Tag: Sabikui Bisco

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [2/6/22]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I summarize my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.

I’ve been a bit sick over the past week. Not enough to impact my blogging, thankfully. I was originally going to have just three shows for you this week, but, what the heck, why don’t we start with a new face?

Seasonal Anime

Delicious Party♡Pretty Cure

If you write about a chosen medium, it’s generally good to know what your Geek Buttons are. A Geek Button is a thing–and it can really be anything, a series, a whole genre, a visual style, a specific actor, whatever–where the more “objective” part of your critical toolkit just fails to work, and you are reduced to a blubbering fangirl (or fanboy, or fanby, as the case may be). For me, magical girls in general, and especially Pretty Cure, are a Geek Button. I cannot pretend to be remotely reasonable about them. I love almost all of them like they’re my children and the few exceptions are girls who I just wish were in better shows. I will die on the hill that the magical girl warrior archetype is one of anime’s best and most important contributions to general popular culture.

So with that in mind, please say hello to the newest Pretty Cure series. And indeed, the newest Pretty Cure; Yui Nagomi, AKA Cure Precious (Hana Hishikawa in what is, astoundingly, her first named character role in an anime.)

She is adorable. Dare I say precious?

The first episode of a given Precure series has a lot of beats to hit; introducing the protagonist, introducing her mentor / helper characters, if any, establishing the broad strokes of the plot for the season, nailing down the basic thematic overtone it’s going for, and of course, introducing the bad guys and their particular version of the monsters of the week. It’s a lot of stops to have to hit in a 22-minute episode, but DePaPre swings it admirably. The general direction in this first episode is really just fantastic, and notably, it’s helmed by animation director Akira Inagami, who had a role as a character designer all the way back on the original Futari wa Pretty Cure. (A hearty shout out to my good friend Pike, curator of Dual Aurora Wave, for that information. I’d have never known!)

The whole thing is bouncy and joyous and just alive in a way that really defines the best kids’ anime. The episode is great looking from start to finish, though obviously the real Peak TV moment is Cure Precious’ first henshin sequence.

Also scattered throughout are the traditional “Precure Leap,” a fun nod to an episode of Futari wa, and some truly ludicrous attack names (a 500 Kilocalorie punch, huh?)

I’m also fond of Yui’s “mentor” character here, the lavender haired gnc king Rosemary. He’s delightfully camp in a way that doesn’t feel overbearing or like it’s making fun of anyone.

Her fairy is adorable too, of course.

And I must make a nod toward Gentle (or “Gentlu” as Crunchyroll’s official subs hilariously render her name), who both puts in a supremely cool showing as the anime’s starter villain and is also the smart pick for Character Most Likely To Undergo A Face Turn And Possibly Become a Precure Herself. It wouldn’t be the first time the series has done that. (My favorite example being from Fresh. Which, fun fact; was the first Precure series that Hana Hishikawa watched as a young child in nursery school, going off an interview she gave a few weeks ago.)

Gentle wouldn’t even be the first villain with this specific hair color to eventually become a Precure. Will history repeat itself? Time alone will tell.

The only “bad thing”, really, about DePaPre, is that it won’t appear in this column much. I’ll try to make exceptions for particularly great episodes but given that I watch it with friends on its premiere night, much like Tropical Rouge Precure before it, it can be difficult to find the time, given that these Reports go up on Sunday.

Still, I’ll absolutely be watching every single week. And if my opinion is worth anything to you, I think you should be too.

CUE!

I don’t really know what to think about CUE! Any time I feel like I should just write it off and stop following it entirely, it does this.

“This,” for reference, is another subtly great episode about the inside of the voice acting profession. It doesn’t start out that way; the first third or so of this episode is actually mostly about Haruna’s pet turtle, about whom she says increasingly ridiculous things. (To wit; it’s not a turtle because he has a name, she asks him for advice, and he looks like “an old man” and “a philosopher. It’s all pretty funny.)

But the episode gets serious at around its 1/3rd mark, honing in on the art of injecting emotion into even very short exchanges of words. Haruna’s role, remember, is just “additional voices.” So in her first scene in Bloom Ball, which the girls record here, she only swaps a single sentence with Maika’s character, who only replies with one of her own. And we hear those two sentences some four or five times over the episode’s duration.

I’ve said this before, but running the same scene back-to-back, for any reason, is challenging. You risk boring your audience, and when the scene in question is this short you risk it even more. But, somehow, CUE! pulls it off again.

The mechanics are very simple; the girls learn a little bit about how voice acting works. They record their lines, Haruna and Maika’s get held because the author (present at the recording) remembers that the bit character Haruna is playing comes up again way later in the story. Once again, this is supposed to sell Haruna as someone with an immense amount of untapped voice acting talent. It doesn’t work quite as well as the showstopper she drops in episode 2, but it’s still pretty good, and it proves that when CUE! is on, it’s on.

For something that should be super dry, it manages to stay quite interesting, employing its favorite trick, jumping in and out of the world of the show-within-a-show. Here, since all present are actually recording, things are further embellished by the show being mid-production. No full-color cuts here; it’s all monochrome and pre-correction. (Let’s take a moment to appreciate the nightmare that making a finished cut that looks convincingly unfinished must be.)

