Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime.
For the Cinderella Gray column, new installments will be posted either on the Sunday each episode airs, or as soon as possible over the succeeding week. Expect spoilers!
Cinderella Gray can be watched, legally and for free, on It’s Anime By REMOW on Youtube. A link is provided below for your convenience. The descriptive blurbs for these articles are taken from those of REMOW’s Youtube uploads.
Hello, umadacchi. Your beloved blogger is a bit under the weather this week, but luckily, this particular episode of Cinderella Gray is mostly one of laying groundwork and doing some character introductions. As such, it’s pretty simple to cover.
Plainly, this episode serves to introduce (or reintroduce, in a few cases) Oguri Cap’s competition at the upcoming Japan Cup. The episode is actually structured as such that it largely introduces Oguri’s foreign rivals first—which makes sense, there’s more to cover there—but we’re going to flip that around and talk about her domestic competition to start with. There are just fewer umamusume in this category, and one of them, Tamamo Cross, is essentially the show’s defending champion. Tamtam gets a nice little practice vignette with her trainer, who warns her against pushing herself. A gentle reassurance from someone who cares, or foreshadowing of something greater? We can’t yet say, but it’s good to see Tamamo around, and it also gives us the delightful treat of seeing her with her head ornamentation removed. Cute!
Oguri’s other main competitor from Japan is Gold City, who actually practices with her at Musaka’s behest as they try to build Oguri’s stamina, given that the Japan Cup, at 2400 meters, is longer than any race Oguri’s yet run.
Oguri and Gold City, in a nice change of pace from some of Oguri’s more serious rivalries, hit it off pretty much immediately, and the episode’s penultimate scene is a funny exchange between the two of them wherein Oguri asks Gold how she keeps her hair so nice, leading to a whole bit about shampoo.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, the international competition is given a bit more focus. Umamusume doesn’t get the chance to feature horsegirls from anywhere but Japan terribly often, so when they do, they tend to go all out. It is also worth noting that this is another case where the umamusume aren’t named directly after the real racehorses—rights issues, one imagines—and it’s fun to compare whose legally-distinct name is an upgrade and try to imagine how they might have gotten from one name to another.
Easily the most prominent of the umamusume featured here is Toni Bianca [Kaida Yuuko, based on the real horse Tony Bin], presented as a genuine menace. Enough so to merit an at least passing comparison to Symboli Rudolf (herself the last Japanese horsegirl to win the Japan Cup). She has an impressive record, too, most notably, she’s the most recent Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe champion.
Of the girls introduced here, Bianca is perhaps the most classically in the ‘arrogant rival’ mold. When our good friend the reporter Fuuji, a recurring presence throughout this episode, asks her what she intends to accomplish by running in the Japan Cup, Toni replies nothing. She intends to win, and she will win, and that’s that. Fuuji is impressed by this of course, but there’s the subtle implication of something more complex going on when later, on her own, she contemplates that the upcoming race will be her magnum opus. What that could mean, we don’t yet know, but it’s enough to raise some intrigue about a character who is otherwise a bit broad.
Even more so is the UK’s representative, Moonlight Lunacy [Sekine Akira, based on Moon Madness. I’m honestly not sure how they got away with that one].
She has a refined and elegant design, and some banter with Fuuji reveals that the two have at least some prior history together—she apparently competed in the last Japan Cup, only to come in fifth—and she kicks him for being tactless when he brings up her previous defeat in the race. Still, I’d say she’s firmly the least interesting of the umamusume introduced here.
Contrast, for example, Ellerslie Pride [Tomita Miyu, based on Bonecrusher, easily the biggest name downgrade here], the sole Japan Cup runner from the southern hemisphere and representing the hope of not just her home country New Zealand, but that entire half of the globe in general.
Her somewhat tough appearance (and the straight-up intimidating name of her inspiration) belie a horsegirl who is clearly a little desperate to put her country on the map. She actually visits a shrine as her first order of business in Japan, apparently praying for her own success. (Fuuji bothers her, too, and gets a giant shrine bell dropped on his head for the trouble.)
And of course, there are the Americans. Michelle My Baby [Takagaki Ayahi, based on My Big Boy] is incredibly tall compared to almost every other character we’ve seen in the series so far. We don’t learn terribly much about her—although on a fact-finding mission for Musaka, Belno Light describes her as having the strength of a bulldozer—but when you’re introduced by slam dunking a basketball from across the court, maybe you don’t need much in the way of complicated character motivation.
Which leaves us with one last character to meet. The other American umamusume is an apparently utterly unremarkable racer, no G1 wins, no record of really any note at all, and she’s also rather hard to get ahold of. Fuuji tries to find her but doesn’t succeed. Belno does, though, although one gets the sense it might be because she wanted to be found.
This is how we meet Obey Your Master
[Ishigami Shizuka, based on Pay The Butler].
When Belno finds her, Obey is literally face down, ass in the air, sniffing the grass. Why is she doing this? Who knows! Belno asks her, and her response is that it “smells amazing.” So at first, one might reasonably conclude that Obey is just weird. Weird girls are not new territory for Umamusume—see Gold Ship, a generational cryptid sort of girl, as just one example—but Belno, and indeed Oguri Cap, are not so lucky. Obey seems to immediately cotton on to what Belno is doing (and jokingly calls her “James Bond”). In fact, Obey knows all about Oguri Cap, starting from her career as a regional star in Kasamatsu up to the Fall Tenno Sho where she lost to Tamamo Cross. But actually, Obey even knows who Belno is, and it is with some sense of alarm that Belno Light processes that the last girl she’s been sent to find is not normal.
We can just say it. Obey is a freak. I fucking love her, she is one of my favorite charcters from Cinderella Gray in general, but she is an odd, odd character. The combination of everything we see here; her wild eccentricity, the star-shaped pupils, her encyclopedic knowledge of the competition, and of course the episode’s instantly-infamous final scene where she dances alone in the dark, Oguri Cap and Tamamo Cross’ race playing on her television and her rivals’ photos plastered all over her walls, brings to mind nothing less specific than Kurokawa Akane from Oshi no Ko. In fact, despite some obvious differences, she comes off as an outright interpolation of the character into a radically different context. I can’t prove that the inspiration actually worked that way—if it did, mangaka Kuzumi Taiyou would have to have been pretty quick on the draw, as Cinderella Gray and OnK started serializing around the same time—so if that reference point seems improbable to you, we can also just say that Obey comes off as a bit serial killer-y in, especially, that final sequence. This is, of course, fantastic, and it implicitly suggests that the true showdown in the Japan Cup will not be between Oguri Cap, Tamamo Cross, and—as one could be fooled into thinking from the start of this episode—Toni Bianca, but between those two and Obey.
Obey explicitly identifies Tamamo Cross and Oguri Cap as her “enemies” for the Japan Cup. And they both, it seems, will have to be careful to not be her next victim.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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.
For the Cinderella Gray column, new installments will be posted either on the Sunday each episode airs, or as soon as possible over the succeeding week. Expect spoilers!
Cinderella Gray can be watched, legally and for free, on It’s Anime By REMOW on Youtube. A link is provided below for your convenience.
Let’s talk about Super Creek [Yuuki Kana].
Actually, before we talk about Super Creek, let’s talk about characters, and how Umamusume handles them. Full disclosure, I’m going to be pulling extensively here—both in this column specifically and, honestly, probably whenever I talk about Umamusume going forward—from IronicLark’s excellent Umadacchi Densetsu blog, a fantastic resource for all things Umamusume and, so far as I am aware, easily the most thorough exploration of the series and its various components available in English. I highly recommend diving into it yourself sometime if what I am doing in these columns interests you even a little bit. Frankly, Lark is significantly more knowledgeable on the subject than I am.
So, characters. Most things I cover on this blog are either standalone anime projects, or they’re anime adapted from some single specific source, a manga, a light novel, etc. Umamusume belongs to the other category of things I cover here, and has more in common structurally with, say, Love Live, than most other anime I write about. What I mean by this is that it’s a media mix1 franchise. Without getting too into it (because that distinction alone is worth having a long conversation about) what this essentially means is that rather than one component of the franchise being the “primary” unit that all other adaptations pull from, there are many distinct components given roughly equal weight. Now, this isn’t strictly the case with all or even most media mix properties, as in the case of Umamusume and many others, there is a “central” project—the game—but the distribution of influence is much more horizontal than it is in something like, say, the Yano-kun anime airing this season, which is a straight one-to-one adaptation of a single specific story.
This approach changes how a series handles many things, but most relevant here is how it handles characterization. Because, if you primarily know Super Creek from the Umamusume game—and I’m betting that describes at least some of you—you might wonder how that character and her doting, motherly personality fit in to the generally fairly serious ‘sports anime’ tone that Cinderella Gray has going on. The answer is that Umamusume, as with many media mix properties, tends to emphasize or scale back different character traits depending on the needs of the story. As such, different iterations of the same character can feel pretty distinct, even if the “core” remains the same. (As a complete tangent, the most extreme example of this approach I can think of is actually Transformers, a series in which this guy, this guy, and this guy all have the same name, at least some of the time, despite being nothing alike.) Nothing so extreme as that example is present in Umamusume, but I bring all this up just to say: when we see Creek here, she is somewhat different from the Super Creek you’ve seen people make all those googoo babies jokes about on the internet. (Although, elements of that doting characterization do remain, I don’t want to overstate the differences.)
Creek is formally introduced here after having kicked around in the background of Part 1, and—not to spoil anything—we are going to be following her, at least intermittently, for quite a while. Her introduction is actually relatively low-key at first, though. We see her training. We see her trainer, Fumino Nase [Yū Shimamura2] apparently a prodigy who’s brought her trainees pretty significant success even early on in her career, beset by reporters. Nase seems to find all the media attention annoying at best (and particularly bristles at an offhand mention of her father, evidently also a trainer), but she’s willing to throw them a bone by telling them that she intends to have Super Creek compete in the Kikuka Sho, one third of Japan’s Triple Crown and, importantly, the longest race of the three. This comes as a surprise to the reporter interviewing her as, to hear that reporter tell it, Creek’s race results haven’t been that impressive, and she’s actually not even a sure thing to so much as run in the race, as someone would have to drop out first. Nase is of course aware of all this, though, and explains that as a trainer, she considers it part of her job to believe in miracles, no matter how unlikely they might be.
Naturally, just then, word comes down the line that one of the other competitors has had to drop out. Super Creek has an in.
The actual Kikuka Sho race follows both Creek and one of her main competitors. Yaeno Muteki, whose name you probably remember. It’s hard not to feel a bit bad for Muteki, who keeps getting put in these situations where she’s trained so hard and has good prospects only to end up facing a rare, generational talent.
And make no mistake, Super Creek is one of those. For a race as long as the Kikuka Sho both physical stamina and clarity of mind are important, so while Muteki holds the most promising position for a majority of the race, Creek is eventually able to angle her way from the middle of the pack straight to the front, and she ends up not only winning but winning by a pretty large margin. (A quick reference check on the real race that this episode is based on shows that the real Super Creek overtook the second-place horse, Gakuten to Beat, by five lengths. I am choosing to assume a similar margin here, in the absence of any other evidence. I suppose he really did beat Gakuten.)
Creek’s strength, as emphasized here, lies in her incredible endurance. Something she and Nase have evidently been working on for some time. A brief flashback between the two invokes the Cinderella metaphor once again.
Apropos of nothing, it is worth pointing out that Creek and her trainer seem very close.
It’s worth going over again, the term “Cinderella story” refers to, in sports, a longshot victory by an underdog. Usually several such victories over the course of a tournament or the like. In the context of Cinderella Gray, well, the second part of the title spoils that this mostly refers to Oguri Cap. But it can, just as easily, be taken to refer to many of Oguri’s contemporaries, including Tamamo Cross and, yes, Super Creek as well. (Given her chestnut brown hair, she’s an almost-literal dark horse.) Her victory here is clearly hard-fought, and the fire in her eyes on the final spurt is really something to behold. I’m probably not going to surprise anyone by saying I absolutely love Creek, especially this incarnation of the character. I am hoping this episode might turn at least a few more people in the world into Super Creek fans. Fingers crossed.
