Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Spy x Family takes a slightly more relaxed, downtempo turn this week. Really, that’s fine, with two cours split across half the year, the series has time to stretch its legs. As such, “Prepare for the Interview,” its third episode, only briefly involves any actual forward plot motion. It’s mostly scene-setting, and an opportunity to put the Forgers in a genuinely domestic context. If only, perhaps, to endear us to them further so that later, when this status quo is threatened, we feel all the more sympathetic. (Not to be cynical about it, that’s just good storytelling.)
We can basically break the episode down into a couple different kinds of scene. There are scenes where the Forger “family” achieve the illusion of domesticity, there are scenes—usually immediately following that—that break said illusion to comedic effect, and there are finally the scenes that actually move the show’s core narrative forward. All three are important in different ways, and there is groundwork laid here that’s sure to pay off later.
The actual interview bit is a fairly minor part of the episode, coming after Loid and Anya help Yor set up in their new, collective home. (Everyone has their own room, which we’re shown in detail. More importantly, we’re reacquainted with Anya’s plushie Mr. Chimera.)
They briefly try some interview practice right away, but it doesn’t go particularly well. I like this little gem here, Yor’s response to the question of what her “parenting philosophy” is.
The bulk of the episode simply revolves around the Forger family having a nice “upper-class outing.” Loid reasons that maybe getting some culture will help.
This is all on the quiet side, but there are still some pretty great gags in here, like Anya briefly getting scared of Yor when the latter has a stray thought about how she once accidentally hugged her brother too hard and cracked his ribs. Anya’s pretty great in general in this episode. She expresses shock when Loid bluntly tells her that she didn’t really help get the house ready for Yor to move in, she falls asleep at an opera, and at an art museum, this happens.
Yor gets in a few good gags too, mostly revolving around her character tic of blushing whenever something related to violence is around. (At one point she fiddles with a knife at the restaurant they’re at. At the museum, she gets all dew-eyed over a painting of a beheading.)
There are a few more serious scenes as well, such as Anya getting a bit of esper overload when the family hangs around a political rally and has to be escorted away.
The episode’s focal point, though, comes when the trio, taking in some fresh air at a small overlook, happen to see a purse snatcher rob an old woman. Loid, being naturally inclined to not draw attention to himself, doesn’t initially do anything, coldly commenting that the woman should’ve been more careful. It’s Yor who springs into action, and while Loid is eventually the one who takes the crook down (Yor loses him), the old woman thanks them both. Loid thanks Yor for inspiring him to action, and she blushes, which leads to another astute observation from Anya.
The episode concludes with more interview practice, and the promise that we’ll see the real thing next week.
If I don’t seem to have much to say about this episode that’s because, in the grand scheme of things, it’s not a terribly important one. Other than that scene with the thief, this one is best enjoyed by just hitting play and letting it wash over you.
Until next time.
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!
Okay, yeah, we’re doing this.
Healer Girl, if you’ve not seen my prior post on it, is an absolutely mesmerizing little series from Studio 3Hz. It’s about girls who sing to heal people. Songstress-doctors. Idol-medics. Whatever compound term you care to come up with. It is the best anime airing right now, and even though I have basically no “good reason” to cover it from a practical point of view—it’s not that popular from what I can tell, which is a tragedy I hope to play some small part in fixing—I definitely have a good reason from a personal point of view. I love this series; it’s a sparkling, scintillating ocean wave of pure joy.
So, this is the only warning you’re going to get. If you’re averse to just straight-up fangirling, this is probably not a column you’ll enjoy. But if you aren’t, well, welcome to the cult.
We’ve missed an episode, but thankfully Healer Girl‘s second was not too complex, so we can quickly run through it here. The episode introduced two new characters; the stuck-up Healer prodigy Sonia Yanagi (Chihaya Yoshitake) and her assistant / friend, an aspiring composer named Shinobu Honosaka (Miyu Takagi). The former is obsessed with trying to show up the clinic that our main girls work at, and essentially strong-arms her way into the story as their self-declared rival. The latter just sort of goes along with it. These two will doubtless play an integral role in the story going forward, as will another fact established in episode two—that Healers panicking can adversely affect their ability to treat patients—so that’s the gist of what we skipped by my not covering episode two.
Episode three is about our girls studying for, taking, and waiting for the results from, the stressful medical exam they need to pass in order to become certified Healer Assistants. They spend most of the episode’s opening half studying for and/or panicking about this. Particularly Kana, whose pharmacological (there’s a fun word) knowledge is sorely lacking. Because this is Healer Girl, the episode actually opens on the three studying by singing. Remember; this is also a musical. I’m particularly fond of the bit where one will call out a music term and another will sing back the definition. It’s wonderfully bouncy. Toe-tapping, even.
The series manages the difficult feat of showcasing the three’s personalities through their singing alone. Kana is Healer Girl‘s ostensible lead character, but it’s really more Reimi who is the “leader” of their little clique, and her forceful, almost rock singer-ish vocal style and fuller timbre emphasizes that. Kana, meanwhile, has a peppier and lighter tone, which fits her status as the not-too-bright lead. Hibiki, the most mature of the three, actually has the highest tone, but it only serves to reinforce her playful, never-taking-things-too-seriously nature.
Of course, the show’s spoken dialogue is full of personality, too. During a study session, where Kana and Reimi stay overnight at Hibiki’s room at the clinic, Kana recounts a story about why she’s so bad at learning about medicine, and I really cannot do justice to her completely absurd excuse except to reproduce it in full.