Flummoxing as it sometimes is, if CUE! keeps making episodes like this I will continue to watch them. Just, please, I’m begging you, either focus on the idol girls less or make them more interesting.

Princess Connect! Re:Dive

One of the reasons I declined to give Princess Connect! Re:Dive its own dedicated column is that I know my limits. A picture truly can be worth a thousand words, and a gif from a show like this can be worth a short novel. What am I supposed to say about this?

Okay, fine. If you wanted to, if you were some kind of joyless miser, you could be mad that this episode is all set up and no resolution. Frankly I think that’s an absurd criticism, and the idea that everything must be resolved within the space of a single episode just because this show started out as a “slice of life series” is so far removed from how I experience art that I have a difficult time even comprehending it. Nonetheless it is what some people think, and I’ll give those people their moment of acknowledgement here.

For the rest of us; holy shit.

Princess Connect season 2’s fourth episode is the sort of absurd instant-classic that demands rewinds, screencapping, and a visit to Sakugabooru. And it’s the fourth episode of a twelve-episode season. That’s nuts. That’s the kind of comically overconfident flex that usually presages some great disaster. But why would that be the case here? CygamesPictures aren’t working on anything else this year. It’s amazing what a well-equipped studio can do when actually giving its workers proper time to do so.

The actual plot here is cartwheeling fantasy screwiness that wouldn’t be out of place in one of the many, many books with dragons and swords on the cover that I read in middle school. That sounds like an insult, but this sort of high-stakes epic-in-the-old-sense-of-the-word plot is what’s missing from a lot of modern fantasy anime. It’s spectacle; even down to details like Karyl still playing both sides, the guild of animal girls we meet here, and the giant golem fight that caps the episode.

I feel legitimately bad for the other fantasy anime airing right now. It’s not like In The Land of Leadale or Reincarnated as a Fantasy Knockout don’t have their merits, but they aren’t this. The only competition Priconne really has in this regard is Demon Slayer, but while that show definitely looks great, it’s always had issues with making its flashy animation feel like it entirely fit with the rest of the world. Priconne never even sniffs that problem; the compositing is as excellent here as anything else. Even moments where characters are literally just standing around look incredible.

The only real issue is that Priconne’s plot is so mile-a-minute I could see it getting hard to keep up. (I’m already a bit lost myself. Having not played the game probably doesn’t help.) But even so; at least for me, that feeling actually adds to the exhilaration of watching this thing in motion. The Proper Noun Machine Gun has rarely been put to such good use.

Tokyo 24th Ward

Unfortunately we must end this section of the week’s writeup on something of a sour note.

If I had known I was going to be covering Tokyo 24th Ward this frequently, I’d have just made it another weekly column. Maybe that would’ve been a bad idea, though, given how the show’s shortcomings are generally more compelling to me than its strengths, which I increasingly think are actually rather modest.

Fundamentally, the problem is this; if your anime (or movie or book or album or whatever) invokes political themes, you are inviting all comers to scrutinize it from their own political point of view. Everyone on Earth has such a point of view, whether or not they’re cognizant of it. In of itself, that’s fine, but if your work’s political themes are, say, shallow and inadequate, it raises a problem. Are Tokyo 24th‘s shallow and inadequate? I don’t really know. The signals are, shall we say, mixed.

Getting a big head over this kind of thing is nothing new to mainstream TV anime. Turn of the decade classic Code Geass, for example, managed to be good largely by trading away any actual meaningful political commentary for sheer camp value. But that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to nail more specific and well-thought-out political messages. Akudama Drive did it only two years ago. (Full disclosure: I haven’t seen Akudama Drive myself, at least not yet, but I trust Inkie’s judgment on the series utterly.) It’s also possible–although both less rare and not as impactful–to make broader statements without rendering them entirely meaningless. Something as goofy as Rumble Garanndoll managed that much just last season.

The gist of the plot forming over Tokyo 24th‘s last two episodes has been this; the graffiti artist / hacker Kunai (Souma Saitou, who has been in many support roles like this) is going to blow up a cruise ship full of the ultra-wealthy.

Normally I’d here provide his motivations, and just from what little we’ve learned about him–his upbringing in the ridiculously named Shantytown ghetto in the poorest part of the Ward, his grandmother’s illness, the fact that Ran has eclipsed him artistically–one could come up with a good half dozen motivations for why this poor man might feel motivated to extreme action.

Kunai’s actual motives are different, and much more personal. He’s been tricked into selling an app he developed by the owner of an enormous corporate megalopoly, a fellow named Taki. Taki rewires the program to turn it into that mysterious “Drug D” we’ve been hearing so much about over the past couple of episodes. Kunai’s resentment, then, is borne not from his situation but from something very specific. He feels as though he’s been used. And he’s right about that! He has been used. Ran correctly points out, when the two meet at the episode’s climax, that Kunai is not the “criminal” he self-laceratingly claims to be. He’s a victim of circumstance. On one level, Tokyo 24th humanizing an actual terrorist to this degree is admirable. On another, it seems like an easy out to give Kunai a single grudge motive rather than anything more circumstantial and messy. Plus, there is what actually happens to Kunai.

