Tag: Reviews

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: Under Cover of Darkness, Enters NINJA KAMUI

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.

There are a handful of interesting cultural currents running through Ninja Kamui. The most obvious has to do with its status as a Toonami co-fund—this is why it premiered so late in the season—and a likely-deliberate invocation of nostalgia for a bygone era of [adult swim]’s action programming. This might be the shallowest of these currents, however; despite the fact that it really would fit right in with [as]’ late-night action programming in the pre-Toonami revival days, and despite the fact that Main Toonami Guy Jason DeMarco has his name on it, I think Ninja Kamui would exist in some form regardless of Toonami’s involvement, and that’s because of the two other currents running through the anime.

The first is the recent spurt in ninja anime again. Not enough to be called a revival, but perhaps the tip of a trend is starting to show up. Over the past couple years we’ve had the straightforward, shonen-y Shinobi no Ittoki and the, apparently, deeply strange Under Ninja (I haven’t seen it), and now, with Ninja Kamui, we have an invocation of the grittier, bloodier ninja anime of the past. I’m probably not the first person to compare this series to ’93 sleaze classic Ninja Scroll, even if it’s only a distant resemblance. This, too, is only a loose thread, probably more indicative of something in the air than anything else. Again, I think Ninja Kamui would exist with or without those other anime. It would very much not exist, however, without Sunghoo Park, the series’ director and main creative brain.

You don’t come to this blog for in-depth production talk, most likely, (and if you do, you’re in the wrong place. I’m not the Sakugablog guy), but Park is a name that’s been well-known and in the air for a few years now. He is probably best-known as the guy who made a good chunk of the first season of Jujutsu Kaisen look as engaging and kinetic as it did. He’s since left MAPPA (I would also leave MAPPA if I were made to direct God of High School, so I get it), and founded his own studio, E&H Productions. Ninja Kamui is not the first thing E&H have done, but it is the first TV series, and thus, in a sense, their big coming-out party. Ninja Kamui isn’t based on anything, so it’s clear that this series’ story is one that somebody at E&H has had in their back pocket for a minute (I imagine Park himself, though I can’t prove that). So with that creative freedom, what did they deliver?

Well, a pretty good action series, so far.

Ninja Kamui‘s premise is very simple; an ex-ninja, our protagonist Higan [Kenjirou Tsuda] has fled to the United States to live with his wife and kid, using Cyber Ninja DisguisesTM to hide their true identities and live in relative peace. Things are great, until one day, Higan’s past catches up to him, and his wife and son are killed as part of his enemies’ ploy to ruin his life. All told, this is a pretty straightforward revenge tale of a kind that dots the whole history of the medium. While there’s something to be said for the baked-in sexism of having your handsome gruff guy protagonist survive while his family are murdered in cold blood, for the most part this is an effective setup. I don’t love Higan, but I like him, and any excuse to hear Kenjirou Tsuda do his thing for 20 minutes is a welcome one, the guy’s a fantastic voice actor.

The supporting cast is solid as well. The case of Higan’s family being murdered is taken up by the local PD, who are of course very much unequipped to handle secret ninja revenge killings. The one cop we spend any amount of time with is Mike Morris [Atsushi Ono], who, despite the obvious caveat that, you know, ACAB, I actually do kind of like as a character. He’s essentially a pretty basic genre stereotype who voices pretty frequent disbelief with the hyper-violent absurdity around him, and of course he’s the token One Good Cop (along with his assistant) in the force, the rest of which is all too willing to ignore a case they have no hope of solving and are ordered to do so by their mysterious higher-ups. He’s hardly revelatory or anything, but he’s fun.

The second episode sets up a further wrinkle in the plot, implying that the CEO of a virtual reality company is somehow tied to both the deaths of Higan’s family and goings-on in the ninja world more generally. This is a nice little twist that helps the show feel a little more distinct, and it’s not like there’s ever been a better time to make a douchebag tech guy your villain; the world is not exactly overflowing with love for Elon Musk and the like right now.

As for style, the series has what you’d expect from Park; lots of absolutely crazy action, with everything else being a little bit secondary. There are a lot of great “what, he can just do that?” moments, like Higan exhaling some kind of magic smoke that makes him grow extra arms (?!) in the second episode so he can more effectively fight off an assailant. Said assailant is disguised as an off-brand UberEats driver, because Ninja Kamui is also a little bit funny with it. The series is also not afraid to invoke truly ridiculous levels of violence and gore, which again makes it feel very much of a piece with [adult swim]’s late ’00s anime offerings. There is a very memorable bit in episode two where Higan, still recovering from the same attack that killed his family, takes out his anger and frustration by leaving one of the offending enemy ninjas tied, hanging upside-down, from the ceiling of a warehouse. Each day he spends recovering, he stabs the guy with a different knife, which he leaves inside of him after he’s done. Then, on the fifth day, when he’s fully recovered, he just lights the guy on fire! It would be downright Jack Bauer-y if he was doing this as an interrogation thing, but he’s not! It’s strictly a revenge play.