Any Discord servers out there looking for a :NotLikeKana: emote?
To which Reimi correctly replies.
In general, the whole “study scene” does a lot to remind us that, while it’s true that these girls have an extraordinary and very important job within the context of their world, they’re also still just teenagers. (And frankly having to take a medical licensing exam when you’re in high school sounds like an utter nightmare.) Given how important it is for any “slice of life” anime to make its characters feel human and relatable, this is pretty important.
There’s also an interesting scene where the three visit a shrine (to pray for success on the test, natch) and Hibiki, witnessing some miko perform a kagura, wonders aloud if Vocal Medicine works by faith. Reimi even mentions that the exact mechanisms by which it functions are obscure, even though it’s been proven to work. (This part is less absurd than it sounds, given how opaque the precise workings of even a lot of chemical medicine were and, in some cases, still are.) If you were being really uncharitable, you could maybe spin this into Healer Girl promoting pseudoscience or faith healing. Suffice it to say, I think such a reading would be an extreme stretch.
Boxing at shadows aside, the shrine scene (and a sung-over montage immediately after it) transition us into the second half of the episode. Here, the girls have already taken the exam and are simply waiting for their results. The stress from the waiting has made them, shall we say, a bit off-key.
I’ve been there, girls.
Ria (the girls’ teacher, and the Healer they’re assistants to, if you’ll recall), decides to try to get their minds off of things. How? By entering them in a town sport and field competition. Why not?
The girls sing all of their dialogue in this second half of the episode in an amusingly flat, slightly off tone, to illustrate how tired they are. This continues—with slightly more spirit in the singing—even when Sonia shows up to cause a general ruckus and gets on Reimi’s bad side by dissing Ria. Naturally, the two decide to settle things by seeing which team between the two of them can score more first-place leis. (They give out leis instead of medals at this competition. I don’t know.)
I really must make it totally clear that Reimi’s half of this whole exchange is sung. It’s great.
Things are neck in neck, until the grand prize for the overall competition winner is announced. You may wonder what a mere county meet could offer as a compelling first prize. I will tell you in three words; Enormous Dog Plushie.
The injection of pure motivation this provides is instantaneous and noticeable.
This is also how I feel about large plushies.
Reimi wants it too, since conveniently apparently Ria collects merchandise of this character and this is another chance for everyone’s favorite blonde lesbian disaster to get in good with her teacher (in her own mind, anyway). With the spirit of competition raised to even greater heights than before, Sonia also starts singing. (Her second number in the show, in fact, after her Healing Song from last episode.)
But Reimi and Sonia’s fired-up neck and neck competition ends up not mattering. Because apparently Hibiki, who quickly overtakes both of them from behind, is a musical Speed Force user or something of the sort.
The competition ends with the giant plushie going to Hibiki. She promptly sends it to her many adorable younger siblings, meaning no giant plushie for Reimi to give to Ria. Don’t worry, though, because Reimi did win the second-place plushie, and gives that to Ria instead. Ria is duly grateful and hugs her student, thus giving Reimi specifically a very happy ending for this episode.
After the ED, we see that the girls also did, in fact, pass their exams. It’s a heartwarming note for the episode to end on. And, for us here at MPA, an apropos one, too.
Song Count: Two full songs in the episode’s first half. The girls’ dialogue is almost entirely sung in the back half, as mentioned, depending on how you want to count 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.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
“Papa is a huge liar. But he’s such a cool liar!”
His codename is “Twilight,” alias Loid Forger (Takuya Eguchi). His real name unknown and unknowable. He is a spy; an international man of mystery. A shadow, a whisper. No one knows his name. In what is not said to be but clearly is the cold war, a certain nation stands divided in two. There, Loid is deployed for the commencement of “Operation Strix,” his toughest assignment yet. What could possibly challenge this earl of espionage? This master of manipulation?
Well, domestic life, for one. Loid’s assignment: find a wife and adopt a child, blend in as seamlessly as possible, and send said child to a prestigious private academy to get close to one of the nation’s top political leaders, a man of near-paranoiac caution who rarely makes himself available except at events for that very school. So begins SPY x FAMILY, Wit Studio and CloverWorks‘ adaption of the wildly successful Shonen Jump manga. So also begins our second Let’s Watch column of the season. We’re in for a ride, folks. Strap in.
For Loid, the first order of business is procuring a child. Time is of the essence, so doing so the—ahem—traditional way is out of the question. As such, the first major undertaking our big heroic superspy sets out on in SPY x FAMILY is a trip to a run-down, skeevy orphanage. There, he adopts Anya (Atsumi Tanezaki), a six-year-old girl with a very cute hair style.
Seriously though what ARE those things on her head? Antennae?
She’s also telepathic, which leads to quite a few shenanigans. Namely; it takes Anya only a few moments to learn that Loid is a spy, being able to read his mind and all. This creates a fun dynamic wherein Loid thinks he has to hide his profession from Anya, who knows what he’s thinking at all times anyway, but who in turn also hides the fact that she knows what Loid really is. The implicit comedic observation that SPY x FAMILY makes here is that children, like spies, have thought processes that are pretty incomprehensible to the rest of us.
Anya is also afraid of what might happen if Loid finds out she can read minds. We’re told upfront that she’s been adopted and then returned to the orphanage four times before. This is a cloud that hangs over all of Loid and Anya’s interactions and provides an interesting shade to even Anya’s silliest antics. Her deep and abiding love of peanuts, for example. (Atsumi Tanezaki also deserves some real credit here for lending a believably childish air to her vocal tics.)