At the episode’s end, Kouki–that’s Cop Boy, if you’ve forgotten–bypasses the advice of his friends and orders Kunai shot dead by a police sniper. Kunai bleeds out in Ran’s arms, begging his friend to continue to be the one thing he couldn’t: an artist.

It is difficult to know how to take this.

Is it a shocking display–and condemnation–of police brutality? Does the show think he’s in the right to have done that? (I don’t want to think so, but I’ve gone broke overestimating anime before.) Or is this another thing where Shuuta’s enlightened centrist fence-sitting is going to somehow turn out to be the solution? Tokyo 24th has given me very little reason to believe the former might be what it’s going for, but I suppose it’s not impossible. A number of details about Tokyo 24th‘s worldbuilding lead me to believe that won’t be the case (it’s insane that an anime that uses so much graffiti aesthetic has perhaps two Black characters and zero major ones), but I’ve been wrong before. Honestly in this specific situation I’d be happy to be. But for the record, I’m not alone here. Some critics have been far harsher than me. And I’m split between feeling like I’m giving the anime way too much slack and coming down on it way too hard.

It’s unfair, in a way. An anime that tries to be a Statement opens itself up to all kinds of nitpicking from audiences both domestic and abroad that other anime could easily dismiss out of hand. Should I not be giving it some points for even trying? Maybe, but “some points” might add up to a 3 or 4 out of 10 depending on how badly it fucks up the landing, and I’m not at all confident it won’t. Wanting to be a critique of the state of the world isn’t the same as actually being one. All of Tokyo 24th‘s effort will be meaningless if it cannot find some way to intelligently apply it.

We will see Tokyo 24th here again, maybe as soon as next week. For good or for ill I cannot yet say.

Elsewhere on MPA

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 4 – “Ride the Crab” – For an episode that features absolutely zero Pawoo, this was still quite a good 30 minutes of Sabikui Bisco. There must be a solid Milo / Bisco shipping community out there, right?

Let’s Watch MY DRESS-UP DARLING Episode 5 – “It’s Probably Because…” – I think people are starting to get sick of My Dress-Up Darling‘s over-the-top horniness. Last week I would’ve disagreed, but this past episode was….a lot. And not really in a good way.

That’s most of what I’ve got for you this week, anime fans. But before I go, a small recommendation! A new manga was picked up by Jump recently, and is available officially in English on the MangaPlus website. It’s called Magilumiere Co. Ltd., a magical girl-action-office comedy whatsit that poses the question; “what if being a magical girl was, you know, a full-on career? And what if an ordinary college grad seeking to enter the workforce suddenly found herself basically dropped into a small Magical Girl Company’s employ?” That’s kind of a long question, admittedly, but Magilumiere does have answers.

It’s to soon into the manga’s run for me to have any terribly detailed opinions on it, but I like it so far, and “magical girl + other stuff” is always a fun combination. Give it a read if you’re so inclined.

See you tomorrow for more Sabikui Bisco, 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 Twitter 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, 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, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 4 – “Ride the Crab”

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

Folks, I’m gonna level with you. It’s 10am local, and I, your illustrious blog-owner / writer, have not slept. This happens to me sometimes. I have insomnia. Pretty bad insomnia! I could just have slept in today and decided to cover Sabikui Bisco later tonight or possibly tomorrow. But let me ask you this; do people who work real jobs get to decide to just not go in for their morning shift because they’re tired? No, they do not. They probably should! But they don’t. So why should I get that luxury? I say fuck it. I’m here to deliver to you, loyal readers, however many paragraphs of grade-A Insightful Anime Criticism (TM, TM, TM), and by god, I am going to get it to you even if I have to shotgun six Red Bulls to get there.

So here’s where I’m at, alright? I have the episode queued up on my laptop (not CUE!’d up, I dropped coverage of that show). I have my breakfast; a delicious slice of Edwards’ Chocolate Creme pie ($2.50 for 2 pieces at the local dollar store) and what I will refer to only as a Caffeine Drink. As I type this, I have not yet started watching the episode. Why draw it out any further? I’m Jack Kerouackin’ it. You do not get the polished Jane The Anime Critic today, you get the rambly one. Let’s rock ‘n roll.

An observation right off the bat; I have not appreciated this OP enough. The song kicks ass. It makes me want to traverse the Rust-infested desert searching for a wanted man. Or maybe lost love. Or maybe I just really wish I was Pawoo. God, Pawoo is great.

You may recall last week’s post-credits scene ended on a cliffhanger. Our episode does not open addressing this–which is a thing I kinda hate?–but we get Milo and Bisco bickering like a married couple to make up for it, so it’s fine.

Some important business is established here. Point 1. Pawoo has only three months to live. Given that she’s the most attractive, coolest, most dashing, and just generally best character in the show, and is in fact absent from this episode, this is tragic. Point 2. Bisco’s mentor, Jabi, has only about one month to live. This is also pretty awful. Point 3. There is no way to get to where Milo and Bisco need to be in time without attracting a huge amount of attention the twosome can’t afford to attract.

