What I’ve Been Up To March 25th - April 14th 2024
Making my return! Sorry it took so long. I had a lot of material to cover, was still pretty busy catching up on stuff, and also the website crashed multiple times while I was typing up this post, deleting any work not saved…which is a bit demoralizing and of course also means I have to retype things, which adds a fair bit to the time needed to write this post. But it’s done now, and I can start immediately on the update post for the week following this 3 week absence which should hopefully come out at a more normal time…
Gonna continue to divide the post into Completed, Still Watching, and Started Watching. Obviously this is a much longer period of time than usual. As mentioned last time, some of the stuff I started watching I did not continue in this period. I still plan to finish all those shows, but not necessarily anytime soon.
I also wanted to clarify, these posts are not meant to be comprehensive reviews of episodes or shows talked about. They’re not meant to introduce people to the shows and explain who the characters are. They’re simply meant to give an idea of my thoughts on the shows I’ve been watching recently. I avoid spoilers because there’s the possibility someone is reading and hasn’t seen the show, but they’re not necessarily meant to be fully understood without having seen the show being discussed. If you’re wondering who a character I mention is because I haven’t told you who they are or something, that’s somewhat intentional. If I explained who every character in every show was, these posts would be unbearable to read.
Anyway, on to thoughts on all the shows I watched these past few weeks! I’ve got a good mix of shows I think for this post. Some old, some new, a mix of genres, a good variety in quality. I’ve included some currently airing shows, although I usually don’t watch shows while they’re airing due to my dislike of waiting for episodes week to week and often falling off of stuff if I spend too long watching it. I usually wait for a show to end and then binge it if I can, which I also have some recently finished shows this week which I binged.
Shows discussed in this post:
Neon Genesis Evangelion (TV show, End of Evangelion, All Rebuild Films)
Akuyaku Reijou Level 99: Watashi wa Ura Boss desu ga Maou de wa Arimasen
Sokushi Cheat ga Saikyou Sugite, Isekai no Yatsura ga Marude Aite ni Naranai n desu ga.
Mahoutsukai Precure!
Oomuro-ke: dear sisters
ARIA The Natural
Blue Archive
Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei 3rd Season
Heartcatch Precure!
Completed
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Evangelion is a pretty daunting series to talk about. Between its reputation as a difficult to understand narrative, the amount of writings dedicated to examining the inner workings of the series in excruciating detail, and the long-standing debate over its quality and which version of the ending is superior, it’s hard to approach this with a feeling that I’ll have anything to say that is particularly interesting or nuanced to anyone remotely familiar with the discourse surrounding this series. That said, I will still try to give my thoughts. Do keep in mind this is a very general post about my thoughts, and won’t be digging too deep into anything. I’m going to be pretty vague, but there will be huge spoilers for the series and films. It’s pretty tough to talk about some things otherwise. If you haven’t seen Eva, scroll past this.
Now, this is not simply a post about the TV show. No, this is a post covering the TV show, the End of Evangelion film, and all 4 of the Rebuild of Evangelion films. I went through all of it, the entirety of the franchise. So strap in, I’m giving thoughts on all of them.
Neon Genesis Evangelion: Anilist | MyAnimeList
The TV show Neon Genesis Evangelion wasn’t quite what I expected. Now, I didn’t go into this blind. I’d seen plenty of memes about Shinji not getting into the robot and Gendo being a shitty dad. I’d heard discourse on the religious imagery and gotten spoiled a bit on the nature of Shinji’s Evangelion unit. And of course the ending “Congratulations” scene is pretty unavoidable if you spend a moderate amount of time in anime spaces. There was still plenty about the show, though, which I wasn’t familiar with, even after having had anime as my main hobby for so long. The biggest thing I didn’t realize going in was that a large stretch of the show follows a monster of the week format. At this point, calling Eva a “deconstruction” of the mecha genre is kind of a meme because of how poorly used that term is, including when applied to this show, but I did find it interesting the ways in which the show ended up fitting into the genre. Now, I don’t bring this up as a negative. If anything, this is probably one of my favorite executions on this kind of format. Every monster they face feels suitably threatening, doing massive damage to the surroundings. There are plenty of episodes where the Eva pilots face mortal peril and barely escape it. However, there are also lots of moments where the show feels kind of silly in its problem solving methods and the attitudes of the characters as they face life threatening situations. I was surprised by how “anime” the show felt, and I mean this in a good way. I think it made the show a lot more approachable for me than what I was expecting. It has plenty of serious moments as well, and its presentation in many scenes is much more creative and unique than most other shows, but there was a comfort in the familiar too, and having the goofy or light moments to balance out the more serious stuff made it a pretty easy binge for me, despite its opening being a format which can often end up dull if you try to binge. One thing that also helps make things work in this more episodic stretch is the pacing of its character development and its overarching plot. Each episode felt purposeful and like it meaningfully advanced the plot. Every element felt like it developed perfectly alongside the other moving parts of the show. It has spotlight episodes more focused on certain characters or the larger mystery unfolding, but it never feels like anyone is at a standstill to make way for someone or something else. This is about as perfect of pacing as you can get I feel like, especially with something like this. As the show moves away from monster of the week, the story ramps up appropriately, but all the character arcs are reaching their endpoints as well. Nothing felt forced or half-assed, it just flowed together beautifully.
