Tag: seasonal check-in

Posted on in anime, Anime Orbit Weekly

Anime Orbit Seasonal Check-in: Another Date With DEAD MOUNT DEATH PLAY

Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week.

Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.

This has been a weird season, particularly for speculative adventure anime. The two original frontrunners, Hell’s Paradise and the unrelated Heavenly Delusion, have respectively gotten kind of boring and completely unhinged in a way where I, personally, am holding off on covering it for now. That leaves a gap, and where there’s a gap, other things will step up to the plate. If you’re asking about what adventure anime I’ve been enjoying in a comparatively uncomplicated way, there are two answers, neither of which I would’ve expected giving just two weeks ago; Magical Destroyers (which was unhinged from the start) and this, Dead Mount Death Play. Neither are flawless by any means, but the nature of expectations is sometimes such that you end up enjoying things that you expected less out of in the first place more than things you had high hopes for that may or may not live up to those hopes.

As for DMDP itself, the gist since we last checked in with our necromancer boy Polka and his funky phantom friends is this; he’s joined the organization that was hunting him down back in episode one. He’s a coup, really, for this shady group of assassins, and their leader, the mysterious Clarissa [Atsumi Tanezaki]. (A side note, we’ll be calling “Polka” “Kabane” from this point out, referring to his character bio, because distinguishing him from the guy who used to be Polka Shinoyama is going to be important shortly) Misaki, predictably, is also around again, having been revived at the end of episode 2 following some exposition about Polka’s past. I was not crazy on the show’s attempts to sell both Kabane and Misaki (who seem to be co-headlining as leads at this point) as “sympathetic bad guys”, but the rest of the episode was quite good, including a sequence where Kabane rescued some kids from a fire in an unlicensed orphanage via summoning their parents’ souls into skeletons. He even caused a huge social media firestorm in the process, setting up a lurking background plot thread as we roll into episode 3 here.

Episode 3 quickly confirms that, regardless of whether or not he’s truly “villainous”, we are going to get to see Kabane properly fuck some people up. It’s really pretty straightforward; for as much as he might want to live a peaceful life in his new home, he does need money, and his talents point him toward assassination as a possible career path. He doesn’t even hand-wring over it, really, and his only token objection is shot down by Misaki pointing out that he was competent enough to kill her, and, after all, she’s a professional assassin too. Kabane and Misaki get a good dynamic going here when the time comes to smack around some yakuza. (Or something. They sure seem like yakuza to me but the show never uses the term.) Misaki, now basically a zombie, is immune to minor inconveniences like gunshots and such, so she handles all of the rough-and-tumble physical aspects of fighting. Kabane, the necromancer, finishes things off with his magic.

It’s also because of Kabane that they end up in this situation in the first place. One of Dead Mount Death Play’s recurring tricks is to set up a scene in one way—here, by making it seem like Kabane is talking to a guy who comes to Misaki for protection—and then reveal that he’s actually been talking to ghosts. In this case, that means deliberately leading himself and Misaki into a trap to get some vengeance for the many children-spirits that haunt this particular group of bad guys. These aren’t really meant to be twists, exactly, but it’s still a cool way to convey the narrative. It’s especially helpful when the show’s visual chops are otherwise more functional than great. (Although there is a really wonderful moment here where Misaki Naruto-runs for a couple seconds. That can make up for a lot of so-so cuts.)

Death Play seems to be setting up this thing where Kabane is, in a sense, less of a villain than the real-world sorts he crosses swords with; hitmen and so on. There’s an intriguing bit in here where he and Takumi, the hacker who’s now serving as his mission control of sorts, have a conversation about the value of human life. Kabane likens human life to toys. But, he says, he’s fond of toys, because they make children smile. This prompts Kabane to reflect on whether the real disconnect in their thinking is not how they value people but how they value things. It’s an interesting little dialogue, although the larger points it might be trying to make have not really connected just yet. Oh, somewhere in here it’s also mentioned that Polka—the real Polka—is still alive, and his soul is bound to a small drone that Kabane took control of last week. Where is all that going? Who knows!

We also learn about “Lemmings” here, in a separate exchange, apparently some kind of assassin-boogieman with a codename that, personally, just makes me think of the computer game. “Lemmings” doesn’t really remain a mystery for long. The closing minutes of the episode introduce us to two new characters who’ve shown up before but not gotten any spotlight before now. These are Tsubaki Iwanome [Takuya Eguchi] and Kouzaburou Arase [Nobuhiko Okamoto], a pair of cops who work for a branch of the government that deals with the paranormal. They get on Kabane’s trail because of the aftermath of the yakuza fight; a massive knot of clumped-together earth and mangled bodies, all of whom are still alive, because Kabane is hardcore like that. Thus, our first major arc sets its wheels in motion, and Dead Mount Death Play seems to snap into focus.

