Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week.
Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.
Look, if I’m going to rant about a show for falling off I have to give it due credit if it gets back in the saddle, too. That’s just fair play.
On the other hand, I really do feel like I’m tsundere for this goddamn show.
It’s not like Magical Destroyers has really gotten any easier to understand since I last wrote about it just two short weeks ago. If anything, it’s retreated even further into its own little world. Subtext and any real stab at a larger theme have been set aside for the moment in order to riff on disparate tropes and styles from all over the last 20 years of anime history. I really wouldn’t say, even as it closes in on its final third, that Magical Destroyers seems particularly in a hurry to get anywhere. (Apparently, there’s a tie-in mobile game, which might have something to do with that.) But even as it’s seemed less and less concerned with making any kind of point, Magical Destroyers has rediscovered its love of style. That counts for something. At the end of the day anime is both an artform and a medium of entertainment; if you can’t swing a compelling take on the former, the latter is a pretty good consolation prize.
Case in point; the last two episodes. Last week, the series dove into an almost Sonny Boy-esque hallucinatory flicker, constantly going back and forth on whether what we were seeing was real or not. (It eventually gave us a definitive “yes,” which takes away only a little bit of the magic.) This week’s episode, despite being much less conceptual, is almost even weirder, though certainly not in better taste. How do you put a compelling spin on the yucky “brother and sister who are like, Too Close” trope? Well, I’m not sure it’s possible. But making them respectively a mutant severed head and a creepy The Shining kid respectively is certainly one way to at least try.
“She will never be ballin.” *Spits out cereal.*
This is to say nothing of the series’ ongoing habit of warping its own aesthetic around the characters of the week. This can, as we’ve established, backfire. But put to the right ends, it can really liven up an otherwise fairly straightforward episode. The series really does get into some proper horror aesthetics here. It’s mostly loving pastiche rather than doing anything “truly original,” but that’s in-line with the series’ general aesthetic aims, so it’s hardly a bad thing.
It’s worth shouting out the series’ commitment to one-off magical attacks that seem like they should be coming out of a bank system, but aren’t. Blue whips out two new ones here, and Pink gets one as well (in both cases, after the girls in question have taken a shady empowering drug. If the show’s edgy sense of humor wasn’t your speed toward the start of its run, it won’t be any moreso now), and they’re a lot of fun.
As for the running B-plot of secondary villain Slayer, that finally comes back around here, too. Although mostly as a tease for next week’s episode. It’s pretty fun when she manages to out-aggro girl Anarchy herself.
All told, the series seems to be back on track. Or at least, as on-track as something this proudly idiosyncratic can ever be. For my money, that’s a good thing. I’m slef-conscious of the fact that this article, where I praise Destroyers, is shorter than the one where I yelled at it for getting lazy. But that is just the way the cookie crumbles sometimes. (Ask anyone, it’s easy to write about things that are done poorly, it can be much harder to articulate why something works. Sometimes something is just cool because it’s cool.) And honestly, if all I truly have to say is “it’s back, baby!” why beat around the bush?
I’ve followed a lot of anime this season, and I’d while be hard pressed to say that Magical Destroyers is the best of the lot, but it’s damn memorable. In the seasonal churn, that counts for a lot.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, or Anilist, and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category. If you have any questions about this or any article, feel free to leave a comment, or pop on over to my RetroSpring and ask me there. It’s up to you!
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are 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.
Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week.
Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.
It’s always a danger with this kind of show; anything that’s more than 30% or so pastiche by volume will get lost in the weeds if it spends too much time reminding you of other stuff instead of being good on its own merits, but that isn’t really the specific problem that Magical Destroyers has run into as it closes out its first half. Instead, the issues are more basic. It just isn’t much fun anymore; the show’s always-questionable taste, initially a forgivable quirk, has collided headlong with its lacking character writing, incoherent plotting, spotty pacing, and, as of the most recent episode, the visual side of things is also starting to fall apart. None of this is good, and even if the series recovers it will be, if remembered at all, rightly dinged for having a weak middle third.