Probably the biggest thing which impressed me were the themes of the show. I’m a pretty big themes guy in general, but I do find that exploring a theme is one of if not the best ways to help me connect with a work and derive purpose and meaning from it, and Eva is no slouch in this department. What I took away from Eva were lessons on human connection and self-worth, and the show does a pretty broad spread of this theme while also digging pretty deep into various aspects of it. Certain ways of exploring those themes are present in different characters, and most characters tie back to that main theme in some way through their personal journeys. This might all sound very basic and straightforward when described here, but I found its integration into the story and characters to be masterfully executed, and the way these different aspects are explored are fascinating. The presentation of these themes is something to behold and which I don’t think many works come close to. I was actually surprised how much I resonated with the themes of connection as they were presented through Shinji. Now, Shinji’s far more whiny and non-committal than I usually like a character to be, so he’s not quite my favorite character in the show, but I do very much identify with his struggle. Shinji’s relationship with his father, Gendo, presents a lot of the thematic weight in how the show discusses self-worth and identity. We’re presented with ideas of how our relationships define us and our desire to be loved and appreciated, as well as the fear of abandonment and rejection. A lot of Shinji’s self-worth is tied to how others perceive him, and he constantly tries to find value in himself beyond his usefulness as an Eva pilot. He’s insecure and mistrusting. Shinji wants to connect with others and to be perfectly understood by both himself and others. He wants affirmation of his accomplishments, especially from those who he’s connected with meaningfully and who he cares about. All of these inner workings of Shinji’s character tie together into the themes of connection, and while they present various facets of that theme, they also contribute to the picture on the whole of what the show has to say about our desire to connect with one another. They also are why I actually prefer the ending of the TV show to any other ending in the franchise, since it focuses entirely within Shinji and ties his resolution to rejecting perfect connection in order to maintain individual identity. He has to come to terms with the fact that, for everyone to be themselves, that means we will never be able to fully understand ourselves or each other. He may still have his insecurities, but he accepts them. And what he gets in return is positive affirmation from all those he’s connected with throughout the show. And that’s beautiful. It’s a perfect resolution to the thematic arc, the narrative, and Shinji’s character development.