Except of course, because this is an adventure anime. There is a plan. (There’s always a plan.) Bisco knows of an underground mine complex whose railcarts run the length of the area they need to traverse. This complex is part of the kickassedly-named Bonecoal Mountains. Which of course, because this is an adventure anime, is an absurdly dangerous route that will present them with all kinds of challenges and tests of both physical and intellectual might. (One of the dangers namechecked here? “Iron mice” which can skeletonize a man in seconds. Piranhas, watch your backs!) After overcoming them, of course, they will grow both individually as people and closer together as friends. All of this is fine, though. Bisco has an ace up his sleeve.

The ace is a giant crab.

Yes, the pair link back up with Actagawa here. Actagawa, a giant “steelcrab,” has a shell tough as iron and can amble over any terrain with ease. He is, as Bisco explains, the ideal mount for their journey. (He may be a bit biased, given that he calls the giant friendly crab his “brother.”) Giant crabs objectively improve any work of art in which they appear, so I have to say I am quite satisfied with the ratio of giant crabs to things that aren’t giant crabs in Sabikui Bisco so far.

But much like a horse or, really, any tamable animal, Actagawa has to be eased into putting up with Milo. Progress is…slow, over the course of this episode. And eventually one of Milo’s attempts to ride the crab (a phrase that really sounds like a euphemism but somehow isn’t), literally tosses him headlong into meeting up with another character we’ve seen before.

Yes, Chiroru unexpectedly returns here. She’s chased off after trying to steal Actagawa, but it’s not long before our heroes meet her again at a small rural rest station. There, things promptly get weird.

The two approach her from behind as she appears to be sitting idly by a fire. Initially it seems like she’s simply giving them the cold shoulder, but a well-executed sudden jumpscare proves that, no, she’s got some kind of horrible infection in her mouth. It’s pretty goddamn nasty!

Worse, Milo somehow deduces that it’s something in her stomach. That “something?” A parasitic creature called a balloonworm that inflates and kills from the inside out; used as a tool of control by particularly bad dudes who force those they make use of to eat the creatures’ eggs and then keep them in line by drip-feeding them a drug that prevents the eggs from hatching. It’s a favored tactic of Imihama’s governor, Chiroru’s former employer. Did I mention that Milo is able to get this thing out of her by locking lips with her and pulling it out with his mouth? I reiterate; goddamn nasty.

Chiroru is grateful to Milo in her own way. But, assuming ulterior motives, tries to, ahem, pay with her body.

I think her main mistake here is assuming Milo is straight.

This starts off Bisco on another annoying, sexist spiel. The only thing that prevents that from being as much of a black mark on this episode as on last week’s is that Chiroru can hit back about as good as she gets. (Milo, bless him, prevents a fight from breaking out. And buried within that exchange, there’s actually a telling little character moment where Chiroru seems genuinely surprised Milo doesn’t expect to be able to sleep with her for doing her a favor.) Everyone hits the hay, and Chiroru–a travelling merchant when she’s not working as a bounty hunter, apparently–tosses out a few old wares she can’t reasonably sell, including a can of “liquid bonecoal.” (Gas by another name or some sort of futuristic fossil fuel? You decide!)

This turns out to be a mistake.

Recall that cliffhanger I mentioned earlier. The unnamed area our heroes stopped at here and the War Memorial from last week’s post-credits scene turn out to be the same place. And it’s here, at about the episode’s 2/3rd’s mark, that the story loops back around to where it left off last week. Not time wasted! I enjoyed the whole ride; but it’s good to know what the heck was going on.

So how does this all end? Well, the “living temple” decked out with cannons and whatnot is, as we learn, actually a colossal, fuel-eating shrimp. Milo is able to use his newfound bond with Actagawa to have the crab land a fatal blow on the shrimp’s noggin, which Bisco finalizes by splitting it open with an arrow. All’s well that ends well…

Except that a stray shot from one of the shrimp’s mounted cannons ignites the mine entrance they were hoping to use and just happened to be near. Bisco’s plan, it seems, did not account for that. The two, seeing no other immediate option, settle down for the night. They awake to find Chiroru’s run off again (and taken a good chunk of their money with her, although she’s left a bunch of food and such in return.)

Our postscript here sees Bisco and Milo wandering a salty-looking desert some days or weeks later, hard up on food. Bisco spots a watermelon–yes, a watermelon. Just lying on the ground–and things quickly escalate into a standoff.

But that’s something we’ll see play out next week, what about this episode?

Honestly, perhaps it’s just the lack of sleep, but I’m dry on sweeping, grandiose statements for this’n. It’s a good episode and I like that Milo can ride Actagawa now. It was cute to see them bond and the critter has a surprising amount of personality given that he’s a huge crustacean animated via a slightly stiff CGI rig. Milo and Bisco’s bickery bromance continues to be incredibly entertaining, and I was thrilled to see Chiroru again in a slightly more prominent role this episode. (Less thrilled to see her hock up a giant worm. Seriously, that shit was disgusting.)