You can map Magical Destroyers‘ episode quality over time pretty easily. After a strong premiere, an even better second episode that seems likely at this point to be the show’s overall highlight, and a solid third episode, cracks started to show around episode 4, where the entire thing is basically an excuse for some tasteless fanservice. Episode 5 is fine, and even seems to set up some ongoing plot threads for the episodes to follow, but the two that come immediately after it are easily the show’s low points. Episode 6 is a dull and pointless elaboration on the titular magical girls’ barely-there backstory, and episode 7 is just a top to bottom problem.
In episode 7, the girls face the second of the Four Heavenly Kings—gotta have those in an anime, of course—but in contrast to the brainwashed car otaku in episode 3, this guy is….an angry gamer named Adam who cheat at video games a lot until he was eventually banned from every online game. It really must be said, Adam has an unforgivably bland design for a show like this, and his AI girlfriend Eve (of course her name is Eve) doesn’t fare much better.
Adam of course traps our heroes in a virtual world where he has unlimited haxx0rz to torment them as he pleases. Except, he’s not very creative with any of this—which is maybe supposed to be a vaguely meta point about the sorts of people who are inclined to cheat at video games, but it doesn’t really come off that way—and his attacks are mostly limited to generic stuff like rocket launchers and pistols. The SNES-style JRPG mockup segments are a bit more interesting, but given how off-model the rest of the episode looks, they almost feel like an excuse to simply have the characters on screen less often.
While all this is going on, there is a massive battle happening back at the home base of Otaku Hero’s rebels. We’re shown approximately none of this, and despite the threat of Otaku Hero and the magical girls possibly not making it back home in time to save the day, the plot is simply resolved off-screen. This is indicative of the show’s poor writing at this point in general, plot points will be seemingly forgotten about or just dissolve mid-episode, proving to be of no real consequence. Anime in this “otaku action anime” genre do not have to be exquisitely-written, but they do need to have impact, and virtually nothing that’s happened in the past two episodes has had any.
On top of that, it must be said. No one comes to an anime like this for its themes, but watching it—again, especially this weak run of episodes 6 and 7—has made me realize just how well written some of them, in particular Rumble Garandoll, actually are by comparison. That series never lost sight of the fact that people who loudly express disdain for art and those who love it tend to have ulterior motives for doing so. There is a reason its villains were from an alternate timeline where Japan won WWII; they were literal fascists, whose hatred of otaku culture stemmed from it being indicative, in their view, of a weak mindset that did not sufficiently put the nation first. By contrast, Magical Destroyers‘ main villain seems to just hate otaku because they’re otaku. He gives a rather over-wrought speech in episode 6 that makes him come across like the sort of person who spends a lot of time on tumblr ranting about how fanfiction is destroying young writers’ minds. He’s still ultimately wrong, but the ideological scope is not there, and as such his plans—and the show’s entire plot as a consequence—come off as trivial.
Otaku Hero’s ideal of a world where you can “like whatever you want however much you want to like it” is a nice enough idea, sure, but it’s not very specific. Contrast Garandoll‘s broad messages of unity and inclusiveness—even accounting for that show’s own flaws—and you start to see how poorly Magical Destroyers‘ writing holds up even against other anime in its own very narrow genre. When Magical Destroyers began, I saw a few people express disdain at the fact that it took its own conceit seriously. That isn’t the problem; the problem is that it’s not taking it seriously enough to actually articulate any further ideas it might have. And if it doesn’t have any, if the only thought it has truly is “doesn’t it suck when nerds get bullied?” then that’s all the worse.
Finally, the show’s production has begun falling off as of episode 7, and as a result some shots and sequences look astoundingly poor, with low drawing quality and bad composition. One hopes it’s just a hiccup, but it’s genuinely hard to believe that shots like these come from the same anime as episode 2, which still stands as one of the single most visually inventive of the season. And for that matter, the show’s own stock henshin sequences, which stack up to any from any more conventional magical girl anime of the past decade.
Will Magical Destroyers recover? It’s not impossible. There are a few high points of episode 7; a bit where Otaku Hero and Anarchy rescue Pink and Blue sees them walking in on the two mid-Uno game, where Pink is “torturing” Blue by hitting her with a pair of Draw 4s. And there are a handful of good to great shots and cuts, although honestly that’s true of almost any anime (very few anime look uniformly terrible throughout).