Now, I was familiar with some of the discourse and controversy coming into the show. I have not read up on most of the things talked about with this series, so my opinion is really only informed by my own viewing of the show, but I do know that some topics are pretty hotly discussed, and so I did want to address those here. On the topic of the Christian imagery, there is debate on whether that aspect is an added layer of thematic depth, or simply an aesthetic which the show chooses to adopt. I fall on the side of thinking that it’s more a motif for the show which isn’t necessarily thematically relevant, but rather more aesthetic to keep all elements tied together. I do think it makes the presentation of the narrative much grander, but I don’t think it has anything to say about Christianity or tries to comment on Christianity in any meaningful way. To talk about Shinji, I honestly don’t quite think the “get in the robot” memes are apt. I rather found Shinji struggled to commit to not going into the robot, always roped back in. That said, I mentioned before that he’s more whiny than I usually like a character to be, and this is a criticism I’ve heard before elsewhere, and I don’t disagree necessarily. Now, I do think Shinji has reason to be kind of bratty, even if it’s annoying at times. He’s just a teenager, and he’s got a lot being asked of him for very little reward, on top of all the emotional turmoil he’s going through due to the emotional abuse he’s experienced. I do think it’s an important detail that no one ever actually forces Shinji to pilot the Eva. You could say he has no choice because the fate of the world and the survival of his friends depends on it, but I never felt like that was the main reason he ever piloted the Eva. He piloted it for selfish reasons, because it gave him value which he felt was necessary to maintain his relationships and receive affirmation. So all in all, is Shinji annoying? Kind of, yeah. But is he justified and understandable? Absolutely. Now, the big debate: Asuka or Rei? Well, if you know my general taste in anime characters, you probably already know my answer to this decades old question. Asuka is by far my preference. I do like Rei, but I actually was surprised how disappointed I was in her characterization in the TV show. This being without high expectations necessarily, since I don’t generally tend to gravitate to deadpan characters. She’s still a good character I’d say, but she’s definitely the least developed of the main cast. Meanwhile, Asuka isn’t just a tsundere, but her character receives a lot of attention throughout the show. I think this difference in time spent developing each of these characters has some to do with Rei being heavily tied to the primary mystery of the show, and thus we aren’t really meant to get to know her until we can understand her circumstances better, but it still doesn’t help that her actual development is pushed to the end. Meanwhile Asuka is much more prominent throughout, and her character benefits immensely from this. She’s got more varied relationships, and her struggles are better established. It also helps that Asuka is more human, and I mean that in a pretty literal sense. Even without my preference for tsunderes, I don’t think there was any way I was picking Rei over Asuka. Sorry to all the Rei fans out there, I know you are disappointed.
And with that I’ll wrap up my thoughts on the TV show. I thought it was fantastic. I absolutely see why it’s a classic must-watch entry in the medium, and it will almost certainly make an appearance on my favorites list.
Neon Genesis Evangelion TV Show Score: 10/10
End of Evangelion: Anilist | MyAnimeList
On to End of Evangelion. I do understand why the “Congratulations” ending of the TV show is so memed upon, but as I stated before, I do actually prefer that ending to this one. That said, I do still see worth in this film, even if I think it’s overall unnecessary. For one thing, it’s got amazingly striking imagery. I didn’t even realize how much of the iconic imagery from the franchise is from this film alone, and not present in the TV show. That they could fit so much meaningful visual storytelling into an hour and a half film is astounding. That isn’t to say the TV show is a slouch in that department, but End of Evangelion brings it to another level I feel.
Now, I called this film unnecessary. What I mean by this is that I think it’s simply a reframing of the same ending as the TV show. The TV show blatantly states that it could not present everything which was happening during the finale of the show in a short period of time, and so it chose to instead focus entirely within Shinji. It is my belief that End of Evangelion is the presentation of the other things happening during the finale. It doesn’t delve into the inner conflicts of all the various characters like it did Shinji, but it does give us more of a narrative conclusion than what the show gave us. The show just kind of leaves what happened to the world as an open book. It implies that Shinji chose not to achieve perfect understanding by assimilating all of humanity into a collective consciousness, but it doesn’t actually show us what happened to the world and people after he made that choice. This film does that, to a degree. This is where I do kind of feel like I need to read some sort of explanation for the ending and could use help parsing meaning from the imagery a bit, as I don’t actually think I quite get the actual narrative conclusion of the film. At the end, Shinji is emotionally in the same place as he was at the end of the show, but the world isn’t restored. He and Asuka are clearly still individuals, but the film does kind of end abruptly and surprisingly with a kind of opposite reaction from Asuka than the TV ending, with Asuka insulting Shinji instead of providing affirmation. Part of me wants to attribute this to her nature as a tsundere. She shows care for Shinji at different times throughout the series, and I do think she cares for him, but she also derides and insults him often, so it wouldn’t be out of character for her to do so in an ending where perfect understanding wasn’t achieved. Asuka still isn’t quite adept at expressing herself honestly. But her expression and tone of voice and what she says to Shinji at the end felt so real that I have a hard time taking that as my interpretation, and instead feel like she was being honest, but I can’t figure out why she would say that at the end. I’ll almost certainly be rewatching this film. Maybe soon, maybe not. And I’ll probably do some reading or watch some YouTube explainers after that rewatch if I still feel lost. But for now, despite not understanding the narrative resolution here fully, I do still feel like I get a lot out of this film thematically and its usage of imagery is still some of the best in the medium.
