Tag: Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop

Posted on in anime, Weekly Writing Roundups

The Frontline Report [9/19/21]

The Frontline Report is a weekly column where I briefly summarize the past week of my personal journey through anime, manga, and the related spheres of pop culture. Expect some degree of spoilers for the covered shows.

Hello folks. Not much to say this week, it’s just been a good, solid week of anime. I’ve got some full-on reviews planned for the weeks ahead, but we’re not quite at the finale of any anime of this season yet. In fact, one started this week, which is quite unusual, but Science SARU can just do what they want, apparently.

I’m also trying a slightly different format with the show writeups this week, now that they’ve developed the habit of exceeding a single paragraph in length (whoops). Hopefully you’ll find the new format a little more readable.

Heike Monogatari

The advantage of a show starting with a public execution is that you immediately know what you’re in for. Heike Monogatari is all period-piece Japanese political drama and haunting omens of future ruin. This story of the prophet-eyed orphan Biwa and her benefactor (Shigemori, a prince of the very same Heike clan that kill her father in the opening. He sees dead people) is backed by a deliberately-anachronistic soundtrack that blends the biwa music after which she’s named with head-down, guitars-plucked shoegazey indie rock.

In general, Science SARU’s work is always distinct, but this is a positively enrapturing first episode. War is coming like storm clouds on the horizon. Biwa can see it, but can’t stop it. This is to say nothing of the other colorful characters we’ve already been introduced to. There’s Shigemori’s father, the immediately-unlikable, obnoxious, head of the Heike, prone to calling things “amusing.” There’s Biwa’s surrogate siblings in her new family. And lastly there’s the mysterious white-haired figure chanting those prophecies of war, death, and violence, who may well be Biwa herself. As for all of us? Well, I suggest giving this thing a look. You won’t regret it.

Kageki Shoujo!!

The most recent episode and a half of Kageki Shoujo!! essentially consists of running the same scene of Romeo & Juliet, performed in-audition by the cast, back to back several times.

There are many reasons this should absolutely not work. Structurally, showing your audience the same thing more than once in a row is a nightmarish prospect. Doing it multiple times is narrative suicide. But Kageki Shoujo!! can pull it off, because it remembers an important truth of the arts. Any work that engages with acting will eventually hit upon the question of what acting is. The reason we can watch the same scene run back multiple times without getting bored is because each time, a different subset of the cast is highlighted. The focus is ostensibly on the characters’ actual performances of Romeo & Juliet, but the real gem is their meta-performances. For an actor, the stage is everywhere. Both the characters themselves and their own actors–the seiyuu who voice them–understand this. This is the point where all the blood, sweat, and tears becomes worth it. What redeems the amount of pressure they’ve had to put themselves under and the things they’ve had to neglect or discard to get here.

Each character who is spotlighted grapples with the question of how to best portray their character in their own way. Ai channeling Juliet by remembering the strong impression Sarasa made on her and Yamada doing the same by reflecting on her first love (and a love lost) are both show-wide highlights.

I never wholly bought into the narrative, perpetuated on some corners of the internet, that Kageki Shoujo!! was the “hidden gem of the season” or anything like that. It has, in my view, too many flaws for that (and a particularly nasty dead spot in episodes 8 and 9 are why I haven’t covered it on this column in a while.) But if it does gain a cult following over the years, it will be on the backs of both its harrowing depiction of Ai’s trauma in its first half, and on these final few episodes. They present the show’s core thesis in as concise, yet resonant, fashion as is possible. The only thing left for the series to do is stick the landing.

Love Live Superstar!

People don’t always believe me when I tell them that I make every effort to appreciate the anime I watch. Sometimes the secret to really “getting” a show is a change in perspective. I’ve previously been a little sour on Superstar because it doesn’t quite nail the more comparatively serious character moments the way I’d like it to. (And that’s true in this week’s episode too, where we’re treated to an unintentionally hilarious sequence where our cast spies on future group addition Ren Hazuki as she details her life story to her own maid, who almost certainly knows it already.) But as a comedy I think I’ve been under-appreciating it. It’s easy to take Superstar‘s very visual sense of humor for granted. Rewatching some bits from earlier episodes, I found myself liking them more. This week also had a truly excellent sequence in which the perennially silly Keke Tang imagines herself and her fellow idols as the victim of some kind of AKB0048-esque crackdown on school idol stuff.