And while it probably hasn’t sounded like it from most of this article’s tone; I am rooting for Magical Destroyers, here. I like stuff like this! There’s a real point to be made about how the persecution of art can abet the persecution of people, and while no show in this small genre has ever made it perfectly, they usually at least try. What’s really burning me about Magical Destroyers at this stage is that it feels like it’s not trying anymore. Not to beat a dead horse, but you’re going to go on and on about the glory of anime and manga, and then this My Hero Academia reject is the heat you’re going to bring?
I initially thought there was a method to this anime’s madness, but it really seems like it might just be making it up as it goes after all. For a show where the premise involves a rebelling army of nerd guerillas and a magical girl named Anarchy, it hasn’t really lit the fires of revolution under me.
Nonetheless, because I’m a mark, and because I tend to get attached to shows where my feelings on them change several times over the course of me watching them, if it ever does get its act back together, I’ll be the first person singing its praises. Come on, Magical Destroyers! Give me something to believe in!
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, or Anilist, and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category. If you have any questions about this or any article, feel free to leave a comment, or pop on over to my RetroSpring and ask me there. It’s up to you!
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are 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.
Hi again, folks! I think most of you know how this works at this point, so I’ll justlink the survey immediately, but if you’re new around here or would like a primer, let me briefly explain. Even returning voters might want to give this a read first, though, since I’ve changed the selection process a teensy bit this year, and, as you can see, there’s a bit more than just a call to vote this season.
Every season (with the notable exception of this past season for Various Reasons), I cover one or two anime on a week-by-week basis here on Magic Planet Anime as they air. I like to leave the selection of at least one of those anime to You, The Reader. In the survey linked above, you can vote for any number of the anime from the upcoming—and absolutely packed—season. This season, though, I trimmed the list of candidates somewhat, restricting it to a narrower selection of 18 shows I have an at least marginal interest in, in addition to the usual exclusions of second seasons of things I haven’t seen, and so on. (Marginal Service isn’t here, funnily enough. I wasn’t impressed by the trailer and while it’s the sort of thing I might check in on anyway in a slower season, this is not a slower season.) I did however leave an “Other” field with a customizable response, so if you’re really dead set on getting me to watch Summoned To Another World For a Second Time or what have you, you can at least try to rally 30 of your closest friends to get it to win out.
This season, since things have been quiet here lately, I wanted to be a bit more thorough than I usually am. Since this coming season is so packed, it helps to have some idea of what these candidate shows actually are. Why don’t we run down the list here, so we can get a sense of the shows in question? Hell, I’ll link the trailers too.
Oshi no Ko
Right off the top, this is the big one. Every season has a few high-profile manga adaptations. In 2023’s Spring season, this is probably the highest profile. Superstar status is pretty fitting for Oshi no Ko, though; the series is a dark, incisive examination of the underbelly of the entertainment industry. If you’re like me and your main complaint with a lot of idol anime is the lack of proverbial blood on the stage, you absolutely need to watch this; it’s some real “the spotlights here can burn holes through the stage” shit. There’s just one catch; the show also has a completely absurd shock value high-premise, one the triple-length first episode will explore in detail. A lot of people aren’t super keen on that part of the series, but I have to admire the incredible power play of putting out a 90 minute first episode in this anime season. That takes some serious confidence.
I have to be honest, this is easily my most anticipated show of the season personally, and I will probably cover it at least occasionally regardless, but I’m really pulling for this, specifically, to win the poll. I even cheated a little bit, using its romaji title, which encases the show’s name in square brackets, to boot it to the top of the list. You can’t be afraid to get a little underhanded in the entertainment industry, folks! Did I mention the manga is written by Aka Akasaka, of Kaguya-sama: Love is War! fame? And illustrated by Scum’s Wish mangaka Mengo Yokoyari? Also that much of the Doga Kobo team who did the gorgeous Shikimori’s Not Just A Cutie adaptation from last year are on this? I’m just saying, I think we’ve got a star in the making here. Check out the very much not fooling anybody trailer below, which mostly tries to present the series as a zany comedy.
alice gear aegis Expansion
Here’s a weird one for you. Is it an idol anime? A battle girl series? Both? Neither? I’m going with “CUE! with power armor” at the moment, but that’s admittedly only so much of a description. I’ll confess that I mostly chucked alice gear aegis Expansion—which is apparently capitalized like That—onto the list because it seems to at least be within the rough ballpark of the battle girl genre, and those are pretty hard to screw up. Even when they’re bad, they’re usually at least funny-bad.