End of Evangelion Score: 8/10 (tentative)
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone: Anilist | MyAnimeList
And now for the Rebuilds…I’ll preface this by saying that I am not much of a fan of the Rebuilds on the whole. I do think they serve a meaningful purpose, and the 4th Rebuild film does kind of save the project on the whole, but it doesn’t really have the magic that the original had.
The first Rebuild film I don’t really have much to say about. It’s a recap of the first little bit of the TV show prior to Asuka’s arrival. There are a handful of changes in the narrative technically, but nothing super meaningful. However, it does do a couple things which make it very hard for me to evaluate it fairly. Firstly, it cuts a ton of the meaningful character moments. Now, in discussing the Rebuilds with others after watching them, some did make the argument that the Rebuilds assume familiarity with the original, and I do think that that’s true, and somewhat justifies cutting a lot of the scenes dedicated to helping us understand the relationships between characters. However, it is still retreading that story, and as I am watching that story unfold, it missing all the little things which make that story work so well, with the intricate and careful character progression, all of which is important to exploring the themes, makes the show feel much more hollow. The film also kind of dumbs down the narrative beats a lot more. There are a lot more examples of characters explaining things which in the show didn’t really need to be said because the visuals did the storytelling, and while I generally don’t begrudge too much a show having characters explain things, it is somewhat a pet peeve of mine, especially when it’s already so well presented through the visual storytelling. This is especially off-putting with the assumption of familiarity used to excuse the skipped character development. If the Rebuilds assume familiarity, they shouldn’t have to explain that which we already understood. This film is also a pretty clear visual downgrade in my opinion. I don’t like the color design as much in the Rebuilds, and the backgrounds and animation feel like a step down from the show in certain areas. That isn’t to say that they’re bad, but more so to say that they don’t hold up to what came before. This first film in the Rebuilds simply feels like a downgrade in every way to the original, and if the rest of the Rebuilds were similar to this one, I would probably say that they shouldn’t exist to begin with. Now, that said, when grading purely on the content, putting aside any feelings of how it compares to the show, it’s serviceable. It still doesn’t have the thematic or narrative depth of the show. In fact, it didn’t feel like this film had much in the way of themes at all. But it’s still competent. It still functions to tell the beats of the story that is Evangelion, and as such I can’t quite give it a bad score.
Evangelion: 1.0 You Are (Not) Alone Score: 5/10
Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance: Anilist | MyAnimeList
The second Rebuild is also for the most part retreading ground of the TV show. It does change more things up. It introduces Mari, a character who didn’t exist in the TV show, although it doesn’t really do much beyond that in this film. Asuka’s introduction is quite different from in the TV show. Many of the angel designs are changed, or they flat out aren’t the same angels at all really. The fights themselves are very different, especially the ones involving the angels not seen in the TV show. All of this makes it a bit more worthwhile to watch than the first Rebuild film, even if by and large it still features similar narrative steps to the show and is going over the same stretch of the narrative for the most part. There are, however, some very key differences which this film changes which really make it actually worthwhile. For one, I actually think this film does a better job characterizing Rei than the TV show did at his point in the series. Now, it does kind of do so by having her not be the same character as she was in the TV show. In the TV show, she doesn’t really show much emotion, and she doesn’t really put effort into forming or maintaining relationships. The film chooses to change this by having her show some affection towards Shinji and provides her some motivation and agency in the narrative. Does this make her more of a “waifu” and act somewhat as fan service to Rei fans? Yes, it does. But it also plays a role in the relationships of the film in a meaningful way, and makes her more likeable as a character.