So, anime fans, I leave you with those as my thoughts for this week. Those and one more; yes, if you’re wondering, the pie I mentioned in the opening paragraph was delicious. Thank you as always to my supporters, who allow me to indulge in such luxuries as occasional $2 pie.

Until next time.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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, 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, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 3 – “Tag Team”

If you’re looking for the ingredients of a classic adventure story, they are there in Sabikui Bisco. That’s more evident in the third and most recent episode (“Tag Team”) than it has been. This is probably the weakest episode of the series so far, but it’s good enough that the very term “weakest” feels a bit too harsh. There’s a lot of promise, here, but also some notable room for improvement.

So Bisco fails to take the hat trick. Still, it’s a solid episode. We’re introduced to a couple key points here. The main one is that the mushrooms that we’ve so far been led to believe spread the Rusting sickness actually feed off of it and can thus cure it. This has interesting implications for Bisco’s wider world. Almost everyone thinks the mushrooms cause Rust. The episode opens with a loudspeaker announcement warning the residents of Imihama City to avoid inhaling spores, and elsewhere another character calls the fact that mushrooms create Rust “common sense.”

This is framed as a simple misunderstanding; people assume that mushrooms cause Rust because they grow where it’s found. But I would not be surprised if it later turned out that someone was lying about something for some ulterior motive. It would slot in well with Sabikui Bisco‘s more ambitious storytelling aims.

About the less ambitious ones, though. As foreshadowed at the end of last week’s episode, Bisco and Pawoo* get into it here, and while their actual fight is pretty good, this is where some cracks start showing.

Sabikui Bisco is, at the end of the day, a shonen series. And while it’s not universal, that does tend to imply certain things. One of them is what I will call a, I don’t know, casual sexism tax? Bisco remarks on Pawoo’s looks some three or four times during their fight, and while his internal monologue and later actions imply he doesn’t “really” believe any of the things he says, they’re still kind of shitty. This is the guy we’re supposed to be rooting for, mind you, so comments like this coming out of his mouth unchallenged reflects pretty poorly on the series at large.

Worse, at the end of the fight (which Pawoo only loses because Bisco snipes her with an arrow tipped with some kind of knock-out poison), she’s left behind in the City Watch’s care while Bisco and Milo set off on their journey. (Which, we’ll get back to that momentarily.) Effectively, this writes her out of the series for the time being. I don’t really want to add Sabikui Bisco to the long, long list of otherwise solid action anime that treat their female characters like trash, but this is not a terrific start. A kinda-goofy “sexy” outfit is one thing. This is quite another.

At the very least, the fight itself is pretty good. One can’t say that Bisco wins too easily. Pawoo is the uber-serious shoot-first-ask-questions-later type, so she doesn’t buy any of Bisco’s talk about mushrooms healing the Rust. She does nearly beat the hell out of him, though, which is pretty great. There’s also some truly weird set dressing going on here. Why does their fight at one point pivot to being on top of a huge bowling pin inexplicably in the middle of Imihama? Who knows! It definitely rules, though. Moreso when Pawoo shatters the thing and there’s an audible “bowling strike” sound effect.

You might say Pawoo has no time for games.

There’s also some brief but fun color commentary from recurring secondary character Chiroru Oochagama. (Miyu Tomita, probably best known as the lead character, Riko, in Made in Abyss.) Her cowardly put-upon minion vibe makes her great for this sort of thing, and I hope she never stops doing it.

Intercut with all of this is Milo healing up Bisco’s mentor, Jabi. He eventually recovers enough that, when the time comes for Milo and Bisco to split at episode’s end, it’s he who stays behind to provide a distraction. (At least Pawoo will have some company in Good Characters Temporarily Absent From The Show Jail.)

As for where Bisco and Milo are actually going, it turns out that the “Rust-Eater” alluded to in the series’ alternate English title is, in fact, a mushroom. One that can heal just about anything, including Jabi’s (and presumably Pawoo’s) particularly bad Rust infection, which will eventually claim both of their lives if it’s not treated.

It’s worth noting in the latter case that Milo does give her some of the same injection that fixed up Jabi, but that the mushroom is still being sought out at all implies that this is only a temporary solution. Also, there is a bit where Milo gives a very long, heartfelt, tearful goodbye to his unconscious sister while saccharine music swells. The entire time, Bisco impatiently taps his foot in the background and then tells him off when he’s done. It’s pretty funny.

So, there you have it, Bisco and Milo exiting Imihama and setting out on an epic quest to get a special mushroom. Complete with all the fightbro homoeroticism so common to this sort of anime.

It’s classic stuff, and despite my criticisms of the episode’s handling of Pawoo I did enjoy it overall. (Time will tell if that continues to be the case, but here’s hoping.) There’s a post-credits scene here where Milo and Bisco come across a “war memorial,” a temple made out of and absolutely covered in ancient, rusting war machines. It promptly comes to life when they attempt to stop there for the evening. Thus, cliffhangers beget cliffhangers, and the adventure continues.

Until next week, anime fans.

