Finally, for 22 uninterrupted glorious minutes, Spy x Family has seen fit to go full Looney Tunes.
I actually complained about something similar to this a few episodes back. But that was different; a single scene that goofy in an episode that otherwise works on rather different rules is out of place. An entire episode of that sort is a lot easier to swallow. Even if some of the fundamental issues that needle the outside edges of SpyFam remain, this is one of the strongest episodes of the entire second cour.
And what can we thank for this radical advance? Tennis, naturally.
It’s easy to use shortcuts like “fluid” and even “sakuga” to describe particularly pleasing animation in anime, but the stuff in this episode really does stack up perfectly well to anything else being made right now, even seasonal highlights in this department as diverse as Chainsaw Man and BOCCHI THE ROCK! – Spy x Family, for this episode at least, stands right beside them.
The “Fonies” tennis match is fun in its own right, too. Loid and Fiona’s opponents begin pulling out even more absurd tricks to help them win; raising and lowering the net height, artificial wind, coating the ball in a foul-smelling perfume, shooting Loid with a rubber bullet from a sniper rifle (quote: “I figured something like this might happen, so I wore a bulletproof vest.” What a man.) None of it works! Twilight and Nightfall are just too damn good together at, specifically tennis, and nothing else. When the match ends, the agents’ mark is so taken by the sheer strength of their play that he gives them the prize, as promised. One of their opponents turns over a new leaf as well. All’s well that ends well, right?
Well, not quite. Fiona is still Fiona, and while I’d ordinarily criticize Spy x Family here for managing to fail the Bechdel Test repeatedly when it has so many female characters, the rivalry that’s developing between Fiona and Yor is actually one of the more interesting plot points the show’s served up recently. It’s also damn funny, if only to see Fiona vastly underestimate Yor. She challenges her to a tennis match, apparently not sick of the sport quite yet. Yor appears to whiff her first swing, only for it to turn out that actually, what happened is that she diced the tennis ball into pieces. This is a fun double gag, because one sees Yor wind up dramatically, sees her seem to miss the ball and assumes the show is going for yet another “Yor’s so clumsy” joke, only for the ball to then crumble into chunks, revealing that this is actually a “Yor’s so deadly” joke. (The better of the two categories, by far.)
Naturally, Yor absolutely smokes Fiona, and Agent Nightfall is left totally defeated, old-school sketch frame and all.
The episode’s final shot is an intriguing one; Yor, sitting on the couch of the Forgers’ apartment, staring off into space, clearly bothered by something. Is it Fiona? After all, “fake” marriage or not, Loid has started running around, suddenly, with a woman who Yor’s never seen before. One can understand why she might feel insecure about such a thing.
This, to be sure, would still be a relatively basic plot. (It’s not like “two women fighting over a man” is anything particularly new.) But there’s always room for new spins on old ideas, and if Spy x Family seems like it’s more on-track recently than it has been for much of this cour, maybe digging back into the fundamentals is exactly what it needs.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
The highest praise that I, personally, can bestow on an anime has nothing to do with my writing at all. It’s a feeling, a kind of half-anxious, half-excited wriggling in my gut. Butterflies; basically, not out of serious anxiety that a show might “get bad” or any malformed pessimistic instinct of the sort, but from the sheer, imminent thrill of where something might go next. It is a very basic lizard brain sort of thing, and it’s not something I really have any control over. It’s one thing to feel like this when I’m not familiar with the source material—or if there is no source material—but today, as I sit here at 9 AM waiting patiently for the newest episode of Chainsaw Man to release, is the first time I’ve ever gotten it from an anime where I already totally know how this story ends. I am that excited purely from the sugar rush of this series being put to silver screen, yet again.
Maybe that means nothing to you, but to me, it’s another badge on CSM’s already well-decorated vest. One it’s really only just put on, in the grand scheme of things, given that we’re heading into the finale of the first of what is sure to be many seasons. Last week, when I was regrettably sick, we saw Chainsaw Man take its combat direction to another level as lives were lost, cursed phantoms appeared from the ether, and seemingly the series’ very foundations were torn to shreds in mere minutes.
This week? Vengeance with the V from Violence.
The last act of the Ghost Devil, Himeno’s now-former contracted devil, is to pull Denji’s ripcord before she finally vanishes. He and Katana Man go for round two in a fight scene that would be the highlight of an episode of nearly any other shonen anime. They slug it out something fierce, and Sawatari, Katana Man’s handler, even calls in some backup. But Chainsaw Man tends to swing for the fences, and this scene, while nice, is fairly conventional compared to what follows. I say this despite the fact that it ends with Denji being cut in half at the waist and left for dead. (You’ll forgive me for not pretending that there’s any real chance he’s going to stay dead in the anime named after him.)
A cue Chainsaw Man wisely takes from its most accomplished ancestors in the shonen anime field is that, while it is ultimately an ensemble piece, it knows to let each individual player showcase their strengths. By analogy; these are solos, stretches of the story where a single character becomes the focus on all levels; aesthetically and thematically bending the series itself to their personal rhythms. Chainsaw Man‘s ninth episode features, basically, two of these showcases, and they are wonderful, things of true frightful glory with fairly few peers in this—or any—anime season.
Makima, to the surprise of, I imagine, no one, is not dead. The episode pivots over to her part of the story through shots of the dead; eerie, still, and silent. Indeed, one of the bodies the camera lingers on is hers. That silence is final for most of the passengers aboard the train that the terrorists hit in last week’s episode. But, evidently, it isn’t so for Makima herself.
Makima jumpscare.
When that train finally rolls in to its original destination, Makima is the one who steps off; covered in blood that is mostly not her own but evidently not actually any worse for wear. The two here-unnamed Devil Hunters she links up with are quickly drafted into a support plot. Simply put, no one involved has the time to speed back to Tokyo to help Denji and friends. Instead, Makima will “do what [she] can” from afar.
So what does “what she can” entail?
Well, I will start by saying, I think almost anyone with even a tiny smidgen of media literacy will pick up on the fact, very early in Chainsaw Man, that there is something decidedly off about Makima. But this episode is the first time we see just how “off” she really is. Let’s put it this way; her plan requires her to be taken to the highest nearby temple that her assistants can find, as well as “thirty convicts serving life sentences or worse.”