(On the note of “beholding”, it’s worth addressing the elephant in the room at least briefly. There has been some amount of discourse about the show’s somewhat reduced animation prowess from the first part of the first season, the Kasamatsu arc. There’s some truth to this, probably related to staff being shuffled around, but the highlights of this race stack up to anything else in the series so far. We’ll see how the rest of the season plays out in this regard. I feel the need to give a good amount of credit to the show continually paying attention to how the racers run, though. Even in the weakest moments of the race, Creek is consistently drawn as taking long, comparatively slow strides. Right up until that final spurt, where she starts really putting the pedal to the metal.)
In any case, while Yaeno Muteki takes her loss hard, she and her master keep up their training. Muteki has an endurance of her own, in this regard, and as I’ve gone through this story she’s become one of my favorite supporting pieces of Cinderella Gray‘s cast, which is not exactly lacking for strong characters.
And as for the Ashen Beast? Well, this arc does mark the point at which Cinderella Gray goes from being largely about Oguri Cap to being something of an ensemble piece, and I suspect we’ll get a lot more of these focus episodes in the weeks (and hopefully, years) ahead. But, she is here. The entire time Super Creek is making history on the racetrack, a pair of distant eyes are on her, and they are those of none other than our very own Gray Monster. She, Belno, and Musaka make a number of comments during the race, in fact, but what sticks out to me most are the ice-blue bullets Oguri stares into the screen when she senses she has gained yet another rival. Truly, our girl is a monster.
Super Creek will not be the last girl to give Oguri a hard time this arc, by a long shot. A brief post credits scene introduces us to Toni Bianca [Kaida Yuuko], the Italian umamusume who stands as one of many international racers Oguri and all other Japanese racers competing in the Japan Cup will have to face. Toni is wildly dismissive of them, time will tell if she can back up that talk.
Oh, and there’s another umamusume from abroad who arrives as well. Some blonde girl with tacky stars-and-stripes leggings. Probably no one important, in any case.
Famously a thing us Americans say a lot.
But! We’ll get to find out together. See you next week, Umamusume fans.
1: While the Japanese term “media mix” is quite similar to the English phrase “mixed media”, I’m rendering it as-is here, because “mixed media” has a different connotation in English, whereas a “media mix” is something a fair bit more specific.
2: As with the Sirius Symboli case in Part 1 of the anime, my usual sources are not helping me here, but I found a few stray references indicating that she’s voiced by Yu Shimamura, and am taking those at their word.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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.
Everyone who knows anything about GNOSIA has made essentially the same joke about it. Finally, an Among Us anime! It’s the kind of essentially-obligatory reference that can quickly get old, but, honestly, in the case of GNOSIA it’s not really a bad place to start in terms of describing the thing. And the series itself directly invokes Among Us‘ public-domain, lycanthropic predecessor werewolf.
GNOSIA is set aboard a space ship en route from one planet to another. On the planet they departed from, they were attacked by something called a gnosia, and now the gnosia is one of the people on board. What’s a gnosia? How does it spread from one person to another? We don’t really know that, yet! Things are kept in deliberately broad terms in this first episode. From what little we do know, it seems like some kind of virus that….turns people into? Replaces them with? Alien shapeshifters. Again! It’s all a bit vague.
But that’s part of the point, as it turns out. Because our viewpoint character is Yuri [Anzai Chika], an amnesiac freshly woken from suspended animation by Setsu [Hasegawa Ikumi], a non-binary soldier who seems to be the unofficial semi-leader of the proceedings. Setsu explains the entire wolf-among-us situation to Yuri, and Yuri’s drafted into the process of voting on which of the crew will be placed back into suspended animation. There are a few key points to absorb here, and the bulk of the episode is devoted to fleshing these out.
Here’s what we—along with Yuri—learn over the course of the first episode. One, this voting-out-the-impostor situation is mandatory, because the ship’s controlling AI, LeVi, will enable the self-destruct sequence if the passengers don’t attempt to get rid of the gnosia themselves. Two, the ship periodically jumps into hyperspace. Humans can’t stay awake during these jumps, but the gnosia can, giving them an opportunity to attack. Three, the fact that one person is placed back into cold sleep “per round” means that if the gnosia isn’t caught by a certain point, it will be down to just one human and the gnosia, at which point the human “loses.”
If all of this sounds very video game-y, that’s because GNOSIA is a relatively rare anime that’s actually adapted from a video game, in this case originally a Vita title that’s been ported several times over the years. (Hilariously, dating from 2019, it actually predates Among Us‘ explosion in popularity.) Usually, when an anime is said to feel “gamey” that’s a bad thing. But, for the second time this season, I’m going to suggest that something that’s usually a negative is not necessarily one. The gaminess lets us, the viewers, feel involved as Yuri learns about the setting and the cast of characters.
Speaking of, in addition to Yuri and Setsu themselves, the first episode also introduces a quiet, reserved woman named Jina [Seto Asami], a blunt enby who’s so straightforward that it’s to their own detriment who goes by Racio [Nanami Hiroki], and a flirtatious, charming, deeply suspicious, and radioactively hot woman with the somewhat cryptic moniker of SQ [Kitou Akari].
I have my favorites already, but in general this is a really strong group of characters, enough so that I didn’t want any of them to be the gnosia. (Another way my own point of view sympathized with Yuri. As they, naïve to the world, want to trust everyone here equally.) Of course, after two rounds of voting, we learn that, nonetheless, one of them is.
The second round ends with Yuri and SQ, who’s managed to sway Yuri to her side of things, locking Setsu in cold storage, after having lost Racio to the previous round and Jina to a gnosia attack during a hyperjump. This turns out to be the wrong decision, as SQ—the one who’s been acting very suspicious the entire episode—is, in fact, the gnosia. The good news for Yuri is that now that they’re equipped with knowledge of how the gnosia operates, they can do a better job next time around. But, ah, SQ attacks and kills them, right, since she’s the gnosia? So how could there be a “next time” for Yuri?
Well, before entering cryosleep, Setsu hands Yuri a mysterious cube which promptly breaks when Yuri tries handling it. This, they explain, will let them go beyond death.
Yes, on top of its main premise, GNOSIA is also a time loop anime. This takes things from merely interesting to absolutely fascinating. Introducing as it does two interlocking rings of mystery that must somehow be related, each of which raises more questions about the other than it answers. There’s a lot to like here, and with the anime slated for a full two cours there’s a lot of time for it to bend and twist our expectations in myriad ways. All this in mind, it might be the season’s easiest recommend, I could see almost any anime fan getting something out of this.
I should mention at least in passing that the show looks and sounds good, too. In particular, there are some really great cuts of SQ emoting in the premiere here that make me very optimistic about how much fun this show is going to be long-term, and the cold, sealed-off atmosphere of the ship itself is hard to beat.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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.
“Until the day that beautiful monster grants my wish with her own two hands….”
The first thing is the pacing, and the second is the sound design. I’m late to this one, I know, but upon watching the first two episodes of This Monster Wants To Eat Me, the latest in a growing number of decent-to-great yuri adaptations from up and down this year, those were the two elements that stuck out to me the most. Normally, when one brings up an anime’s pacing, it’s to complain. It is all too easy to fuck up the sequencing of events when adapting a manga to animation; by rearranging them illogically, by sticking so close to the source material that you sap the life out of the thing (the more common of those two scenarios these days), or simply by pacing them wrong. Events that are snappy on paper aren’t necessarily so in motion, timing is a key consideration when it comes to picking an approach for adapting this material.
Keep all this in mind as I say, usually, when an anime feels slow, that’s said as a bad thing. Especially if it was based on a manga. Watatabe—as This Monster is more commonly known—proves that it’s not necessarily so. This is an anime that creeps, lurches, and crawls. What it lacks in traditional production polish it more than compensates with in deploying its sense of timing and its audio to create atmosphere. Despite being set in the dead of summer, this is an anime that most makes sense as a Fall series. Mermaids should get to trick or treat, too.
As for what this is all actually about? Well, our main character, Hinako [Ueda Reina], is depressed. We don’t have the details yet, but it seems that she lost her family to some tragic accident some time ago. She wants to die, but she either doesn’t want to or can’t bring herself to end her own life, so she spends a lot of time gazing into the sea and waiting for her time to come. Early in the first episode she runs into a mysterious girl, Shiori [Ishikawa Yui], who warns her that leaning over the railing by the coast isn’t safe. She could fall in, after all! Nonetheless, when she returns to the same spot to do more or less exactly that later that day, strands of thick, dark hair creep out of the water like animate seaweed. Our heroine is thus attacked by an iso-onna, who drags her into the water to consume her.
In its way, this isn’t so bad, Hinako thinks. Sure, it was out of the blue, but this is what she’s been looking for, isn’t it? And nothing, not even the attempts of her best friend (the rowdy Yashiro Miko, played by Fairouz Ai), has really helped. But, in an even more surprising turn of events, the girl from earlier intervenes, sprouting fishscales and a long, sickle-wicked claw to drive the water ghost away.
This isn’t anything as simple as a rescue, though. Shiori wants to eat Hinako, too. She’s just not quite tender enough, yet. So begins a particular flavor of twisted love story.
These first two episodes, especially the second, largely take us through the paces of Hinako’s daily life, and how it changes in the presence of Shiori. Hinako technically never straight up says she’s infatuated with Shiori, but lines like the one quoted at the top of this article make it pretty clear how she feels. The dynamic Watatabe is building here is an interesting one. Hinako wants Shiori to kill and eat her. Shiori is explicitly interested in keeping Hinako alive until her flavor reaches its peak. She explicitly compares Hinako to livestock, in fact.
The important bit here is that Shiori is going to eat her eventually, but not right now. This actually bothers Hinako, not because she’s afraid or repulsed, but because if she’s going to be eaten she’d really rather it be soon. Despite the grim tone and the slow, creaking nature of the storytelling, there’s also an almost bratty overtone to the whole thing, as though Hinako is a needy submissive and Shiori, her domme, is teasingly avoiding giving her what she wants most.
This is, of course, the point. Watatabe’s premise is a take on the whole “domestic girlfriend” fantasy—found more often in heteroromantic romance manga, but it can be seen in yuri as well—wherein a depressed character is lifted to life and warmth by someone who insists on taking care of them. (There is in fact an entire style of romance manga and light novels built on this premise. If you’ve ever seen anything tagged “Rehabilitation” on Anilist or MyAnimeList, that’s what that means.) The roles of the nurturer and romantic partner are rolled into one in these scenarios, and Watatabe‘s playful skewering of them involves giving the caretaker/partner character an explicitly malicious overtone. Remember, within the world of the story itself this isn’t actually a metaphor: Shiori literally wants to kill Hinako and eat her, head to toe. But Hinako, depressed and longing to be reunited with her family, either figuratively in death or literally in the hereafter, is fine with that, and in fact wants that. In its way, Watatabe‘s story is quite a wicked little thing.
I don’t think it would work nearly so well without the audio component. The music here is straightforward but devastatingly effective, an arsenal of simple piano and string pieces that hammer home the oppressive summer that Hinako has been living for so long, and remind us that there is a final, sharp end to her relationship with Shiori. The voice acting here is excellent, too. Ishikawa Yui lends a breathy, ethereal tone to Shiori that really sells the idea of her as some otherworldly creature. She can also make Shiori sound forceful, which is helpful when the character needs to project ferocity (as at the end of the first episode), or make clear to Hinako that she doesn’t get to make all of her own decisions anymore (as at the end of the second). Ueda Reina makes Hinako sound exactly the right amount of withdrawn and closed-off. For an example, visually speaking, her daydreams about ocean life intruding into her everyday existence are reasonably effective but hardly flashy. It’s really the flat, deep-sighing tone of voice Ueda brings to the role that ties it all together.
Having the aural advantage is good. The elephant in the room here is that the show doesn’t look fantastic. It doesn’t look bad, I wouldn’t say—although its frequent use of frame-blending pushes things—but it’s definitely a shoestring production and looks the part, and doesn’t hit the visual heights of, say, the best episodes of the similarly-abbreviated Watanare. (Although that had its lesser moments, too.) Similarly, the actual shot composition is effective but largely unspectacular except for a few particularly striking moments. None of this is all that surprising for a low-resource anime at this stage in the medium’s history, but it is at least worth knowing going into it, and if it pushes people toward the manga instead, I don’t think that’s necessarily such a bad thing, even if they are missing out on the lovely sound design here. It is, in any case, a minor weakness. Or at least it is if I’m the one being asked.