Also; even if you’re not watching this show at all, take a moment of your day to appreciate the performance at the end of episode six. The CGI choreography for this stuff has gotten a lot more advanced over the years, and while it’s not quite to the level of Nijigasaki‘s full-on music video dreamscapes, it’s still a really impressive bit of visual showmanship.

Elsewhere on MPA

Magic Planet Monthly Movies: WORDS BUBBLE UP LIKE SODA POP is Simple Summer Sweetness – This is, as the first half of its title implies, the start of a new recurring column for the site. I feel like the central conceit is pretty explanatory; I plan to watch an anime film per month and review it. We’ll see how it goes! I’ve also retroactively added last month’s Evangelion 3+1 review to the tag, just because it happened to fit. Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop is a wonderful movie, by the way. Give it a watch if you have the time.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or 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, Monthly Movies, Reviews

Magic Planet Monthly Movies: WORDS BUBBLE UP LIKE SODA POP is Simple Summer Sweetness

This review contains spoilers for, and assumes familiarity with, the reviewed material. This is your only warning.

Like your emotions
rise above the sea
young one

The anime film industry runs over with summertime teenage romance. Nowadays, a film in this category has to be either really good or have some kind of twist to stand out. Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop is in the former camp. It is conventional, but has such warmth and easygoing charm that, if you have even the slightest bit of room left in your heart for this genre, it’s impossible not to love.

The story (or rather, stories) here are extremely simple. Point the first; boy meets girl, literally. A chase sequence climaxes in a crash and an accidental phone switcheroo. Cherry, our boy, is a withdrawn haiku poet with a deserted Twitter account. Smile, our girl, is a teenage influencer who has recently become self conscious of her buck teeth. Mapping this out any further almost seems superfluous, if you’ve ever seen a film like this you can correctly guess that it all dovetails into shouted “I Like You”‘s and such. The story is a skeleton in this sort of film, not the flesh and blood.

Our second narrative is the more interesting one, involving an also-withdrawn old man who is also a haiku poet. The film neatly entwines together his story, and his love for his late wife (an also-bucktoothed singer-songwriter) with Cherry and Smile’s. But as sweet as all this is, lingering on story details risks getting stuck in the mud.

The current period of Makoto Shinkai’s filmography stands as a reference point, at least for me, here. Like those films, Words Bubble Up succeeds not because it is particularly complex or challenging, but because of its startling emotional resonance. It expertly captures sensations as disparate as the joy of first love, the fog and frustration of memory loss, the pleasures of artistic creation, and the deep futility of trying to correct an uncorrectable mistake.

Much of this comes down to the visual angle. The film’s symbolism is intricate, with every image chosen interlocking in a dozen different ways. Cherry blossoms are names and fireworks, and their leaves are buck teeth which link otherwise related characters across generations. Haikus are song lyrics. The sweetness of young love is a cola. The world is alive, so Words tells us.

On top of that? Bright, sharp coloring giving the world of the movie a look akin to informational posters and spot-the-object books. That may sound odd, even offputting, on paper, but in practice it works amazingly well, making the city it takes place in feel concrete in a way that even more “realistic” media can struggle with. It also means that Words is capable of conveying a ton of emotion through nothing more than some clever editing, or through character acting. Those whose greatest appreciation of anime stems from its core as animation will find a lot to pour over in this one.

Take Cherry, for instance. The boy’s character-as-written is solid but minimal. He likes haikus, he has a crush. But if we pay attention to his actions we can learn so much more. It’s straight-up pointed out that, in a way common to people with anxiety or processing disorders, he often keeps heavy headphones clamped over his ears to shut out unwelcome noise. As you may guess, he relies on them less over the course of the film, Smile’s companionship rendering them unnecessary.

Smile too gets a lot of attention in this regard. A moment late in the film where she’s shattered a vinyl record absolutely drips with intensity; you really feel her regret. She spends an entire night trying to glue it back together in a scene that probably lasts only a minute or two but feels three times that. All this without a single word being said.

That’s not to say the auditory component of the movie is unremarkable, though. The voice acting carries a lot of charm, with even minor characters like Beaver having distinctive tones. The soundtrack is excellent, too, and when we do finally get to hear that record (or rather, a copy) played at the story’s end, it’s a wonderfully sweet cut of folky pop.

“Sweet”, of course, is the operative word. I can think of few anime in recent memory that are so obviously fit by their titles. Of course words bubble up like soda pop; have you seen the world this movie takes place in? Like cola, I can imagine it being too sugary for some, but as summer ends, it’s the sort of refreshing treat I find myself craving.

If you like my work, consider following me here on WordPress or 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.