Tag: The Rolling Girls

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

Weekly Anime Writing Roundup – 8/25/20

Hello folks! Not much to say in the lead-in here, we’ve got an old groupwatch ending, a new one starting, a couple stray articles here and there. Nothing too crazy this week but I’ve been able to keep up a good clip. Still not entirely sure about the film thing I mentioned last week, for now I’m just going to have Twitter vote on a choice and perhaps let donators and patrons suggest the films to me in the future? Something again to consider.

On with the roundup!

Twitter “Live Watches”

The Rolling Girls (#anitwitwatches) – This is over now! I’ve covered my thoughts extensively elsewhere but I still love this show a lot. I have a bit more to say further down, you’ll see why if you don’t already know.

Revolutionary Girl Utena livewatch – Progress on this has been slow just due to it being a bit hard to find the time. That said, the couple episodes I watched this past week have been some of my favorites. Check this out for a moment where the emotions run so high that both I and my screenshot software have a breakdown.

Sailor Moon (#FightingEvilByGroupwatch) – And here’s the newcomer! I literally just finished this up as I’m typing this so I’m still collecting my thoughts. I like the series so far, though it hasn’t immediately hit me in the same “oh god this is my shit” way that I was the first time I saw, say, Pretty Cure. That’s not really much of a knock though, these three episodes were all pretty fun and the show absolutely oozes 90s which would make it a fun watch all on its own. Side note: this groupwatch was started by my friend @himawari_town_ on twitter. Go give them a follow if you’re interested in this sort of thing! And check the hashtag! Lots of people have neat things to say about this show. Or heck, consider joining in yourself! Lots of options here.

The Geek Girl Authority

The God of High School Recap (S01E08): close/friend – Kind of a slower more transitional episode compared to last week. It’s solid as far as such things go, but gosh do I just want to see shark man get the tar beat out of him.

Deca-Dence Recap (S01E07): Driveshaft – I’ve finally found a surefire way to get people to watch this show and it’s this image.

They huuuuug! 😭

Burn The Witch Announced for Crunchyroll Fall Lineup – I don’t normally link this sorta thing but my hope is that Burn The Witch being easily legally available in the US miiiiiight possibly lead to us eventually getting a TV anime? Not that I’m unhappy with how the film looks, the trailer’s really promising and there’s not a single sign of whatsisname from the manga, which makes me hopeful that he’s been mostly written out.

Magic Planet Anime

The Idolmaster (2011): Full Review – Time is a flat circle and I know that because I was dead sure it had already been at least two weeks since I wrote the im@s review, but nope! It’s a very good show that I like a lot, and I’m glad some friends of mine got me to watch it. I don’t have a ton else to say beyond that other than what I said in the review itself, so get reading. By the way, there’s a not as nice looking mirror of this on Anilist if you prefer that, for some reason.

Under The Deep Pale Moon: Revisiting The Rolling Girls Five Years Later – It only occurred to me after I had already published it that this title is kinda misleading since while it has been five years since The Rolling Girls aired it’s only been just under one since I watched it, oh well. Either way; this show is a part of me now, I go through some effort to try to explain why I love it so much and to be honest I’m not sure I did it justice. This is going to be one that I’ll come back to a number of times over the course of my writing career I think. (See you all in 2025? One of my favorite pieces of anime commentary from someone who’s not me this year was a ten year anniversary article after all.)

Other Thoughts N Such

I have a plan to get a manga column called The Manga Shelf off the ground sometime soon where I just write a couple of paragraphs about whatever I happen to be reading, regardless of whether it’s finished, unfinished, bad or good. Look forward to that sometime this week?

I have been continuing with Eureka Seven, the series is going in some interesting new directions but I’m not sure I have a ton new to say on it. I’m 3/5ths of the way done, so look forward to the full review when I’ve finished!

I’ve also started watching Yu-Gi-Oh! SEVENS and gang, this show is bananas. I highly recommend it if you need a dose of goofy kid show energy in your week. If you want a small taste, please enjoy this thread I made about a recurring character who is a 37-year-old that looks like a gradeschooler and her deck themed around outdated fashion trends. Your guess is as good as mine.

Don’t have a ton else to say! Fall Guys has been consuming a fair amount of my time to be quite honest and that’s not anime so I’m not covering it here! (Or maybe I will, who knows.)

Kneel before your new God.

