As for that far-off ending? Who knows, one of the exciting things about manga that are still being published is that they are, in a way, pure potential. Perhaps the next time you read about Oshi no Ko on this blog, it will be about an upcoming anime adaption. Or perhaps a truly shocking volume. Who can say?
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Before we get started, a brief reminder to check out the Introduction post and the previous 3 parts of the list before you read this one. Don’t wanna spoil yourself, y’know?
In any case; there were plenty of anime I liked in 2020, some of which I liked quite a lot. There were not nearly as many that I truly loved. But of those I did, they fall into one of two categories. Either they are sharp, questioning, and political. Or they are joyous reaffirmations of how art can affect us, and how it can carry us forward even through the darkest times of our lives. The two are dissimilar, but complimentary. The former is grounded in realism and the latter in escapism. They tend toward the pessimistic and optimistic, respectively. I think that reflects the character of the year–and I suppose, of myself–quite well. Hopefully you agree. On to the final five!
#5:DECA-DENCE
Not since Kill la Kill has a studio produced an original anime debut so immediately sharp and arresting. I have to admit, I turned that statement over in my head for literal days before committing to it, but it’s true. Nut Co. Ltd. have done TV anime before, but aside from an assist on the polarizing FLCL sequels, their most well-known work before Deca-Dence was The Saga of Tanya The Evil, which, whatever one may think about it, was a manga adaption that stuck fairly close to its origins.
Any flaws aside; Deca-Dence feels very much like a wholly-realized singular artistic vision, from start to finish. The sort that is fairly rare in commercial arts fields (which TV anime certainly is). What’s more, it is nakedly political, with a witheringly on-point cross-examination of the evils of capitalism and its dire endpoints as exemplified by its very setting; a post-apocalyptic world which is exploited as a “real life video game” by the ruling class. Which would maybe make it a slog if the show weren’t so damn fun. Visually, Deca-Dence pops with bright colors, steampunk-inspired machines, and a design sensibility for its robot characters that feels inherited from Kaiba, one of the all-time great anime of this sort. Narratively, there’s enough action and compelling character drama to keep things from getting stale or feeling preachy. Deca-Dence exists in solidarity, not on a pedestal.
The unified artistic vision that is largely a positive does, on the flipside, unfortunately mean that it has a few notable flaws. Its chief sin is a bait-and-switchy treatment of its two leads, which would be less of an issue if one were not a young girl and the other an older gruff man narratively empowered by her pain. It’s a mistake this kind of thing should be able to avoid, and that is primarily why it rounds out the bottom of the Top 5. So it goes.
Still, if Deca-Dence is any indication of what future Nut Co. productions, or those of director Yuzuru Tachikawa or writer Hiroshi Seko will be like, there’s a lot to look forward to.
#4: Kaguya-sama: Love is War?
For two years in a row; Kaguya-sama: Love is War! has been raising the bar for anime romcoms. What it may lack in innovation it more than makes up for in technique and heart, Love is War?, the confusingly-titled second season of the series, is top-to-bottom hilarious. Except of course, when it’s busy being surprisingly heavy instead.
It’s not entirely fair to put Love is War on a pedestal, but I really struggle to think of anything else in recent memory that works in this space so well. Original mangaka Aka Akasaka‘s technique of starting with a familiar archetype and then “filling them in” over the course of the story has kept Love is War‘s character writing consistently interesting. This holds true both when exploring the school-day trauma that Ishigami still suffers the aftershocks from and when breaking down the surprisingly complex character of the moralistic, blustery Miko.
But those are strengths equally attributable to the original manga. What puts Love is War the anime near the top of its bracket is the way the visuals elevate and enhance this storytelling. From a comedic perspective, the visuals breathe new life into jokes manga readers have heard before and really make them pop for newcomers. At times, new gags are even made up wholesale, often leaning on the visual element alone. Scenes like Kaguya randomly breaking into vogue, Hayasaka annoyedly bursting into Kaguya’s classroom, and even random visual asides referencing Dark Souls and Peanuts give the entire thing a wonderful, absurd edge.
On the more serious side, these techniques are instead turned toward invoking empathy. Faces have their visual features erased to signify disassociation, crowds coalesce into shadowy masses to project anxiety. Visual effect enthusiasts are given quite a bit to pour over in Love is War.
You might rightly ask why you should care about any of this, since at its core Love is War still is very much a “will they or won’t they” sort of love story. The sort that anime has seen many times before and will see many times again. To a point, that very question has kept it from an even higher spot on this list. But conversely, I would argue that resonant artistic depictions of the anxieties and absurdities of youth will never lose their place in the artistic canon. Not for anime, and not for anything.