Which gets at the one problem I do have with Ninja Kamui which is that even with everything I just said in mind, it just feels a little….basic? So for all the praise I’ve given it here, I wouldn’t say I’m necessarily super invested. I think it’s being beaten out even in the fairly narrow category of “anime I’m not crazy into but which I enjoy watching for their fight scenes” by Bucchigiri?! Still, if you like by-the-book revenge thrillers, you could probably do a lot worse than this.

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 Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to 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.

Posted on in anime

Seasonal First Impressions: WONDERFUL PRECURE is Doggone Great

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.

“Now I do not know whether I was then a man dreaming I was a butterfly, or whether I am now a butterfly, dreaming I am a man.“

-Zhuangzhi

After last year’s season proved that adults, magic babies, and even boys can be Precures, Wonderful Precure continues the trend by introducing the first Cure who is buppy. An absolute good girl. A magical woofer. What I’m telling you is that the lead character of this season is a literal dog. Truly, we are breaking new ground here.

It’s a little meaningless to ask ourselves if this is a “gimmick” or not. Precure seasons tend to make pretty heavy use of loose visual themes, so in some sense they’re all gimmicks, other than perhaps the original Futari wa team. (And even they had the whole black/white duality. Plus the hand-holding thing.) It’s more important to acknowledge that, for however silly this premise may seem on its surface, Wonderful Precure‘s first episode is exactly that. It’s a significantly more low-key affair than last year’s opening blast of explosive punch, but it trades that in for a surprising amount of character depth given the relatively short amount of time we get to know the characters in question.

It goes something like this; Iroha [Atsumi Tanezaki] and her cute little dog Komugi [Maria Naganawa] live in the happy burg of Animal Town, a place known for how much its residence love their pets. We open, as so many magical girl anime do, on a typical day. Iroha is late for school, and Komugi wants to play but sadly, her human can’t stay. Anyone who’s ever owned a pet knows this whole song and dance, and it makes for a cute and relatable opening few minutes of the show.

Pictured: The main character of the show, and a human.

Komugi herself, despite still very much being nothing but an ordinary dog at this point, is given a fair bit of internality here as well. While Iroha is away at school, Komugi dreams a sad little dog nightmare about how she and Iroha will always live separate lives. That sadness is here represented by a washed-out shade of denim-y blue-grey, and a pair of shadow girls who look like they’re on leave from Revolutionary Girl Utena, representing Iroha’s human friends.

Iroha herself seems very kind and peppy, it’s clear she loves animals, as in when she hollers a greeting at the cat in a window of a local Pretty Holic shop just opening up in her neighborhood. That cat, Yuki [Satsumi Matsuda], is a haughty little furball in the classic cartoon mold, and seems to lightly scold her own owner Mayu [Reina Ueda] when the latter actually hides upon hearing Iroha’s cheerful how-do-ya-do at her cat. One gets the sense that she’s very shy and anxious, a likely hint toward the direction her own character development will take in later episodes.

Finally, there’s Satoru [Takuma Terashima] and his pet bunny Daifuku, who are introduced as the former studies a local landmark called the Mirror Rock. Satoru seems to be our supporting boy, at the moment, a character archetype many previous seasons of Precure have used to greater or lesser effect. He gets flustered when Iroha chats him up and it’s clear the two already know each other, so if you want to place your bets on who the token puppy-love interest is here, it’s probably him.

Daifuku does rather little in the few minutes they’re on screen, but still manages to convey an immense amount of personality just by Looking Like That.

This early part of the episode is very character-driven, and it does a great job of balancing all of these different introductions, giving us just enough of a look into these characters (both pet and human!) to tell us what they’re like, while firmly foregrounding Komugi and Iroha as the show’s actual leads. Frankly, it’s actually fairly light on any indication that this is even is a magical girl anime. Only a brief cut over to a mysterious, sinister-looking orb and a demonstration of its corrupting effects on a land of magical talking animals reminds us that this is a Precure series we’re watching, and the more typically mahou shoujo genre elements largely only emerge in the episode’s second half. It’s worth noting, though; the orb seals all of these animals in magical black eggs. These are, it would seem, our local plot devices this time around.

In the episode’s second half, Iroha, at a dog park with Komugi, has an encounter with a giant, rampaging sheep that seems to have been taken over by some sort of sinister force, which we shortly learn is termed “garugaru.” (The work of the aforementioned orb, no doubt.)

Iroha is able to distract the beast, helping a local boy out of danger, but she fails to account for the sheer speed of the thing, and the fact she’s now in danger herself. Komugi, initially trembling at the sight of this monster, rushes in to save her owner, despite being outmatched in comparison to this angry ram creature in just about every respect.

You can probably guess what happens next.

That “three, two, wan!” countdown is ungodly cute.

Yes, suddenly filled with magical energy, Komugi becomes a real, entire human girl, and then transforms into a Precure. Every Cure’s first henshin is an event, and Komugi’s is just as much of one as any long-time fan would expect. The new Cure Wonderful’s approach to fighting the monster is novel, as she doesn’t really attack it per se (perhaps owing to the fact that the baddies this time around are, you know, animals). Instead, she blocks its own attacks with a giant, paw-shaped shield and chases it around to wear it out.