SPY x FAMILY is not a drama, really. But you could make the case for “dramedy,” perhaps, if heavier on the “edy” side. It has the good sense to cut its comedic side with more tonally complex moments, creating an actual emotional core as opposed to just a parade of gags. Anya fucking around with Loid’s spy equipment is funny. Her then panicking, wondering if she’ll be sent back to the orphanage if he finds out, and flashing back to her days as “Subject 7” in the facility she was born in? That’s sad. And like any good dramedy, SPY x FAMILY can juxtapose these polar opposites without making either feel out of place. This is, after all, a little girl that we’re talking about. Kids do think like that, and Anya’s been through more than most.
That’s not to say that all of this totally works. Later in the episode, after a great action sequence where Loid rescues Anya from the direct result of said equipment-fuck-arounding, he engages in a bit of self-lionizing, and we get some rather leaden backstory. This comes too early and too unearned to really hit the way the show seems to want it to. (This is to say nothing of it bumping up against the fact that, you know, real spies are generally not great people. SPY x FAMILY generally renders the profession too ridiculous to feel like it’s glorifying it, but it does occasionally come close.) Thankfully, it’s brief, and not enough to seriously ding the episode in any real way.
The episode ends with Anya successfully passing the exam to get into the private school that forms the crux of Loid’s mission. Perhaps more importantly; it ends with Anya snuggling up to her adopted dad on a couch (and him slightly freaking out about it. He fell asleep in front of someone! That’s a huge no-no for a spy). Then things, as they always do, hit a slight snag.
But we’ll discuss the full implications of that next week. See you then, anime fans.
Oh, I think I already have, episode title. I think I already have.
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.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
Before we even talk about Healer Girl, Studio 3Hz‘ new original anime project, let’s briefly discuss its trailer.
Released inconspicuously back in December, this PV is absolutely spellbinding. As recently as a few days ago, I’ve previously called Healer Girl an idol series, and it does have an associated idol group. But the actual Healer Girls are more Wilson Philips than AKB48, and as the soft, light pop music flows out of your speakers you’ll eventually notice the visuals, too. Our girls fly in the air, their songs extend literal beams of music outward, raising stone pillars from the ground and healing all who hear them. They’re dressed in all white, like they were angels. It’s one of the most singular PVs in recent memory, and Healer Girl the actual show has a lot to live up to.
Let this much be said: it must know that, because it puts a strong foot forward. It is exactly three and a half seconds into Healer Girl before we get our first piece of music. Before the opening credits even drop, Kana Fujii (Carin Isobe), our lead, sings a soft little song to a group of schoolchildren who were roughhousing. The scrape on a little boy’s knee disappears in the blink of an eye. One boy points out to another that this isn’t “magic,” it’s healing. This is a pretty bold first step for your show to take, and it speaks to a lot of confidence on the part of the writers.
After the OP finishes, we get some explanations for what exactly is going on. Healer Girl takes place in a world where “Song Medicine” is an accepted, scientific form of treatment. (Here referred to as the “third major branch” of medicine. My brief time working at a pharmacy does not qualify me to speak on how real either of the other two are, I have no idea.) The few pieces of terminology we get throughout the episode are–obviously–audiomedical technobabble, but that’s fine. The point is made; these girls are less like idols and more like doctors. Or med students, since our three leads are apprentices. They mostly train rather than do anything more involved at this stage in their careers. There are pushups.
The first half of the episode plays out like a reasonably typical work or school life comedy, albeit one set in a world with key differences from our own. Healer Girl is certainly not short on the merits that the better examples of these shows have; there’s a lot of colorful animation, some interesting directorial decisions (the series has a fixation on rotating the POV of a shot), and the coveted Good FacesTM that seal the deal on any character comedy. Kana’s co-stars are fun, too, with simple personalities that avoid being one-note. Reimi Itsushiro (Marina Horiuchi) is the straightlaced one, but she has a fixation on the apprentices’ collective teacher, Ria Karasuma (Ayahi Takagaki). The crush she harbors on Ria is hilariously unsubtle. I might use the word “thirsty.”
Hibiki Morishima (Akane Kumada) is soft-spoken and eccentric, at various points in the episode she professes to be scared of manju(?) and white rice(??) and tries to freak out her fellow apprentices by claiming there are ghosts in her bedroom.
On top of all this, Healer Girl is also kind of a musical! There are, by my count, two proper songs and a medley in this first episode. Which, combined with those aforementioned strengths, would make Healer Girl recommendable on its own.
Before we get to the last thing about the show, though, we should back up slightly. It’s established that that little stunt that Kana pulled in the opening minutes isn’t something mere apprentices are actually allowed to do. For reasons left ambiguous to us, healing music is strictly regulated. Apprentices doing so much as singing away a knee-scrape is very much not okay.
Which leads us to the closing act of the episode. A little girl named Yui pounds on the front door of the clinic while Ria and the other in-house doctor happen to be out giving a conference. Her grandmother is in trouble, and she doesn’t know what to do. Our apprentices, accordingly, spring into action; dialing an ambulance, trying to get ahold of Ria, and heading to Yui’s house to comfort the patient, respectively.
It’s Kana who takes that last job, and good lord does she ace it. She knows–and we know, from earlier–that she shouldn’t try to heal this old woman, so she improvises, instead singing simply to stabilize her and calm her down while the ambulance arrives, and it is as she’s doing this that Healer Girl goes from having a good first episode to having an amazing one.