#3:Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club
If this list were ranked solely by how much the anime on it made my heart sing, Love Live! Nijigasaki High School Idol Club would hold a comfortable #1 spot. Earlier this year I began an earnest dive into the girl group idol anime genre after only idly (haha) poking at it for most of my life. My opinion that 2011’s The Idolm@ster is the genre’s gold standard remains unchanged. But I did not expect it to receive an even close to worthy contender to the title this year. But here we are, and I do genuinely think that Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, the latest entry in the rival Love Live franchise, makes a damn good showing of it. Why? Because of the sheer effort the series go through to convey to you one simple fact; these girls are born entertainers, and they love it, through and through.
The ways in which they love it vary wildly, and if I had to pin a single weakness on Nijigasaki it would probably be that its gargantuan cast size (eleven main characters!) means that some of the girls do only get cursory development. The flipside though is that almost every single one who does get some focus is so magnetic that the passion they have for singing transfers almost directly to you. In its best moments, Nijigasaki feels like holding a live wire of artistic inspiration. Without a doubt; the anime is best experienced by checking any cynicism at the door and just throwing yourself in, arms wide open.
And part of the reason it succeeds is how easy it makes it to do that. Nijigasaki‘s great writing triumph is how quickly and snappily it establishes each character within each arc. Part of this is down to sharp visual design; things like Setsuna’s pyrotechnic stage setup, Rina’s iconic digital “faceboard”, Shizuku’s black and white dress, and so on. But the show’s laser focus when it comes to establishing why each girl wants to become an idol and how she goes about doing so is an incredibly convincing argument for this genre in this format, proving you don’t need two cours here. (Not to say an extra 13 episodes of this would’ve been in any way unwelcome.) The final arc, where group manager Yu and idol Ayumu have a near-falling out over the former’s desire to become a composer proves that the series can also work in more delicate emotional shades, which (as with many things this high on the list) makes me hope for a second season.
In a broader sense; from Setsuna’s matchstick strike of a guerrilla concert in episode three to the blazing monster of a festival that closes out the series, Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is a celebration of communal art and performance in a year where, to paraphrase music critic Todd Nathanson, the very idea may as well be science fiction. Being so fantastically escapist emphatically does not hurt Nijigasaki, it is the very core of its strength.What makes it wonderful is how it is borderline utopian; a vision of a place where everyone’s dreams come true.
#2:Tower of God
I try not to think about these kinds of things too much when I write, but I suspect if there’s a “controversial” pick this high up on the list, it’ll be this one. Tower of God stands as one of 2020’s most polarizing and, in my opinion, most misunderstood mainstream action anime. Tower of God is two primary things: for one, it is a kickass battle shonen set in a truly unique fantasy world inherited from its source material, a sprawling webcomic that effectively wrought the Webtoon movement from the ground with its bare hands. For another; it is an absolutely dialed critique of systems of arbitrary merit. If you’ve been waiting for me to bring up capitalism again, wait no longer. Frankly I don’t need to, Tower of God does it for me. It’s not like characters having to pay off their own medical expenses within the Tower is exactly a subtle analogy to real life.
Tower of God‘s attitude towards its source material–adapt the interesting or the relevant bits, skip everything else–can definitely leave it feeling a touch hard to follow at times. But Tower of God makes its intentions clear in its final few episodes, where deuteragonist Rachel does exactly as the Tower incentivizes her to, and betrays protagonist Twenty-fifth Bam. And why wouldn’t she? Every detail of the Tower’s worldbuilding portrays it as a ruthless meritocracy where only looking out for #1 at the expense of everyone else is rewarded. Bam never understands this because he never has to. His natural talents; his vast reservoirs of shinsu (mana, effectively) and propensity for making allies, are rewarded in a place he has been deposited into by what is more or less random chance. Essentially, he’s privileged. Rachel, who has no such talents, understands it intuitively, hence her betrayal.
But Tower of God‘s critique of these systems goes both wider and deeper. It’s foreshadowed much earlier by minor character Hoh betraying his team during the “Tag arc” that takes up the show’s middle third. Elsewhere, the series touches on misogyny (there is something truly–and intentionally!–offputting about how it’s spelled out to us that the King of Jahad ties the powers of his “princesses” to their virginity) and frame-ups (whatever happened with Khun and his sister). Through it all, its central point remains sharp; the Tower’s world is fantastical, but the principles it operates on are very much like our own.
It is true that the show’s setup basically begs for a second season, one that’s yet to be confirmed. But even if it were to end here, with Bam washed down to the bottom of the Tower, the show has made its point. All of us are climbing, and the Tower still waits.