You can, here, start to make some guesses about where this is going. But if you don’t feel inclined to, the show spells it out about as soon as Makima has those 30 prisoners kneeling in front of her, with both they and her assistants wearing blindfolds. She then starts making peculiar hand motions; massaging her hands together, as though kneading a lump of clay. Here, for even the most unobservant, I must imagine the fact of the situation suddenly clicks into place; you are watching a ritual sacrifice.
As Makima works, the show undergoes a temporary transformation into a straight-up horror anime. One that is still, mind you, lit by the midday Sun, but is no less oppressive because of it. Makima’s contracted devils—whoever they are—must be fearsome indeed, because we don’t actually see them work at all. One by one, Makima has each convict recite the name of one of the terrorists. One by one, three prefectures away, crows spot them, they feel a sudden, inexplicable, and overwhelming sense of impending doom, and then, spontaneously, they explode, into a water balloon pop of high-pressure gore; ridiculous, and deeply unsettling expressionism by way of supernatural violence. The soundtrack, appropriately, darkens to an intense, drumming industrial track while this occurs. When it’s over, even Makima’s own immediate subordinates are more than a little freaked out. This, clearly, is some nightmarishly deep magic. Questions of how are of course unanswered at this time. You want a takeaway? Try “don’t mess with women in suits.”
Makima isn’t the only one to make an excellent showing here. Kobeni, who I suspect many anime-firsts might’ve written off as a bit character, puts in an absolutely stellar turn here, too. Shaking and trembling, she confronts the fleeing Sawatari and Katana Man. Hirokazu having physically shoved her out of the way of an assassin’s bullet and taken the shot himself, she is one of the few human members of her division left alive. Even so, she charges at Katana Man with nothing but a knife and a truly inhuman set of reflexes.
We actually get even fewer details about what Kobeni’s got going on as far as powers than we do for Makima, but sometimes exposition isn’t necessary. Kobeni manages to somehow flip what must be a truly back-breaking weight of PTSD into enough adrenaline and finesse to absolutely kick Katana Man’s ass; she very nearly kills him. Only after he and Sawatari have fled the scene does she finally break down crying, tearily apologizing to Denji for trying to kill him, and then laughing at herself for the absurdity of her words. The last we see of her here is that; half-cackling, half-weeping, and talking to a bisected corpse.
So, what of Makima and her two new “friends”? Well, somehow or another, she seems to know that her little Satanic ritual / artillery strike worked just fine. Madoka, a character we formally meet for the first time here, gives Makima the rundown; Special Divions 1 through 4 have been decimated—almost literally—by the terrorist attack, and the remnants of the four are being merged into a single unit under Makima’s own direct command. He also, without missing a beat, hands Makima his retirement slip. She accepts it, but when he tries to learn a bit more about what’s transpired here, this is the response he gets.
Bonus Power Screencap: Power isn’t in this episode! She doesn’t even show up in the ED! So do you know what you get instead?
Go on, guess.
Yeah, it’s another Makima stare. I’m not sorry.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
Her code name is “Nightfall.” Alias Fiona Frost. Real name unknown, and unknowable. She is a spy; an international woman of mystery; a phantom in the night. A cloak, a dagger, a whisper on the wind.
She has a huge crush on her coworker, and she’s dealing with it really, really badly.
Fiona Frost (Ayane Sakura), is the first major new character to be introduced to Spy x Family since Bond near the start of this season. On the one hand, she plays into a pretty disappointing pattern of SpyFam not giving its female characters much depth outside of their relationship to Loid. (Other than Anya, who, as a girl rather than an adult woman, occupies a very different place in the narrative just inherently.)
On the other hand; this is still a romcom at the end of the day. While the aforementioned self-imposed narrative constraint remains a handicap, it is at least possible for Spy x Family to pull off some interesting tricks from within that framework. Those tricks are enough for Spy x Family‘s better episodes in this vein; it can leverage them, both for laughs and into actual character development.
We’re introduced to Fiona in a formal context. Her handler informs her that she’ll be working with Twilight for their next mission. Immediately, we get a sense for her character in that her mind begins to race with ways by which she might replace Yor—who she has not even met yet, at this point—as Loid’s “fake” wife. The message is clear from the episode’s opening shots; Fiona is catastrophically down bad, and it’s not going to get better any time soon.
Posing as one of Loid’s hospital colleagues, she shows up unannounced to the Forger household. There, she plans to try to convince Loid to abandon Yor, and take her as a wife instead. The fact that this will be a huge problem toward Operation Strix itself (which she’s fully aware of) does not seem to much bother her. In any case, it’s a doomed cause from the start simply because Loid isn’t actually there when she arrives. Instead, she spends the episode’s first few minutes trying to psyche out Yor, only for her verbal ace in the hole—some unkind comment that starts with “Dr. Forger is always saying his wife is–“—to be interrupted by Loid, Anya, and Bond arriving home from their walk.
Thus, the game changes; she switches to talking with Twilight in code (a very stupid-funny sequence where we learn that WISE agents know how to “make their mouth movements not match what they’re actually saying”, so they can communicate via lip-reading), and directly tries to get him to break it off with Yor.
All the while, Anya uses her mind-reading powers to instantly discern Fiona’s true motive, and is more than a little disturbed by what she sees.
Obviously, Fiona’s attempt to break up the Forger family does not work, and the fact that there’s a fake smile plastered across Loid’s face is cold comfort; she knows Twilight well enough to know that the “subtle body language” she can pick up on as a fellow agent means that he truly is happy with Yor and Anya. Of course, that does not necessarily mean she’s willing to accept it.
Fiona, thus, is something of a minorly tragic figure despite the silly manner in which the episode presents her woes. She’s shackled to the idea of loving a man who, in all senses, “belongs” to someone else. (There are solutions to this problem, but, well, I doubt polygamy is legal is Ostenia.) When she figures out that she has no immediate way to win, she immediately leaves, walking into a rainy afternoon, and into a downpour that looks positively freezing. Loid brings her an umbrella at the end of the episode, and she takes the opportunity to change tactics; she tells Twilight not to hold her down, and says that she thinks “playing house” has made him soft.