And goodness that’s about all! I had more to list here than I thought this week, but I suppose that’s a good sign.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Misc. Anime

Under The Deep Pale Moon: Revisiting THE ROLLING GIRLS Five Years Later

Whatever else may be said about it, there is almost nothing else like The Rolling Girls. From its circumstances of creation, to its odd hodgepodge of themes and aesthetics, to even its place in the broader continuum of 2010s TV anime. The Rolling Girls is a true original, one of the few directorial turns from Kotomi Deai and an unusual move from Wit Studio, best known for Attack on Titan. The show is not perfect; it’s weird, it’s wildly overambitious, it’s more than a bit of a mess, but I’d argue that almost none of that matters.

Since I first watched the series a bit under a year ago I’ve turned it over in my head a number of times. I’ve referred to it as the anime equivalent of record-collector rock; a sometimes (but not always) derisive term used to pin down music that mines on reference and stylistic riffing to communicate its ideas. I don’t think that’s an incorrect description, though even just a year later I recognize far more references in the series than I did the first pass around, but there’s more going on here. The show’s tagline spells things out about as clearly as the series ever deigns to:

Rolling, falling, scrambling girls. For others, for themselves. Even if they’re destined to be “one of the rest”

That’s a fascinating little poem, isn’t it? “Even if they’re destined to be ‘one of the rest.'” is a kind of inspiring that doesn’t really come from anime (or really, any pop media) that often. In some of its best moments, The Rolling Girls is a treatise on how support, “soft action”, and even simple determination can match up to more bombastic natural gifts. It took me months to realize it, but this is why the show’s central plot tokens–the Heart Stones–are revealed in the finale to not actually do anything.

This is not to say that The Rolling Girls is an anime about accepting your lot in life–that’d be absurd–but not everyone is Superman, and that’s fine. Some people want to be Superman, and might eventually get there, and that’s fine too. There’s an agnostic, nonjudgmental bent to the series’ storytelling that is incredibly refreshing even five years after it aired. The Heart Stones, the final narration tells us, respond not to skill but to passion. Which you can read a lot of ways; personally I think it maps rather well onto the difficulty of “making it”–financially, emotionally–by pursuing what you love.

And this makes some sense; up and down the show the power of both the bombastic Bests and everyone else comes not from some magic item, but from passion. The show’s fractured near-future Japan divvies the country up into some several dozen microstates, each driven by a love of something. The otaku paradise of Always Comima is the first example we get, and by the series’ midpoint we’re getting hit with wild rock ‘n roll pyrotechnics set to exploding Buddha statues.

The phenomenon of superpowered “Bests” is never explicitly explained, but seems unrelated. The character of Hibiki, perhaps my favorite of the titular Rolling Girls, is rooted in this discrepancy. The finale shows us the hard work she has to go through to catch up to the naturally-gifted Bests. As someone who has always considered herself a bit of a late bloomer and specifically not particularly naturally intelligent, it is maybe inevitable that I’d see myself in the show in general, and Hibiki in particular.

The narrative sympathizes with both the Bests and the Rest, but the fact that The Rolling Girls‘ final insert song contains the lyric “Let’s sing a never-ending song for the bastards of the world” should tell you who we, the audience, are intended to see ourselves in.

The Rolling Girls remains, at least in my experience, a touch enigmatic. It has a place in the wider trends of TV anime of the New ’10s, but it’s a strange one; somewhere in the farthest ring out of the FLCL-indebted high-concept action anime that were often some of the most intriguing (though not always the “best”) shows of the decade. (Flip-Flappers, Kill La Kill, PUNCHLINE!, FLCL‘s own sequels Progressive and Alternative. Hell, even Akiba’s Trip, there were a surprising number of these things!) It is united with them by its freewheeling, wild aesthetic sense. It stands apart because of its thematic core and because of its unusual setup.

There are very few other anime in which Nozomi and friends would be the main characters, but that they are here is something we should all be thankful for. Nozomi and friends, through their struggles, help save the world. Who could ask for anything more than that? Indeed, perhaps we, too, all the rest of us, may help save our own troubled planet. I have said it before and will say it again; everyone is a hero to somebody.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Weekly Writing Roundups

Weekly Anime Writing Roundup – 8/11/20

So it is Tuesday–Tuesday night at that–and I am only just now getting to this. A late one just three weeks in to my new schedule! Alas. You’ll have to forgive me, it’s been a rough few days here at the lakeside temple for reasons I mostly won’t get into here. On with the anime! I’m also formatting these slightly differently now, using bullet points was making it impossible to justify most of my paragraphs, which was annoying me. Just a minor note!

