Tag: Love Live

Posted on in anime, Misc. Anime, Reviews

Ranking Every 2020 Anime (That I Actually Finished), From Worst to Best – Part 4

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.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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

Posted on in anime, Twenty Perfect Minutes

Twenty Perfect Minutes: Searching For Setsuna in Episode 3 of LOVE LIVE NIJIGASAKI HIGH SCHOOL IDOL CLUB

Twenty Perfect Minutes is an irregular column series where I take a look at single specific anime that shaped my experience with the medium, were important to me in some other way, or that I just really, really like.

Disclaimer & Thanks: I am new to Love Live as a property and enlisted my good friend Heinzes to help me Love Live Fact Check this column. Thank you very much!

“There are school idols and they have their fans. Isn’t that more than enough?“

Let me let you in on a small secret. As a medium commentator of any sort: critic, blogger, video essayist, whatever. You tend to set little arbitrary rules for yourself. “I won’t review this until a week after I’ve watched it.” “I won’t score anything 10/10 unless I’ve seen it more than once.” Things like that. But sometimes you come across something that just hits you in such a way that’s so specifically your thing that these rules suddenly seem like they don’t matter, and that’s about when it’s time to break them. When I started Twenty Perfect Minutes my intent was to do it fairly infrequently and to showcase episodes of older anime. A few years old, at minimum.

Yet, here I am. Writing in late 2020 about an anime airing in late 2020. Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club is the voluminously-titled most recent entry in the storied and frankly massive Love Live franchise. It is also not finished, and as such by writing this I very much risk making myself look like a fool come the end of the season. But if that is a risk, it’s one worth taking, because Nijigasaki‘s third episode is not just the best episode of the young season, it’s one of the strongest this year period.

It’s been a solid year for a lot of different kinds of anime, but very little has made me cry, and as someone who values high melodrama I do unashamedly check for that when mulling over how good I find a series overall. Nijigasaki arguably tossed its hat into the Anime of The Year conversation from the word “go”, but if there was any doubt, it should be cleared up by this episode; “Shouting Your Love”.

Before we can discuss “Shouting Your Love” though, we have to backtrack a bit, to that word “go”, and explain how we got here. First of all, let’s meet Yu.

No not You. Yu.

Yu is interesting. She feels simultaneously pretty typical for the genre but just enough to the left that it’s fresh. Yu begins the series as someone with a lot of passion searching for an outlet. She does not start as an idol (or even an idol fan). We get to see her fall in love with idol music in real time, as the opening half of the first episode is devoted almost entirely to this. And it’s back in that first episode where Nijigasaki pulls out its artistic ace in the hole.

Yu (and her friend Ayumu) happen to catch a public performance by a local idol, Setsuna. The song itself (“Chase!”) is a great slice of upbeat J-Pop if you’re into that sort of thing, but what really sells the scene is twofold. One is a number of close shots of Yu’s face, letting us see her reaction change moment to moment. The other is that we see Setsuna’s performance gradually shift from a simple depiction of what she is actually physically doing, to–at the exact moment that her music hits Yu in the heart–a music video-within-a-show. The stage erupts into fire; figurative passion transformed into literal flame. My understanding is that these inset MVs are not entirely new to Love Live as a franchise, but Nijigasaki‘s use of them feels deeply woven into the narrative. The show wouldn’t entirely work without them.

Yu’s journey starts here, her passion is ignited and it’s her drive that leads the plot forward from this point on. What is left largely unsaid in that first episode–and what brings us back to the third–is Setsuna‘s journey. The very short version is that Nijigasaki pulls off an elegant piece of narrative symmetry here: in the first episode Setsuna lights a fire in Yu’s heart, and Yu, in the third episode, rekindles the dying embers in Setsuna’s.

As this early part of the series has gone on, it’s established that “Setsuna Yuki” isn’t a real person. She’s the alter ego of Nana Nagakawa, the student council president of the titular Nijigasaki High. The performance that Yu and Ayumu witnessed was, in fact, her last and only. Some attention is even paid to the fact that Yu can’t find any other songs by her. (And real life is rife with examples of low-output musicians, from The New Radicals to Mr. Fantastik, so it’s quite a relatable experience.)