Of course, we all know that’s just her changing her angle. Which brings us to episode 22.
Fiona persisting in her pursuit of Twilight is not unexpected. What might be, though, is episode 22’s headlong dive into the world of illegal underground gambling tennis.
Yes, you read that correctly. In its twenty-second episode, Spy x Family effectively embeds an entire other anime inside it; something in the vain of Kaiji or Kakegurui crossed with a sports anime. Loid and Fiona’s mission is to play in an underground tennis tournament in order to gain access to the mansion of the man hosting it, an energy company heir and antiquities collector named Cavi Campbell. There, they’re to retrieve a rare painting. Why? Because the painting is related to a secret document known as the Zacharis Dossier, which contains such high-demand intel as “records of the East’s human experiments” and “the truth behind the West’s massacre of POWs”.
Pretty heavy stuff! Especially considering the remainder of this episode, which, other than a brief flash over to Anya and Yor, is a totally bonkers take on sports anime. If anything else within Spy x Family itself, it resembles that unhinged dodgeball episode from part one. But this is a significantly stronger commitment to the bit; the animation is wilder, the comedy a bit more dialed-in. This may, in fact, be the best episode of the second cour so far. Not in spite of its differences from the rest of the cour, but because of them. Even as details like Fiona’s motivation remain unchanged.
Things begin in relative simplicity, with Loid, who claims to merely “dabble” in tennis, laying a total shotgun smackdown against their first opponents in the tournament, despite those opponents being hardened warriors of the racket.
Things escalate from here; their second opponents are completely roided out on a mix of illegal steroids that makes them look like tennis-playing cousins of the Incredible Hulk.
By the episode’s halfway point, Loid and Fiona are subjected to some sort of weakening gas while locked in a room awaiting their final match. Their opponents, Cavi Campbell’s own kids, wield jet-powered rackets with extending whip handles and play on a court booby trapped in their favor. The entire thing is just wonderfully ridiculous, and the fact that we don’t see the conclusion of this arc here means that we’re probably in for another episode of tennis-themed madness when next episode rolls around.
Most importantly, this episode is fun the entire way through, in a way that it’s really felt like Spy x Family has lacked for a decent chunk of its second cour. If it takes a bizarre turn into sports anime weirdness to get SpyFam back in proper form, I’m all for it.
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!
Content Warning: This article contains an embedded image which depicts a realistic instance of gun violence.
You know, I wasn’t actually going to cover this week’s episode. I’m sick, and I tend to write much worse when I’m sick. So, if this column—again a few days late—comes to you in a more rambly and disjointed form than usual, I do apologize.
That said; holy fuck that was good.
Most of the attention that Chainsaw Man episode 8 has gotten and will continue to get is going to come from its fight scene in the second half, a lovingly-rendered hallucination of locking blades, smoke, and phantoms.
We should talk about the first half of the episode, though. Pour one out for Himeno, who spends the first half of this episode continuing her drunken attempts to seduce Denji and ends it with her body literally vanishing into thin air. A sacrifice for nothing, as the episode’s final sucker punch makes clear.
Throughout another of the anime’s deeply-studied emulations (but not mere imitations) of live action film, she comes across as a lovable drunk, even as the opening scene itself sits somewhere between “intimate” and “horror movie.” She and Denji do not actually do anything, something she’s grateful for come morning since “they throw you in jail for doing that stuff with minors.” Even this in mind; she almost immediately offers to help Denji get together with Makima, whose affections are still what he’s actually gunning after. It either does not occur or does not matter to Himeno that Makima is also a fair bit older than Denji. Maybe she’s willing to skirt the law if it means her new bestie will be happy.
In either case; she doesn’t get the chance. Let’s circle back around to that in a few paragraphs’ time.
There is a scene, deliberately left un-expounded-on here, where Makima and several of her escorts from Public Safety are in the middle of a business trip train ride only to be abruptly shot in the head by a mysterious terrorist group. The unease hangs like a heavy fog, and it does not let up from here.
We’re introduced to two new characters in this episode, also. The first is informally known as Katana Man (Daiki Hamano) to most of the fanbase; the son of the yakuza boss that Denji killed back in episode one, and who rendered his early life so miserable. (Officially, his nomme de gurre is actually Samurai Sword, but few people call him that in my experience.) Katana Man is here to avenge his late father, and after a curious rant about how the ramen in the restaurant the scene takes place in tastes terrible, and how if you’re raised on “crap” as a kid you never develop “good taste”, the episode promptly explodes into shattered glass.
Katana Man himself is more than a match for Denji and, indeed, the entire group with Denji—Aki, Himeno, and Power—to say nothing of his mysterious handler, Akane, (You Taichi), the second character we meet here.
The entire “fight scene” (frankly, the term feels inadequate) is vicious and surreal. In particular, the bizarre sequence of Katana Man being “crucified” by new arrival the Curse Devil is sublimely terrifying and is the sort of thing I want to see the anime do more of as we continue moving forward.
As for Himeno, with the last gasp of her life, she tries to buy even just a few minutes to keep the others, especially Aki, who it’s become clear that she deeply cares for, alive. It doesn’t work; Katana Man’s handler summons her own contracted devil, the Snake Devil, and it eats the Ghost Devil in a single bite before vanishing with a light switch-flick snap cut, like it was never there at all.
That’s the fate of Himeno, too, reduced bodypart by bodypart until she’s nothing but a pile of clothes on the ground.
It always feels a little shitty to have to “justify” an early character death (a story trope of no inherent value, like any other), but really, as much as anything else, it serves as the final off-ramp for people who might not be able to handle—or simply not want to handle—what Chainsaw Man is putting down. There is a reason this episode’s ED is a song called “the first death.”
Bonus Power Screencap: Before the fight begins in earnest, Power gets a good, solid sock to the jaw in, on Katana Man. Here’s 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!
You don’t need me to tell you that Denji, as his antiheroic alter ego of the titular Chainsaw Man, fucks up the Eternity Devil something wicked. If you’re watching this show, the fact that Denji can out-crazy the craziest of Devils is not news. It’s something that’s been established since basically episode one.