Twitter

The Rolling Girls livewatch for #AniTwitWatches – We only watched one episode this week, #9, which is about the only thing in the whole show I’d call a “transitional episode” since it’s where the series switches over from being pretty strictly arc-by-arc and pivots into its finale. This, in fact, is my favorite part of part Rolling Girls (narrowly beating out the Kyoto arc). And to this day I’m amazed that they managed to fit four distinct arcs plus the three-episode finale all into a single-cour twelve episode show without having it feeling rushed. Anyway, I won’t spoil anything about episode 9 itself. It’s a doozy.

Revolutionary Girl Utena livewatch – I got to the start of the Black Rose Arc, as it’s called, in Utena, and LET ME TELL YA FOLKS, people are not kidding when they say this is where the show really starts to amp up the weirdness! I speculate somewhere in that particular thread that Utena might’ve been an influence on some of the folks at ’00s SHAFT just because a lot of the wild architecture and particular visual setups are really starting to remind me of that. Regardless, I’m having a ton of fun with the show and in fact will probably be livetweeting more of it right after I finish this writeup.

The Geek Girl Authority

THE GOD OF HIGH SCHOOL Recap (S01E06): fear/SIX – “It’s slowly improving” is not an exciting way to sell a show to someone, but I would argue that that’s basically what GOH is doing. I’m interested to see how the already pretty stylized fights change now that actual supernatural powers are involved.

THE GOD OF HIGH SCHOOL Cast Q&A – I got to interview some of GOH’s cast! Kinda! It was just a short text Q&A I sent their way through my contact at CR and their responses were in turn fairly short, but I still think it’s cool that I get to do this kinda thing. I’m really interested who this “mob boss” character Mr. Tachibana mentioned is and why the auditions for him were apparently so amusing. Did you know that Jin’s VA was primarily a stage actor before this? That’s neat.

DECA-DENCE Recap (S01E07): Differential Gear – I’m running out of ways to tell y’all that this is the best thing airing right now. Please watch Deca-Dence it’s so good.

Magic Planet Anime

Hoo boy.

Apathy Is Not The Answer: The Anime Fan Community Needs To Defend Its Most Vulnerable Members – ‘Lo and behold, the most popular article ever posted to Magic Planet Anime, by an order of magnitude. (Somehow I doubt many of these will be repeat readers but I’d love to be proven wrong). I wrote this in response to some developments over at Anilist–the details are in the article itself–and I was really not prepared for the blowup it caused. I have nothing much else to say about the issues discussed within, I don’t think it’s a perfect article, but I think I expressed a very simple plea for empathy as effective as I could. Some people, unfortunately, do not think that I should have done that.

In the two days since it’s gone up I’ve responded to a number of counterarguments and read many more. Some of which are….let’s be polite and say “a bit rude”. I’ve also read and responded to a fair bit of thanks. My hope is that the ultimate result of the article is that some people open their eyes to issues that they’d previously not considered and, secondarily, hopefully more people check out my work. I don’t consider myself an activist or political writer or anything of the sort, and it’s more than a little frustrating to be pigeonholed as some kind of ultra-left demagogue less than a month out from writing a decently positive review of goddamn Akiba’s Trip. What can you do, I suppose.

Other Thoughts N Such

I’ve got several things to talk about down here this week!

I finished Oregairu‘s first season. No real idea what to make of it! It’s interesting and I liked it more than I didn’t but I’m not in a real rush to watch season two or catch up to the (currently-airing) third. It’s one I’ll be turning over in my head for a while.

I have also resumed watching The Idolm@ster after quite a long break. This show is still very good for many of the same reasons I outlined in my article about it way way back when this blog was in its infancy, although sadly Miki is not as present in the show’s back half. I am still not entirely sure what to think of the rival idol agency and its comically evil president, but hey! Also in that article I briefly mentioned that I was enjoying 22/7. Haha, how things change.

And finally, I’ve also been working my way through Eureka Seven. E7 occupies a really odd place in the popcultural memory and I want to talk about that more when I actually review it (as I’ve been commissioned to do, thank you patron, you know who you are!) but I’ve been enjoying it so far. I particularly love the character of Anemone who is, well, a lot. E7 in general is quite the wild ride and I’m really liking its particular brand of weirdness, particularly now, as the first eight or so episodes of the show were a bit slow for me. Side note! Connoisseurs of Mecha Anime Discourse may know that a few years back the Darling in the FranXX showrunners were accused of essentially xeroxing Anemone’s entire design. Having now seen some Eureka Seven, I get the complaint!

and GOODNESS. That’s about all for this week! I’ve been busy, I suppose! To that end, well, I’ll just direct your attention to the footer below.

