The Weekly Orbit is a weekly column collecting and refining my more casual anime- and manga-related thoughts from the previous week. Mostly, these are taken from my tumblr blog, and assume familiarity with the works covered. Be wary of spoilers!
Hello, anime fans!
I have a confession, there were supposed to be two articles today. This, and a longform comparison of Girls Band Cry and Jellyfish Can’t Swim in The Night called “The Girl Band Wars Are Almost Over – But Who’s Winning?” I couldn’t bring myself to do it! At this point, I like the former show more, and it just kind of felt rude beating on Jellyfish for “only” being very good as opposed to fantastic. (And I’m sure plenty of people would disagree with me there anyway.) Because of all that, you can guess what we’re starting with today.
Anime
Girls Band Cry – Episodes 10 & 11
Oh boy we have a lot to cover here. Suffice to say, I think Girls Band Cry has easily notched itself as my favorite anime of this season. Depending on how things go, it could take the annual crown, too.
First point of note; there’s a good old fashioned WcDonald’s in this episode, I was worried they’d gone extinct.
Second point of note; I like that the Rupa groupie scene is in 2D. Once again, flat animation is reserved for romanticized, idealized moments. Someone on tumblr pointed out that this seems to vaguely imply that Girls Band Cry‘s vision of what being a rocker girl “should be” includes being surrounded by other women. Who could argue with that?
Anyway! There are two main beats to this episode. Following the introduction of a barely-hiding-her-fangirlishness manager figure, our girls are semi-officially working with talent agency Golden Archer. Not long after, however, the episode takes a left turn into Nina’s family problems, where it stays for the rest of its duration. This starts with her mother and father showing up unannounced in the area. Given that the show is nearing its end, it makes sense that we’re finally bringing this all back.
We also get the barest outline of Rupa’s own backstory from her own mouth, a phone call that went unmade on the day of what she tersely refers to as ‘the accident’ has made her cognizant of how little time anyone really has in the world. She uses this to encourage Nina to try to reconcile with her family, although Momoka’s much blunter ‘encouragement’ of just flat-out banning her from the apartment is part of the equation too. Reluctantly, Nina ends up on a train back home.
This confrontation, primarily between Nina and her father, is not easy. An obvious reason for which is that both Nina and her father seem to be incredibly stubborn. Even when she’s literally back home, their conversation is had from opposite sides of a shoji door, with Nina herself radiating the same red rage particles that we’ve seen the show draw on her before as she struggles to hold back her anger (complete with a very loud heartbeat sound in the OST), and her father chain smoking the entire time.
Later, her father walks her to her old school, and Nina is clearly uncomfortable the entire time. (It may just be on my mind, since I’ve seen it recently, but the small city summer portrayed in the scenes where Nina’s father is taking her around remind me of AIR. There’s a similar tactility to the humid, baking concrete of the city.)
Perhaps surprisingly, Nina’s father seems to have gone through the effort of getting the school to issue an apology of some kind. This doesn’t sit right with Nina either, though, and the emphasis placed on her father labeling her a “victim” implies to me that the real issue here is that Nina’s father is unable to see her as a complete person. She can slot into one of several roles, perhaps; student, daughter, bullying victim, but he can’t handle it when she wants something he doesn’t have a good grasp on. This is in fact a recurring thing with Nina; Momoka gives her the same treatment in prior episodes with projecting her own past experiences onto Nina, and another character does the same in a flashback in episode 11. Nina seems to really not like being put in a box! Which is, honestly, completely fair!
Ironically, the inverse might be somewhat true as well, since Nina seems eager to put her father in a specific, adversarial role. Of course, Nina, being only a teenager, does not have nearly as much responsibility for her parent’s mental health as they do for hers.
Speaking of which, the climactic scene here where Nina is talking about how That One Song gave her the courage she needed to soldier on after dropping out of school is just genuinely really beautiful. Aside from its excellent visual presentation—how often do you get the “falling into the open blue sky” thing in the show itself?—the fact that she openly admits to have been contemplating suicide at one point, and how she contrasts with that how she feels now, as someone who loves herself and is ok with who she is…. It’s odd to put it this way, but I honestly feel, I suppose, proud of her?