This change in Rei’s character and relationship with Shinji also leads well into the other major change in the narrative, and this is probably the biggest change of this film, setting up the trajectory of the other Rebuilds and establishing that this film series will not simply be a remake of the original’s narrative. This film ends during Shinji’s rampage following Gendo overriding Shinji’s control of his Eva, putting the pilot of that Eva’s life at risk. To go on a bit of a side tangent, I do have some issues with the change of the pilot of that Eva from Touji to Asuka, and the removal or Rei from that situation. In the original, Shinji didn’t know who was piloting the Eva he was tasked with defeating. All he knew was that some kid was still inside it, and so he refused to fight it on principle. This really grounded Shinji in a clear moral position: he would rather give his life than be responsible for taking the life of another. It doesn’t matter who’s in that cockpit, Shinji isn’t just hesitating because his friend is in there. Shinji is simply morally opposed to killing another person. This is a great character moment for Shinji. It furthers the conflict between him and his father, establishing a diametric opposition between Gendo’s harsh realism and Shinji’s moralistic idealism. It re-establishes Shinji’s issues with trusting his father and NERV. It presents Shinji as a good person and gives the audience a barometer of where he stand in terms of valuing not only human life, but his own life as well. In the second Rebuild film, replacing the pilot of that Eva with Asuka and Shinji knowing that going in, as well as removing Rei from that situation, makes this moment where Shinji refuses to fight the enemy Eva and Gendo taking away his agency a fraction as impactful as it was in the original. It might make the moment where Eva-01 bites into the cockpit more harrowing for the audience, who is likely much more invested in Asuka’s survival at this point than Touji’s, but in terms of Shinji’s character and the nature of his conflict with Gendo in that moment, the show did this infinitely better. Anyway, back to the point about the ending of the film, having Rei’s character be better connected to Shinji was a good move not only because it helps the audience like her more, but also because the final moments of the film have Shinji disobey orders to save Rei, and a lot of the emotional impact is tied to both Shinji’s attachment to Rei, but also Rei’s attempts to help Shinji reconnect with his father. Shinji puts it all on the line to save Rei, with the world at risk. Now, this moment could have been improved had we had Touji in the cockpit in the previous fight and not Asuka, since once again the conflict between Gendo and Shinji would have been established a lot stronger, and so the moment of defiance by Shinji and his holding onto his ideals and doing what he believes is right would have been all the more powerful. But this is still a strong moment regardless. This is also the point where the Rebuilds go completely off the rails into new territory. Shinji saving Rei and defeating the angel leads to the third impact triggering, much earlier than it did in the series, and the film ends with the fate of the world unclear. I do kind of like that they decided to do something new. Again, that’s the main thing which I feel justifies this film series existing. I don’t know if the way they went about it is quite the best way, and it doesn’t fit quite within the logic of the original, although obviously this makes changes to plenty of things so why not bend the rules a bit I guess. With this, we’re really, truly in new territory.
Evangelion: 2.0 You Can (Not) Advance Score: 6/10
Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo: Anilist | MyAnimeList
The third Rebuild film feels like it exists mostly to introduce us to this new world which our characters now exist in. Having gone a completely different route than the TV show and time skipped to 14 years after the end of the second Rebuild, there is no longer any real grounding in the TV show, and the film is free to do whatever it feels like. We can have giant evangelion powered flying warships if we want. This does make it so that I’m much less inclined to compare it to the TV show, which I do think is a point in its favor. I can’t say that certain story beats were better handled in the original, because they don’t share those story beats anymore. There is also another character dynamic which this film does better than what the TV series had done, and that’s Shinji’s relation to Kaworu. Kaworu only really exists in 1 episode of the original, but in this film we get quite a bit of dedicated time to see him and Shinji grow closer. This gives Shinji a reason to grow attached to him, and so his care for him makes much more sense, and that’s a pretty notable improvement to that shared element.
I do still have some reservations with the film, though. The thematic depth which was missing in the first film is still missing here, and I don’t think the Rebuilds ever quite recover from that. The second Rebuild did lay some groundwork for it, having Rei take an active role in trying to help Shinji and Gendo connect. This film also contributes to that end, when Shinji chooses to go with Rei to find Gendo rather than stay and be useless alongside Misato and Asuka. As such, there’s still some thematic through-line involving connections and self-worth and identity. It isn’t as intricate, though, and not as well woven into its various characters throughout. Not every scene feels purposeful towards its thematic goals in the same way as the original. Some of this may be because so much has changed during Shinji’s absence, and as such the audience is similarly disoriented, but I can’t help but feel less connected to what the film is trying to say, and like it’s saying less than the show.
