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.
Hello folks! I’ve got two writeups for you today, one of a returning favorite and one we’ve not had in this column before. Some quick announcements before we get into things.
The first is not site-related, so I’ll lead with that: I’ve dropped a few seasonals and put some others on hold. Most notably CUE! in the former case and Ousama Ranking in the latter. While CUE! was genuinely starting to bore me, I want to be clear that my pausing Ousama Ranking is more my own issue than the show’s. I intend to, hopefully, finish it later this year and if I do so and find it worth discussing at length, I’ll write about it then. I don’t like to feel “guilty” about dropping or pausing anime if I can, I’ve mentioned before that I have various mental issues that affect my mood and can sap my motivation, and lately I have unfortunately very much been in the lazy phase. I’m under no delusion that I owe anyone these explanations, but I do feel like I should at least make an attempt to keep y’all in the loop, just so you’re not left wondering why Quasar no Blackstar or what-have-you randomly disappeared from repeat Frontline Report coverage.
On a more directly site-related level, there are two small changes coming to Magic Planet Anime. For the past few months I’ve made a habit of parenthesizing a voice actor’s name after the first time introducing a character in a writeup, and then giving some quick “you may know them from”-style fact. I’m going to still be providing the names, but I think the trivia has made me look like a bit of a know-it-all, and I don’t want to give off that impression, so I’ll be stopping that. Also, in the “Elsewhere on MPA” section, I’m now full-on embedding the article links instead of simply posting text links. I genuinely just didn’t know you could do that, and it seems like a much better and cleaner way to link other articles in this column.
Let me know what you think of these changes in the comments! But enough yapping about the site itself, on to the stuff you actually care about.
Seasonal Anime
Miss KUROITSU from the Monster Development Department
Often, some time after a season begins, I will end up picking up an extra show or two. Usually just something to watch on my “downtime” with friends between anime I’ve actually committed to writing about. Rarely do I mention these anime on this site; they’re often not exactly the best shows of a given season, they’re often pretty obscure, and they rarely have much to discuss about them. Once in a great while one will contort into strange and compelling enough shapes that it demands my full attention in spite of my own plans–last year, that happened to Blue Reflection Ray–but it’s rare.
Occasionally though, I’ll feel compelled to pen a bit about them just to give them whatever due I may feel they’re owed regardless. (And to fill in some blank space left by my dropping of CUE! a few weeks back.) So it is with Miss KUROITSU from the Monster Development Department, a quirky comedy anime that’s been quietly chugging along for the past eight weeks to the notice of, evidently, rather few people, going by its social media numbers.
The series’ premise is not difficult to get your head around. Here it is, in full, straight from Anilist’s database.
Kuroitsu is an assistant researcher in the superhuman research & development department of Agastya, a villainous secret organization that battles with heroes who try to save the world. Kuroitsu lives a busy life in Agastya, caught between the absurd requests of her bosses; making presentations; implementing new features into superhumans; and getting results within the allotted time, budget, and spec requests; all without vacation.
We follow a lab researcher who works for a toku show-style evil organization. Nothing complicated there. The series blends the genre with the style of an office comedy, and the results can be pretty damn funny when correctly dialed in. I’m particularly fond of the managerial Megistus (Tetsu Inada), who is a combination surprisingly responsible and levelheaded boss and also a Huge Powerful Guy in Metal Armor.
The show’s main roadblock to being more recommendable is that sometimes that humor also wildly misses. One of the main characters is Wolf Bete (Sahomi Amano), who was a monster intended to be a wolfman but, due to the interference of Agastya’s evil leader Akashic (Mao Ichimichi), ended up as a girl with wolf ears and claws instead. He still considers himself male (and to the translators’ credit, they respect that), and so do most of his coworkers, but the show sometimes leans into mildly transphobic humor regardless. Also, the character’s very premise just feels a bit…weird. In a way that’s going to be familiar to anyone who’s read or watched a lot of gender-bender stories over the years.
One of the two magical girls (!) who’re present in the show, Yuto (Yui Horie), also gets this treatment, since they’re “actually” a boy. (I’m not terribly clear on how the character in question views themselves in an in-universe sort of sense. I get the vague impression they may be, as we’d say, gender-questioning.) It’s just enough to not make Miss Kuroitsu the obvious recommend that I want it to be, and that does kinda suck even if the show is otherwise pretty good.
Take the most recent episode, the eighth. Its middle segment contains an absolutely incredible scene where the magical girls, infiltrating Agastya on the orders of their boss, participate in a shockingly normal interview, where the wilier of them, Reo (Yukari Tamura) just spins a whole fabricated sympathetic backstory out of thin air. The whole thing only falls apart when Megistus takes note of their age.
Despite its issues, Miss Kuroitsu is worth a watch if you can look past them. Screwball office comedies aren’t as common as they could be in anime, and this is a solid one underneath it all.