If you’re cynical, you can object that Nina’s reconciliation with her father is too clean and too soon. I would counter that the two of them still obviously have a fairly complicated relationship by the end of this episode, and that it is rare for anyone to truly ever square everything away with their parents. I don’t think the show portrays Nina as having done that, and I think that remaining emotional debris will continue to be important as the series enters its final stretch.
Which brings us to episode 11. Easily the highlight of the show, and maybe the best single episode of any anime this year so far.
The scheduling of the concert is switched around, which gives TogeToge a leg up to hopefully make an even bigger first impression at their first festival. Things are going well for them for once! It’s really nice to see!
In the leadup to the festival, with Nina and Momoka actually doing pretty much fine for once, the show refocuses on its other three characters for a little while, spotlighting Subaru and how she’s still hiding her involvement with the band from her overbearing grandmother, and then moving over to Tomo and Rupa, whose relationship—played to a tasteful tee, neither over- or under-explained—provides a source of strength for the both of them in the face of the loss of their respective families. Physically in Rupa’s case, emotionally in Tomo’s. Subaru seemingly resolves things with her grandma later in the episode, but Tomo and Rupa’s issues aren’t so easily packed away. I wouldn’t be surprised if the show touches on them one more time before it ends.
Also, hey, Mine’s back! That’s cool as well. In general the atmosphere of the pre-show buildup reminds me a bit of the pre-concert scenes from Oshi no Ko, although in that show there’s a different and more cynical context at play to the upbeat, nervy anticipation on display here.
Also returning here? The punk girl from episode one. (Kyouko, apparently.) It feels telling that even she’s a fan of TogeToge now.
Momoka taking them all to the big main stage to see Diamond Dust play before their own show is gutsy. And at that, we get our rewind all the way back to Nina’s confrontation with DD’s current lead singer when they were both students. And, as has been previously implied a few times, friends! We still don’t precisely know what their falling out was about, as Pink’s remark to Nina where she tells her to stop “playing the tragic heroine” are awfully vague. Regardless, DD’s performance itself is pretty good, although one gets the sense they’re sort of being set up to fail here from a meta perspective. Their little show of rivalry here is admirable, but they aren’t the band we’ve been following this entire time. (And while they sound fine, if we’re being honest, they’d be rinsed not just by TogeToge but by most protagonist girl bands from these sorts of anime. Then again, maybe me thinking all this is the intended reaction, and we’re supposed to be feeling some amount of fannish partisanship.)
Rupa’s just here for the drama as usual, what a queen.
During the sound check Subaru plays a pretty nice little breakbeat, and Rupa gets to show off her bass licks.
TogeToge also unveil their new looks here and all of them look genuinely fucking fantastic. (I’d recommend this little Twitter thread on possible references and symbolism in the outfits.) Rupa’s weird military uniform thing with the goggles, Subaru’s pinstriped suit(!), Nina’s dyed hair and badass long shirt, Tomo’s almost pixelated-looking hair bow accessory, Momoka’s arm bands. Honestly just a killer visual presentation both in- and out-of-universe.
When the time comes to take the stage, they absolutely kill it. At the end of the day, this is an anime, so of course, Girls Band Cry deploys absolutely every single visual trick it can think of to really sell the performance that serves as the climax of this episode.
“Void & Catharsis”, the song they play, is a, if you’ll pardon the pun, rock solid alternative number with a surprisingly heavy low-end that serves as a bed for Nina’s incisive, comet-like vocals. (Also it has what I’m pretty sure is a breakdown? I’m not a heavy metal expert, but what the fuck.) The show spins out into full music video mode here, taking a page from the otherwise very different Love Live series, as the stage blends into a blurry stitching-together of crystalized memory and motive; defiance, lies, love, loss. It is perhaps the single most arresting moment in a music anime to air this year. I ended up replaying the entire thing from the start of the song onward, twice. I can’t help myself; TogeToge have serious charisma. Every single one of them sheds tears during their part of the music video, making this episode something of a sideways title-drop, as well.