Of course, I’m well aware that by saying that I’m practically jinxing myself. But hey, I’d still be willing to give it a shot, even if it does turn sour. Also, it’s based on a video game I’ve never heard of? So that’s cool. Check out the weirdly rambly, somewhat inscrutable trailer below.
The Blue Orchestra
Let’s say pop stardom isn’t your thing but you still want to see me cover an anime about music this year. If that admittedly narrow description applies to you, you might want to cast a ballot for Blue Orchestra. I’ll be honest – I don’t know a ton about the manga this is adapted from, aside from the fact that it’s well-liked. The trailer, in all its CGI band glory, tries to give the idol anime treatment to something decidedly more down-to-earth and personal. Will it work? I’m interested to find out. Check out the trailer below, and make an amusing mental note of how similar the protagonist looks to Ishigami from Kaguya-sama: Love is War!
Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story – Season 2
Birdie Wing is just one of those things; you either get it or you don’t. The first season of the Golf Girls Story aired about a year ago to sudden cult fandom, as the series’ combination of strong lesbian undertones, hilariously over-the-top interpretation of golf, and more than a little no-shit social commentary were weaved together surprisingly well. But, the outwardly ridiculous bit of Birdie Wing is over, and I’m admittedly interested to see if the show can keep its pace up in its second half, as the golf mafia and life-or-death stakes are replaced with more mundane golf tournaments and interpersonal drama.
Ah, who am I kidding? It’s probably still going to be crazy as hell. Check out the trailer and it’s intoxicatingly chipper soundtrack below.
Dead Mount Death Play
Here’s the sum total of what I know about Dead Mount Death Play: 1. the manga was written by the Baccano! guy, 2. it’s a two-cour anime, which is noteworthy here because almost everything else on this list either is the second cour of something or is only one cour long, as far as we know. 3. it’s an isekai? Or something? It’s tagged as an isekai on sites like AniList and MyAnimeList anyway, and that gnarly skeleton monster from the trailer sure looks like something out of an isekai.
Beyond that, I really have no idea what to make of this thing. (I have to admit with some embarrassment that I missed the Baccano and Durarara hype trains back when those anime were an active, going concern.) But that’s precisely why it’s interesting! The trailer, which I will direct you to below, offers tantalizing glimpses of mystery and violence soundtracked to a nice minimal piano piece. Also, check out that girl with the glasses. Any time a girl with glasses gets to cause violence a show is at least going to be decent, don’t you think?
Otaku Elf
Otaku Elf!
Otaku elf.
An elf who is an otaku.
An elf who primarily enjoys pop culture media from Japan.
An otaku elf, if you would.
This really seems like it should be one of those “the title says it all” affairs, and it mostly does seem to be shaping up that way, but aside from the fact that I am willing to watch anything that reaches for this particular kind of comedic vibe—check out that shot in the trailer of the titular elf being flanked by a pair of actual-ass Red Bull cans while some shoujo stuff happens—there’s also a hint of an actual story here, something that might dig into why this particular stock fantasy character is such an otaku, maybe? This is one that I’ll probably cover at least a few times even if it totally washes out in the poll. I can’t stay away from something with this much 2006 energy. Check it out in the trailer below, but watch out for that incredibly catchy theme tune.
Jigokuraku: Hell’s Paradise
I have to give Hell’s Paradise—or Jigokuraku? I’m not sure what’s going on with the English name situation for this one—a very important award here; most bitchin’ trailer. This shouldn’t be confused with best trailer, those are different things, even if this one is pretty great. But if you’re like me and you need a “completely crazy action anime” quota filled each season and feel a little unsatisfied when it’s not met, you’re going to love this one. This is one of the anime on this list I knew the least about when I checked out its trailer (the third of three, apparently, in fact), but it’s now up there as one of my most anticipated shows of the season. It’s funny how that works, isn’t it? I don’t know much about Buddhism, but despite the series taking place in a Buddhist hell, that doesn’t seem like it’s going to be a huge obstacle; anybody could pop for this.