That is indeed how episode 7 opens. Denji, yet again a whirlwind of iron and gore, ripping the Eternity Devil to pieces, over and over and over again, until it finally stops fighting and begs to be put out of its misery. We’re told this little ballet of violence took place over three entire days; Genesis-ian timescale reduced to a footnote. Somehow, this fight scene, in all its headbanging heavy metal AMV glory, is not nearly the most notable thing about the seventh episode of Chainsaw Man. Even so, it is worth highlighting the flashback conversation between Himeno and her own mentor, who puts forward the idea that the devil hunter that the devils themselves fear most is not one who’s brave, but one who’s “got a few screws loose.” Most of this part of the episode is meant to re-emphasize that yes, Denji’s incredibly rough upbringing really has left him “crazy.” Remember, as we go forward, that Public Safety recruited him not in spite of that, but because of it.
Anyway, shall we cut to the vomit kiss? We might as well, right?
I have no photos of the aforementioned vomit kiss. Because I love you, dear readers, and also I think that putting images of a woman puking on my website would probably not be great for SEO. But! It is here! It is important! Somehow, it is actually quite important!
It also tends to serve as one of Chainsaw Man‘s great filters. I think the importance of these things—and of “weeding out the normies” in general—is vastly overstated, but it is impossible to deny that it’s going to put some people off. That’s a little unfortunate, but Chainsaw Man, while it never goes back to this particular well (I guess that’s technically a spoiler. If you’re angry about me spoiling the fact that no one else pukes in anyone’s mouth in Chainsaw Man you’re free to yell at me about it in the comments), is only going to get grislier from here. It’s probably better that people know what they’re working with.
The context of that particular incident is very important, and it doesn’t happen until toward the end of the episode. In fact, leading up to it, Denji is actually being rewarded for once in his life; he’s killed the Eternity Devil, gotten the entire unit out of a pretty harrowing situation, and has even procured a piece of the Gun Devil’s flesh. All worth genuine praise. So, it’s not a surprise that Himeno (and Aki!) take their squad to a drinking party a few days later. Everybody is there, including several new characters, most of them relatively unimportant. And, of course, Makima, who returns to the show after an absence last week in a truly wonderful fashion by subtly creeping up behind Denji as he’s talking about that kiss Himeno promised him.
Makima Jumpscare
There’s also a pretty great moment where Aki asks her why she’s pursuing the Gun Devil in the first place, and this happens.
Denji, meanwhile, spends much of the restaurant scene acting, as my friend and occasional podcast co-commentator Julian put it, “weirdly moe.” I think that’s an accurate assessment.
On the other hand, Himeno mostly embarrasses herself. There’s a certain kind of person who finds someone being piss-drunk hilarious and/or charming. I will admit that Himeno makes it look better than most, but for most of the episode she’s absolutely sloshed out of her mind. I’m not going to say that this is necessarily because she’s a “normal” Devil Hunter and is partly drinking to forget the surreal and traumatic experience that the past few episodes have been, but I think the idea is at least worth considering.
At one point during the party, Himeno makes an advance on Denji and plants a kiss on him. Then, because of just how drunk she is, she promptly….well, here’s a photo of my note card from this part of the episode. I think you get the idea.
Pardon my handwriting.
The scene is well and truly disgusting. The addition of sound and color makes what was already pretty gross in the manga absolutely nauseating. The actual emission is pixelated, but that might actually make things worse. All told, the amount of artistic heft put in to rendering the scene as off-putting as possible is bizarrely commendable.
Of course, it’s the aftermath of this infamous, iconic scene that is where the actual development lies. We end again on a cliffhanger, but not before Denji, rendered drunk somehow or another, finds himself lying in a mysterious bed.
Only for Himeno to enter, and, in a gorgeously-rendered POV scene that feels far more sensous and grounded than the vast majority of anime cheesecake, climb on top of him. She proceeds to very blatantly seduce someone who—hey, just as a reminder!—is only sixteen years old. We can make a lot of assumptions here, but it’s probably better to save such observations for next time. This scene, in another example of Chainsaw Man’s unorthodox adaptive approach, is cut off mid-thought by the end credits. That’s all for this week, folks.
Bonus Power Screencap: I’m fond of this bit during the bar scene, where Power tries to claim having a high IQ by constantly one-upping the most recent number anyone else has brought up. (She also gets hit on by the short-haired butch woman. I’ve never been envious of Power before, but there’s a first time for everything.) Here’s a cap from the start of that little bit.
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!
This week, Spy x Family wisely returns to what is probably its greatest stylistic asset; the fact that Anya, for the many ways in which she is not like an actual child, is, at her core, written with an authentic kiddishness that lets her carry whole scenes—or in this case, an entire episode—by herself. For being, what, five years old? She’s a hell of an actress.
Our A-plot here is pretty simple. Anya is assigned a job-shadowing project at school; she has to follow one of her parents to work and ask them a few questions as they go about their day. Initially, she asks Yor, but after an admittedly quite amusing sequence of Yor vividly imagining what “taking Anya to her job” would actually entail, she decides to ask her pa instead.
Thus begins a miniature odyssey of Anya going to the hospital that Loid practices as a therapist at. (I think this is the first confirmation we’ve gotten that he actually does go in at least occasionally to keep up appearances for his real work.) In general, this entire plot reminds me of the aquarium episode that closed out the first cour, except here, the monkey wrench is not an enemy spy organization but rather Anya herself. Predictably, she gets into all sorts of trouble at the hospital, from taking notes on what Loid is thinking rather than saying, to sneaking into a secret passage that WISE has installed in the hospital for Loid’s benefit, to stressing her papa out by dumping a bunch of toys into a therapy sandbox in an expression of pure, utter chaos.
The point is this; while Spy x Family still hasn’t really regained any sense of urgency, this plot is proof that it can at least be genuinely fun and charming. This is to say nothing of the report that Anya eventually gives when she’s back in class; a pretty acrid piece of genuine cringe comedy in an anime that doesn’t really go there that often. The mixup is nice, even if it’s not a direction I’d want SpyFam to take for very long.