*Official sources seem to disagree on whether her name should be romanized as Pawoo or just Paw. Because of how these things work, neither is exactly wrong, and they’re pronounced the same way. But the official subtitles use “Pawoo”, so it’s what I’ll be using from here on 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 Twitter 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, 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, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [1/23/22]

Hello anime fans! What a week it’s been over here! Commissions, seasonals getting better or worse, schedule shakeups, and more. There’s a lot to talk about, so I won’t waste any more of your time. Let’s dive in.

Seasonal Anime

CUE!

Maybe it’s a good thing that I stopped doing weeklies on this show? This episode, only CUE!‘s third, really meanders. That’s not inherently a problem given that the show is slated for two cours, but it does raise some possible problems going forward.

To put it very briefly; there is now an idol anime happening within CUE! Almost literally, even. We’re formally introduced to another “unit” of four characters this episode. We met one of them–Yuki Tendou–last week, but the other three have basically been background characters before now. These are Airi Eniwa (Mayu Iizuka, in her first major role), Yuzuha Kujo, (Manatsu Murakami, also voicing the lead in the deeply creepy Akebi’s School Uniform this season) and Chisa Akagawa (Satsuki Miyahara, another member of DIALOGUE+).

Yuzuha, Airi, Chisa, and Yuki, from left to right.

The four of them volunteer for a project AiRBLUE is considering picking up; a four-piece idol unit called Project Vogel. Which itself seems to be…honestly it’s not entirely clear? They’re playing characters who have designs and such, we even see said designs, which implies that this is a VTuber thing or is itself an idol anime of some sort? But no one ever actually explicitly says either, it’s just referred to as “a project.” It’s a little confusing.

It may not matter, because on top of everything else, this project is being crowdfunded on what looks like Kickstarter. Someone even explicitly points out that the project has only 52 backers at the moment. Which, to give the show due credit, is pretty funny.

This could all conceivably be pretty interesting, and it might even become so at some point, but there’s a lot of daylight between then and now. Because of the team of four we’re introduced to here, three are just not compelling characters. In contrast with Haruna (still our ostensible lead) and her genuinely endearing everywoman charm, they barely even qualify as caricatures. Only one rises above the level of a complete cardboard cutout.

That’d be Yuki, the only one of the four with some actual spark. She wants to land a role in something as quickly as possible because her dad might be forcing her out of the business to work in the family restaurant, and she’s willing to take a gamble on Vogel Project being something she can do. It’s basic, but that’s a real character motivation, which is more than the other three get. Also, she has an exclamatory catchphrase that gets subtitled as “D’oh!” for some reason, which is fun.

Airi has perhaps a dozen lines this episode and more than half of them have to be variants on “I’m sorry.” There’s also a bizarre dialogue gimmick where she says vaguely rude things and then justifies them as being things her horoscope told her to do? She’s honestly pretty annoying! And Mayu Iizuka’s all-nose vocal performance does not help. Yuzuha “wants to make precious memories.” Chisa is “the serious one.” We don’t get to learn much about those two beyond that. Their introductory scene drags like hell and it’s easily the worst part of the show so far, across all three of its episodes.

These are issues that a series could fix with time and development, but it’s a bad first impression to make for what is presumably going to end up becoming a major part of the cast. Why do an introdump like this if you’re going to make the characters seem so dull? It’s worth remembering here that CUE! exists partly to promote a mobile game. No one is going to roll the gacha for characters this boring. (The show’s character designs tending toward the pedestrian certainly doesn’t help either. Though within the context of CUE! as fiction, it does make the designs of the various shows within the show pop more.)

In more interesting territory, Maika and some of the other girls learn that they’ve landed a role in Bloom Ball. I’m pleasantly surprised that the zany sports anime-within-an-anime seems like it’s going to continue to be relevant. Haruna doesn’t get a major part, although she’s penned in to attend the first recording session anyway. Because you see, she’s got a role as “Student A.” It’s something?

Of all of CUE!‘s characters, I actually probably like Haruna the most. It’s a little disappointing to see her performance from last episode lead to a result that is, basically, a joke at her expense. I do still intend to keep up with CUE, but I can’t pretend that this episode isn’t fairly disappointing. Time will tell if this goes down as merely a rough patch or the point where the series just falls apart.

Tokyo 24th Ward

Normally I don’t cover anime in back-to-back Frontline Reports. (That’s what the dedicated weekly columns are for.) Nonetheless, I felt like I should take some time to appreciate the fact that Tokyo 24th Ward has appreciably improved from its snoozefest of a second episode last week to its third this week. Hopefully signing that the first episode will be more indicative of the show’s overall direction than the second.

Very briefly; the Gourmet Fest alluded to last week happens here, and Kaba, the event’s organizer, foils the scheme by a rival restaurant to win by cheating. All of this is fairly humdrum, though thankfully the production picks back up here (the pop-ins are back! Hooray!)

I would’ve written the episode off as just okay were it not for the fact that we get another one of those bonkers ghost phone calls here. The second half of the episode, which this kicks off, seems more indicative of where Tokyo 24th wants to go from here.