Check out the trailer below, and be prepared for the needlessly hard soundtrack to kick in about halfway through.
TOO CUTE CRISIS!
You know what’s missing from anime these days? Aliens. The Invaders from last year’s Teppen!!!!!!! made an admirable go of it, but they were only a pretty small part of a large ensemble cast. Here, with TOO CUTE CRISIS!, the aliens are the majority. But if that does nothing for you, the sheer stupidity of the comedy on display here should. Sure, the aliens try to destroy the Earth but can’t bring themselves to do it because cats are really cute. Why not? Check out the extremely fuwa fuwa trailer below, where I believe the lead character compares cuteness to a black hole.
Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch From Mercury – Part 2
Look, I’m not going to pretend anyone needs me to explain Gundam to them in 2023, especially not the second half of this Gundam, which is interesting and important in all sorts of ways. I’ll be totally honest, I was actually kind of hesitant to even put The Witch From Mercury on the poll, because I don’t know if I’m totally up to the task of covering a Gundam anime week by week. Nonetheless, if you all should find it in your hearts to assign it to me, I will do my very best. That’s about all I have to say on this one.
Check out the trailer, full of blood, iron, and drama, below.
Insomniacs after school
Figure this one out; after years of being quite possibly the least impressive anime studio regularly making shows on its own two legs, Liden Films have managed to really turn things around over the past few. Between Insomniacs after school here and last year’s excellent Call of The Night adaptation, they might even be establishing something like a studio specialty.
Far from a re-tread, though, Insomniacs after school promises a kind of dusky romantic magic all its own, charged not with danger like Call of the Night’s, but with a galactic, midnight sweetness. The real highlights here are the shots in the trailer that nail this home; a shrine gate against the night sky, our two leads prancing through a dreamlike reflection of the Milky Way itself. You can check out the dizzyingly romantic trailer for yourself below.
Kizuna no Allele
Every year, there are a few anime that I treat less on the terms they probably want to be taken on and more as….mysteries to be solved, perhaps? Sometimes it just isn’t totally clear what a show is trying to do. Kizuna no Allele is one of those.
At first glance, Allele seems like a fairly standard idol anime with a virtual twist, with a color-coded cast of candy-haired girls who want to put on their first concert and become big stars and so on. What makes Allele odd are its ties to real-world VTuber Kizuna Ai, whose level of involvement in the project is fairly unclear at this point and who haunts the trailer (which you can check out below. Are you sick of me saying that yet?) like a ghost. That, plus some of the more surreal stuff in said trailer (what’s up with that room with the metal box in it?) make this an odd one. Airing in the same season as Oshi no Ko might sap this thing’s chances of getting a real fanbase, at least in the west (even if Oshi no Ko is only an “idol anime” in a fairly broad sense), but I am nonetheless somewhat intrigued by it.
Oh, also, the main girl’s name is Miracle. I’m not clear on if that’s her VTuber name or what, but I just think that’s funny.
Mahou Shojo Magical Destroyers
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before; in the grim darkness of the near future, nerd shit is outlawed by an oppressive government, and it’s up to a ragtag band of otaku heroes to save the day. No, I’m not describing Rumble Garanndoll, though I could be. It and Mahou Shoujo Magical Destroyers here are bedfellows as part of the niche self-aware otaku action-comedy genre. I’m kind of a sucker for these things and I like them more than I probably should, but even with that in mind, Magical Destroyers here is shaping up to be a strong example of the form, even if hiding the fact that you have a male lead until fairly late in the PR cycle does scan as a bit disingenuous.
If there’s a real star here, it’s Red Anarchy, the crimson-haired mahou who, in the trailer, is rocking a black t-shirt with the word “RAGE” written across it in all caps. And yes, that is Ai Fairouz you hear, staking out the exact middle ground between her voices for Power and Cure Summer with laser precision. What a talent.
A Galaxy Next Door
Remember a few entries up where I mentioned all the space imagery in Insomniacs after school? Well, here we have an anime that is bold enough to ask, what if there literally was A Galaxy Next Door?
I’ll be upfront about it, this is another one that I don’t know a ton about, but the premise of a mysterious otherworldly woman turning an everyman lead’s life upside down does appeal to me when it’s done right, and the hints of the literally supernatural going on here sweeten the deal. This looks like it could be low-stakes fun, and in a season this busy, sometimes that’s a nice thing to have.