The single most compelling visual element, though, has nothing to do with all the crazy camera tricks, overlays, flashbacks, or anything else like that. It’s Nina herself. In what I can only describe as an absolute triumph of CGI in anime as a form, this little seventeen year old pipsqueak comes off as a complete and total superstar, and, even more than that, an absolutely fatal frontman. She stomps angrily from one end of the stage to the other with her long shirt drooping and billowing dramatically, she grips her head in anger as she sings like the words are being physically ripped out of her throat, she headbangs, she pumps her fist and spins around to egg her own band on, she glares at the audience like she’s trying to kill them—maybe Diamond Dust specifically, who are also watching—with her mind, she does weird shit with her hands and gestures around like a rapper. It’s mesmerizing.
Clearly, all this is the result of a ton of love not just for animation as a form of art but for concerts as a form of performance. The entire thing is just end to end nuts, and this moment, regardless of what came before it or comes after it, completely validates Girls Band Cry as an artistic endeavor. If the entire rest of the show were to somehow go missing, removed from reality with a surgeon’s knife, this performance alone would make the undeniable case that it deserved to exist.
Nina isn’t even my favorite character in this show. But good god she’s great here. I’m just honestly stunned.
As for GBC itself, there is only one real problem; there are still two episodes of this anime left. It’s possible I’m just sitting in a sort of concertgoers’ afterglow at the moment, but I kind of can’t imagine what else the show could really do from here. How do you top that?
Nonetheless, Girls Band Cry wants to try, and that ambition is admirable.
Jellyfish Can’t Swim in The Night – Episode 10
Once again mostly rambling stream of consciousness, because talking about this show coherently is kind of hard. It seems like there’s maybe been another (brief) timeskip?
Kano’s put the group on ice after her fight with Mahiru, citing her reasons for singing as trivial and expressing a fear of singing in the meantime. The show here makes the odd decision to focus an episode primarily on Mei, although we’re drawing a link to the current Sunflower Dolls center, Mero, I think?
There is something to be said both about this show’s weird fixation on noses, and how Mei is somehow the gayest person in this show that includes a possible actual couple.
“The Influencer” is the idol from a few episodes back, now going by Nom-Nom Baba. Godspeed.
I must give the show credit for its horror-inflected visuals when Mei decides to activate her stalker powers. Also worth noting is how hard Mei seems to be infatuated with Mero despite her ulterior motives and despite claiming to not even be a fan of Mero’s in the first place.
The depiction of Mero has a fairly shallow person is interesting, someone who only sings because she wants to be famous and be adored. Mero makes the claim—probably not entirely wrong—that Kano herself mostly only sings nowadays to try and get her own mother to notice her. Of course, Mero herself doesn’t seem that happy with her own situation, so perhaps she’s not the best source.
Kano being once again subject to the gossip of classmates. Not great all around for her, I’d imagine. Although, the fans she overhears talking near the jellyfish mural does do something to improve her morale. (And honestly, the two who talk about wanting to respect JELEE’s privacy remind me of a hell of a lot of conversations I had on the ZUTOMAYO Discord back when they were first blowing up.)
Nonetheless, Kano draws a not entirely false but certainly not entirely true equivalence between her own behavior and her mother’s pattern of predatory behavior.
There is something genuinely, deeply sad about the scenario of exactly half of JELEE putting on a livestream to announce their hiatus. Mei’s absolutely heart-rent, ridiculously screechy and off-key singing is a very literal cry for help. It sounds TERRIBLE, and for a show centered on music to play something so deliberately unmusical as an important plot point is….bold, to say the least, to say nothing of her rambling rant immediately afterward.
By the end of the episode, it seems to tentatively be the case that JELEE will get back together. But is it really going to be that simple? Time will tell.
Also hey! This show deserves credit for managing to be visually inventive enough to meaningfully compete with Girls Band Cry, even at this relatively late point.