This time the disaster is a sudden tornado (!) striking the festival. Once again, it’s presented as a sideways variant on the trolley problem; choose to save Group X or Group Y, but not both. This time, though, our heroes don’t coordinate before moving out to enact their grand shonen-y rescue plans. As a result, things go badly, and for the second time, “RGB” fail to save everyone. One of those who loses his life is Kaba himself, marking the genuinely shocking removal of a character who had up to this point been a fairly major supporting player.

A willingness to buck expectations now, while we’re still rather early in Tokyo 24th‘s run, is a good sign. I legitimately felt for Kaba’s daughter, Kozue, previously traumatized by the fire catastrophe we learned about back in episode one. Here, on her first day out of the house in who knows how long, she’s caught in a tornado and loses her father. That’s just awful, and all the melodramatic touches in the world–Kozue sheds a tear as her father’s ripped away by the tornado, which mixes with one of his own!–can’t entirely blunt that sense of loss.

But if anyone had the absurd worry that Tokyo 24th was going to get too serious, the episode ends with the reveal that somehow, this fucking guy was behind the tornado.

And just like that, our little superhero team suddenly has a proper nemesis.

I don’t know where Tokyo 24th goes from here, but that’s an exciting feeling. I am sure it will appear in this column again.

Elsewhere on MPA

It’s been a productive week here on the site.

(Review) Pompo: The Cinéphile – One of two commissions I finished this week. I don’t love Pompo but it’s a pretty solid movie and it probably deserves more love than it’s gotten from western audiences. Check it out sometime, won’t you?

(Review) SCHOOL-LIVE! / Gakkou Gurashi – I think I’ve basically exhausted all I have to say about mid-’10s cult classic Gakkou Gurashi. I really loved this series despite a few problems and it’s probably the most an anime has made me cry since, what, A Place Further Than The Universe, maybe? There’s a reason this one has stuck around.

Let’s Watch Sabikui Bisco Episode 2 – “Soar on King Trumpets” – Sabikui Bisco is, in a word, nuts. If you have any interest in seasonal TV anime as a format and you’re not following it you’re missing out.

Let’s Watch My Dress-Up Darling, Episode 3 – “Then Why Don’t We?” – This episode is a lot less egregiously horny than last week’s. I did want to throttle the male lead at various points during it, though.

And that’s about all for this week. I’ll see you tomorrow for more Sabikui Bisco, anime fans. 🙂

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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, 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, Let's Watch

Let’s Watch SABIKUI BISCO Episode 2 – “Soar on King Trumpets”

Let’s Watch is a weekly recap column where I follow an anime for the course of its entire runtime. Expect spoilers!

We’re in new territory for this site.

I am a lot of things as a critic. But I would not say I’m exactly a savvy predictor of an anime’s success or positive acclaim. Sometimes I stick to my guns in spite of public consensus, sometimes I do not. I went over the long and short of this in another post earlier today, but the very short version is this; the previous series I’d picked up as a weekly is just not working out. Instead, you get Sabikui Bisco every week going forward.

I’m going to go ahead and assume that if you’re reading this, you’re fine with that.

This column arrives rather late (and a bit short compared to my usual) as a result of this schedule shakeup, but I do intend to pick up episode 3 on Monday, so we’ll have to really haul ass through episode 2 here. But I’m fine with that. Do you know why? Because Sabikui Bisco is an utterly unhinged box of delights, and writing about it is fun.

If you don’t like my “rapturous praise” mode of writing you can go ahead and skip this column. I have nothing but good things to say about Bisco.

This week’s episode focuses more on the redheaded title character than the feminine Milo, who we got to know last week. We learn how he ended up in the city and that the reason he sought Milo out is because his traveling companion and mentor, an old man named Jabi (Shirou Saitou, who seems to play roles almost exclusively in this vein and has done so since he made his VA debut in 1996. He was also Jake in the Japanese dub of Adventure Time, isn’t that fun?), was injured by an attacking bounty hunter looking to take Bisco in. Now, that’s a fairly normal shonen plot beat. Less normal is the fact that the bounty hunter’s method of attack was “giant snail fighter jet.” Similar weaponization of animal life occurs throughout this episode and, I imagine, will continue to be a motif seen throughout the show.

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One could speculate on the possible thematic implications of a world so war-torn that even ordinary fauna have been turned into weapons. But this early on, the sheer cool factor has yet to wear off. We’ll get there, and so will Bisco itself, presumably. Right now, the feel of the ride is what matters most. The episode ends with the promise of an impending duel between Bisco and Paw, who currently thinks (correctly) that Bisco blew up her brother’s hospital and possibly (incorrectly) that he’s killed him. This promises to be one of the most stylish fights of the season, and you’ll have to forgive me if I take this opportunity to again remind everyone that Paw is just an absolutely untouchable character.

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I wish she’d look at me like that. 🥺

So that’s the Cliff’s Notes for our second episode. I’m glossing over more than I’d like to here because I’m pressed for time. I almost didn’t even get to mention the fun little character aside where the aforementioned plane-owning bounty hunter grovels for her life at the feet of the villainous prefectural governor we met last episode. How he tosses her a pistol and tells her she’s still under contract, and how he offhandedly mentions that Bisco’s attack on the city has ruined his plan to host a totally sweet sci-fi movie marathon.