Finally, when it’s exhausted and cornered, she realizes it’s in pain, and gives it a gentle hug, which is enough to purify it and turn it back into a regular sheep.

What this simple textual description leaves out is the sheer amount of personality the animation has here. Cure Wonderful is, on the inside at least, still a jumpy little puppy, and she’s drawn as such even as a human and even when in her magical girl form. It’s honestly just absolutely delightful, and if this is any indication of how the character will be written and drawn going forward, we’re in for a year of adorable, fuzzy charm.

But let’s give some credit to Iroha, too, who ends the episode in exactly the fashion you’d expect a baffled middle schooler to respond to their dog suddenly turning into a person. At first, she has no idea who this girl is and wonders where her cute little dog went. Then, as the facts of the situation slowly dawn on her, she is completely dumbfounded. Her expressions really must be seen to be believed, especially when she tries the whole “give me your paw” trick on the newly-human Komugi and the former dog still responds as expected.

All told, and to the surprise of few, Wonderful Precure marks another fantastic opening episode for a series that has gotten very, very good at doing those. It’s already February, but I think I can safely predict that we’re in for a wonderful year.

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 Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to 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.

Posted on in anime, Seasonal Impression Roundups

Seasonal First Impressions: The Puzzle of PON NO MICHI

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.

The seasonal anime churn is pretty accessible nowadays compared to where it was even 15 years ago. Most shows get officially brought over in some capacity and are available on some streaming site. Because of that, in the rare case where that’s not true, it’s worth seeking out the odd show with no official North American release just to see what it is that could be holding it back from an official pickup.

With Pon no Michi, there’s an obvious answer; the subject matter, a parody-heavy slice of life comedy about riichi mahjong, is very Japanese. But that said, this has never really stopped the importation of mahjong-themed anime and manga before, so it’s a bit of a mystery as to why this one specifically didn’t get picked up for the ol’ US of A, especially given that mahjong is probably having the closest thing to a Moment in recent years over here as it’ll ever have, given the recent popularity of games like Mahjong Soul. (You can try to watch it on BilliBilli’s English site, but doing so, at least in the US, gets you a “video unavailable due to the request of the copyright holder” notice. So who knows what’s going on there.)

It’s also a bit of a shame, because while Pon no Michi is probably not going to be anyone’s anime of the season, its premiere is a delightful and quirky little thing. This is the kind of low-stakes comedic fun that tends to get shows slapped with the “cute girls doing cute things” pseudo-genre label. I’ve never been fond of that term myself, but, if you wanted to apply it to Pon no Michi, it’d be hard to argue against. There are girls. They are cute. They do things (play mahjong poorly and also just generally dick around). The shoe fits. This is all also lightly inflected with Gay, as such anime tend to be. Not enough to earn it a yuri label, but enough that fans of yuri will probably have fun shipping this cast of wonderfully silly idiots. It’s a nice watch.

It’s also surprisingly odd. Elements like a magic, talking bird that claims to be a “mahjong spirit”, frequent style cuts that parody a plethora of other mahjong manga and anime, and a character who appears late in the episode to call our lead “ojou-sama” would seem incongruous in an even slightly more grounded show. But here, where the actual mahjong play is secondary to the gags, they fit just fine.

The actual plot is so barely-there that it only just counts as one. The gist is that Nashiko Jippensha [Kaori Maeda] is being too loud when hanging out at home with her friend, Pai Kawahigashi [Iori Saeki]. Nashiko’s mom kicks them out of the house and they’re forced to go be noisy elsewhere. Nashiko and Pai chill in a park for a while until Nashiko gets a convenient phone call from her conveniently off-screen father. He then tells her that he just so happens to have recently bought an old, unused mahjong parlor nearby. With her dad’s blessing, Nashiko and friends make their way there, call in a third friend—the sprightly redhead Izumi Tokutomi [Shion Wakayama]—and get to work straightening the place up so they can claim it as their own personal hangout spot.

While doing so, they stumble upon its mahjong-enabling accoutrements, including an electric shuffling table. In the process, Nashiko meets the aforementioned magic bird, who the girls name Chonbo [Akio Ootsuka], and the remainder of the episode is spent on silly nonsense.

The girls don’t actually know much about mahjong, is an important point. Nashiko knows by far the least, having apparently never even heard of it. As such, the girls’ first “mahjong game” quickly deteriorates into the lot of them being goofy, such as Nashiko declaring she’s using her “Red Dragon Beam” when slapping down a Red Dragon tile. This is also where most of the aforementioned parodies of other anime come into play (I’ll admit to most of them flying over my head, but even I know about Akagi, since it’s by the Kaiji mangaka.)

Did I mention that the rich-girl character who calls Nashiko “ojou-sama” in the episode’s closing minutes is named Riiche [Yui Kondou], after the mahjong term? Again, the show’s a bit silly.

All told, this seems like a solid pickup that one will unfortunately have to go a bit out of their way to experience. Still, for those among us who appreciate a nice slice of lighthearted comedy with a wildly catchy theme song, it might just be worth doing.

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 Tumblr and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the Directory to 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 similar technology is used in the creation of Magic Planet Anime articles, with the exception of a basic spellchecker. 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.