Jellyfish Can’t Swim in The Night – Episode 11
So we’re back in The Negging Office again as of the start of this episode. This happening while the rest of JELEE are having a big viral moment is an interesting juxtaposition. Of course, they’re not all doing great either given that Kiwi’s cover has been blown at the same time. So really it’s 50/50 on the main cast doing OK right now.
Once again a case of Yukine using her perceptiveness to just basically gut someone emotionally for her own ends. (Honestly, I think if I can pin a major difference between this show and Girls Band Cry it’s that this series has something akin to an actual villain.)
With Kano and Mei’s conversation we return to a theme of passion and intention over technical precision that I think this show is fairly good at elaborating upon. This takes the form of rewriting the lyrics for JELEE’s upcoming single here but the series has gone back to it several times.
Back on Mahiru’s end of the story, she’s handed an extensive correction sheet that essentially swaps all of the art she’s contributing to the Sundolls’ show out for different work entirely. Yukine frames this as a compromise but it seems fairly obvious to me that she never actually intended to use Mahiru’s art in the first place and this entire thing has just been a ploy to hurt Kano.
Kiwi is handling the public rejection that comes with knowing her superhero persona was fake very badly, we see her combing through her comment sections and deleting anything negative and the like. She doesn’t drop the bluster for Mahiru, either, and in fact compares herself to “some punk band” in how she intends to tell anyone who tries to bother her in person to go shove it. (Wrong show, darlin’.)
There’s a recurring thing here about the characters either not liking themselves or being so unsure of themselves that they don’t even know if they like themselves or not. This is mostly framed in reference to artistic pursuits, but it seems to be more general than that, which ties into the episode’s episode’s climactic scene.
Visiting an arcade that was an old haunt of theirs as kids, Mahiru and Kiwi run into some former friends, who proceed to badmouth Kiwi in front of Mahiru while Kiwi slumps toward them unsteadily. When they notice her, they rake her over the coals for lying about her past and for being immature. Some of their taunts are outright transphobic in a way that feels very real.
Kiwi, gathering an inner conviction that seems to surprise even themselves, rants at them, telling them off, screaming at the top of her lungs and making a huge scene. Kiwi seems to say outright that they’re some form of genderqueer if not precisely in those terms exactly. It’s a brave, raw moment from an anime that’s been full of those.
We don’t see their tormentors’ reaction, as the show just cuts to Mahiru and Kiwi riding a train back home.
Mahiru stands up to Yukine, too, when they have their next meeting. The episode again ends on a cliffhanger when Mahiru tries to negotiate JELEE performing at the concert as well.
It feels fair to say that Jellyfish is trying its absolute damnedest to sell all of this. I want it to work, especially in Kiwi’s case since I think the show is fairly unsubtle about portraying them as some sort of genderqueer. Unfortunately though, on a personal level, I still think that while Jellyfish has a lot of strong moments, and the show’s core thesis of being true to yourself is solid, I’ve found it kind of hard to reckon those moments together in my head. It’s still definitely quite a good show, but something is missing in a way it wouldn’t be in a story that had a slightly cleaner, more ironed-out plot.
Of course, a few weeks ago I said such a version of Jellyfish would arguably be less special, and part of me still thinks that, but I can’t help but shake the feeling that this is one of those anime that just doesn’t have enough time and space to do everything it wants to do, which is a shame. (I have seen speculation that the series was cut down from 20 to 12 episodes at some point during the writing process. If that’s actually true, it explains a lot.)
Still, we have the finale next week. Who knows, I want to be proven wrong.
The Grimm Variations – Episode 2
The second episode of CLAMP‘s loosely fairytale-inspired anthology is in fact a pretty straightforward karmic retribution story. Honestly, I’m a bit mixed on this one, although my opinion has improved a bit since I first watched it a few days ago. It’s pretty lurid and, even considering the end of the ‘tale’ told here, it’s not exactly a great feeling to be following a serial rapist and killer as our protagonist for most of the story. Still, his comeuppance is pretty satisfying even if his executor doesn’t necessarily seem like a much better person. (If she is, it’s only by degrees.) It also has astoundingly little to do with the story it’s ostensibly based on, which does not sway my opinion of it strongly one way or the other, but may put off some.