The second episode ends set against the interesting love triangle building between Hinako, Shiori, and Miko, who spends much of the episode being jealous of the mysterious relationship that Hinako and Shiori seem to have suddenly developed.
She, in fact, asks Hinako to a festival. Hinako turns her down—it would seem that the accident that caused the deaths of her family is somehow related to this very same festival—but Shiori, not content to let her prized pig simply sit and girlrot, forces her to go. We don’t know how that’s going to work out for either of them, yet. (Or for Miko, for that matter.) But I certainly plan on tuning in to find out.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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.
Another season, another isekai thing that starts like a week before every other premiere. I’m not hating, TV anime being what it is, you have to pull out every trick you can think of to get your foot in the door, and sometimes that just means having it there before anybody else. (We’re conveniently ignoring several other anime that have already premiered, which I either did not watch or did watch but had nothing to say about. Still, the general point stands.)
You can glean a lot of what you need to know about A Wild Last Boss Appeared! from its title alone. If it’s bringing to mind images of overpowered protagonists staring at stat screens then, yeah, congratulations, you’ve figured the show’s general deal out pretty well. What is less apparent from a cursory look is that the series does boast a few distinguishing characteristics. First of all, our protagonist was a man in the real world but, upon being isekai’d into his favorite fantasy MMO, Exgate Online, inhabits the body of his female player character Lufas [Koshimizu Ami], a ludicrously-powerful winged person who, among other things, united the entire game world under her banner as a domineering queen before being killed by a party of heroes in a thrilling, violent opening fight scene. The heroes were, of course, other players. (The kind of stuff you can do in an imaginary MMO vs. a real one is truly mindboggling.)
The gender stuff is noteworthy but not entirely out of place, as there have been several “I was a boring, ugly guy on Earth but in the isekai world I’ve been turned into a totally hot babe with a great rack and magical powers” isekai over the past several years. Nonetheless, it’s still a lot rarer than the usual main character these sorts of things have, which remains “just some guy.” Lufas has a solid character design, too, with gigantic black angel wings and a cool red-and-gold outfit that makes her look appropriately regal. Characters like this tend to inspire a lot of hay-making in certain social media circles about whether they “count” as transgender. I have never managed to muster up a strong opinion on this subject in the broad sense despite being a trans woman myself, but, in this case it’s worth noting that Lufas gets over the shock of her transformation extremely quickly. So, if you’re trans and want to project onto her, I’m sure as hell not going to try to stop you.
It’s a magic HRT glowup anyone would envy, honestly. Where are my black angel wings, medical science?
Second and perhaps more important to the success of a show in this genre, Last Boss has a fair amount of production polish. It comes to us from a new-ish but definitely not rookie director, Horiuchi Yuuya, whose prior two directorial credits were on the two seasons of NIJIYON ANIMATION, a chibi spinoff of Love Live Nijigasaki High School Idol Club, which he also served as the assistant director on the second season of. (His team are under WAO World, a studio who have a few sparse credits under their belt since the start of the decade but were responsible for Anime-Gataris back in 2017. That’s barely relevant to this piece, but you better damn well believe that if I can connect Anime-Gataris to a column I’m writing I’m going to do it. Watch Anime-Gataris.) This is all, in any case, basically the long way around of saying that the fight scenes that bookend the episode look good, although in the latter case it might be more appropriate to call it a full-on slaughter scene. (That’s not a compliment. We’ll get to it.) There are also some striking shots in the middle, particularly when Lufas, newly summoned 200 years after her defeat, returns to her old base, a massive tower decked with stained glass windows.
All told, the show looks good enough that, if you were just looking at stills, you might be able to convince yourself it was compellingly-written, too. Anime is after all a visual medium, so if something is strikingly directed and animated, it’s halfway there, right? Arguably more than halfway.
Sadly, this isn’t entirely the case. For one thing, Last Boss falls into the same trap as essentially every other “totally OP protagonist” isekai, which is that if the character is monstrously strong, we already know who’s going to win every conflict, and thus, there aren’t really any stakes to, at least, any physical confrontation. What saves the script from being a total wash is that Lufas does actually have some genuine charisma and dignity. Koshimizu Ami’s performance does a lot to uplift the broad writing of the character in this first episode. She’s commanding and has gravitas, and sitting alone in her all-but-abandoned fortress, you can, briefly, see her how the people of this world might see her. Regal, with a quietly crackling power just waiting to be unleashed.
This itself is, unfortunately, undercut by her interior monologue, which seems to switch between Koshimizu’s narration for Lufas herself and Horie Shun‘s interior speech for Minamijuuji Sei, the #epic #gamer who was Lufas’ real-world player, and whose narration’s generally goofy tone and loose fourth-wall jabbing jibes very badly with the rest of the narrative. The very first scene after Lufas is resurrected actually seems to imply that these are two separate characters somehow, and they seem to briefly be in conflict as Sei struggles to communicate to his summoners in a non-domineering fashion, but after turning off some passive skill or another on Lufas, this problem is immediately overcome and the now seemingly just-one-person Lufas flies off, free.
On its own, this would be easy enough to overlook, but this paper tiger problem of setting up some kind of conflict, only for the main character to interface with a poorly-defined Skill (in the video game / D&D sense) of some kind and then resolve it immediately is illustrative not just of the flaws in Last Boss‘s first episode, but of those in this genre in general. No matter how many times I see a show do this, I am always going to have this base-level negative reaction to it. It’s just no fun to watch.
Handled a little better is Lufas’ relationship with Dina [Usui Yuri, in what seems to be her debut role as a major character]. In the actual MMO, Dina was quite literally just a prop, an NPC that Sei plunked down for decoration in his base and never gave much thought beyond this. But, seemingly because he gave her a loose backstory, Dina is recontextualized in the world of Exgate as Lufas’ advisor, a trusted confidant who is overjoyed to see her ruler once again. It’s nothing terribly complex, but that she has an attachment to Lufas beyond fearing her is a massive step up from essentially every other character in this episode. This is vaguely reminiscent of the whole Machina / Veltol dynamic in Demon Lord 2099, although I’m sure there are other examples across the genre as well.
Other than this, Dina’s ultimately also a fairly basic character, at least in this first episode. The second half of it consists of Lufas taking up adventuring odd jobs. (Because she needs money, because it’s been 200 years since she ruled anything and the coffers Dina was watching over are empty.) Upon entering a tavern, Lufas and Dina take a gander at a quest board, and, ultimately, Lufas decides to do what she does best. Thus, the last few minutes of Last Boss‘s first episode are dedicated to adding to the growing number of anime scenes that just consist of a character brutally slaughtering orcs, goblins, demons, or whatever particular humanoid bugbear the writer has decided are not worth consideration except as cannon fodder.
Sigh.
Look, the fraught-ness of orcs is a well-trod topic and I’ve gone into it and similar things myself on this blog before, so we’ll skip past that for the time being. The problem here is that orcs just aren’t interesting opponents. I have no problem fighting them in a video game, but in an anime, which I am watching and not playing, I want some visual panache to the bad guys at the very least. Not helping matters is that Lufas, upon goring a bunch of them by summoning a huge cluster of glowing swords, feels the need to remark that doing so does not disturb her. Mere seconds after wondering in her mind whether she actually has the stomach to do this. Once again, problem raised and immediately surmounted: can Lufas bring herself to kill living, thinking creatures? Sure seems like it! What a boring thing to write.
Generously, you could say that Lufas’ lack of a reaction is the result of Sei more fully merging with his character, that her mentality has begun to override his. Mostly though, it just feels handwavey. I don’t expect a show like this to get into the ramifications of how it feels to take another life, or what it means for a species to essentially be born evil, a point of view Dina outright reinforces—this, after all, is quite literally the old Tolkien-derived Problem With Orcs, it’s not like this convention is Last Boss‘s fault—but I don’t think it’s too much to ask that, either, the series just not bring this kind of stuff up in the first place, or, if it’s going to do so, actually explore it in some depth rather than just dismiss it out of hand. It is of course possible it will return to these ideas later and actually grapple with them in some way, but if I’m honest, I kind of doubt it.
The word I’ve been dancing around this entire column is “edgy.” It’s very passé, and ironically, kind of childish, to dismiss something out of hand for being edgy. If Last Boss wants to have its protagonist aura farm by slaughtering a bunch of monsters, I’m not going to tell it that it can’t do that. (Aura farming is great, and gets a bad rep.) But there needs to be some craft to this stuff, and while Lufas ruthlessly slaughtering the orcs is definitely striking and well-animated, it’s not actually interesting. They’re not dragons, they’re not sinister-looking demonic beasts. They’re just orcs like you’d find in any other fantasy series. She says herself that she’s not even expending a modicum of effort. Everything interesting about the scene is in spite of the fact that they’re orcs. Why are we going through such lengths to portray the equivalent of killing Level 1 Rats like this? There’s just a mismatch in what’s actually happening and how impressed the show wants you to be. This does not warrant this treatment! Yeah, this is a brilliant and creative way to show the disparity in power that the orc feels as Lufas kills them, but why, if orcs are just brutish pests worth no further consideration, should I care how an orc feels in the first place?
Combined with the fact that a different significant chunk of the episode is taken up by just straight-up exposition about the game systems of Exgate, this all adds up to a first episode that is fun in spots but, overall, is mostly dry and, for something that looks this good, surprisingly boring.
In the end then, I think whether Last Boss can manage to wring a compelling narrative out of its setup is going to boil down to whether or not it’s willing to let Lufas actually struggle a bit. This doesn’t have to be in terms of combat, it could be anything. Just, some way in which she’s not solving every problem the minute it happens. There are some seeds of a longer-term plot in here! Mentions of some of Lufas’ old comrades defecting to the army of the mysterious Devil King, a figure she seems to regard with complete contempt, are something to grasp onto. So I’m not going to dismiss this series out of hand and say that this can’t work as an idea. It clearly can! It does in the show’s opening minutes! It just needs to commit to some actual narrative buildup. The question of course is if it can actually do that. And I do want it to! Fall is looking like a pretty barren season as far as new anime go, I only have three other anime on my personal shortlist, and one of them is a sequel. So I have every reason to want Last Boss to succeed here, but admittedly, I’m keeping my expectations tempered.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 Weekly Orbit is a (sometimes) weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume at least some familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!
Hi folks, I missed last week, and as I alluded to the week before that, I’m experiencing a bit of end-of-season burnout. Still, I wanted to try to get an at least mostly complete Weekly Orbit to you today. We have some season finales and a few less permanent things. I hope you enjoy.
Anime – Seasonal
Call of The Night – Season 2, Episode 12 (Finale)
A really sweet sendoff for Call of The Night, here.
I really like that we’re not just abandoning Anko as a character now that her arc is “over,” and I will be honest, while it’s not for nearly as grandiose reasons, her comments about feeling like you’ve gotten older but not really grown up, and about wasting the last decade of her life, really hit home very hard for me. Not to be dramatic, but as I’ve sometimes discussed elsewhere on this site I sometimes feel the same way due to my disabilities. Accordingly, I think this is maybe the most I’ve ever liked the character.
As for Nazuna and Ko, I am happy to see their relationship developing as it has. Ending the season by cutting to black on the chomp (because bites are their private thing, now, you see) followed by the “Call of The Night” needle drop was just brilliantly classy. Good episode, good season, good show.
Dandadan – Season 2, Episode 12 (Season Finale)
Another example of that with Dandadan here. A great finale from what’s just been a pretty consistently great season of a great show. A robot vs. kaiju showdown just makes sense as a way to end an arc for something as rambunctious as Dandadan. I particularly like how the robot goes from very toku-esque (and a bit goofy looking) to a very Daicon-y thing with a flaming head by the end of the battle. And of course we end on the introduction of another new character to the anime, who I am excited to get more spotlight next time around.
Admittedly! The upcoming arc is maybe my least favorite of the manga? It’s….an odd one, to say the least. But it has its high points, too, so I’m sure Dandadan will be reliable with delivering bangers for many seasons to come.
My Dress-Up Darling – Season 2, Episode 12 (Season Finale)
And bringing up the third spot on the tic tac toe board, Dress-Up Darling also delivers a lovely end to a lovely season. I don’t have a ton to say about the finale, I’m happy that the two character arcs here resolved the way they did though. I think Akira actually just being a huge lesbian is a pretty unsurprising plot twist, but I was still really delighted with how they handled it. The Coffin cosplay scenes were also really great, I think this is easily the most blood I’ve ever seen in a gentle romcom!