The B-plot is similarly simple. Anya watches an episode of SpyWars, the in-universe cartoon she’s obsessed with, featuring a cryptogram. She becomes obsessed, and has Yor help her copy the puzzle onto paper several times. Thus begins a dead-simple bit where Anya runs up to various people—her mailman, the women who live down the hall from the Forgers, Becky, Damian, even Frankie—and exclaims “top secret!” before handing them one of the cryptograms and running away. It’s absolutely adorable, and it put a huge smile on my face. (Spare a thought for Frankie, who once again somehow manages to twist this into being convinced that Some Random Woman is in love with him.)
All in all, a resoundingly fun episode for a show that seems to finally be finding its swing again. Let’s hope that continues as we head into the final stretch of the season.
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!
Chainsaw Man is a story about bad things happening to people. I have said this before, I will say it again many, many more times before it eventually ends. To really get where CSM is coming from, one should attempt to understand this. Chainsaw Man isn’t a drag; we know this already, as the series is full of humor and of more delicate character moments. But it’s not happy, either. The jokes in Chainsaw Man are those of a depressed friend. But at the risk of sounding like the most arch and stereotypical critic imaginable; that gives it a real emotional honesty. The kind that makes everything hit with appropriate weight even when it might seem egregious in an anime that wasn’t this specific kind of tuned-in.
All of this is worth restating, not for the last time, because today’s episode is another fairly slow one, despite an impressively bizarre climax. Gently pressing down the brakes on the actual plot-as-such, it spends a lot of time engaging in character building. As always, if Chainsaw Man is crass, or hedonistic, or occasionally out-and-out psychotic, it is so for a reason. Case in point; episode 6, “Kill Denji”, is a wild seesaw of tone and emotion. This remains a best-case-scenario for adapting the manga; truly unhinged, quietly poignant, and crudely funny, by turns, and as it needs to be.
Where to even start? Sure, we open by learning that, as they suspected, our heroes are trapped on the eighth floor of their hotel, but a simple “how do we break the loop?” mystery would not be nearly compelling enough for CSM. (Even so, what of that is done here is done very compellingly, complete with a small visual motif in the form of a squarish alarm clock that keeps ticking back and forth to always land on 8:18.) We can break what occurs up into roughly three categories, although they’re not entirely in discrete sequential chunks as such.
First of all; we get properly introduced to Kobeni in this episode. Kobeni, as previously mentioned, is a walking bundle of neuroses and anxiety in the vague shape of a 20something young woman. She should really not be in this line of work, and in the manga she was essentially Chainsaw Man‘s main comic relief character. Kobeni’s backstory is so dead simple that it’s lodged somewhere between hilarious and ridiculously depressing. Her parents made her sign up so she could put her talented older brother through college. It was devil hunting or sex work. Ouch.
As has been its wont, the anime sands away a bit of the dark humor here. In the manga, the format itself means that we don’t actually linger on Kobeni’s depressed rambling for particularly long. Here, it’s a full scene, which really screws in just how utterly bleak her life situation is. In a more conventional series, she and Denji might find some fast camaraderie in their poverty-stricken upbringings. In Chainsaw Man, it is she who eventually gives this episode its title, but we’ll come back to that. The main thing to take away is that, while Kobeni’s initial breakdown remains a source of black comedy, much of that is shifted over to Power’s comedically insensitive reaction, rather than Kobeni herself. Remember; to her, this is deadly serious.
We also get a fair bit more insight into Aki and Himeno’s partnership up until this point in this episode. Much of the episode’s middle third is taken up by a flashback of Himeno repeatedly trying to get Aki to try cigarettes; “life is better with a little dependence”, she says, a bit of hard-luck pithy wisdom that suits the spirit of this series perfectly.
This entire sequence is dominated by warm guitar in the soundtrack and a purple-pink sunset over the city. But, even in reminiscence, no one in Chainsaw Man is safe from reality; Himeno is jolted from one memory to another with a slap, a surgically-precise cut that bleeds out the nostalgia of the preceding few minutes in a subtly heart-rending way.
Said backhanding comes from the girlfriend of one of Himeno’s late partners. Aki, who understandably doesn’t think she deserves that kind of treatment, gets petty revenge by sticking some gum on the woman’s clothes, probably the first time in the entire series so far that we’ve seen him do something genuinely funny on purpose. The two bond over a cigarette in the scene afterward, and Aki’s chainsmoking habit is established. The entire thing is sweet, in an off-kilter way.
Back in the present, our heroes happen upon the entity keeping them trapped on the 8th floor. The creature isn’t named as the Eternity Devil here, but its identity is fairly obvious, given its powers and some of the imagery. The Devil has a very simple condition. A contract, even. If the other devil hunters kill Denji, he’ll let them go.
Kobeni and Arai (who’s also been having a hard time of it), immediately turn on Denji, with the former charging him with a big shiny knife while squealing like some kind of small, dying mammal. This doesn’t work—mostly because Himeno and Aki(!) aren’t okay with just turning over a comrade to this thing, even as Himeno points out that it can’t possibly be lying. (Short version of the exposition; if a devil calls something a “contract” it has to fulfill its end of the promise or it’ll die instantly.) The Eternity Devil itself is a cascading wave of rubbery flesh, a specific kind of body horror that you really don’t see very often in mainstream TV anime. (The only other example from this year that I can think of is the finale villain in The Executioner & Her Way of Life.)
There are other options; that mysterious sword Aki’s been carrying is apparently Cursed Or Something, and is quite powerful at the cost of literally taking years off of Aki’s life. He could use it to get them out of this situation, but Himeno objects hard enough to use her Ghost Devil to stop him. Which, itself, leads to Kobeni accidentally stabbing Aki in the side.
All this going on, is it any real wonder that Denji ends the episode by feeding himself to the Eternity Devil? He has no real plan, beyond “make it suffer enough that it’d rather die than keep them trapped in the hotel.” But long-term plans were never our boy’s strong suit.
In the rush to praise what the CSM anime will eventually get to, I do worry slightly that we’re all a bit missing the forest for the trees. This episode ably proves that Chainsaw Man is already great, early on or not.
Bonus Power Screencap: Given all the ruminating over the anime’s themes and general tone this week, I didn’t actually have time to discuss the incredible comedy break of Power deciding to win a Nobel Prize and become Prime Minister so she can make everyone miserable by instituting a “100% income tax.” Here’s her coming up with that little idea.
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All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are solely my own opinions and conclusions and should not be taken to reflect the opinions of any other persons, groups, or organizations. All text, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.
Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!
For the second time while writing this column, I feel the need to open this article with an apology. I have to level with you here. I genuinely mostly like Spy x Family, but this is, by my count, the fourth episode in a row that’s been basically pleasant and amusing but also of no consequence whatsoever. I’m aware that Spy x Family is not some immortal drama that seeks to resonate throughout the ages, but it’s not a particularly great sign when co-seasonals of such narrative heft as BOCCHI THE ROCK! and Do It Yourself!! have had more comparative forward plot momentum this cour than SpyFam has. It’s not that I’m demanding shootouts, character deaths, and commentaries on the nature of the human condition in every episode, here, but it really and truly feels like very little is happening. This is Spy x Family spinning its wheels; in a full water-treading mode that is perhaps the unintentional result of its heavily decompressed pace. It’s not even that these episodes are bad; they’re just difficult to write about.
The good news is that, for an episode that isn’t really about much of anything—save maybe some more light pair-the-toys energy between Anya and her perpetual frenemy Damian—it at least is still a pretty good one. (Again, nothing since “Yor’s Kitchen” has even sniffed actually being bad. There’s just not really a ton going on.)
Again, the episode is split between an A and a B plot. The A plot is another Anya segment, although the real focus is on new character George Glooman, a classmate of Anya and Damian’s who we haven’t seen until this point. Georgie here is under the impression that his company has been “crushed” by the Desmond Group (the very same owned by Damian’s family). To this end, he hired a spy to try to mess with Damian’s grades—that was the B plot of last week’s episode, which we skipped here on Magic Planet Anime because I wasn’t feeling very well. It also introduced us to a new counterpart for Loid, a bumbling novice spy who goes by the codename “Daybreak.”—and when that doesn’t work, he here resorts to trying to get him expelled. Perhaps unsurprisingly, that doesn’t work either; Anya might not like Damian as much as Damian clearly likes her, but she’s unwilling to let him get kicked out of school over nothing. It would foil her beloved papa’s mission, after all.
There’s also some stuff here about George exploiting the fact that everyone—even himself—thinks he’s leaving. He asks for drinks, for caviar(!), for mementos, etc. Only to then find out from his pa that the Glooman company is just being bought out and everything is pretty much fine. Whoops!
The B plot is a bit more interesting this time around. Mostly because it stars Yor, who gets her first real chance to show off at all here since the cour started. She runs a bundle of gym clothes to Eden Academy because she gets the impression that Anya’s forgotten them. Naturally, Spy x Family being what it is, she’s actually mistaken, and the entire segment’s punchline is that she did all this for no real reason at all.
But, along the way we get some very nice animation and some unusually zany directing for this series. Including a memorably bizarre cut where Yor kicks a falling flowerpot back up onto the windowsill it fell from, in full Looney Tunes fashion.
Maybe, in the end, that’s really how I should be thinking of this show. As a half-hour Chuck Jones or Tex Avery joint, a showcase for fun animation and wacky antics. But by its very nature of having an overarching story—Loid’s mission and Anya’s part in it, and the blooming family dynamic between Loid, Yor, and Anya—it more or less resists that classification. Thus, episode 19 ends like last few have: solid, but unsurprising. The next-episode preview once again teases a new proper story arc. Perhaps we’ll get something more substantial to chew on then.
Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live.If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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!
Earlier today, I had a lengthy discussion with a good friend of mine in which we went over all sorts of very personal and heavy subjects. One of these was, essentially, dreams – aspirations. These things keep us pushing forward and pursuing them often defines our lives. I, for example, would like to formally study history someday. I have an interest in the subject and think it’s an important field.
But of course, different people have different sorts of dreams, which brings us to today’s Chainsaw Man serial. You see, at the start of episode five, Denji achieves one of his dreams.
To touch a boob.
Listen, I never said the man’s dreams were noble. Or terribly fulfilling. But hey! He has them! Respect his dreams! Or don’t! I’m not a cop.
Instead of being fulfilled, Denji finds himself spiraling. Power, in a bit of the manga’s trademark askew humor, was wearing breast pads the entire time for…reasons. Who knows why, really? They’re probably Fiend reasons. Very secret, you and I wouldn’t be privy to them. Denji thus finds his boob-touching experience to be largely unsatisfactory, which plunges him into a bout of existential ennui. If there is no truth and beauty to be gleaned from the titties of the world, where then, might it be gleaned?
Well, Denji gets an answer not long later. Whether or not it’s a useful answer is another question entirely.
It’s been a moment since we last spoke about Makima’s Problematic Power Dynamics Emporium on this blog. I don’t think I’m cutting the legs off of any kind of “twist” by pointing out that Makima does not exactly have Denji’s best interests in mind, but Denji himself of course does not know that, and as an emotionally shattered teenager whose spent most of his life not knowing even the feintest hint of human kindness, Makima’s practiced, razor-sharp manipulation seems entirely genuine. What might be read flags to an experienced viewer are, instead, to both Denji and I’m sure at least some of the demographic at whom Chainsaw Man is in fact aimed—it’s a shonen manga at the end of the day, recall—genuinely alluring. They’re also instructive; as warnings.
The little lecture that Makima gives Denji here is all about physical intimacy. She tells him that sexuality is best explored with someone you know very well. She has him fondle not just the obvious but also her ear. It is all extremely charged, and it’s supposed to be. But it’s also supposed to be a little unsettling. Take note of the many cuts back to Denji’s own eyes, which Makima stares phantasmal daggers into, intentionally or not. She also asks him if anyone’s ever bitten his finger before. The sort of request that scans as a little bizarre on paper, but could easily absolutely destroy the unprepared in the right circumstance.
Make no mistake; Denji is actively being manipulated here, in a way that is extremely transparent and wildly inappropriate, considering that Makima is pretty clearly at least a bit older than Denji and is also his boss. Guys; don’t rake me over the coals for this, but I think that this Makima character might not have our boy’s interests in mind!
And sure enough, before he really even knows it, Denji is agreeing to hunt the Gun Devil, a spectre of death that appeared in—where else?—the USA some number of years ago. (Why does he agree? Other than the fact that Denji would probably do nearly anything Makima asked at that point, it’s because she offers to grant him any “one wish.” You get two guesses what he plans on making his wish. First two don’t count.)