This is not a flawless show by any means; it’s visually a bit too dark (enough that it’s occasionally hard to puzzle out what’s going on), and the sense of humor is markedly dated. Sometimes in a charming way (Misaki’s whole kooky murder-girl personality) and sometimes in a very grating one (basically everything else), and its use of totally shameless fanservice feels pretty out of place in something like this. Still, the show is solid fun, and I enjoy tuning in every week.

Of course, what I would really love is to see it take that extra step up and go from good to great. Will it? Only time will tell.

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, Mastodon, or Anilist, 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. If you have any questions about this or any article, feel free to leave a comment, or pop on over to my RetroSpring and ask me there. It’s up to you!

All views expressed on Magic Planet Anime are 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, Anime Orbit Weekly

Anime Orbit Seasonal Check-in: Beyond the Royal Rainbow in THE MAGICAL REVOLUTION OF THE REINCARNATED PRINCESS & THE GENIUS YOUNG LADY

Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week.

Expect spoilers for covered material, where relevant.

It’s not common, but it happens; an anime that is decidedly fine but not great will unexpectedly just tap into something: a raw vein of resonant or intense emotion, a particularly strong theme, an exceptionally charismatic character will appear, etc. In doing this, the show goes supernova, breaking itself out of whatever little genre-box it’s stuck in and becoming something pretty unique—or at least interesting—in the process. If not permanently, at least for a while. Thus, we have the anime adaptation of The Magical Revolution of The Reincarnated Princess & the Genius Young Lady, a series that has been on Magic Planet Anime before, though not actually in its anime form.

I haven’t covered the series’ anime adaptation until this point because, frankly, until today, I wasn’t terribly impressed with it. I fell off following the manga not long after writing that original Manga Shelf column. And since then, Magical Revolution—MagiRevo, to its friends—has stuck in my mind, certainly, but not been at the forefront of it. Its anime, in particular, I have been a bit down on; just by being an anime, it has the obvious baked-into-the-format disadvantage of simply being of fixed, linear length, meaning that the balancing act between the more lighthearted yuri elements of the series and the more serious, dramatic, and intrigue-driven plot of the series has not always been easy to keep up, given that it’s stripped of the flexibility presented by reading a manga nor novel at one’s own pace. Sometimes, it has felt like watching two anime glued together. But no longer! Over its past few episodes, MagiRevo has largely discarded any pretense of being light and fluffy and has dived headlong into some surprisingly big ideas. Any feeling of trying to split the difference is long in the rearview by now.

To very briefly get the uninitiated up to speed: after what I previously discussed in the Manga Shelf column, MagiRevo starts getting into the story of Anis’ (Sayaka Senbongi) brooding younger brother Algard (Shougo Sakata). It was clear from day one that Algard was up to something, but over the course of, in particular, episodes 8 and 9, the series paints a compelling portrait of a man who is deeply troubled by the feudal realities of the world he lives in, and who takes drastic steps in reaction to them. It’s not long before he’s literally ripping the magical power out of supporting character and basically-a-vampire Lainie (Hina Youmiya), leaving her for dead in the process, and attempting to stone-cold murder his sister to secure his ascension to the throne.

This goes poorly for Prince Al, who at this point has basically ruined his own life as part of this harebrained plot to get Anis out of the picture. The tragic thing is that his motives are quite sympathetic! We see him moved by the plight of the poor, and furious at how his fellow nobles turn up their noses at those commoners. But tragically, he has no real idea of how to turn that righteous indignation into an actual plan to fix things. He conflates these systemic issues with his own complicated jealousy of his sister, and throws any real shot at repairing the underlying problems of the show’s world away for petty score-settling. He is, honestly, pretty lucky to get out of the whole ordeal alive at the end of the arc. Although being exiled to the kingdom’s borderlands ensures he won’t be playing a major role in the plot again any time soon.

Look at how smug he is about it.

That exile creates a new problem, though. With Algard out of the picture, Anis is once again the kingdom’s only valid heir. Her father, Orphanse II, restores her hereditary rights, and Anis is suddenly faced with the prospect of being forced into a queenly role that she neither wants nor is suited for. Perhaps surprisingly, she accepts all of this without much of a fight, resigning herself to her “duty” to the kingdom and to the other nobles, in spite of the fact that it’s not what she wants and that she isn’t the right person for the job anyway.

There’s an element of sad irony here; Anis, a genius in what is basically her world’s version of a STEM field, can’t seem to quite pick apart the systemic issues that her brother could. (We don’t get a great sense of what Anis actually thinks of the whole socioeconomic setup of her kingdom. She clearly likes the commoners as people, but it’s not clear if she really understands what makes them commoners in the first place the same way her brother did.) Algard, of course, wasn’t smart enough to come up with a way to solve those issues. One gets the sense that if they had been working together from the start, things would be much more on-track at this point, but complex interpersonal problems have gotten in the way, and the situation, as it stands at the end of episode 10, is very complicated all around.