Skip & Loafer
Three words I will never truly tire of no matter how old I get: coming of age! I don’t know what it is, but there’s a certain brand of summery, glinting story about the ups and downs of youth that just hooks me right in almost every time. I feel like it’s been a while since we had a truly great anime of that sort. Was the last one still O’ Maidens in Your Savage Season? Possibly. It’s too early to call if Skip & Loafer will be great, but it’s shaping up to at least be pretty good, with its powerfully scrunkly lead and J-Rock soundtrack. I’m just very fond of this one, okay? I’m rooting for it like a parent for their kid during a baseball game.
Heavenly Delusion
Here’s a guy I bet most people were betting would never show up on this site again; Masakazu Ishiguro, once and future mangaka of And Yet The Town Moves, and the same for Heavenly Delusion, a series that is, in quite possibly all ways, absolutely nothing like And Yet The Town Moves.
Heavenly Delusion stands as a rare cult favorite manga getting an adaptation that seems like will actually elevate its already-impressive source material. I’ll admit to being only passingly familiar, but something like this—a fairly heady sci-fi seinen—getting an adaptation from Production I.G. of all people should be cause for celebration. I’ll admit that the trailer looks absolutely fantastic, beaming all the spec fic sci-fi specifics directly into your brain without wasting a second on belabored narration, and then cutting to the next while you’re still processing the first scene.
If I seem a little more muted on it than you might expect, given all that, that’d be because Heavenly Delusion is being brought over to the states by Disney+, and I do so hate the Mouse and his increasing investment in the medium I love. Last year, almost no one was able to watch Summertime Render, also a top-shelf adaptation of a cult favorite manga, and one of the year’s strongest anime overall, because Disney+ simply sat on it for months and then released it with no fanfare whatsoever a few months ago. I hope they don’t make the same mistake with Heavenly Delusion, but I have my doubts about whether they’ve learned any real lesson here. Disney seem to be in the anime streaming game more to deny rights to their competitors than they are out of any desire to actually let this stuff be seen by an anglophone audience. If that seems like a paranoiac reading of their actions, I encourage you look into their historical business practices.
Nonetheless, if it’s even possible to do so, I would love to cover the series. Time will tell if that’s doable. Check out the trailer and get combination hyped / irritated that we might not get to watch this for like 9 months with me below.
Yuri is My Job!
Another nefarious yuri! Yuri is My Job! is an interesting one, being a girls’ love series equipped with a pretty novel high premise. The gist is this; our lead gets roped into working at a character cafe` where, basically, the workers act as though they’re in a school setting. The sort one might find in ye olde Class-S stories, back in the day. I won’t spoil any further details, but you can intuit some of the metacommentary that might arise here from the setup alone, and the lead’s charmingly bitchy personality is the lemon in the confectionary that ties things together.
Admittedly, the anime’s soft, jelly candy art style is not the first choice I would’ve gone with to adapt this material (I might’ve advocated going full-on retro shoujo pastiche. Admittedly, that’d be quite effort-intensive), but the trailer makes it look pretty good in motion. To me, my fellow lesbians!
World Dai Star
Rounding things out, we’ve got another idol anime but actually it’s about acting sort of thing. This is another niche subgenre of anime that I’ve become a bit of a mark for over the past couple of years, although it’s definitely possible to do badly. (See CUE! How has that come up twice in this article?)
Will World Dai Star do it well? Honestly, this early on it’s kind of hard to say. I was drawn in by the colorful character designs (the handiwork of Fire Emblem and VTuber character designer Mika Pikazo), but the trailer itself has not given me much to work with other than pondering how I’d navigate the sight of anime girls doing what seems to be a stage version of Aladdin. I suppose we will leave that question for if the time comes.
Thus ends the list! If you haven’t already, go and vote for your favorites (remember you can vote for as many shows as you like) if these candidates. I should note that this season, I’m only running the poll until the end of this weekend. So, I will take the final tally sometime after Sunday ticks over into Monday.
I hope you’re all excited, I’ve missed writing for you guys, and it’s great to be back.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter, Mastodon, Anilist, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directoryto browse by category.
All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
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