You know he’s a villain because he watches the Star Wars movies in chronological order.

Nonetheless, I hope I’ve impressed upon you how wonderfully bonkers the world of Bisco is. If you’re reading this, I assume you’re already onboard the mushroom hype train. If not, there’s plenty of time to climb on.

Until episode 3, anime fans.

Like what you’re reading? Consider following Magic Planet Anime to get notified when new articles go live. If you’d like to talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers, consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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 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: What the Hell is SABIKUI BISCO?

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.

A sickness called the Rust. Forbidden mushrooms that offer toxic euphoria. A desert with iron sand and the foggy streets of the sin city beyond it. Those streets crawl with the sick and dying, hucksters, hookers, butchers, and a doctor with a heart of gold. This is Sabikui Bisco, one of the season’s most singular offerings.

Bisco is absolutely suffused with atmosphere, and it’s tempting to spend the entire article talking about that instead of the actual story (which is only in its very early stages anyway.) But we should at least touch on that before we get into what this thing is actually about. Despite a fairly modest production from an animation point of view, the visuals on this thing are beyond engrossing. (The series comes to us from the brand-new studio OZ. This is, as far as I can tell, their first-ever production.) Almost everything in the city itself is lit with a neon undertone that really sells the whole “Las Vegas of post-apoc Japan” vibe. The character designs, similarly, really pop, and there’s a lot to love about them. Even minor characters get to look good.

But yes, about that “post-apoc Japan” bit. Bisco takes place in a world overrun with something called The Rusty Wind. It makes people sick, and eventually kills them. Also factoring in are a group of people who have some sort of supernatural control over those mushrooms I mentioned before, The Mushroomkeepers. I am quite sure that before watching this episode I had never heard the phrase “mushroom terrorist” in my entire life. Having now seen it, I’ve heard it several times. Most people don’t seem to like the Mushroomkeepers, and while it’s too early to draw clean good guy / bad guy lines (if that’s something this series ever wants to do at all), it’s not hard to get why. Most Mushroomkeeper activity seems to consist of causing huge colonies of tree-sized caps to sprout in places, which causes a lot of damage. One of our protagonists, the titular Bisco (that’s the wild-eyed redhead on the cover. Played here by Ryouta Suzuki, probably best known to readers here as Ishigami from Kaguya-sama: Love is War!) is a Mushroomkeeper. Apparently quite an infamous one. We’re made aware of his legend in this utterly brilliant exchange from the episode’s opening minutes.

Bisco himself doesn’t do a ton in this first episode. What he does do is quite impactful and sets the whole plot in motion, but we’ll circle back around to that. Let’s talk about our other protagonist first.

Milo “Panda” Nekoyanagi (Natsuki Hanae, easily best known as the lead, Tanjirou, in Demon Slayer) is a feminine-looking doctor with a heart of gold who appears to quite literally treat his patients out of a brothel. He seems like a genuinely very nice man, as demonstrated by his habit of giving away treatment (both for Rust and a number of other things) for free. He also collects illegal mushrooms, hoping to synthesize a permanent cure for the disease from them. There’s a personal investment here, as his sister Paw, the city’s guard captain (Reina Kondou, who given that she was also Nikaido in the Dorohedoro anime, seems to be building a niche for herself voicing dangerous women in weird science fantasy settings) is also ill with the disease.

Milo also has one other connection we should discuss. That with the prefectural governor, Kurokawa. (Kenjirou Tsuda, an industry veteran most famous as Seto Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh! Though I’d be remiss to not also mention his roles as The Giraffe from Revue Starlight and the talking dog Yamabiko from Sonny Boy.) Kurokawa does not seem to be a nice man, and in his first on-screen appearance tries to bully Milo into abandoning his sister so he can offer his services to the prefecture’s rich elite instead.

His attempt at a verbal beatdown is interrupted, though, by Bisco, who for reasons currently unknown to us, lets loose a mushroom colony in the middle of the city. Utter chaos ensues, with Paw dawning her guard uniform to go stop him despite Milo’s pleas. (And if I may, she looks amazing while doing it, too.)

I try to keep obvious thirsting over anime girls to a minimum on this site, but you’ll have to pardon me here, I have a type.

Paw actually knocks Milo out, but, unfazed, the good doctor simply slinks into his laboratory to continue his work. That, of course, is when Bisco inexplicably shows up behind him, and the episode ends there, with our two leads meeting face to face for the first time.

A lot about Sabikui Bisco reminds one of Dorohedoro, but beyond that I struggle for reference points. (And even in that context, Bisco is very much its own thing.) This is absolutely one to keep an eye on, we might be looking at the start of something big. Even if not, it promises to be intriguing.

Grade: A-
The Takeaway: If you have the time, give the first episode of this a watch. It’s interesting.

Wanna talk to other Magic Planet Anime readers? Consider joining my Discord server! Also consider following me on Twitter and supporting me on Ko-Fi or Patreon. If you want to read more of my work, consider heading over to the 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, excepting direct quotations, is owned by Magic Planet Anime. Do not duplicate without permission. All images are owned by their original copyright holders.