We get a flashback, eventually revealed as Aki’s, where the creature passes unseen over a remote home and completely obliterates it and everyone inside in microseconds. Except for Aki himself, waiting for his brother to go fetch a pair of gloves so the two of them can keep playing with snowballs. Naturally, Aki’s brother never comes back.
More exposition, brief but important; the Gun Devil sheds bits of flesh—casings, basically—wherever it goes. Stick enough together, and it acts like a giant magnet, pointing you toward the Gun Devil itself. This is all the context we need for part two of this episode, where we meet some new friends.
From left to right (and skipping Power, Denji, and Aki, who we obviously already know), that’s Arai (Taku Yashiro), Kobeni (Karin Takahashi), and Himeno (Mariya Ise). Respectively, they’re straightlaced and serious, a walking bundle of nerves in the vague shape of a human who jumps out of her own skin at anything and everything, and a bisexual whirlwind freewheeling spirit whose broad smile, perhaps unsurprisingly, holds a profound inner pain. They’re all pretty great. Much of this half of the episode is character dynamic, feeding us fun little hints about this other company of Devil Hunters (such as Himeno’s contract devil being the Devil of Ghosts) fun moments for the newly-expanded cast to interact in equal measure.
Anyway, not long after this, they discover that the hotel building they’re infiltrating is looping infinitely in every direction. The episode ends there, because cliffhangers are fun.
a line of infinite ends finite finishing the one remains oblique and pure – arching to the single point of consciousness – find yourself starting back
On that note, I’d like to talk briefly about this show’s pacing, as a closing note. I think some have been surprised at the relatively easy pace the series is adapting the manga’s chapters at. It’s only skipped a very few things and most of these small arcs at the start of the series have been given an episode and a half or so to sort themselves out. It’s a pacing that feels slightly unconventional in the modern TV anime landscape, but if it is a difference, it’s a welcome one, and it suits Chainsaw Man extremely well.
Bonus Power Screencap: Behold, the hall of 100 Powers! Tremble at their infinite variety and their varied facial expressions! At this rate I’ll be able to pick these out from the ED alone every week.
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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.
This review contains spoilers for the reviewed material. This is your only warning.
This review was commissioned. That means I was paid to watch and review the series in question and give my honest thoughts on it. You can learn about my commission policies and how to buy commissions of your own here. This review was commissioned by Wynne. Thank you for your support.
“There must be a paradise waiting for us somewhere.”
The image of a vampire in a garden is a pleasant one. Consider it for a moment; the bloodsucking creature of folklore allowed to sit in peace, the Sun gently lighting her face in the way it does for the rest of us. Throughout Vampire in The Garden, we examine this visual metaphor, jewel-like as it is, from several angles. Some of these are surprisingly literal, others symbolic, but it’s clear from the outset, and throughout the miniseries, that the primary meaning is not that of a greenhouse or anything of the sort. It is of a garden of Eden. An imagined, perfect paradise beyond this world, in which there is no strife, violence, or hatred. In which two people who love each other can be together, even if they are from vastly different circumstances.
Even if the whole world is arrayed against them; arrows aimed at the throat.
I’m getting ahead of myself. Vampire in The Garden is yet another anime this year to focus on vampires and romance, following after the second part of The Case Study of Vanitas, but presaging summer seasonal hit Call of The Night. It has a bit in common with both of those, but its real roots lie much deeper; back in the era of 90-120 minute OVAs. Vampire is a little longer, the five-episode mini-series clocks in at about 2 hours, but it is very much a single, self-contained story. And what a story; this is easily one of the year’s best anime, no mean feat in 2022, which has been absolutely swamped with great shows. As for the production-side of things; it’s a Wit Studio project, helmed by director and series compositor Ryoutarou Makihara, his first time at the helm since the obscure Empire of Corpses.
There are two main things one must understand about Vampire in The Garden in order to properly appreciate it. 1: it is an intensely queer story. While it is true that the themes found within it could be generalized out to apply to other situations, there is a reason that both of its leads are women, and the story simply makes far less sense if you try to rationalize your way into believing that our protagonists, Fine (Yuu Kobayashi), and Momo (Megumi Han), aren’t in love. 2: it is a tragedy. Gay romances that end in heartbreak get a bad rep these days for understandable reasons, but such a thing should only truly be objectionable if it doesn’t have something to say, and Vampire in The Garden has plenty to say. Throughout, it demonstrates a keen eye for imagery and paints a very emotionally honest portrait of life as a queer person in a society that is not very accepting of those.
Consider our protagonists. On the one hand, we have
Momo; a hardworking factory girl with a talent for tinkering, who lives in a massive compound called the Tower, run by her authoritarian, abusive mother. She longs for an escape, and a flight of fancy—fixing a broken music box, forbidden, as all music and art are, in the Tower—spirals into a tragic adventure. Her close “friend” Milana is shot during a raid on the Tower by vampires, the eternal enemy of mankind in the bleak, frozen, post-apocalyptic world that Vampire takes place in. But, of course, if things were as simple as “humans vs. vampires”, we wouldn’t be here. In a combination of panic, confusion, and the urge to seize the chance to escape, she meets–
Fine; queen of the vampires. Flighty, constantly neglecting her duties by choice. She too longs for escape, and it’s a chance encounter with Momo that sets them off, together, on an adventure far from the Tower and far from Fine’s own ostensible demesne, ruled as it really is by her consort/vizier Allegro (Chiaki Kobayashi). Together, Momo and Fine are star-crossed lovers in the most classic mold possible; a Romeo & Juliet of the modern age. You already know how this story ends; amid a field of moon azaleas, somewhere deep within a cradle of earth, all graves, shed petals, and teardrops. But that doesn’t make it a journey not worth going on.
That journey sees Fine and Momo searching for that mythical paradise. Initially, they seek such a thing solely to escape the shackles of the human/vampire war itself, but before long, they’ve grown close enough that it’s clear that the promise of somewhere where humans and vampires can live together in peace, and thus where Fine and Momo can live together in peace, becomes their primary motivator. At the start of this story, Momo loses Milana, who she is clearly quite close to. We learn much later on that Fine lost someone she was quite close to, Aria, a long time ago. Momo and Fine’s relationship, as deeply upsetting as the circumstances it was born in are, is one that springs from mutual loss. They find comfort in each other in a way that feels truly human.