Overall just a fantastic season of television. I’m hoping the third season, should they make more, isn’t too far off. We’ll see!
Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 12 (Series Finale)
This was the first full-length TV anime of the season to end, at least as far as stuff I was watching. My verdict? This was fine! Not great, not awful. It was fine.
When the show started I said something to the effect of, if you can’t pull off “good,” “weird” is a solid second thing to aim for. I think maybe more than I expected, Necronomico is a great example of that. This is a show that has much less to say than it thinks it does, has generally messy and unfocused characterization, and its core conceits are all just generally kind of stupid. But it was largely entertaining week to week just off of novelty and audacity, and I think that’s worth something. This is a truly textbook Seasonal Anime, capital S, capital A. I cannot imagine anyone remembering this aired by this time next year, except maybe because of the ChatGPT subs controversy when the first episode dropped.
About the final episode, I can’t say I have a ton to comment on. I will say that I think any finale in which the main character gets to pilot her girlfriend, grown to kaiju size for the sake of a fighting game match, is an at least solid finale. I also like that, perhaps intentionally but perhaps not, the game Nyarlathotep—sorry, Tick Tock Man—comes up with seems kind of shitty. Everyone loves fighting games where you have to button mash so hard your fingers bleed, right? I also really appreciated the gag where Miko somehow magics up a proper fight stick after being frustrated with the gamepad. Also the symbol sealing thing felt like a missed opportunity to incorporate the Yellow Sign into the show. That would’ve been a fun gag.
The epilogue was honestly a little much. I appreciated seeing Miko reunited with her girlfriend, and the hints that Cthulu might still be in there (and a similar hint with Gua’s host streamer) are fun and tantalizing if they ever decide they want to follow this show up. (Frankly, it seems very unlikely that this show did well enough to warrant that, but I wouldn’t mind being proven wrong. I think the actual IP is owned by Cygames, so maybe they don’t care about that.) But I really had no desire to see most of the other characters again; the mangaka, the actress, etc. are just not memorable and I think if we really felt the need to establish that they were still alive, a simple montage of a couple seconds, tops, would’ve sufficed just fine. I’m also a little mad they never killed Eita, he really seemed like he was asking for it and if they do make more of this, I simply refuse to buy into any attempted redemption arc. Try harder, man.
In any case, yeah, that’s Necronomico. A solidly decent show that I will probably think about only very occasionally for the remainder of my life. Hardly the worst thing I’ve ever seen, but definitely in the bottom third or so of anime I’ve seen this year. I really liked Cthulu, and that’s probably the most credit I can give it.
Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 12
I know I’m overusing the word here, but this is another lovely episode from Ruri. Here, Ruri comes across an old crystal radio owned by her grandfather while snooping around her attic. This is a bit of a shift for the show in that this episode is as much about radio as it is about mineralogy, but I think it ties the two fields together very nicely. In addition to exploring the overlap between these fields, this is also the first time Aoi (Ruri’s gyaru-looking friend from school) gets to be much of a character, which is also nice.
I also think that the scene at the end, where Ruri finally gets the radio working again out near a shrine, is a very nice summation of the “point” of Ruri Rocks as an overall work.
What we do today can connect us, however fleetingly, to the endless yesterdays before us, whether that time scale is across human lifetimes or across aeons.
On a more grounded level, it is also nice to see Ruri working through her insecurities: after saying in last week’s episode that what she doesn’t isn’t research because that’s something only “smart people” do, she here opts to take geology as an elective at school. I should also commend the use of the ending theme as diagetic music. That was brilliant.
Turkey! Time to Strike – Episode 11
Have you ever played bowling with your life on the line?
This is truly just a delightful show. I think something that’s largely gone unsaid about it is that despite the very different literal events than most other anime in this broad girls’ drama genre, it is fundamentally wired the same way. The characters have similar arcs and the bonds between them are not unlike what we would have in a much more traditional show in this genre. The main difference is in the stakes, which are outright fatal here as opposed to the much lower ones present in what would otherwise be Turkey‘s peers.
A decade ago—to the month, in fact—SCHOOL-LIVE!, Gakkou Gurashi as it’s also known, pulled off a similar trick. That anime similarly borrows language from outright horror material to obfuscate the fact that it is, fundamentally, still a story about friendship and caring for the people close to you. The difference, of course, is that in most anime where girls compete in sports tournaments, their lives are not literally at stake if they lose.
The latter is what leads to Turkey’s second biggest tonal pivot, coming in behind only the initial switchup in the first episode. Just when things seem like they might be resolved a bit too conveniently by all of our heroes getting strikes in this tournament that the enemy feudal lord has agreed to, he changes the rules and puts them at a marked disadvantage, betraying their trust and any notion that he’s someone that could be seen as respectable.
I am pretty damn sure this is all a fakeout, of course. The finale will end with our heroines battered but not beaten, and they will tearfully depart to their own time. (There is always a second throw, recall.) But if I’m wrong, that’s actually even more interesting, so barring some generational last-episode fumble, I am still deeply interested in what Turkey will do in its last moments.
I mentioned Gakkou Gurashi. That anime is a classic, and I don’t think Turkey! is quite that good, but it’s definitely one of the more interesting things to air this year. I don’t think it’s out of the question to say it’s one of the better ones, too.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 Weekly Orbit is a (sometimes) weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume at least some familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!
Hello there, anime fans. I’m struggling with a bit of the ol’ burnout on my end, but I think I’ve managed to put together a pretty nice column for you this week regardless. Hopefully you agree. 🙂
Anime – Seasonal
Call of The Night – Season 2, Episode 10
I don’t know when, exactly, during this episode it became clear to me that Anko might be trying to commit suicide-by-vampire, but it hit me like a brick when that turned out to actually, genuinely be the case.
I really think this show’s second season has proven to be just incredible in a way I don’t think I would’ve predicted at the end of the first, even accounting for the fact that I liked the first season a lot. The intense emotion on display all throughout this episode, Nazuna and Anko’s horribly painful divorced yuri, Ko getting caught in the right place and saving Anko’s life, and then in the wrong place at the end of the episode when her gun goes off as she’s trying to kill herself….man, I don’t really know what to say here beyond this is a really exceptional series. I think my favorite of the many little touches across this episode was Nazuna ripping up playground equipment when she starts really trying to stop Anko. Playground equipment, you see, as a symbol of innocence, destroyed because neither of them can ever go back to it. Honestly, just brutal, what an episode.
Dandadan – Season 2, Episode 10
Last week we had a fight, and then comedy. This week, we have comedy, and then a fight. Simple!
This is the episode where we’re first introduced to Sakata Kinta [Fujiwara Daichi], although I don’t think we get his name here. His introduction as a weird nerd—an even weirder nerd than Okarun, in fact, by a mile—who makes inappropriate dirty jokes because he thinks it helps him seem cool is a bit of a slow start in terms of actual characterization, but I have to admit it is genuinely pretty funny. The first half of the episode also has a Tom & Jerry sort of quality to it where Momo and Okarun are looking for each other at school and keep missing each other, eventually literally running into each other and prompting Kinta’s surprise that Okarun is “popular with the ladies.” (Presented as Kinta getting the wrong idea in-fiction, but he’s not really wrong, given that both Momo and Aira are interested in him.)
Naturally Kinta gets dragged into a battle with the supernatural when the “gold ball ghost” that was mentioned last week turns out to actually be an invisible monster using high technology to shield itself from sight. Our heroes seem to defeat it (even Kinta makes a small contribution), but it rises again, growing gigantic and promising a full-on kaiju battle next week. I have to give it up not just to all of this show’s usual strengths here but also the music, the kaiju theme sounds like a drum n bass remix of the Godzilla motif. Lovely stuff.
My Dress-Up Darling- Season 2, Episodes 9 & 10
For all my complaining about the slight hit Dress-Up Darling took with that diet episode a couple weeks back, it returns here with two of its best episodes maybe ever. This is what I get for complaining and, hey, full credit, I couldn’t be happier. Two main things happen over the course of this arc. Let’s talk about the less consequential and funnier one first.
First of all, this arc involves Marin’s friend group prepping to do a group cosplay of some characters from a horror visual novel called Coffin. Unlike the series’ usual formula, the dramatic push and pull here doesn’t come from Gojo having to make an outfit. Marin’s buying a simple off-the-shelf number this time, but Gojo is still going to be involved in setting up the cosplay, so he wants to learn more about this visual novel regardless. He visits Marin plays the game at her place, and of all of the various style emulations that Dress-Up Darling has engaged with over the course of its run, this is some of the most impressive. We get scenes from the VN rendered in tastefully faux-retro, dithered pixel art. As Gojo plays, it goes from being a fairly straightforward slice of life thing to being an absolutely brutal psychological horror story about killer nuns and familial abuse. (And from what we see of it, Coffin really is a pull-no-punches kind of game. It’s easily the sort of thing you could imagine grabbing off of itch.io. And, perhaps, end up regretting that you didn’t read the trigger warnings, depending on how squeamish you are.)
Gojo being Gojo, he doesn’t see this coming at all, and to paraphrase his own words, gets a bit hyperempathetic about it. Worse, he doesn’t actually have Marin with him for the majority of his playthrough to bounce off of. He’s also hopped up on energy drinks, because, surprise, the trains back home are out of service and his whole hanging out with Marin has turned into an impromptu sleepover.
Why is Marin asleep? Well, when she sees our boy buying the energy drinks, they happen to be right next to an aisle of what I’ll politely call supplements and gets the wrong idea. So she spends most of the night anxious that Gojo is trying to make a move on her, even as she also kind of looks forward to it, her head spinning with ideas about how they’re going to do all of the “important stuff”—handholding, kissing, and yes, sex—in one night. It’s a little rare for an anime to have noticeably good body language animation, but the way the show focuses on her eyes, dialed into tight, beady little pupils, and toes, twiddling and scrunching up into little balls of anxiety, is really something. It also noticeably never feels even a little bit salacious, since in this context, Dress-Up Darling—never afraid to be horny when it wants to be, and I must stress that that’s fine in its own right—wants you to appreciate Marin as a person with her own thoughts and feelings, not as something to ogle.
After eating some instant ramen, Marin calms down, sharing an adorable story about how her and her dad used to share the very same kind of ramen while watching movies together late at night. In fact, she gets so comfortable while talking about this that she actually falls asleep, and Gojo puts her to bed, leading to his own odyssey with the visual novel above. (It feels like a pointed contrast that Marin, a well-adjusted and happy girl over all, shares a warm and positive anecdote about her father. The protagonist of Coffin, by contrast, is horribly abused by hers.)
With the clarity of morning, Marin beats herself up a little bit about getting so anxious—and so excited—over a simple misunderstanding. She wonders if Gojo actually likes her in that way at all, and in doing so she imagines him rejecting her, which shakes her so badly that she actually starts crying. Her anxieties are dispelled though upon visiting Gojo at his house a day or two later. Gojo, ever-considerate, sometimes overly so, actually tries to turn her away at first. Not because he doesn’t actually want her there, but because he made fried fish for dinner, and isn’t sure if she should be having that, given her stated dieting goals. Marin is moved enough that she just decides today is a cheat day, and she enjoys dinner with her crush.
Still, she can’t actually work up the nerve to outright ask him out. She tries to, but eventually scales the request back to just asking to come back tomorrow. (He says yes, of course.) On a late-night train, the warmth from their time spent together crystallizes into determination, and she promises herself that after the Coffin group photoshoot, she’s going to ask him out, come what may.
I admit I’ve never been super concerned about the overarching “plot” of Dress-Up Darling. It’s always pretty clear in this kind of thing that the leads are going to get together eventually, it’s just a question of if it’ll take the whole series or only part of it. Still, it’s really exciting to see actual progress being made on that front. Even if it’s a feint in the immediate short-term, the character development here speaks volumes. Marin herself, pondering her and Gojo’s relationship, points out that teasing him used to be easy, but now that she’s actually worried he might reject her, she can’t bring herself to do it anymore.