The central connection that Healer Girl makes, even this early on, is between music and medicine. One heals the soul, the other heals the body. Healer Girl‘s main trick is to make that connection literal with music that can soothe both. Other anime in and around the idol genre have occasionally flirted with spiritual, magical, or religious imagery, but, speaking personally, I’ve often been frustrated by how hesitant they are to commit. If you’re going to draw up grandiose metaphors, go hard on those metaphors! Restraint is for suckers, and it makes most popular art worse! Go fully unhinged! Have your idols literally heal the sick! Do it! Madonna wasn’t afraid to compare herself to Jesus and you shouldn’t be either!
Healer Girl seems to agree; when Kana sings to this poor old woman, a flower blooms beneath her feet, she levitates in the air and tiny poppets in her own image materialize from the ether to calm her patient down.
It is a beautiful thing to watch, and the show damn well knows it, because when Ria does arrive, she excuses her apprentice’s kinda-sorta rule break, and is as impressed with her display as any of us are. This is not the face of a woman who’s unhappy.
There’s some more exposition here–apparently this transcendentally luminous phenomenon we just witnessed is called an “Image”, and the fact that Kana’s changes while she sings is somehow notable–but mostly everyone is just happy that the old woman is okay. Kana, deservedly, takes some time in the episodes final moments to bask in a job well done.
If you’re a certain kind of person I could see finding Healer Girl‘s whole thing offputting or even creepy. There is no denying that the little worldbuilding we get here also raises some odd questions about the setting. (What is the role of non-healing music, for example? Does it even exist? Does all of it sound like early 90s light pop?) But I can’t pretend to be part of that group, I’m all in on Healer Girl. I have tried to refrain from making predictions about a show’s success (doing so last season ended, I would say, embarrassingly), but I certainly want this one to keep up this level of quality.
Speaking personally, I had a very bad morning before I sat down to watch Healer Girl. A morning filled with medical anxiety, even, complete with missing prescription refills and an agonizing wait in a doctor’s office. Healer Girl made me feel better, too, and I cannot give the series a stronger endorsement than that. Early in the episode, Reimi compares recorded healing music to OTC drugs. But what can I say? Sometimes the over-the-counter stuff works.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Seasonal First Impressions is a column where I detail my thoughts, however brief or long, about a currently-airing anime’s first episode or so.
“Do you want to run away from your current situation?”
And so, the season begins with a doozy.
ESTAB-LIFE: Great Escape is peculiar on several fronts. For one, it was a beneficiary of the increasingly-common practice of a pre-air screening. The first two episodes have actually been out for about a week, today merely marks the start of its actual broadcast run. (And just to clarify; to give it parity with the other anime I cover in this column, I’m only looking at episode one here.) It’s also an all-CGI affair, still novel enough a thing to be worth noting. It comes to us from Polygon Pictures, who have built their particular fiefdom of the anime industry entirely out of that sort of thing. Its director is Hiroyuki Hashimoto, whose filmography is a bit scattershot. (It’s difficult to make firm statements about a man whose greatest contributions to popular culture thus far have been directing the anime adaptions of Magical Girl Raising Project and Is The Order a Rabbit?) Nonetheless; this is first original anime, not based on any existing property. But interestingly, the “original plan” (whatever that means) is credited to someone else; Gorou Taniguchi. Who you may know as the man who directed Code Geass, perhaps the grandfather of all truly gonzo camp-fest anime of the past decade.
This is all well and good, but you’re probably wondering–even with that colorful legacy in mind–what this show is actually about, which is fair enough. Here are, with as little embellishment as I can muster, the events that unfold in the first five minutes of ESTAB-LIFE, before the opening credits even roll.
We open on a rain-drenched funeral with a priest solemnly reading out last rites for the deceased. His prayers are interrupted by a car horn, and our cast–two anime girls, a small robot, and a wolfman–pile into the Hearse, with apparent intent to drive it somewhere. We cut to a slight bit later, and our heroes(?) roll up to some kind of military checkpoint. The ball-shaped android manning the checkpoint notices that something is amiss when one of them sneezes(?!) and pulls an emergency alarm. At this, our heroes blow through the checkpoint while pursued by a cloud of armed drones, to the irritation of the third anime girl hiding in the coffin in the back seat. They arrive at a gate, which they must hack open, or something, while under fire. One of the drones shoots one of our heroines dead in the eye, at which point she bursts into water, only to reform seconds later. Her compatriot remarks that this ability of hers is useful.
It is at this point that the OP plays, and it sinks in what kind of anime we’re in for.
Eventually, a kind of context for all this does emerge. The setting is Japan (naturally), but a Japan divided into many independent city-states called “clusters” that have little contact with each other. A civilian moving freely from one cluster to another is unheard of, and met with harsh, sometimes lethal response from the “moderators” who govern these cities. That’s where our heroes come in; they’re extractors, people who spirit away citizens who are bored or disaffected with their lives.
As we establish, that’s mostly by night. By day, they’re ordinary citizens at what appears to be an all-girls school; the two male members of the main five hold down the fort at home, we must assume. The three girls are Equa (Tomomi Mineuchi), Ferres (Rie Takahashi), and Martese (Maria Naganawa). Respectively, the compassionate leader whose only desire to help out everyone the group possibly can, the cynical one who swears she’s going to quit this extractor business any day now, and the cocky, flirty one who can turn into water. (She’s a slime-person “demihuman”, as we eventually learn.) There’s a lot of great banter here, and even though I singled out Martese as the flirter it’s worth noting that all three of them kinda seem to be into each other, which is cute.