This leaves Euphie in quite the spot, too. Episode 10 does a wonderful job of capturing just how powerless Euphie feels to really help Anis in any meaningful way. The succession issue is her problem too, since she loves Anis—she actually explicitly says as much here for the first time, no subtext here—and can’t stand to see her making forced smiles through the whole process of preparing for queenship. (This seems to mostly involve winning over the country’s nobility, which, given what we’ve seen of them, and given that we already know that they hate Anis because she can’t do magic, would seem like profoundly thankless work even if the show didn’t outright say as much.) She eventually goes to curse scholar and only slightly toxic friend of Anis, Tilty (Yuu Sasahara), for advice, and Tilty eventually gets it out of her that it’s not just that Euphie can’t solve Anis’ problems, it’s that Anis’ problems are her own, given how close they are. It’s worth reiterating the feeling of powerlessness captured here; the inadequacy, the friction between Euphie’s own feelings and the outside world. It’s surprisingly intense stuff, especially given that it’s mostly conveyed solely through dialogue, which, it’s worth noting, is wonderfully voice-acted.

Between Euphie’s feelings, Anis’ situation, and Algard’s arc that led up to that situation, the show also does a pretty good job of exploring how the systems that create the upper classes tend to strip even those people they’re intended to privilege of genuine happiness. Every single one of these characters is a landed and titled noble, wealthy in ways that you or I cannot really imagine, and they are all absolutely fucking miserable. It takes a deft hand to make that kind of thing actually sympathetic.

All in all, MagiRevo has become dark, fascinating, and surprisingly heady for something that really seemed like it wasn’t going to ever amount to much more than a power fantasy. (A gay power fantasy, which is a thing worth having, but a power fantasy nonetheless.) Episode 10 leaves us with the introduction of a new character—the mysterious Lumi, whose spirit contracts may offer a way out of Anis’ situation, but there are clearly some strings attached we’re not totally privy to yet—and a lot of unanswered questions. And, hey, on top of all that, there’s also a pretty spectacular bit in episode 9 where the maid Ilia (Ai Kakuma) saves Lainie’s life by making out with her. That’s pretty great too.

Absolutely bitchin’.

There is still a very promising year ahead of us, as far as anime goes, so I don’t know how many people—myself included!—will really remember MagiRevo’s surprisingly strong turn here come December. (Honestly, even if it totally flames out in its final two episodes, having a strong middle section is noteworthy enough, given how many single cour anime manage to have a noticeably weak one.) And fans of the original light novels, or even just those who’ve kept up with the manga, won’t be as shocked, of course, but the raising-of-stakes here is pretty great all around, and it’s taken MagiRevo from a show that’s decidedly okay to one that’s absolutely worth keeping an eye on. In a season this quiet, things like this have a chance to stand out that they might not otherwise get, but even in a stronger season, something like this would be worth taking note of. Mark MagiRevo down for “most improved since its premiere.”

A Note: I have COVID-19 at the moment. I think I’m through the worst of the infection, but that’s why content has been so scarceon the site lately, and it will probably continue to be irregular at best for a while longer. Hoping to be fully recovered by the end of the season so I can get on top of next season’s premieres! But, I don’t want to promise anything. If you’d like to help, now more than ever, I would appreciate donations at the links below.

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, Mastodon, Anilist, 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, 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, Anime Orbit Weekly

Anime Orbit Seasonal Check-in: What the Hell Happened to RWBY: ICE QUEENDOM?

Anime Orbit is an irregular column where I summarize a stop along my journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of popular culture over the past week. Expect spoilers for covered material.

I really did not think I’d ever be writing about this show again. I didn’t make a secret of the fact that I wasn’t super impressed by RWBY: ICE QUEENDOM‘s premiere. When discussing that first episode, I called the show a mess. In that context, I meant it negatively; a slapdash, hacky story given a wildly uneven production that felt like it was being carried on the backs of individual boarders and animators rather than being directed with any strong sense of purpose. I stand by those statements as they hold to episodes 1-3, which together made up the series premiere on Crunchyroll, and they might still hold true going forward, but we’re not here to talk about any past or future episodes of this show. Not today. Today, here, in the very first of the new Anime Orbit columns, I’d like to talk about episode 4, the first new episode since the series began its normal weekly airing schedule.