There are complicating factors; one of the other people involved in the group cosplay—Akira, who were introduced to just a few episodes ago, a mysterious and somewhat reserved girl who primarily cosplays her own characters (awesome, it must be said)—doesn’t like Marin for some unstated reason. This, along with Sajuna’s return to the series and her own reluctant involvement with the Coffin shoot, promises to throw at least one, maybe several, wrenches into this whole business. Still, I’m really looking forward to how this arc resolves, there are a lot of parts in motion here, and I am so fascinated to see how they intersect.
Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 10
You can say a lot about Necronomico, much of which is not exactly flattering, but damn if it isn’t memorable.
There are two main plot threads in this episode; Kanna contending with Ghatanothoa’s game for her—a supernatural raising sim based on her own life—and Kei being played like a fiddle by Cthugua.
In the case of the latter, I don’t think it’s even explained to us what Gua’s “game” actually is, but she spends her entire half of the episode alternately insulting Kei and calling her a pretty doll, while at the same time making her drink sake until she’s so drunk she can’t see straight. Eventually, this culminates in the two of them kissing and burning to death together in Gua’s palace. I’ll be honest, I have no idea where exactly this came from, but as far as tragic (and commendably strange) yuri goes, it’s pretty good.
Kanna’s half of the episode is a bit more thematically meaty, in that Ghatanothoa’s game is directly based on her own, very sad life, and to discover its true ending (and thus win it) she eventually figures out that she has to make no decisions at all.
“You can’t really change the past” is, as Kanna herself angrily points out, exactly the kind of obnoxious and overdone theme that someone like Ghatanothoa would gravitate towards putting in a game like this, with its presentation of that theme equally so. Despite his bloviating about how all of human art and culture is meaningless, Ghatanothoa is essentially portrayed as a parasocial fanboy, in fact, complete with calling Kanna his “oshi”, and his amateurish-at-best command of visual novel writing reflects this. I commend the show for not taking the easy way out of saying that Kanna’s suffering is what gives her life meaning, but it is a little hard to swallow that this leads to another mutual kill. I get why it has to be set up that way; so Miko and Cthulu can hinge the fate of the world on their final confrontation, but it doesn’t really square with what we’re shown here.
And, well, all of this has to put up with the fact that this episode has some of the worst boarding in a show that, even at its best, has not exactly looked fantastic. Still, the end is in sight by now, so I am interested to see if they stick the landing. My personal theory is that this show doesn’t actually have the stones to commit to a bittersweet ending and we’re going to get everyone revived at the last minute somehow. The still-hanging plot thread of Kanna being “favored by Azatoth” would provide the perfect off ramp.
Oh, and no Eita this episode is notable, if only because it means he will inevitably be back next week.
Turkey! Time to Strike – Episode 9
Fundamentally, right, the whole “bowling” motif in this show, it’s a gimmick, right? Or it at least seems like it should be one. You could write a very similar story to this without that aspect of it at all, and people have. But, more than just a way to stand out from the pack, the way the series uses the sport to actually emphasize the communal nature of play as an idea is like….forgive me for not finding a better way to say this, it’s just not something you really expect from a random seasonal anime. Which is absurd, right? Because every anime was a random seasonal anime at some point. There’s not actually a distinction. But it nonetheless manages to surprise me every time one of these shows actually turns out to be this good.
So, you have this episode. A thwarted—thank god—double suicide and winding, beautiful conversation about what it means to mean something to someone, how people put themselves on the line for those they truly care about.
And of course, there’s how the episode ends, with a thundercloud rolling in, the promise of home on the horizon. Will our heroines actually leave? After this episode, I think it’s very up in the air. It’s clear that the two halves of our cast care for each other a lot, but there are still three episodes to go, so there’s plenty of time for interesting developments.
Oh, and can I say? Starting the episode by immediately catching the viewer off-foot with the altered OP sequence? Brilliant.
Other
Ano Hi no Kanojotachi: day09 Miu Takigawa
It has been five years since early lockdown-era idol anime 22/7 tried, and failed, to reinvent its genre.
22/7 the idol group, though, have ticked on. They still exist, and have persisted through a variety of lineup changes, a notably rocky history that has resulted in multiple changes in direction for their sound and, admittedly, given them more of a fanbase than you might assume if you don’t follow idol stuff very closely. Takigawa Miu, the group’s center, was one of two remaining original members. As you can glean from the existence of this short, she has now left. “Graduated,” as it is somewhat-euphemistically referred to among idol fans.
This short is ostensibly a sendoff. It’s not actually even narratively related to the 22/7 TV series (it has more in common with, and is presented as, an episode of the 2018 slice of life shorts that were created early in the lifespan of the project), but it marks the end of something, so it’s still significant, as both a point to reflect on what 22/7 was and is and what its existence can tell us in general about the circles of art and media it is a part of.
Miu’s vocal performances—both voice acting and singing—were provided by Saijou Nagomi. (She technically reprises the role here, but doesn’t speak, contributing only a few soft sobs at one point. These could easily have been provided by a fill-in or pulled from archive audio, but I’m choosing to assume some amount of professionalism here.) Five years is a long time in the entertainment industry, and watching this short, and its quiet melancholy, I cannot help but wonder how she must’ve felt to have it playing behind her during her farewell concert, as that is the context for which it was originally produced.
It is worth noting that Miu is Ms. Saijou’s only voice acting credit of any note, and if she’s ever released any other music, I was not able to find it by doing a cursory search. Still, a glance at her Twitter page indicates she was keeping it professional up until her very last day in the group. There is lots of talk over there of cherishing every moment she spent with her fans and so on. As of the time of this writing, the most recent post is a handful of images from the farewell concert. Some digging reveals she intends to largely make the transition to behind-the-camera work as a photographer.
The short itself largely portrays Miu in transit; first coming home on a bus, and then, after quietly crying to herself in bed, going somewhere that looks an awful lot like a college or new school of some other sort, in what is either a dream sequence or a flash-forward. It’s definitely playing into these sorts of thoughts; where is she going from here? Is she happy? Does she have regrets? On some level, all of that is as much an emotional manipulation as any of the more obvious work done by any number of more traditional idol anime—before or since—that 22/7 sought to join the ranks of and perhaps surpass. (And we have to give credit to Wonder Egg Priority director Wakabayashi Shin that this is imbued with such emotion in the first place. The short has no dialogue, as mentioned.) Still, it’s overall a surprisingly moving piece of work, and one that feels ever so slightly out of step with where the medium’s sensibilities currently are, with its vibrant and shiny lighting that feels so tied to the visual aesthetics of the last decade as opposed to this one. I said it’s a long time in the entertainment industry, but honestly, five years is a long time for anyone. The short is a potent, if brief, reminder of this.
The last scene of the short shows us Miu, on a bus, looking back at the camera. We don’t know where she’s going, but she is going. It’s hard not to feel happy for her. And as strange as it may be to say, that shot, as it fades out for the final time, is probably the most 22/7 has ever affected me. Perhaps tellingly, it did it without “subverting”, “reinventing”, or “deconstructing” anything.
And that’ll be all for this particular week. As always, I ask that if you enjoyed what you’ve read here (or just enjoy my site in general), you consider a donation to my Ko-Fi page, it helps immensely, and helps keep the site up and running.
For this week’s Bonus Image, please enjoy the title screen of Coffin, perfectly evocative of the evolving title screens of RPGMaker games and indie visual novels of both the past and present.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 Weekly Orbit is a (sometimes) weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume at least some familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!
Hey there, friends! Another pretty light week this week, but one in which I’ve got some interesting stuff outside of the usual Seasonal Anime bracket to share as well. Enjoy.
Anime – Seasonal
Call of the Night – Episode 9
Bear with me here. I’ve always found the co-opting of the “arcs” system that shonen anime fans tend to use a little frustrating. Admittedly, I don’t know if this is actually true, but my impression at least has always been that things are sliced up into arcs as a fan-led convention. So when an anime’s English marketing actually refers to something as an “arc,” I roll my eyes a little. All storylines are arcs when you get down to it, so what are we saying here, right?
Well, Call of the Night makes the argument that this part of its story should be called The Halloween Arc because it takes place entirely on Halloween. You know what? Fair enough. I’ll let them have this one.
This is all tangential of course to the fact that this is probably the best Call of the Night has been since its return. (If it’s not, its main competition is episode four. Throughout its second season, Call of The Night has proven to be surprisingly adept at tragic yuri. I would love Kotoyama to attempt a full series in the genre at some point.) Anko springs her plan into motion on the night of a Halloween festival, but we’re still in the dark about what that plan actually is. Thus, most of Anko’s actions throughout this episode—and we see enough of them that she’s basically the second protagonist here—seem engineered to make you, the viewer, wonder what in the utter fuck she’s trying to accomplish. This is more entertaining than it may sound on paper.
It’s been established that a vampire’s main weakness is memorabilia from their human days. With most of the vampiric side of the cast having gone out of their way to dispose of those, Anko begins enacting a strange plan where she actually shoots two of the vampires—Niko and Seri—in full public view. (The public in question, being about as smart as any fictional audience, assume a movie is being filmed Or Something.) They recover, of course. You can’t kill a vampire with something as simple as a revolver. But the provocation has had its intended effect, and by episode’s end Anko is running from Seri’s boyfriend (Takkun, also a vampire) and the rest of the vampires. We end on a confrontation in her and Nazuna’s old classroom, where the two reunite and stare each other down.
It’s a hell of a cliffhanger, and it promises even better things ahead, but what I really need to emphasize here is just how wildly entertaining Anko is during all this? I was a bit slower to warm to the character than a lot of people in my age bracket, but she’s an utter riot here. Sure, she’s the antagonist, but that doesn’t mean she can’t be silly with it. Particular highlights include threatening to shoot some random guy after he hits on a girl half is age only to reveal that that gun is actually just a gun-shaped cigarette lighter, and a sequence near the end of the episode where she just runs like hell after tossing Takkun into a trashcan.
CITY THE ANIMATION – Episode 8
I think I should mention that I’ve been watching the dub of CITY. That’s very relevant in this episode because it ends with a musical number! And to my (pleasant) surprise they actually dubbed it! That’s not always a given in anime dubs.
Now, the number itself was some kind of bizarre Hamilton-meets-Japanese folk tales-meets The Barenaked Ladies’ “One Week” kind of thing, but it’s the thought that counts.
Oh yeah and the rest of the episode was pretty funny, too. The “Bon Jovi” joke in the band names segment got me so hard that I had to pause the video to collect myself. Episode nine is pretty great, too, for the record! I’m hitting my limit for how much writing I can do about anime in a given week here, I think (this is the last bit of writing I’m doing other than the closer before this article goes up), but episode nine is a giant, wacky race. In the vein of something like….well, Wacky Races. The episode sprinkles in some backstory for the characters we’ve gotten to know over CITY’s run and is pretty sweet in addition to the usual humor as a result. This is especially true of our goofball schoolgirl lesbians Matsuri and Eri, who, soon to be parted, enter the race to make some final memories together and end up winning the whole thing. It’s cute!
Dandadan – Episode 9
Despite an absolutely fireworks fight scene at the start of it, episode nine is mostly a slower and more comedic break between the previous and upcoming arcs of Dandadan. This makes sense, and a decision to slow down a little and focus on the series’ character strengths is a good one on the heels of so much fighting.
That’s not to say this episode is devoid of important developments, though. Having finally become strong enough to take him on, Okarun manages to convince Evil Eye to not constantly attempt to slaughter all humans in his vicinity. Instead, the two of them will fight once a week. Like gentlemen. (More or less.) This paves the way for Jiji to return to school, which sets up the often hilarious second half of the episode, wherein Evil Eye emerges at school and Jiji’s classmates have to wonder why he’s suddenly talking about butchering all who stand before him, and why he suddenly looks so goth. It’s basically just one joke iterated upon for several minutes, but it’s a pretty good joke.
in between these things, Mantisian and some of his friends—including the Minecraft Steve-esque Mr. Ludris—rebuild the Ayase household’s home, with the help of an alien wonder-material called nanoskin. While this seems like just a cute way to wave away the whole “no longer having a house” situation that Momo and her grandmother would otherwise be in, it’s actually about to be rather important as a plot device. In the interest of not spoiling the rest of this season, I’ll say no more on that, but overall, yeah, this was a very fun episode. I’m excited to see where we head next.
Necronomico and The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 9
As I assumed would be the case last week, Episode eight of Necronomico sets us up with what seems to be the structure we’ll be working with for the remainder of the series.