I won’t belabor the point by going over every single beat of the episode. Its main plot centers around the girls smuggling their philosophy teacher, one Yamada-sensei, out of their cluster. This eventually comes to involve, in no particular order; the man having to thumbprint a document saying that the extractor team can’t guarantee his prosperity or happiness in his new city, his being handed an emergency grenade by the team’s robot, Alga (Shou Hayami), just in case he gets captured and has to “end it all,” and Martese creating a diversion in a police station by pretending to be drunk off her ass. (This backfires. One of the cops scans her and finds out she’s a slime person, and apparently, slime people can’t have alcohol because it’s dangerous to them. The more you know!)
The actual extraction goes pear-shaped, because of course it does. Even with three girls with guns, a talking robot, and a wolfman who doesn’t talk but does have two swords (Shinichirou Miki) on your team, sometimes things go wrong. Eventually, Yamada-sensei does end up making it to his new cluster of choice; but he has to get there by rope, and it’s not after a whole lot of shenanigans involving busted elevators and improvised building-climbing. Nietzche quotes are thrown around.
Top to bottom, the whole episode is also stuffed with great banter and surprisingly good little character moments. (Especially in the animation department, which is far from a given in any anime.) That, combined with its generally oddball nature and focus on “escape” as a main theme makes it remind me less of any recent seasonals and more of that Idolmaster short I covered a few weeks ago.
All in all, it’s hard to say where, exactly, ESTAB-LIFE is going, but it’s certainly going somewhere, and the ride seems worthwhile. Keep an eye on this one.
Grade: B The Takeaway: Interesting character designs, great banter, an intriguingly odd plot, and a general sense of WTF-ness combine to make this an early standout in the young season.
An administrative note: I alluded to this in the body of the article itself, but I have basically no clue what’s going on with this thing’s schedule. The regular broadcast apparently starts today, but on some JP services it’s apparently going up in three batches of four episodes each. And I’ve seen conflicting reports as to what schedule streaming services available in the US will be following. Personally, I’m probably just going to watch it week by week like any old seasonal. I hate to think that an unorthodox release schedule might hurt Estab-Life‘s chances at gaining an audience, though.
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!
Well folks, here we are. I always meet the end of each season with a certain air of cleaning out the cobwebs. Maybe that just speaks to my impatience and love of novelty (after all, the many shows that will come out next season remain nothing but a sparkle of infinite possibility until they actually air.) Still, more than usual, I am glad to put this one in the books. I haven’t started watching episode twelve of Sabikui Bisco as I type this, but the show has not exactly wowed me over the last third or so of its run, and whatever I end up thinking of the finale, I can’t really change that. On the other hand, I don’t want to go into it with clouded eyes, either. Judging something before I watch it is bad form.
Without further ado then, let’s hop on the crab and find out; can Sabikui Bisco nail the landing, totally saving the show just in the nick of time?
Well, in short, no. But! It does make a pretty good show of trying, and that counts for something.
The actual plot here is dead simple. Bisco, in revived-mushroom-super-saiyan form (reborn “as a god” I believe is how Jabi puts it) has to take down Kurokawa. Who, we here find out, has not turned into the Tetsujin giant so much as he’s “piloting” it. And when Bisco can take down the Tetsujin’s armored form we’ve been following for the past few episodes in just a couple shots, surprise, it has a second form. Tirol helpfully explains that they can’t just kill it while it’s like this, because if they do it’ll self-destruct and take out nearby Imihama along with it. So the only solution? Taking out the pilot.
Our heroes’ plan to do this is also pretty straightforward. Step 1. Have Pawoo break the giant’s helmet with her pole. Step 2. Have Bisco snipe Kurokawa’s sort-of still alive body from the head of the giant. The show spices this up in a few ways; mostly by giving everyone some delightful banter. Pawoo in particular shows a lot of personality here. She also starts gunning pretty damn aggressively for Bisco! Which, me being me, you might assume I’d complain about. But honestly, “warrior woman who aggressively steals a kiss from the guy she’s into” is about the only way they’ve depicted Pawoo that actually makes the pairing make some sense. (And hey, he does offer her “anything she wants” if she comes back alive.) This is the most chemistry they’ve ever had. It only took, you know, 11 and a half episodes.
She even brags about it to Bisco’s surrogate dad afterwards! I would’ve liked to see more of this brash, charmingly arrogant side of Pawoo. It’s unfortunate that we didn’t get to.
The actual execution of the plan goes from A to B to C so quickly that it almost feels perfunctory. Pawoo bonks the giant, the giant’s mask breaks, revealing just how ugly the damn thing actually is.
It’s like if you tried to sculpt an ugly infant from cherry Jell-o.
Kurokawa and Bisco get into it a little bit, and then Milo once again overtakes his sister in the “getting with Bisco” department as he helps Bisco line up the all-important pilot snipe. The power of homoeroticism saves the day, and Kurokawa goes down in one.
And that’s honestly kind of it! We do get some additional stuff throughout the remainder of the episode. Bisco and Milo get a nice moment where they just chill on the bed of giant mushrooms that’s sprung up in the wake of the battle, and the last 10-ish minutes of the episode are a montage showing everyone’s rust infections being cured. (Bisco is now 100% Rust-Eater Mushroom by volume. How does that work? How does anything in a shonen work! Who cares?) This includes Pawoo! Who looked beautiful with her rust scarring and looks just as beautiful without it.