So with how high my opinion of Tower of God clearly is, what could possibly be better than it? Well, if you know my tastes, or indeed if you’ve simply studied the banner closely, you can probably guess. Scroll down to find out, and raise a hand if you saw this one coming.
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#1:Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken!
Fundamentally, my taste in anime hasn’t changed much since I first discovered the medium over ten years ago. I have a hazy, sun-blurred memory of watching the dub of foundational school life comedy Azumanga Daioh chopped up into pieces and uploaded on Youtube. Azumanga Daioh and Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! are, very loosely, in the same genre, despite otherwise not being particularly similar. I bring the former up because I marvel at the many strange and wonderful shapes the school life comedy has taken over the past decade and a half. And Eizouken! certainly has the hallmarks of the genre. It is set primarily in a high school, centers around the activities of a small group of students, and uses the pitfalls of coming of age to set up relatable comedic skits. But it’s also more than that.
I place Eizouken! firmly in an emerging movement of anime that increasingly combine this genre with more serious and reflective elements, a logical step from its origins. (It’s not like AzuDaioh couldn’t be reflective when it wanted to be, after all.) I would happily shuttle it right up next to the post-apocalyptic melancholia of Girls’ Last Tour, or the contemporary but more adventure-oriented A Place Further Than The Universe, my own favorite anime of the 2010s, or the funny, wrenching dramedy of O’ Maidens In Your Savage Season! But its place within that movement is interesting, because while many of its genrefellows seek to perhaps evolve past the school life descriptor entirely, Eizouken! reestablishes why it matters in the first place. How it does this is pretty simple; it has perhaps the most well-considered thematic core of any TV anime to air this year.
History will probably peg Eizouken! as an “anime about anime”, but that’s looking at it narrowly. Eizouken! is an anime about the creative process in general, about what it means to be passionate about something, about turning that passion into reality, how that can be very hard, but how it is almost always worth it.
Our three leads correspond to an aspect of the inner world of art. Midori Asakusa, short, behatted, and kappa-like, is the pure ambition and the font of ideas. She spends the series half-adrift in a sea of drawings and daydreams, in love with flying machines and walking logos. Tsubame Mizusaki, of average height and with a sharp haircut, is the strive toward the perfection of technique, the desire to capture One Perfect Movement as cleanly as possible. (This is why it is she who expresses that she cares about animation, not anime. Contrast Midori who cares very much about anime-the-medium.) Finally, there is the tall, tombstone-toothed Sayaka Kanamori. The brains of the operation, someone for whom practical knowledge and the pursuit of money is a means to her and her friends’ collective happiness, a sort of person vanishingly rare in the real world. Alone, they’re incomplete. Together, they’re unstoppable. I’ve seen many anime whose casts compliment each other well, but Eizouken! might have one of the most well-oiled character dynamic machines in recent memory.
Eizouken!‘s beauty is in how it does not need to really explain itself at length. The series is an argument for itself. The skeptical may be inclined to ask the question back at Eizouken!; “what can sticking to your passions really accomplish?” And, well, the answer is Eizouken! Admittedly, as someone who writes for a living, I am predisposed to like themes in this general realm. But by the same token, pretending that Eizouken!‘s deep understanding of how the creative process functions, the diversity of motivation as to why people want to make art, and its celebration of the two didn’t move me would be disingenuous. I would simply not be doing my job as a commentator on the medium.
The show celebrates many kinds of people in general, really. Sometimes this is even surprisingly literal; Eizouken! stands as a still-rare anime that has a fairly racially diverse cast even though its leads are still Japanese. The series’ near-future setting seems to imply both a Japan and a larger world that is more heterogeneous (in every sense) than today, but this optimism shouldn’t be taken to be naivety. There is conflict in Eizouken!, the optimism comes from the resolution of that conflict. Short films are premiered, audiences are blown away. “We are all different, but truly great art can bring us together” seems to be the final message of the series. It’s a thesis that is so optimistic, almost utopian, that it can, to some, scan as corny. Whether Eizouken! “earns it” or not is where people are split on the series, but I think I’ve made damn well my case that it does.
Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! premiered at the top of the year, in the Winter 2020 anime season that now feels a lifetime ago. Yet, throughout this long, dark, bizarre year, I found myself continually turning it over in my head. I think it’s likely that I will be for years to come. If I may make take back one thing from my original review that predates this blog, it’s this; Eizouken!, with the benefit of distance, feels like it’s not really from this, or any, specific year. It feels like it’s always been there. And from now on, it always will be.
And with that sign-off by way of what is in my estimation the first truly great anime of the ’20s, that concludes our little journey over these past few days. To both old friends and new readers, I wish you the best possible in the new year. Hold each other close, and in all things help one another. Magic Planet Anime will see you in 2021.
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