Our four remaining heroes have to tackle the four Old Ones, and they end up splitting up and doing each trial alone. This means that the first half of this episode is actually a focus story about Hastur on the villains’ side, and, on the heroes’ side, Sano Seishirou. Given that the latter’s characterization so far has amounted to a pedophile joke about 5 episodes ago, which even the show itself seems to have forgotten about, this is a good chance to give him some actual characterization.
And you know what? He acquits himself pretty nicely here. Hastur’s game is in of itself not terribly interesting, being essentially the card game War with a smaller deck and some extra steps, but it’s nice to see Seishirou actually fit into the “heroic teacher that goes down fighting” archetype, even as Hastur taunts him all the while. (The drawling, low growl that Okitsu Kazuyuki delivers for how Hastur mockingly calls Seishirou “senseeiii” is one of the best pieces of voice acting in this whole show so far.)
The card game does manage to have some legitimate emotional stakes, especially when Hastur conjures up mental recreations of Seishirou’s family for the final hand. Pretty impressive considering that it just boils down to a coin flip, essentially, but Seishirou ekes out a win by psychoanalyzing his opponent and is free to be reunited with his family.
Except he isn’t, because SURPRISE! HE DOESN’T ACTUALLY HAVE A FAMILY!
In the sort of beautifully brick-stupid twist you only get in this kind of show, it is revealed that Seishirou’s family, who we only met a few minutes prior, are in fact completely imaginary! Surprise! It’s the most hilariously awful system rep of all time!
Suffice to say, I think this is so dumb that it kind of comes back out the other side and becomes funny. How can you hate dialogue like this?
Others will feel differently I’m sure, and Seishirou’s victory over Hastur is pyrrhic anyway: he collapses and dies shortly after Hastur’s disposed of, leaving the remining three Old Ones (and possibly also Tick Tock Man? I wouldn’t put that past this show) for the anime’s final few episodes.
Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 9
Another complete delight from the slice-of-substrate anime this week. This marks a return to what we might call Ruri Rocks’ usual formula, but the expressiveness of the animation is at an all-time high here, and there are a lot of gorgeous moments throughout the episode. I’m particularly fond of Ruri’s dream of infinite fields of opal and how it eventually reflects itself in reality toward the end of the episode. This is also another episode that deals with a manmade object—this time a massive dam—and its impact on mineralogy, which is a theme the show seems to want to return to again and again. I admit I find it pretty compelling stuff, so I can’t complain. Also, Nagi tries on a bunch of different outfits in this episode and looks gorgeous in all of them, god bless.
There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. – Episode 8
I really enjoy that Satsuki’s evil plan to break Mai’s spirit consists of….telling an embarrassingly sweet story, so she’ll be distracted, so she can headshot her in a video game. Truly, a woman after my own heart (and of course the evil chiptune music makes a return to compliment it).
I find myself short on actual commentary for Watanare, which is a little frustrating because it’s honestly an absolutely fascinating show. In this episode we have a series of amusingly janky Red vs. Blue-ass 3DCGI segments, of our characters playing this video game they’ve agreed to compete at, juxtaposed against sincere emotional stakes, which are themselves complicated by the series’ overall messiness. (A term I normally hate and try to avoid, but I really can’t think of a better adjective to describe the relationships on display here.) If someone handed you just the script for this episode, you might think it was some kind of very bizarre sports anime, given how well the game and the emotional development are woven together.
Turkey! – Episode 8
Turkey has juggled an impressive amount of moods and tones over the course of its run thus far. Episode eight largely sits on the “quiet melancholy” end of the spectrum, before a sudden swerve—a fakeout, I am guessing—into horror at the episode’s end.
This isn’t my favorite episode of the series, and what we learn here is not anything we couldn’t have guessed from context. Still, the reveal of Mai’s backstory is well done, and I like the way everyone is connecting with their feudal counterparts. Also, I’m not sure what it was, but Nanase’s line about liking (or at least acclimating to) living in the past because she “feels useful” there really hit me. There is something immensely sad about that.
Anime – Non-Seasonal
Key The Metal Idol – Episodes 3 & 4
The main thing that has interested me about this show so far is its sheer, overwhelming atmosphere. That’s still true; there’s a real hypnagogic feeling to much of the plot. Key—who may not really be a robot after all? It’s still unclear—suddenly develops psychic powers, which she seems to unintentionally use to kill an idol singer (herself a remote-controlled PPOR android) mid-concert. The sleazy gravure idol manager from episode one hangs on to the lip of a rooftop for dear life. A tech CEO protests that robots don’t need self-awareness, damn it! All the while picking apart the gears of his own robotic “son.” These strange and haunting images, combined with the forceful sheets of pulsing, heavy synthesizer, give the entire thing the energy of a jumbled-up nightmare. I know people compare these two all the time, but it really does feel quite similar to Serial Experiments Lain. The emotional beats are arranged very differently, though, and in general Key the Metal Idol, at least so far, feels in some sense more raw and primitive. Time will tell if that impression holds.
22/7 – Ano Hi no Kanojotachi: day09: Miu Takigawa – Short
It has been five years since early lockdown-era idol anime 22/7 tried, and failed, to reinvent its genre.
22/7 the idol group, though, have ticked on. They still exist, and have persisted through a variety of lineup changes, a notably rocky history that has resulted in a lot of changes in direction for their sound and, admittedly, given them more of a fanbase than you might assume if you don’t follow idol stuff very closely. Takigawa Miu, the group’s center, was one of two remaining original members. She has now left. “Graduated,” as it is somewhat-euphemistically referred to among idol fans.
This short is ostensibly a sendoff. It’s not even narratively related to the 22/7 TV series (it has more in common with, and is presented as, an episode of the 2018 slice of life shorts that were created in the early lifespan of the projects), but it marks the end of something, so it’s still significant, as both a point to reflect on what 22/7 was and is and what its existence can tell us in general about the circles of art and media it is a part of.
Miu’s vocal performances—both voice acting and singing—were provided by Saijou Nagomi. (She technically reprises the role here, but doesn’t speak, contributing only a few soft sobs at one point. These could easily have been provided by a fill-in or pulled from archive audio, but I’m choosing to assume some amount of professionalism here.) Five years is a long time in the entertainment industry, and watching this short, and its quiet melancholy, I cannot help but wonder how she must’ve felt to have it playing behind her during her farewell concert, as that is the context for which it was originally produced.
It is worth noting that Miu is Ms. Saijou’s only voice acting credit of any note, and if she’s ever released any other music, I was not able to find it by doing a cursory search. Still, a glance at her Twitter page indicates she was keeping it professional up until her very last day in the group. There is lots of talk over there of cherishing every moment she spent with her fans and so on. As of the time of this writing, the most recent post is a handful of images from the farewell concert.
The short itself, portrays Miu in transit; first coming home on a bus, and then, after quietly crying to herself in bed, going somewhere that looks an awful lot like a college or new school of some other sort, in what is either a dream sequence or a flash-forward. It’s definitely playing into these sorts of thoughts; where is she going from here? Is she happy? Does she have regrets? On some level, all of that is as much an emotional manipulation as any of the more obvious work done by any number of more traditional idol anime—before or since—that 22/7 sought to surpass. (And we have to give credit to Wonder Egg Priority director Wakabayashi Shin that this is imbued with such emotion in the first place. The short has no dialogue, as mentioned.) Still, it’s overall a surprisingly moving piece of work, and one that feels ever so slightly out of step with where the medium’s sensibilities currently are, with its vibrant and shiny lighting that feels so tied to the visual aesthetics of the last decade as opposed to this one. I said it’s a long time in the entertainment industry, but honestly, five years is a long time for anyone. The short is a potent, if brief, reminder of this.
The last scene of the short shows us Miu, on a bus, looking back at the camera. We don’t know where she’s going, but she is going. It’s hard not to feel happy for her. And as strange as it may be to say, that shot, as it fades out for the final time, is probably the most 22/7 has ever affected me. Perhaps tellingly, it did it without subverting, reinventing, or deconstructing anything.
Manga
Dear Flowers That Bloom in Days of Yore – Chapters 1-10
I think, in a world where there are already a lot of yuri manga doing this, there is a danger that the whole “subversively playing with Class S tropes” setup would start to feel hoary and cliched in its own right. This has not happened broadly, and it certainly hasn’t happened with Dear Flowers That Bloom in Days of Yore. Protagonist Kasumi begins a letter writing relationship with an anonymous “onee-sama” after discovering a note from her in a copy of foundational Class S text Hana Monogatari. In doing so Kasumi and her “onee-sama”, who she eventually meets in person, discovering her to actually be an older middle-schooler named Haruyo. The two wrap themselves in these roles, roles that are heavier, bigger, and older than either of them. Heavier, bigger, and older, but not necessarily more real. And that tension is threatening to tear Kasumi apart.
Were the manga merely playing with Class S tropes, I would think it was clever but not terribly ambitious. Where it clearly excels is in its ability to use this framework to subtly but definitively expose Kasumi’s own internalized homophobia. Something happened to her. We don’t yet know what, but we know it involved a now deceased friend. In the most recent chapters, Kasumi has met another girl who also met her own “special one” through a letter slipped into the copy of Hana Monogatari. I won’t spoil the specifics, but the most recent chapter seems to certainly imply that the girls who meet via this method are doomed to tragedy. The book, in other words, is cursed. Literally or metaphorically? Who knows? The distinction isn’t relevant except for fiddly questions of what genres this manga technically belongs to.
I have gone this whole writeup without mentioning that mangaka Igarashi Jun is….honestly a very rare talent in terms of presentation. Aside from being an absolute master of chiaroscuro—simple but striking contrasts of solid lights and darks recur throughout the manga. You would think this would be very common in a medium that’s solidly black and white, but it really isn’t.—they also employ, admittedly sparsely, a number of paneling techniques I just really don’t see in manga very often. They’re also an expert at conveying mood through visual metaphor; before meeting Haruyo, Kasumi imagines her as a thorned rose bush in the shape of a woman. When the two sink their most firmly into their roles, the scene is wintry and amberlike; beautiful but remote. I think one could recommend this manga alone on the strength of the fact that it’s clearly written by a master of their form, but the subtle and resonant details of the storytelling shouldn’t go unappreciated either.
That’ll be all for today’s column. Have a pleasant week, friends.
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 Weekly Orbit is a (sometimes) weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume at least some familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!
Hi folks, bit of a light week here, and also one with not very many pictures. Hopefully that’s fine, I’ve been going through it a little bit.
Anime – Seasonal
Call of The Night – Season 2, Episode 8
Call of The Night does not go full horror anime very often, but when it does….brr.
So, yeah, Kyouko Mejiro is Anko. We could probably have seen this coming, but this episode confirms it in a tragic, delirious fever dream of blood and violence. I honestly have very little to say here, other than to remark that this episode absolutely excelled at imparting just how tragic Kyouko and Nazuna’s falling out was. I also suspect that there’s more to Kyouko’s father suddenly becoming a blood-starved vampire than we were shown here. After all, how exactly he was turned is a bit up in the air.
Dandadan – Season 2, Episode 8
I don’t think I remember the fight featured throughout the bulk of episode eight here being as memorable as this in the manga.
Which is strange, because when considered on its own terms, it’s pretty unique even for Dandadan. What we have here is a strength-building throwdown against a cadre of ghosts, taking the form of classical musicians. Primarily, this fight serves to do two things; give Aira something to do in this storyline, since she’s been absent for much of season two so far, and, more importantly, build and her and Okarun’s sense of “rhythm” to make them better fighters.
The show accomplishes this in a delightfully literal way with the ghost musicians, and I have to say that the chalk-white look really works well for the surreality of this episode. At about the halfway mark, the ghost of Beethoven summons a quartet of singing giants, who break into “Ode to Joy”, one of the ancestral bangers of western music, and it was around then that I realized I was watching another casual triumph in an anime absolutely stuffed with them.
If you want pure hype, though, next week is looking to top even this, as Okarun finishes this episode by promising to use his newfound strength to throw down with Evil Eye. Predictably—though not in an unwelcome way—we end things on a cliffhanger.
Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 8
If we want to say that Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show has a main flaw, and I think we probably do, I would say it’s that it has a poor command of its own strengths.
What the show is good at: putting its characters into wacky (and life-threatening) situations, basic and broad character writing, effectively tying the death games’ stakes to the lives of its characters.