There’s a timeskip, and sometime later we get a fun closing scene where Bisco has to once again pass through the government gate from episode one, this time with Milo in tow. I’m fond of this whole bit, especially Milo also getting a wanted poster where he’s branded the “Man-Eating Panda.” Oh, and the very last interesting worldbuilding tidbit is something we see via a TV. Imihama has a new, political firebrand of a governor who’s done radical things like condemn the persecution of the mushroom-keepers and even declared independence from whatever’s left of the Japanese government. That governor? Pawoo, who–and you’ll have to forgive me here–looks fine as hell in a suit.
And on that victory for WLW everywhere, Sabikui Bisco ends. I didn’t dislike this episode, but from basically every perspective it really felt to me like the show started running out of steam by its end. And as nice as some parts of this episode were, it didn’t really change that. I have rarely seen a series so thoroughly tie up its own premise by the end of its first season. Even many original anime leave a bit more to the imagination than this. One could call that a strength, I guess, but to me it mostly feels weird. Especially since there actually is a sequel to the manga.
We do get one hook here, aside from Imihama’s independence–and I imagine it’s what said manga follows up on–Bisco is now immortal because of his mushroom-fueled resurrection godhood whatever. He doesn’t really like that, and it’s on the note of trying to cure this particular condition that the story ends. So there clearly is some space for the story to continue, should Sabikui Bisco have done well enough to warrant that. Even so, we’re a far cry from where we were back in episode one, and while I always try to judge anime based on what they are, and not what they could’ve been, a part of me does miss the neon-streaked nocturnal urban ambience of the premiere. And on a different note entirely, the smaller-scale character-focused episodes that followed it.
There’s also the issue of this episode’s somewhat inconsistent art. There’s some stuff that looks really great, like when we see Bisco’s resurrection from his perspective in the episode’s opening minutes.
But a lot of the character art is spotty, and it brings down an otherwise solid finale somewhat. Even so, as a decent finish to a decent show, “Bow and Arrow Duo” does its job just fine. (And boy, am I conscious of the fact that I’m yo-yoing between positive and negative opinions a lot in this article.) The series’ final shot is a framed picture of Milo and Bisco, and I think that’s a nice image to end on.
And ordinarily, dear readers, this is where I’d tell you I’ll see you next season. That’s true as far as the Let’s Watch columns go. (I won’t even be announcing the winner of the Community Choice poll until this coming Saturday in the weekly Frontline Report column.) But the first show of what looks to be a very busy season actually premieres tomorrow. So, with that in mind, I’ll see you then, anime fans.
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 Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.
Hi folks, simple writeups this week, nothing too fancy. But I hope you’ll enjoy them as one of our recurring anime comes to a close and another heads there at a mile a minute. But first–
Seasonal Anime
Miss KUROITSU From the Monster Development Department
Miss Kuroitsu probably isn’t quite consistent enough to be called a seasonal underdog, but damn if it doesn’t sometimes come close. This past week’s episode is the beautiful little fable of a mute monster girl filled with weapons (named Mumy and played by singer YURiKA) who wants nothing more than to become an idol. The general idea is hackneyed, and the episode looks like ass. Did I tear up multiple times throughout anyway just because the show got me so attached to this girl? Yes I did. Did I have to actively stop myself from crying even more at the end of the episode where a combination of vampire bioengineering and sheer fucking moxie means she’s miraculously grown a voicebox and developed a beautiful singing voice? Yes I absolutely did.
What else can be said? Sometimes even a benchwarmer bats a home run.
Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2
I wish people still sincerely called things “epic.” I can’t think of a word that better fits the blazing spectacle that Princess Connect has transmogrified to as it enters the final stretch of its second season.
To get something out of the way; in previous articles where I’ve discussed Priconne, I’ve made a point of entertaining alternate points of view. The show is widely liked, but not universally liked, and while I do still respect everyone’s rights to hold their own opinion, I think the time for trying to specifically acknowledge criticisms that others might have has passed. If you object to rapturous praise for stuff like this, you’re on the wrong site. Sorry.
“Stuff like this,” if you need to be brought up to speed, is an absolutely shameless blind-fire of the Proper Noun Machine Gun, mixed with what is certainly some of the flashiest animation of the year so far. (Priconne is good at that.) We get some new characters here (and a few old ones make return appearances), and a good chunk of the episode consists of a guild–a guild who seem to have some knowledge of how the world of Princess Connect really works–fighting against Christina, another of the Seven Crowns and Omniscient Kaiser’s sort-of lackey, below Kaiser’s palace.
This is, in a word, awesome. New arrivals Ruka (Rina Sato) and Anna (Asami Takano) attack Christina with Anna’s Final Catastrophe attack. Ah, but of course, Christina is one of the Seven Crowns, so her passive ability Absolute Defense renders her immune to normal damage.
But that too can be overcome by simply overloading the ability’s computational capacity–a kind of VRMMO underflow error–but then it turns out that Christina secretly also has access to Absolute Offense, which fires glowing beams that invert the world’s colors. They eventually subdue her…only for the secret true form of Omniscient Kaiser to emerge from the very thing they were fighting over! All of this is deeply ridiculous, but it’s a total blast. Anna in particular is really fun, being perhaps the most chuuni chuunibyou I’ve seen in any anime in years.
Alongside this is Pecorine’s fight to save Karyl. Impeded here by the return of Jun–the blindfold-wearing knight we were introduced to several episodes ago–but now she is, of course, brainwashed by Kaiser and in full battle armor. The two prove a solid match for each other, although it says a lot that this is actually the more restrained of Priconne’s two battle scenes in this episode.