Princess Connect! Re:Dive Season 2
The main plot of last week’s episode of Princess Connect! Re:Dive could not be simpler. Kokkoro, and two minor characters we meet for the first time here–Misaki (Misaki Kuno) and Suzuna (Sumire Uesaka)–are sending out a bunch of letters at the post office. For whatever reason, a bunch of bandits raid the post office while they’re there, and steal the letters along with several other things. Thus, Kokkoro and her two new acquaintances must go on a (short) quest to get them all back.
This A-plot is decent fun. We get a lot of Kokkoro’s signature “x” face and in general the other two provide solid foils for her. Misaki is the weirder (and therefore funnier) of the two, and seems to think she’s some kind of alluring temptress despite being….not that.
I’m normally, to say the least, pretty mixed on this sort of humor. But the fact that the two are also demons ratchets it back to “funny,” at least for me, on sheer audacity. There is an utterly bizarre sequence where Misaki tries to do a stripper pole routine–animated in a decidedly goofy fashion and set to comical club music–on her staff to the complete bafflement of the bandits she’s trying to “seduce.” Kokkoro and Suzuna end up having to break her out when this inevitably leads to her capture.
Although it does make their own motivation for sending letters clash a bit oddly against their actual appearances. The both of them are students at a local school that is threatened with closure in part because of their own poor grades. We’re not given exact ages, but they seem pretty young, given that Suzuna (hilariously) calls the 7’s the “final boss of multiplication tables.” Despite their somewhat showy outfits, and Misaki’s behavior, the characters aren’t actually sexualized enough to make this come across as gross. It’s just strange. They feel a bit like actors performing a play that they’re not properly costumed for. It’s a minor qualm, but such things are noticeable in the context of Princess Connect, which is otherwise very well put-together. Obviously, the three eventually recover the letters. Suzuna also gets a very short highlight of her skill as an archer (presumably also true in the game), which is nice.
Cut with all this are brief spotlights on our other three main characters, which collectively form the B-side of the episode. Presumably, this is setup for Princess Connect‘s season finale. A solid idea, since there are just four episodes left. Karyl again finds herself mesmerized by the mercurial, wicked Kaiser Insight (Shouta Aoi, doing his Cagliostro from Symphogear voice), whose control over her seems to run far deeper than any simple evil overlord / minion relationship.
At the same time, Pecorine dreams of her former self warning her that she’ll be left alone again once her true identity comes out. Yuki, meanwhile, works out his distress over last week’s developments with Labyrista (Akira Mosakuji), who delivers one of the most stunningly profound lines of the whole season when Yuki despairs over forgetting (or more likely, being forced to forget) his previous companions.
She’s right, and Princess Connect‘s ability to casually drop things like this in the midst of what is otherwise a fairly silly episode really nails down its place as the season’s best show. Nothing else is working in this space this well right now.
At episode’s end, after Kokkoro, Suzuna, and Misaki have recovered the letters, the Gourmet Guild set out to harvest a rice crop. With just the four of them, it’d take forever. So, it’s naturally here where we learn what Kokkoro was sending so many letters for; they were sent to all of the Gourmet Guild’s friends and allies, asking them to pitch in. And I do mean all of them.
This veritable parade of cameos, some of which are from characters we haven’t seen since season one (remember the huge llama girl? What about the ghost who turned Yuki into flan?) is one of the episode’s highlights. And more than anything, it makes me dead certain that Princess Connect is gearing up for this season’s final arc. In its last minutes, we see the Gourmet Guild transform the rice harvest into a massive feast for everyone, and it’s a huge, well-earned capital M Moment of emotion. Pecorine can’t help but tear up, and I doubt she’s alone.
She resolves, just before the credits roll, to tell Yuki and Karyl of her true identity as Princess Eustania. Time will tell how that goes, but no matter what happens, this wonderful memory, preserved in amber, will stick with us, the audience, the whole way. PriConne has a way of hitting you in the heart.
Elsewhere on MPA
One of the reasons I like doing commissions is because I’m occasionally handed some fun little thing I’d never even heard of before. Such is the case with Yoyo to Nene, a largely forgotten magical girl / isekai film from the early ’10s. It’s not perfect, but I still really enjoyed it and highly recommend it, especially if you’re a fan of ufotable‘s visual work. Especially especially if you also wish they adapted more interesting material.
My Dress-Up Darling manages to produce two good episodes in a row! Astounding! This wasn’t as much of a knockout as last week’s and there’s still definitely more fanservice than I’d like, but there are only so many ways I can say that and not feel like I’m repeating myself. I enjoyed Gojo helping Shinju fulfill her cosplay dreams.
Equivalent exchange at work, perhaps. As Dress-Up Darling improves, Sabikui Bisco, my other weekly, gets markedly worse. This episode was honestly a real blow to my enthusiasm for this series, it makes the previous week’s look like a masterpiece. We’ll know by tomorrow if the downward trend continues or not.
And that about covers it for this week. So, with little left to say, until then, anime fans.
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