What Necronomico is not good at: social commentary, more complex character writing, anything with immediate (that is to say, visible to us) stakes outside the lives of its own characters.
This is a problem, because episode eight is mostly about the latter group of things. We zoom out here, taking a broad view of the world as seen in Necronomico. Our main heroines go on a TV show and the series attempts to recontextualize its own past writing, shaming its audience by having a sleazeball TV exec character refer to Kanna as a marketable tragic heroine. The problem there is that “marketable tragic heroine” is pretty much exactly what Kanna is. Her more complex traits—relatively speaking—mostly consist of being a bit rude sometimes. She’s not a perfect angel, but that’s hardly an actual character flaw. Puzzlingly, Necronomico seems to think it is.
Similarly, the attempt to drag and drop Eita into the role of a cult leader is just baffling. I’m not going to say it’s unrealistic—the rise of Elon Musk has proven that people will bleed and die even for the dorkiest and least charismatic leaders possible as long as they give them suitable permission to enact violence—but it’s not necessarily super compelling. He remains a dead spot in the series’ cast.
And there’s not really a lot that happens in this episode other than these two things? Sure, getting a proper introduction to our Vatican witch hunter type character, Joe, is nice, but beyond that it’s all setup. Thankfully, the final game seems suitably deranged, as our cast have been dropped in a freezing wasteland—Kadath, in fact—and have to somehow take down the four main Old God antagonists on their own. So I am hoping this episode is more of a speedbump than a sign that the show’s final third is going to suck. At bare minimum, I hope we at least get to see Cthulu show off at some point during this game, as she was mostly absent from this episode.
Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 8
We continue the theme of artificial minerals in this week’s Ruri Rocks. To be honest, most of this episode didn’t capture my imagination terribly much despite being perfectly fine, but I liked the scenes in the factory at the end. Ruri’s concern over whether she’s “allowed” to like Zincite reminds me, funnily enough, of some similar thoughts I’ve had about, say, Detroit agate.
There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. – Episode 7
I’m not entirely sure what to think of this plot development, but the scene with Mai and Satsuki fighting over Renako is pretty great. I have to give a special nod to the, I’m not even sure what to call it, evil Super Nintendo music? It plays when Satsuki shows Mai the photo of her and Renako kissing. A great scene in an episode I thought was merely pretty good, which when the last several have been great is a slight step down.
Anime – Non-Seasonal
Dominion Tank Police (OVA)
Well, this was just a bit puzzling. An interesting thing about these old OVAs is that they’re often baffling in ways that, on the surface, seem completely different from how a contemporary anime would be baffling, but taken in a broader view you end up with a lot of the same root causes.
For Dominion Tank Police, that’s basic incoherence. I can only guess here, but I think the two story arcs adapted for this four part OVA must be from quite far apart in the original manga, since that’s the only way I can think to account for this thing’s bizarre tone. We start with an extremely politically-charged argument between a mayor and a police chief about the role of police in society, wherein the chief advocates using nukes on criminals(!!), and from there it seems like the series is attempting to sort of hamfistedly parody buddy cop narratives. But this reading doesn’t really survive contact with episode two, which seems to take the cops’ side.
We ditch all this entirely for the second part of the series, consisting of episodes three and four, which exchange the over-the-top comedy action of the first half for something slower and more philosophical. I wouldn’t say the change in tone works to the show’s favor exactly, but it makes a kind of half-sense in the moment, even if it does leave almost the entire cast feeling like they’ve been replaced with different characters halfway through. I particularly like the weird explorations into conceptual sci fi toward the end; artificial humans, a winged environmental fairy named Greenpeace, blunt and unsubtle musings on the nature of man. Will any of this be elaborated upon to feel “satisfying” in the conventional sense? No, and given the, to put it lightly, troubling political sympathies of the series, I can’t cleanly recommend Dominion Tank Police. But I admit it’s entertaining on a moment to moment basis in a stoner-flick kind of way, and I appreciate that about it. Again, not something I’d show to just anyone, but it has its charms. Charms helped along, admittedly, by the across-the-board strong visual presentation. A sakuga-head watching this would find enough to enthuse over to keep their attention, and even if that’s not your specific focus, the show is sharply directed throughout and has a great use of strong color; lots of dark navy blues and purples, burnt oranges, and fluorescent blues and reds. (Like a police siren, you see.)
Even aside from everything else I’ve outlined here, the catgirl criminals are an excellent pair of characters (and so fashionable!) and the show’s music is unimpeachable.
Manga
Big Love From Ultra Deep Space – Chapters 1-5
This….is okay!
Only five chapters in, it’s hard to make many claims about Big Love From Ultra Deep Space. The manga is about an alien princesses being betrothed to an ordinary (if gloomy) high school girl. So far, my main takeaways are that the character designs are all lovely, and tonally it’s pretty cute, with a lot of nice domestic scenes between our leads as the princess settles into her life on Earth.
It does however try to tackle some more serious subject matter, too, with the pair’s classmates initially harboring some suspicion of the princess, the lead girl having a troubled past, and so on. Unfortunately the handling of these aspects has so far been a bit contrived. There’s definitely still time for the manga to improve in this regard, and the fifth and most recent chapter is definitely a bit better than the previous four, so it may be a case of the mangaka—Ashidaka Woz, no relation to Scott The, presumably—finding their narrative legs.
If the manga has a central theme, it’s this:
There’s something really beautiful in the sentiment expressed here, the idea that just inherently, we often need others to see the best parts of ourselves. That people mean different things to different other people. I think if it pursues this core theme, Deep Space could really put together something special.
As is, it’s mostly cute and not a lot else, but we’ll see how it develops as time goes on. If nothing else, the art is beautiful, so it’s not hard to recommend off the back of that alone.
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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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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 Weekly Orbit is a (sometimes) weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume at least some familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!
Hello, folks! I don’t have much of a message here, this week, other than to note that I’m happy to be caught up on my seasonals. (With the exception of a few things I’m watching with other people, more on one of those below.) If I’m to direct you to any of the subheadings below in particular, I really do recommend reading about Turkey! which went supernova this week in what I’m hoping is a permanent level up from “good” to “great.”
Other than that, I’m relishing in the feeling of caught-up-ness for the couple hours until another episode of Watanare airs and plunges me right back into the mines. But hey, that’s just how it goes.
Anime – Seasonal
Bad Girl – Episodes 1-5
I’ve been watching this show over the past week or so with my girlfriend. I like it! The central premise of a goody two-shoes trying to pretend to be a delinquent to get her class rep’s attention is a little staid, but the execution is solid. It’s very cute, just funny enough to keep things moving, and it’s snappily paced. The production could use a shot in the arm, but that’s a reality of almost any seasonal anime in this day and age outside the absolute A-Tier, so it is what it is.
Episode five is probably my favorite yet, as new character Sumiki Kiyoraka [Lynn] feels slightly out-of-step with the world of the show in a delightful way. With her loose snake motif and ara-ara-ing, she really seems like she’d rather be in a toxic yuri series of some kind, the sort that’s boiling over with sex and intrigue, as opposed to a sometimes somewhat horny schoolgirl comedy where most of the other characters are dumb as a box of rocks. Still, she gets farther along in her little plot to seduce protagonist Yutani Yuu [Tachibana Azusa] than I’d have expected, and I’m excited to see how she integrates into the rest of the cast going forward.
Call of the Night – Season 2, Episode 7
I don’t know what direction I expected Call of the Night to take after its last arc, but it certainly wasn’t this.
The bulk of this episode concerns Nazuna’s relative youth at a night school, and is a flashback to that time, where she met and interacted with—and maybe fell for, the idea is at least floated—an upperclassman named Mejiro Kyoko. Kyoko is a reserved and bookish sort, but she comes from a home presently undergoing some difficulties. Since those difficulties include her father possibly having an affair, she doesn’t really like guys very much. She does like Nazuna, though, whose puzzling combination of cynicism and wide-eyed naivete at the world she finds charming.
The episode essentially ends just as it’s raising its most heightened questions. We learn that a vampire killed Kyoko’s parents, with the very real possibility being that “the vampire” was Nazuna, somehow and for some reason. Likewise, Kyoko’s hair color, love of detective novels, and clear motive practically scream that there is some connection between her and Uguisu Anko, the murderous vampire hunter / “detective” who’s been a looming presence throughout this entire season. Either or both of these connections could be red herrings, but the episode’s end point—with Kyoko and Nazuna caught by an unexpected guest as they’re snooping around, trying to find evidence of Kyoko’s father’s affair. The series is clearly setting up something of a miniature mystery here, and I’m definitely going to be turning it over in my head over the next few days while we wait for resolution.
Dandadan – Season 2, Episodes 4-6
With this, I am officially caught up with the Dandadan anime!
This in mind, despite liking basically all of these episodes, I have remarkably little to say. This week’s episode, the seventh of season two, is a much quieter and moodier episode than usual from the series, and I did appreciate that; lots of piano pieces in the soundtrack and nightscapes on the drawing board here. I also like that for the fight against the musician ghosts next episode we’re teaming up Okarun and Aira, a somewhat unorthodox pairing for the show. It looks to be fun!
On another visual note, I must also say that I really enjoy the return of the show’s trademark electric greens and purples, they really tie the anime together and I was kind of missing them during the Serpent Lord Arc (or whatever we’re calling it). Even so, the frozen-out grayscale-with-some-color episode seven cut to as it closed here was also great, so I’m excited for next week, regardless of what direction we’re getting.
Gachiakuta – Episode 6
A theme Gachiakuta frequently returns to is worth. The worth of objects, of people. Self-worth, the value we place in each others’ lives, the value of the roles we give to ourselves, and so on. The show has, thus far, batted this around but not really engaged with it directly all that much. Here, it does so via a major plot development for the first time.
Zanka’s assailant from last week is formally introduced to us here as Jabber Wong [Shin Yuuki]—what a name—and we learn that his vital instrument is a set of Edwardy scissor hands. Cool stuff, moreso when they’re revealed to be laced with a neurotoxin that incapacitates his victims. I’m not huge on his design beyond the knife hands themselves—anime, and honestly media in general, could probably stand to do the “big dreadlocks = scary crazy guy” thing less often—but the core concept more or less works. He makes a villainous little speech about how much he values (there’s our watch word) strength, and how much he doesn’t value people like Gris, the non-powered support Cleaner we’ve been following for a couple episodes now. This serves to establish Jabber as the kind of sadomasochistic combat freak so common in these sorts of stories. Then, to establish him as a genuine threat, he makes a lunge for Gris, who he seemingly kills.
Gris’ death initially lacks much impact. (And he might not actually be dead at all, when we last see him in this episode he’s still bleeding out. You know how shonen anime can be with that kind of thing.) Sure, we got to know him a little bit recently, but he’s ultimately a minor character of a sort that is essentially written to be disposable. But, after the OP ends we cut to a slow-motion look at the scene that blends it with the traumatic memory of the death of Rudo’s mentor. The series briefly adopts a wonderfully stark, pure ink sketch-on-paper black and white look for this, and it’s probably the best creative decision Gachiakuta has yet made.
This is then followed by a flashback where we learn that Rudo’s affinity for discarded objects comes from identifying himself with them; his violent instincts restrained, he feels worthless, and there’s a pretty gnarly scene of self-harm here as the flashback opens, with Rudo bashing his head into a cobblework wall.
The fight scene that follows all of this is not quite as good a payoff as you might hope, but it’s still solid. Gachiakuta is mangaka Urana Kei‘s first serial. So to me, this sequence, where Rudo transforms Gris’ protective talisman into a floating, golem-like ward that protects him from hostile intent, reads as someone figuring out the general paces and expected beats of their genre in real time. As, too, does Jabber’s eventual solution to this; to poison himself with his own neurotoxin, not enough to die, but enough to put him at the threshold of consciousness so he can thrash around mindlessly. These kind of battles, that are much wars of magic-like semantics as they are actual fights, can be very entertaining when done well. Gachiakuta‘s display of the form here won’t rank as an all-time great, but for a relative beginner, it’s good.
We end on Jabber making that play, so any resolution of this fight is going to have to wait until next week. Still, despite my qualms, if Gachiakuta can keep up this level of entertaining visual storytelling, it’ll be a worthwhile watch overall.