Eventually, Pecorine is able to break Kaiser’s hold on Jun, and the two turn the tables against the evil wolf-woman and kill her. Except they don’t actually, because of the aforementioned hidden true form of Omniscient Kaiser lurking beneath Kaiser’s palace. The form that they’ve been fighting this entire time? Merely a particularly strong-willed shadow. It has a very hammy death, and it’s not gone for ten seconds before the real Kaiser starts tossing Pecorine and Jun around like ragdolls with a wag of her finger. (As a side note, Kaiser’s actor Shouta Aoi deserves some praise here. He has a reputation for voicing dangerous women, and he is indeed very good at that, but he can also holler like a motherfucker when the scene calls for it, and he uses that skill several times in this episode.)
As you can surmise from the appearance of credits over this final scene, this, and the cut immediately after where Yuki finally arrives, is the end of the episode. But we should back up a bit, because one more thing of import does happen in between all the flashy sword-clanking.
Kokkoro, in about the middle of the episode, is spirited away by the Ameth, that mysterious girl with the broken clockwork floating around her who, like Labyrista, seems to have been instrumental in controlling the world. Regardless of the specifics of her, though, what she gives to Kokkoro is important; a small device for “keeping Yuuki’s emotions in check.” Ostensibly to keep him from overloading his powers and hurting himself. It’s an odd turn of events, and seems to imply that maybe Ameth isn’t entirely on the level, either.
The season finale approaches, so perhaps we’ll get some answers there. Or at least, more intriguing questions.
Ranking of Kings
“Shine on toward a yet-unseen tomorrow.”
Ousama Ranking‘s finale begins thusly; Daida reaffirms his (puzzling, though given the vaguely medieval-ish setting perhaps slightly less so) decision to marry Miranjo, swearing that the both of them will turn over a new leaf and concentrate on doing good in the world. At the same time, he relinquishes the throne, and all of Bojji’s retainers hail him as the new king; the scene is a happy one, with all present praising Bojji’s bravery and strength of character. There’s much celebration, and King Bojji’s new subjects quite literally toss him into the air with joy, and later take him to his new throne room so he can receive formal homage from the townsfolk. It’s very classic fairy tale. There are a lot of happy tears. So, we’re all good, right? Happy endings all around.
Well, no, not quite.
Not present among Bojji’s gaggle of retainers is Kage. The shadow clansman rationalizes that the young king no longer needs him–and that his own reliance on the boy is bad–and leaves silently, seeking honest work in the same nearby town he used to make his way as a thief in. He ends up miserable there, of course, as the townsfolk haven’t really changed. No one wants to hire him for honest work, and when he sets up a small wooden hut outside of town someone destroys it.
Meanwhile, Bojji, too, is lost without his best friend. He seems like a fine king based on what little we see, but his heart clearly isn’t in it. Fittingly, it’s Queen Hiling (now Queen-Mother Hiling, one supposes) who picks up on this. In a cozy bit of motherly wisdom, she tells him that being a king is his responsibility, but if there is something that truly matters to him more, he should go seek that instead.
Bojji, thus, ends his brief reign by re-relinquishing (delinquishing?) his crown to Prince Daida. Making for, I’m sure, a fun footnote in their kingdom’s history some hundreds of years down the line.
Bojji sets out to find Kage the very day, and they meet up again not long later. He reveals to Kage his secret ambition; to someday found his own kingdom, after having a great many adventures before then, of course.
As for what happened to King Desha at the end of last week’s episode? We don’t know, and perhaps we never will. Some mysteries remain even under the morning Sun.
Ousama Ranking is occasionally criticized–and I’ve made these criticisms myself–for its odd pacing and the plot’s tendency to drift all over the place. Even in this final episode there’s an aside that really doesn’t add anything at all, although it does look pretty cool. (Kingbo makes a surprise return appearance, splits the rock that Ouken is imprisoned in in half, and then decapitates him and chucks his head into a lake many miles away in the span of about 3 minutes.) But, while that is certainly a flaw, it’s not one that negates the show’s many strengths. In the end, Ousama Ranking boils back down to what made it great in the first place; Bojji, Kage, a bag of treasure, and the great, wide world stretching before them. The promise of more adventure on the horizon billows into the sky like smoke. If not now, it seems to say, then someday, somewhere.
Please vote on this if you care about what I’m going to be covering during the (rapidly approaching) next anime season. You’ve got a little under a week left to make your voice heard!
Sabikui Bisco continues to be Sabikui Bisco-y as it comes to a close. I kinda feel like I’ve run out of much to say about this show other than what’s already in the
Meanwhile, My Dress-Up Darling ends the only way it really could have, sweet nothings and fireworks. It doesn’t hold a candle to the very best fireworks-centric romcom finale in recent memory–that being a different show’s season one finale–but still, it’s a definite high point to go out on for a show that’s been something of a rocky ride. I hope the second season (and let’s be real, one is definitely getting made) is more like this than say, like episode six.
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!
Ladies, gentlemen, nonbinary folks of the jury, our long national wet dream is finally over. Yes, it’s been a long twelve weeks, but here we are, at the season finale of My Dress-Up Darling. Before we even talk about this episode at all, let’s go over some facts of the prior eleven. Some of MDUD’s episodes have beenspectacular, others have been pretty bad. This is an inconsistency not rare among anime or, honestly, among linear TV shows in general. Evaluating a run of episodes that includes both the former and the latter is difficult, especially since the “good episodes” aren’t entirely devoid of flaws and the “bad ones” aren’t entirely devoid of merits. Such are the limits of purely qualificative criticism.