Their first stop is the catacomb-esque opulence of Fine’s manor, where Fine helps a wounded Momo recover. It’s here where they first start to trust each other and their relationship goes from something uncertain and tenuous to something very real and immediate. The good times are fleeting, of course, but they have meaning.
At one point, Momo stumbles into a cinema, and is so rattled by the film idly left playing—probably the first she’s ever seen, mind you—that Vampire itself dissolves into a nightmarish patchwork of loss and traumatic imagery, and it is Fine who must calm her down. For not the last time in the series, Vampire is astoundingly lyrical, a tapestry of images both in the forefront and background that imbue the world with tactility and meaning;
a bath, a record player, an opera singer whose voice, spilling out of the player laments the loss of those she loved
There’s a garden – a beautiful, green, lush, literal garden – where Fine grows all manner of plants, in defiance of the Sun itself. She teaches Momo to sing, to appreciate art and music. For this, she is rewarded by the pursuing humans of the Tower, and then, separately, the vampires, raiding her mansion. Both of our protagonists are pursued–
Momo by her mother’s forces.
Fine by her own subjects.
–and the mansion ends up in flames as they flee, starting a pattern that will repeat several times over the course of Vampire‘s five episodes. Momo and Fine arrive somewhere, settle there for a short time, and then are driven away by these twin forces independently pursuing them. It is worth noting that they never directly do anything we’d understand as wrong, it is simply that the very act of a human and a vampire living together is unconscionable to the people of this world.
Throughout, as these entwined swathes of fire pursue its protagonists, Vampire is able to capture a gripping, rare feeling. On the one hand, you can appreciate much of these more action-oriented scenes for what they are on a technical level, and say that Vampire, especially its first half, is a kickass action-post apoc-sci-fi-fantasy adventure. This is true, but on the other hand, it is also a near-hallucinatory torrent of love and loss; trauma, laughter, music, snow, iron, blood – mixed together, and adjoined end to uncomfortable end, a feeling evocative of memory itself. Much like the music box that serves as a leitmotif throughout the series.
Everywhere Fine and Momo go is a false promise, in a way. The manor, of stability. The segregated two-island vampire / human town they visit in episode three, of unity. The too-good-to-be-true village in the far north in episode four, of community. And finally, the blasted-out ruin of some long-forgotten metropolis in the final episode, an already-broken promise of civilization itself.
This extends somewhat to the supporting cast as well. Momo’s mother is portrayed as disturbingly, realistically abusive, swinging wildly from backhanding and berating her daughter and pleading for her forgiveness and asking for a hug. When Momo finally turns her away near the very end of the show, it’s hugely cathartic. Later in the story, we meet Elisha, the representative of the idyllic / winter horror village in episode four.
In addition to enabling the false promise of community and hospitality that the village itself represents, she’s also quick to attack Momo as a hypocrite when things go south. This is, of course, nonsense. There is a vast gulf between harming people accidentally, or in self-defense, and doing so as part of a convoluted scheme to live a life of privilege, which is what Elisha’s village is doing.
There’s also Momo’s uncle, who leads the human forces that seek to recapture her, and in the final episode it’s revealed that he too once fled from home with a vampire he loved in tow, only for that story to end on a harsh, bitter note. This recontextualizes his earlier actions; like Momo, he longed for an escape from the drudgery of a world defined by petty, pointless conflict. Unlike Momo, when that escape was ultimately denied to him, he turned his anger outward.
Which leads us to Vampire’s conclusion.
Just based on what kind of story this is, it will not surprise you that only one of our protagonists is fortunate enough to live through the ending. Fine’s death is a long, torturously slow process. At first, she seems to die rampaging amidst muzzle flash and rubble, but the truth of things isn’t that simple. A serum that turns vampires into berserk beasts—a plot point back from back in the first episode, and one which I should point out, basically causes them to transform into what humans think they are—can’t be countered so easily. She does save Momo, and her final confrontation with Momo’s uncle actually ends when she stops attacking him. What truly rattles the man is not the notion of vampires attacking him, it’s of them not doing so, because it means that there isn’t anything inherently stopping vampires and humans from living in harmony, it really is just all circumstance; grudges, old wounds, and unsolved problems.
Momo’s own last confrontation is the aforementioned rebuke of her mother, as she carries the still-dying Fine to her final resting place; a warm cave below the cold surface, where the queen of vampires finally dies, amidst a bed of porcelain-white flowers. The very last shot of the main body of the series is –
Momo, kneeling in front of Fine’s body, taking a sharp, deep breath; preparing to sing.
She herself lives on, and Fine is gone, but not forgotten.
The main reason that Fine and Momo don’t both survive is that, unfortunately, that is rarely the case for real queer couples in these kinds of situations either. But we shouldn’t take this to mean that Fine and Momo’s entire journey was pointless. Instead, it is the very fact that Fine and Momo did journey, and journeyed together, that is, itself, the true paradise they sought, however fleeting it may have been. There is a real, resonant beauty in that notion, even if it is a very sad and tragic sort. Something like;
“If we don’t have each other forever, at least we had each other today.”
The series offers a single post-credits scene; a sunlit garden, where Momo cradles a young vampire child in her arms. This scene’s nature—real or metaphysical, future or afterlife—is left ambiguous. A ray of uncertain hope that pierces the gray skies of an even less certain present.
I have to confess, Vampire in The Garden has proven very challenging to “review”, in as much as this even is a “review” of anything. This is a work of uncommon grace and elegance, as even its ideas which sound, on paper, inadequate, or like they’re trying too hard, are executed absolutely perfectly in the miniseries itself. There are several other axes I’ve barely even touched on; the visual beauty of most of the show’s backgrounds, for example. Part of me does feel that I haven’t entirely done Vampire justice, but perhaps that is simply a limitation of my medium. Some things must be seen to be felt.
And of course, all criticism is, in the end, but a reflective prism of the original. Here, for the first time in a long time, I have felt honored to be that reflection; I am but a mirror to moonlight.
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.
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