My Dress-Up Darling – Episode 7
Lots of thoughts with Dress-Up Darling this week. Not all of them positive, but I like this show, and I think people (including me, in the past) are often unfair to it, so I’m going to start with what I like here.
The last third or so of episode seven sees Marin and Gojo on a very cute park date where Marin surprises her still-not-technically-bf by revealing that she’s bought a fancy camera. For several minutes, the show is done entirely from Gojo’s perspective as he clicks the shutter. He’s in love with the new camera, sure, but he’s mostly in love with Marin, and it’s a sweet reminder of the genuine, gentle love the two clearly have for each other. It’s a culmination of what we’ve seen so far, and an indication of where we’re heading next. All told, it is absolutely lovely.
That being said, I really did not like the rest of this episode, so it’s good that the part I just discussed was at the end.
This is a weight loss episode. I know. Sigh with me. I don’t like them either.
I am marginally less down on this particular instance than I would be in many similar shows for two reasons. One; Marin is a model, so very specific weight goals do actually, genuinely matter for her, as opposed to just being an insecurity. Even if that doesn’t neatly box away the “are we really doing this?” vibe across this plot, it at least provides a coherent reason for it being here in the first place as opposed to coming out of nowhere. (And we’ve seen her eating with Gojo and his grandfather a lot recently, so again, there’s an actual logical through-line here at least.) Two; this is a series with a lot of empathy for its characters. Usually that means Gojo, but it does mean Marin, too, and the show has been pretty careful with, for everything that could potentially be criticized about it—the horny framing, etc.—making sure that you the viewer understand that cosplay really does mean a lot to her. (In fact, as much as her modeling job giving her grief is a cause for concern, it’s Gojo’s cosplay outfits getting tight on her that really gets to her.) Where I’m going with that is that I think the show is trying to do a bit of an inspirational message, or perhaps mining this material for relatability, as opposed to just ridiculing Marin.
That said, it’s still pretty unpleasant. I’ll admit some amount of my yuck reaction to this particular stock plot is insecurity about my own weight (I am a fairly hefty trans woman. It comes with the territory), so maybe I’m not being totally fair. Still, this did feel like one of the show’s relatively meaner episodes. Compared to a lot of stuff in this vein, the jokes at Marin’s expense are relatively light. (This is not Sailor Moon’s weight loss episode, for example.) But still, things like illustrating her recent eating patterns with “chomp chomp” sound effects just come off bad no matter how lightly you intend them. I’m sure at least some part of this is lived experience, but if I, twice Marin’s age, felt a little hit, can you imagine someone watching this and getting hit with these vibes if they’re actually sixteen?
I feel the need to temper my criticism, because this plot doesn’t actually get resolved by episode’s end. So it’s possible I’ll feel differently about it next week depending on where this goes, even setting aside the fact that I’m aware I’m sensitive to this kind of stuff. Still, for a show that’s normally so sweet, even slight sourness can seem very bitter. I’m hoping that either the series is going somewhere meaningful with this or, failing that, that we just tie this up quickly and get back to the actually fun parts of this anime.
Necronomico & The Cosmic Horror Show – Episode 7
I think I’m finally deep enough into my anime fandom that I have started getting just a little annoyed at Akira bike slide homages.
After 4 1/2 episodes of Eita doing his I Am An Alpha Gamer shtick, it was immensely gratifying in this week’s episode of Necronomico to see him a) be run over with a motorcycle and b) have his eye(s?) gouged out. That’s the kind of karma you love to see. (I’m sure they’re going to try to make us feel bad for him later. I will not be falling for it.)
That particular development aside, episode seven was a good but also relatively standard one for Necronomico. The tower defense game setup was pretty fun, I enjoyed the various little twists and turns like Gua getting shot with a high-powered sniper rifle and Kanna being secretly from Kyoto. The latter dovetails nicely into the episode’s last and meanest twist, that the damage done to VR Kyoto also carries over to real Kyoto. I admit it’s not hard to see coming, but it’s cruelly effective nonetheless.
Ruri Rocks / Introduction to Mineralogy – Episode 7
Like Gachiakuta, Ruri Rocks is another anime that centers value as a theme. (This is about the only thing they have in common, but it is a similarity nonetheless.) In previous episodes, this has consisted of Ruri learning to find value in minerals beyond the strictly monetary or aesthetic, and she’s come to appreciate everything from pyrite to fluorite in the process. This week, the show introduces a new character and, in doing so, also shifts to focusing on a different sort of rock. As opposed to being about earth minerals, this week’s episode is about a man-made phenomenon; sea glass.
The new character in question, Seto Shouko [Hayashi Saki, in what seems to be her debut role], is introduced with a broadly Tomori-esque flashback sequence where, as a child, she wants to play with some pretty rocks she’s collected at preschool, but she’s pulled away from them by her teacher. Her parents don’t approve either, and she overhears them talking about how they hope she doesn’t become a mineralogist something like that for a career, given that there’s “no money” in it.
Only the most normal of parental conversations here.
This is all a tad silly—it certainly doesn’t reach the world-through-her-eyes pathos of the aforementioned Bang Dream episode—but as a tone setter and a quick backstory, it works just fine. Shouko is introduced, in the story’s present, as a classmate of Ruri’s but not anyone she’s ever really engaged with. When Shouko happens to spot her holding a piece of sea glass at the beach, she remarks on it. Ruri rather stubbornly insists it’s agate. And later, she takes it to Nagi and learns, nope, it really just is sea glass. Nonetheless, this prompts Imari to propose looking for further specimens of sea glass, and this becomes the trio’s latest adventure. As you might expect, Ruri Rocks applies the same level of care and detail to sea glass as it does to natural minerals, and the episode has all of the usual charm one would expect from the series, especially when Shouko eventually joins our usual crew.
Throughout, an implicit comparison is made between sea glass and Shouko. Shouko doesn’t seem to think of her rock-collecting hobby (which she’s kept up in the present day) as meaning very much, but when she meets Imari, she learns that it can be both a passion and a career, thus highlighting that in both of these cases, the personal worth of the subject is what gives it meaning. In more literal terms, Shouko’s delight that she is not just allowed, but encouraged to value minerals and her collection of them, to the point of considering it as a career, is also a classic “passion ignited” sequence—wherein a character, often but not always the protagonist, is awakened to the joy and wonder inherent in whatever field a given hobby anime happens to be about—and it can stand with the best of them.
The ending of the episode, coming after some truly gorgeous character animation during a scene where our heroines rake the beach looking for more glass, makes this comparison more explicit. Both Shouko and Ruri, Nagi points out, have names explicitly connected to glass; Shouko’s contains the kanji for the word, whereas “ruri” is an old term for blue glass. It’s another small, jewel-like detail in a series full of them.
There’s No Freaking Way I’ll Be Your Lover! Unless…. – Episodes 5 & 6
If I could compare the experience of watching Watanare to anything, it would be a tennis match.
Renako, our main character, keeps getting batted back and forth between the mind games of the various scheming girls in her friend group. She is a ball flying through the air between them. All of these girls also seem to have their own emotional baggage between each other that Renako is not necessarily privy to, which is an important complicating factor.
Thus, this storyline, which follows up Renako having dated Mai in a strange, convoluted way, with her doing the same to Satsuki, the conniving, underhanded one of the group, who wants Renako on her arm to hurt Mai’s feelings. Satsuki acquits herself amazingly across these two episodes and she genuinely comes off like a real bitch at certain points. (I mean that in a loving way, something like this isn’t entertaining unless the characters can be believably nasty at least some of the time.)
As you might suspect, Satsuki begins dating Renako by strong-arming her and playing on her guilt. But what beigns as an obligation (one Mai claims to be fine with, in fact, even as she’s obviously not) turns particularly spicy in episode six where Renako happens to catch Satsuki working at a donut shop late at night. This ends with Satsuki taking Renako home (where the pair briefly meet Satsuki’s notably young single mother) and, of course, shenanigans ensue.
Aside from Satsuki herself being great, Renako and her gallery of Bocchian wild takes are absolutely essential here. In providing a sugary comedic overtone, they serve to make the actual emotional development more subtle. Satsuki consequently gets much closer to Renako than she even intended to. The house visit becomes a sleepover, and by the time of the cold, dreamy sensuality of a shared bath and Renako unintentionally stealing Satsuki’s first kiss, the goalposts have already moved pretty damn far. The show’s real strength is in the moments where the comedic mask drops away; Satsuki unintentionally hurting Renako’s feelings by telling her that her attempts to come off as an extrovert are only half working, Renako’s simple and clear explanation of why she wanted to be an “extrovert” in the first place, the aforementioned bath scene and swiped first kiss, Satsuki’s clear and genuine affection for her airheaded but kindly and diligent mother, and so on. That it’s maybe the first anime in a decade to actually get a laugh out of me with a “protagonist falls on a girl and accidentally feels up her boobs” joke is more a nice bonus than the main reason this thing is so good.
Turkey! Time to Strike – Episodes 5 & 6
At the start of the season, Turkey surprised me—and many—with its genre switch. Here, at its halfway point, it surprises again, this time with one of the year’s single best episodes.
A common concern of the time travel narrative is that of the dissonant value systems of those in the past compared to those who live today. This episode deals with this dichotomy, in its many forms, from its beginning to its end, starting with relatively simple examples—Sumomo being betrothed to someone she’s never met, for instance—and slowly snowballing up until the episode’s final, harsh climax. The relevant early example is that Sayuri has her period here, and initially panics because she’s not really sure what to do about that in a time before pads were invented. Suguri is there to help, thankfully, and is revealed to be a woman—ordered by her father to play a man’s role as a protector and warrior of the estate—in the process.
Were that all this episode did, we’d already be approaching rare territory for an anime (think of how many anime bring that particular subject up at all. It’s not zero, but it’s not exactly a thriving club). But episode six’s masterstroke is instead in drawing a connection between that blood and blood of a very different kind. After Suguri and Sayuri’s initial connection and bonding over their shared womanhood, a group of bandits threatens the estate, forcing Suguri and her men to take defensive action. This, of course, entails killing them.
Perhaps understandably for someone growing up in the relatively privileged position of being a high school girl in modern Japan, this sort of breaks Sayuri’s brain. She lashes out at Suguri, simply not understanding how such a kind and caring person can be so willing to take a human life. (And, for perhaps the first time, she processes the death of the bandits in the second episode as something other than horror-movie shock.)
She initially finds Sugiri’s counterargument, that protecting someone necessarily entails that you may have to harm or even kill someone else, unconvincing, and runs away in tears. It is thus left to not a single character but the show itself to explain how these traits coexist in a person.
Turkey‘s answer to this dichotomy is that because the bloody period the girls are trapped in will one day become the gentle times they grew up in, any one person—Suguri, Sayuri, anybody—is exempt from blame. It articulates this, quite deftly I would argue, with its final scene. One of the bandits who survived Sugiri’s forces’ initial attack threatens her again, and in order to save Sugiri, Sayuri heaves a massive rock at the bandit, allowing Sugiri to finish him off. (The sound work deserves a check in particular, here, the bandit’s death gurgle is absolutely grisly.) The fight scene is equal parts stylish and over the top and positively ghoulish, a reminder that the relatively pampered lives we now live are the exception, rather than the norm, of human history. (And, it must of course be said, it’s not like those are a universal human experience in of themselves.) By putting blood on Sayuri’s hands, symbolized by it dripping down and staining the petals of a pure white flower, Turkey has involved her directly in the period’s violence. In doing so, it asks, even if our girls ever do return home, will they ever be the same? But the stained flower is the show’s answer; unchanged, no, but the same at their core, yes.
It is a thesis Turkey will need to spend the remainder of its runtime proving or, perhaps, disproving, but this episode proves it can pull off this kind of subject matter. So I await what is to come with anticipation and bated breath. Godspeed, girls.
And that’s it for this week! As always, I ask that if you enjoyed the column, please consider a donation, as this site is my only consistent source of income. Beyond that, I hope your week is lovely. Hang in there, friends! 🙂
This week’s Bonus Screencap comes from Dandadan. I mentioned really loving the show’s use of greens and purples in the writeup, but didn’t get to fit any screenshots showcasing that into the writeup itself. So here’s one now!
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 Anilist, BlueSky, or Tumblrand supporting me on Ko-Fi. 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 is manually typed and edited, and no machine learning or other automatic tools are used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. However, some articles may have additional tags placed by WordPress. 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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