What would otherwise be a very straightforward plot detour is spun into a miniature epic through “Shouting Your Love”‘s framing. Nana’s true identity was revealed an episode prior. Here, we get to see her most “normal” side first. Despite her own misgivings about her role in the former Idol Club, she has many traits of a good leader that shine through even here. She seems to know almost every student by both name and educational track, and isn’t above doing dirty work herself. After an introductory sequence where Nana mulls over her decision to quit before deciding it’s for the best, the first thing we see her do is chase down a stray cat. It’s charming and sets the rest of the episode up nicely.

But while this fleshes out her character a bit, the real revealing turn is her initial encounter with Yu, who is idly playing “Chase!” to herself on a piano. Yu initially mistakes Nana for a fellow Setsuna fan, but Nana quickly rebuffs her. But as she does so, it becomes clear before long that Nana is less talking to Yu and more trying to justify her decision post-hoc to herself.

In a vacuum this is a pretty simple development. In the context of the rest of “Shouting Your Love” it helps Nana feel like someone legitimately going through a serious crisis of the self. The actual argument that broke up the Idol Club–something about passion vs. cuteness–is perhaps a bit underexplored, but the conflict it represents feels real. It’s clear to us the audience that Nana doesn’t really want this to be where her time as an idol ends, and she’s trying to convince herself more than anyone else. At one point she even sits down to watch a Youtube upload of her own performance; only to scroll down and realize that all the comments are asking fundamentally the same question: why did Setsuna quit?

You can read a lot into her internal monologue in this episode. And there may be more than one answer. Personally, it seems to me that she’s someone with a tendency to put what others expect of her before what she wants herself. It would fit with her demanding position on the student council, an aside remark by her mother about “mock exams”, and her decision to disband the club once she felt like she was getting in everyone else’s way. She even seems to think that she was holding them back from competing in the Love Live, the school idol “tournament” after which the entire franchise is named. And indeed, her final comments in that very monologue seem to frame things that way, with her justifying her decision as a sacrifice for the benefit of her friends, the new members of the club, and so on.

In fact on my first viewing of this episode I actually thought it might end there, because I wasn’t paying particularly much attention to how far along the video was. In the best way possible; “Shouting Your Love” is the rare anime episode that feels twice its length. The second half of the episode sees the newly-reformed School Idol Club briefly hijack the school announcement system to call Nana and “Setsuna” to the roof. (After a heartfelt meeting where they decide they want to try to get Nana back in the club, of course.)

Here, she has another talk with Yu, who at this point in the series seems like someone whose wildfire passion may well be contagious. Yu asks Nana to rejoin the club. Nana replies that she’ll hold everyone back from being able to compete at the Love Live, to which Yu says this.

And the facade of Nana as the dutiful student council president who always puts others before herself promptly snaps like a twig.

It’s hard to not just post screencaps of the entire conversation, which is so heartfelt that in places it borders on a confession scene (not the first like this that Yu’s been responsible for in Nijigasaki and I doubt it’ll be the last).

Shippers eat your heart out.

The important thing is that Yu’s words reach Nana, much like Setsuna’s song first reached Yu. In a stylish hairflip, Nana’s braids come undone, and Setsuna is reborn in an instant. Because this is an idol series–because this is Love Live, perhaps–she of course bursts into song. “DIVE!”, the insert song here, is a fist-pumping rocker whose “music video” weds the earlier fire theme of “Chase!” to an underwater aesthetic, laying Nana/Setsuna’s personality out in symbolic language as she, in the MV, breaks through a reflective underwater wall of ice, perhaps a visual metaphor for this rediscovery of what is, in my estimation, her real self.

But we can talk about symbolism and other such concerns all we like. The biggest thing I can say in the favor of “Shouting Your Love!” is that I’ve now watched the ending scene three times. And while it’s true I cried the first time, I think it’s even more impressive that I couldn’t stop myself from grinning ear to ear every single time. “Yu” is kind of brilliant as a character name, because while she is a character in her own right, when you’re watching the idol performances, you’re seeing them, essentially, as Yu sees them. If you open yourself to it, the passion of the series–the same passion I’ve talked about at length, here–can easily light your heart on fire as well.

It’s impossible to know if we’ll still be talking about Nijigasaki in these same terms in a few weeks. A lot can change over the course of an anime’s run, after all. But it’s hard to imagine a world where this episode ever feels less wonderful. To tell the truth, as someone who recently set music as a creative outlet aside, I can’t help but relate to Nana. But even more, I can’t help but relate to Yu, who seems just as star-struck by the wonder of art that I am in moments like….well, like “Shouting Your Love”.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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.