Because 4 is something else entirely. To really just lay the matter on the table; it’s really good. In a way that feels a whole universe removed from what Ice Queendom had been doing up until this point. The actual plot here is very simple—one of the ‘Nightmare Grimms’ introduced in episode 3 gets its hooks into Weiss, and it’s up to Ruby to rescue her from the confines of the resulting dream-prison—but the way its presented is another beast entirely. If nothing else, Ice Queendom deserves some sort of “most improved” award here. This is lightyears ahead of what the first three episodes were doing, both in terms of visuals and, to an admittedly lesser extent, writing.

When we were introduced to the Nightmare Grimms concept (not a name explicitly given to them in-dialogue, but I can think of nothing else to call them), the first person they afflicted was Jaune. Who is, just speaking honestly, not a character who particularly endeared himself to me when he first showed up a few episodes ago. Jaune’s mental world was also not terribly interesting, to my recollection.

No one could make the same criticism of Weiss’. Her inner world is an absurdist dystopia monitored by living propaganda posters of her father Jacques and robots that greet each other with a bizarre salute of “Big Nicholas!”. It’s a massive walled factory town surrounded by blizzard-stricken bluffs, allegedly part of a wider “Empire”, where it always snows. Huge trains made of ice run unknowable cargo in and out of the city, only to be set upon by White Fang-affiliated bandits. Everything here seems jumbled up in guilt, insecurity, paranoia, and inherited prejudice. It doesn’t make Weiss seem like a particularly great person—and it’s not like the show needed help in that regard—but for the first time, it makes her sympathetic.

This entire thing is still mess-y, mind you, and I doubt Ice Queendom is going to really reckon with the inherent problems at the core of the whole “Faunus” analogy, but you can consider episode 4 a study on the difference that the addition of a single Y can make. For certain, it holds your attention in a very immediate way; one more comparable to all those other great SHAFT shows than anything in the first three episodes.

Helping to build the dreamy atmosphere are lots of little details, like Ruby’s scythe-gun not working the same way it does in the real world because Weiss is mistaken about how it’s put together. (Weiss seems to be under the impression that the gun is on the handle, which isn’t true. The first time Ruby goes to fire it in the dreamworld, she hits one of the robots behind her because of this, accidentally firing it backwards.) The little dream-gadgets Ruby can use via a payment of magic coins connected to the mysterious witch-exorcist (Shion Zaiden, played by Hiroki Nanami. We met her in episode 3 as well) helping them try to pull Weiss out of this thing are great, too. Using the coins, she can conjure up phone booths to talk to Shion for advice, she can summon decoy “chibi” Rubies who run around and repeat various things she’s said, etc. It’s strange and fun in a way that’s just an absolute joy to watch.

This is RWBY Chibi, right?

It’s not all fun and games though. As mentioned, there’s a distinctly dystopian / authoritarian bent to Weiss’ dreamscape. Winter City is a cold, hostile place.

A place where Ruby learns about the horrors of capitalism.

Even the few seemingly-friendly faces that Ruby meets turn on her the instant she’s declared a “dummy” (which Weiss’ subconscious seems to use as a catchall for people who can’t be trusted) by the regime, and she’s spied on for much of her stay by Weiss’ brother Whitley….who is also a bat here. (It’s a dream, just roll with it.)

Perhaps the most revealing scenes are the ones from Weiss’ own perspective. She is the city’s dictator, and sure enough, her outfit here has her rocking a militaristic overcoat and shades, making her look like some cross between Douglas MacArthur and Esdeath from Akame ga Kill!

I couldn’t get any good stills of her with the sunglasses actually on. So, in order to preserve the hilarious reference above, I’m going to need you to just imagine them. Picture an old-school smoking pipe in her mouth while you’re at it, really complete the look.

But she’s as trapped by the long shadow of her father—and the ancestor to the both of them, the ‘Nicholas’ referred to in the robots’ salute—as anyone else. When she reads reports off of a giant computer screen in her castle at the center of the city, a massive hologram of her father appears on the ceiling to berate her for her many perceived failures. Most especially, of course, letting this “Ruby” girl run free. This is what leads to Ruby’s branding as a “dummy,” and sets up their actual confrontation at the end of the episode, which builds both on what’s established here and the friction we already know exists between the two of them. Their battle starts here, but doesn’t end, implying this intriguing arc will have at least one more episode.

It’s worth looking forward to. In addition to the many things about Weiss herself we learn, there’s no denying the sheer mood of this thing. Perhaps my favorite moment actually comes not from either Weiss or Ruby, but from Shion, who offers this very true and absolutely fascinating piece of advice when Ruby calls to ask for help, concerned that Weiss secretly hates her.

If it can keep delivering moments like that, and like the more openly bizarre turns in this episode, Ice Queendom will be worth keeping up with. It remains to be seen if this marks a new direction for the series or if this is merely an anomaly. But for the first time since the series premiered, I’m optimistic. You should be, 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 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.