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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

Weekly Anime Writing Roundup – 8/3/20

So it’s the middle of the night and I’ve committed to doing these on Mondays I guess. Whatever! Anime time.

Twitter

  • The Rolling Girls livewatch for #AniTwitWatches – An advantage of linking to the Twitter moments is that I can literally just copy and paste the links lmao. Anyhow: the arc of The Rolling Girls we watched this week, the Kyoto arc, is among my favorites. Mostly just tweeted this one out as normal but do take a peek at my last couple tweets which are about the song sung in the latter episode of the arc.
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena livewatch – I would like to say that things are heating up in Utena but I’ve been assured that things actually start *really* getting weird in the next arc, so I guess I’ll look forward to that. I maintain that Nanami’s purple epulet / yellow jacket combo is absolutely killer.

The Geek Girl Authority

  • DECA-DENCE Recap (S01E04): Transmission – BOY THERE’S A LOT GOIN’ ON IN THIS SHOW, HUH? I have the exact opposite issue with Deca-Dence that I have with God of High School. There’s so much going on in each episode it’s a bit hard to know what specifically to write about. That said: I love where this show’s head is at and I’m super excited to see how it develops from here.
  • THE GOD OF HIGH SCHOOL Recap (S01E05): ronde/hound – After several episodes that I don’t think would really move the needle for most people The God of High School‘s fifth is the first one in a while where I think it’s actually done something to improve. Granted; it’s still not being wildly innovative here, “talk with your fists” is fairly standard shonen stuff, but it’s done well here. Consider picking this up if you like that kinda thing and have been on the fence about this one?

Other Thoughts N Such

  • I started watching Oregairu (or as it’s formally known in English, ahem, My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU. Yikes) just out of idle curiosity and at the inspiration of seeing someone I’m mutuals with livetweeting it. It’s a neat little series, I’m only a few episodes in so I can’t make any sweeping judgments yet, but I like how it manages to juggle the rather difficult tasks of making Hachiman seem like someone representative of the lame cringelord in all of us without making it seem like it’s endorsing his mentality, which are two different things. Obviously not everyone is going to feel that way about it, but still, I’m pleasantly surprised with this’n so far.

And that’s all for this week. See you guys around!

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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, Misc. Anime

Weekly Anime Writing Roundup – 7/27/20

Hi folks! If you only follow me here on MPA you’ve probably not seen much of me lately. Iv’e been doing quite a lot of writing, but most of it not on here. From now on, I’m going to be trying to do a roundup of everything I’ve done in the past week related to my anime writing. Mostly, these will be on Sunday, but this week’s is the day after. It’s just that way, sometimes!

Twitter

  • The Rolling Girls livewatch for #AniTwitWatches – Livewatch of 2017 Wit Studio series The Rolling Girls. This is actually my second time seeing the show and I highly recommend it.
  • Revolutionary Girl Utena livewatch – Livewatch of the classic shoujo series. Aiming to update at least once a week, probably more than that much of the time.

Anilist

The Geek Girl Authority

  • THE GOD OF HIGH SCHOOL Recap (S01E04): marriage/bonds – Recap of the most recent GHS episode. I have to confess to struggling a little bit with GHS in general, it’s a very archetypal shonen and consequently I sometimes find it difficult to find things to say about it. However, this most recent episode is definitely interesting if nothing else, even if I’m not sure it’s really going to move the needle for those still undecided on the series.
  • DECA-DENCE Recap (S01E03): Steering – By contrast, I think basically anyone with an interest in TV anime should be checking out Deca-Dence. It’s a fascinating series even only three episodes in, and I have absolutely no idea where it’s going to go from here. I’m thrilled to be keeping up with it and I hope everyone else who checks it out loves it as much as I do.

Other Random Stray Thoughts:

  • It’s really good to have Healin’ Good Precure back. That said, I won’t be resuming my liveblog of it on here, it was kinda just too much work and not very many people read those posts.
  • I hope everyone’s having an alright summer. It’s rough out there with the pandemic and the heat, try to stay as safe and cool as you can!

If you like my work, consider following me on Twitter, supporting me on Ko-Fi, or checking out my other anime-related work on Anilist or for The Geek Girl Authority.

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.