One thing it has undeniably been, is successful, and while this is certainly the season finale I would not be at all surprised if the series were hastily renewed. An anime does not simply put an extra two million copies of its source material into circulation and not get a second turn at the plate. To argue that a second MDUD season is unlikely would be to argue that capitalist businesses aren’t actually that interested in making money. Things just don’t work that way. So, to put aside my own–and our own–collective biases for a minute, this is clearly a series that has connected with people in some way. Is it because Gojo is just really that relatable? Maybe it’s because something about Keisuke Shinohara‘s directorial style really resonates with The Youth. Or maybe people just want to wife Marin that badly. (Given the show’s target demo, probably at least some of that.) Maybe it’s all of these. But the point remains; MDUD is here, and it’s probably not going away any time soon. If you care about the current anime zeitgeist, it is at least worth consideration.
So, for the final time–at least for now–let us consider it. My Dress-Up Darling‘s 12th episode, its season finale, also called “My Dress-Up Darling”, begins with a heavy summer night hanging over Japan. A small breeze clinks a windchime as Gojo focuses on his first passion, dollmaking. He gets the sort of text that would send just about anybody–age, gender, whatever, aside–into a bit of a panic.
It is, of course, not actually that serious. She wants help with a costume thing and to vent about her dad not letting her go to a festival. Normal teenage girl stuff. Things happen, and our heroes end up A) working on summer homework and B) watching a scary movie. Also, somewhere in here Marin casually reveals that she has a side job as a model.
The horror movie itself is a real treat. We don’t see much of it, but, in keeping with MDUD’s prior visual ambition in this area, it’s animated totally differently from the rest of the series. The character designs are more grounded and realistic, and in general the visuals look like something out of the Boogiepop franchise. It’s pretty cool! Marin is scared witless by the film while Gojo nerds over costuming details, which, yeah, that sounds about right.
There are a lot of great character moments here, in fact. Gojo and Marin later end up needing to run to their high school to pick up some over-summer math homework that Marin left behind. (And, really, props to them, there. I don’t think you could’ve made me enter my high school over summer vacation if you put a gun to my head.) There’s a scene here where, after falling into a pool(!), Marin muses on how she loves going to the beach even though she can’t swim; to watch the Sun set and make the ocean’s surface sparkle, to talk with friends and eat tasty food. It’s a bit of quiet insight into her character that the show has done well a few times and I really hope it doesn’t let up on when the inevitable second season arrives.
Gojo gets his turn, too. He and Marin attend a festival after Marin finally does finish all her summer homework; one Gojo’s lived near for years but never actually gone to. There’s a lot of great stuff in this scene. Some of it, tropes that are so old to the genre that they’re practically cliche. Gojo is practically dumbstruck by seeing his love interest in a yukata, Marin buys way too much food, etc. But the one Dress-Up Darling works the best is probably the most classic. The fireworks go off; Gojo hears thunder and smells gunsmoke as a billion neon flowers bloom in the night sky. He spends more time looking at Marin than he does the actual show. Marin returns the favor by shattering the mood into a million pieces by goofily sticking out her tongue, which is a solid blue from the Blue Hawaii she’s been eating.
Is the moment actually ruined? Not really, Gojo has to carry her home. (Traditional sandals evidently do a number on your feet. I’ve never worn Japanese-style ones, but, that tracks with my experience with flip-flops.) And when Marin casually mentions being more careful with her footwear next year, when they go again, Gojo gets so hung up on the “next year” that the boy looks like he’s practically going to cry. It’s really sweet.
There’s an equally-sweet after-credits scene, where Gojo keeps Marin company over the phone after the latter makes the brilliant decision to watch the sequel to the horror movie they’d seen earlier. We don’t get a concrete sense of how long the two talk for, but it seems to be quite a while. At episode’s end, Marin tells a now-asleep Gojo that she loves him. Maudlin? Maybe. Heartwarming? Absolutely, and the visual of their two separate beds being stitched “together” by their phone call is really lovely.
The episode–and the season–ends with Marin wishing him a goodnight, and a promise to see him later.
A promise that might well extend to us, the viewers, as well. One can say a lot about Dress-Up Darling, most of which I already noted in the opening paragraphs of this column. But, the show definitely cares about its own characters, and that’s a good thing. I have my own hopes and expectations for the near-inevitable season two, but there will be time to write about those in a future column. MDUD will almost certainly return to the pages of Magic Planet Anime in some form or another. (Perhaps sooner than you think, even.)
For now, I think perhaps I should end this particular round of Let’s Watches the same way MDUD itself ended. To that, I say; goodnight, and see you later.
Egregious Horny Score: We’re at a tasteful 2/5 this week. Although some teenager is going to watch this and discover he has a thing for exposed necks. Pray for him.
Overall Egregious Horny Score: A solid 4/5. Frankly this was my biggest complaint with the show and probably a lot of other peoples’ as well, and I sort of regret waving the extraneous cheesecake that was present early on off in the way that I did. Oh well.
And finally, by far the most important of these little mini-entries, returning for the finale is the Bonus Nowa Screencap. Let’s hope we get more Nowa in season two. If we can’t get an authorized Flower Princess Blaze spinoff I at least want Nowa: The Anime. I would take that as a consolation prize.
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