The visuals in this episode are pretty interesting too. This story takes place in a future that’s consistently half-submerged in a virtual reality, making determining what’s “real” or not something of a challenge, and giving the whole thing an airbrushed CGI finish. (And also some strong character designs, especially for Scarlet who looks a bit like if Lelouch Lamperouge had a twin sister who spent most of her time in a fire-red bunny ear hoodie.) This is in fact the ostensible motivator for our protagonist, as vile as he is. There may be some seed of commentary in here about the constant thirst for “grounded”, “realistic” stories is at times little more than an excuse to rubberneck at horrible tragedies, but even as I make this connection, I’m cognizant it’s a bit of a reach.
All told I think the main goal here was just to tell a straightforward tale of comeuppance, and it’s a decent one of those, if definitely not one for the squeamish.
Mysterious Disappearances – 10
Yorumun’s gone full Bonzi Boddy. What will our heroes do?
I love Nodoka’s voice actor just absolutely dying in the booth to portray the character having a breakdown. Pretty good!
Yorumun being a version of a garei rather than a tsukumogami is another example of the show switching from one apparent type of supernatural being to another.
I like Mysterious Disappearances‘ fascinating analogy between an idol and their audience and a divinity and their congregation. It’s hardly the first time anyone’s made the observation, but this is one of the more literal takes on it I’ve seen, and I think consequently this is one of the anime’s better episodes.
I like Yorumun’s departure, on the whole. It’s a pretty good sequence and gently nudges the episode into tragic yuri-esque territory. There is the obvious question of whether Yorumun’s death allowing her former host to walk again is ableist or not, I’m inclined to unfortunately kind of think so, but that’s a problem inherited from the manga. Then again, so are most of this episode’s strengths, so maybe it all comes out in the wash? I’m not sure.
Delicious in Dungeon – Episode 24
Fantastic end to a fantastic first season. I honestly don’t think you could ask for much more.
The first half of the episode sees us resolve the changeling plot from last week. More than anything, I want to highlight the really excellent animation here. They went all-out, knowing it would be the last episode for a while, and it really shows. Half-foot!Marcille in particular is given an absolutely cartoony treatment that is both adorable and very funny. Love it.
The more serious second half is what I think people will remember long-term, though, and I think that’s about right. What sticks out to me about the Dungeon Meshi anime as we await the gap between seasons is that it has a very good understanding of its source material, a very good command on what to emphasize, what it can and can’t do, and how to portray all of that in a way that feels complimentary to the manga as opposed to feeling as though it’s trying to replace it. All that to say; the trolley ride sequence is the exact right split of moody and comedic. The way the conversational ball drops when Laios reveals his biggest anxiety about Senshi’s plan is how just the five of them could possibly eat a whole dragon? Brilliant.
Also, Falin, despite only technically being in this episode for a small bit near the very end in person, is great throughout here. She remains my favorite character and I’m in absolute love with how much affection the animators and director clearly have for her.
All told, I cannot wait for season two.
And that’s all for this week! Normally I’d here include a fun little Bonus Thought, but I actually have something more serious to talk about, here. My housemates and I have been having some financial difficulties at home, and to make a long story short we need about $120 USD to fix things. If you enjoyed the previous article, or for that matter anything I’ve written that you’ve read recently, I would be deeply, earnestly thankful if you could consider contributing to my Ko-Fi. If you’ve been reading this site for a long time, you’re probably aware of how generally reluctant I am to ask for help in the main body of an article itself, so that should give you some idea of how serious things have gotten. Hopefully everything will be fine!
EDIT: We’ve actually already hit our goal! I’m so impressed that I’ve edited in a post-facto Bonus Tomo Screenshot below, because she’s my favorite and I think everyone should look at her. Look at how devilish she looks behind that keyboard! What a scamp.
And on that note, I’ll see you next week, anime fans. Please feel free to leave a comment to tell me what YOU thought of this week’s shows!
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