I’m also not quite impressed by the narrative, and this film features maybe my least favorite Shinji moment. I’m not a fan of Rei in this film. Her reverting to being less human than her TV version sucks, and she’s quite dull throughout the film. I do like the time spent with Kaworu, and find it both entertaining and meaningful, and that is a large chunk of the film. Where the story goes from there is what annoys me. So Shinji and Kaworu decide to pilot an Eva together under instruction by Gendo. Last Shinji saw Gendo, he was at the height of his mistrust of Gendo. However, Shinji still believes his only use is piloting an Eva, and Misato won’t let him, so it makes sense he’d side with Gendo regardless. But he shouldn’t trust him. Shinji should trust Kaworu, so once again I do get why Shinji gets in the Eva. It makes sense for his character, and he has Kaworu encouraging him and standing by his side. My problem comes when Shinji and Kaworu are completing their mission together. They get down to where Lilith’s body lays with the spears in it, and Kaworu starts to question why Gendo sent them down there, sensing that something is wrong. They get into a fight with Asuka and Mari, who are trying to prevent Shinji and Kaworu from completing the third impact. Kaworu tells Shinji something is wrong with the spears several times throughout the fight, and tells him that he thinks Gendo may have misled them. Shinji…ignores Kaworu completely…and removes the spears…Why? Now I do know why Shinji wants to complete the third impact. Shinji believes that if he can complete it, he can do things over again. He won’t have destroyed the world, the people he lost will come back, and the angels will have been defeated to boot. What I’m wondering is why Shinji is so intent on ignoring Kaworu. We haven’t really spent any time establishing Shinji’s desire for affirmation in this film series, and even if we’d had the same build up of Shinji’s joy at getting affirmation from Gendo before, it would have been ruined by Gendo’s betrayal the same as it was in the show. So it’s not that. What I feel like we’re left with is just Shinji’s desperation to go back to the way things were, and to a time when everyone valued Shinji as an Eva pilot, not just Gendo and Kaworu. Yet I still struggle to make that emotional leap to where he so unquestioningly decides to do what Gendo told him to do. Kaworu is telling him to wait, to not remove the spears. Asuka is fighting tooth and nail to prevent Shinji from falling for Gendo’s trap. But he mindlessly decides to take them out anyway, killing the final angels necessary to fulfill the prophecy which will lead to the third impact, and progressing Gendo’s plan. It’s a moment of pure stupidity and desperation, and I just don’t feel satisfied with that in terms of where the character relationships are at that moment, even if they make sense in terms of Shinji’s motivations. It really feels like this film was more concerned with getting us from the end of the second film to the start of the fourth film than actually bothering to justify why events would play out the way they do.
Evangelion: 3.0 You Can (Not) Redo Score: 6/10
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time: Anilist | MyAnimeList
And so, finally, we have the fourth Rebuild film. This is far and away my favorite of the Rebuilds.
The film does open with a big flashy action scene, but we pretty quickly actually dive into a fairly extended slice of life segment. In this period, we get a lot of characterization for Asuka, get some really nice world-building as to what things are like after the disaster Shinji has caused, reintroduction of characters we thought to be long gone, introduction of new characters, the revitalization of Rei as an actual human character, and the character arc of Shinji from wallowing in depression over his failure and the betrayal he feels to regaining the motivation to keep living and find meaning in what he can do. Shinji matures an immense amount in this film, and most of that happens in this early segment of the film. It’s kind of amazing how much they were able to fit into what is basically a bit over half an hour, and I’d say this combined with the final confrontation of the film make the whole of the Rebuilds worth watching. The mid section is a good deal less interesting. It features a lot of preparation for the big battle between Misato and Gendo, and then also the early stages of that fight. There is some neat action here, but the environment the battle takes place in is pretty uninteresting compared to much of what Eva has done before. It does have a sense of scale greater than the average angel fight from the TV show, and is clearly going for something very different, but I just didn’t feel quite as impressed by the action scenes as I did with the ones from the TV show, and it’s not nearly as beautiful and thought provoking as the imagery in End of Evangelion. I’ve made my peace with usage of 3D animation in anime, especially for large action set pieces like this with lots of moving parts, and it does have its place here as well, but I didn’t get as into it as watching buildings crumble and 2D animated mechs and monsters fighting in the series. And of course, the worst visual of all, the giant 3D face of Rei…I can’t say I get why they went with 3D for that except that lots of other things in the background and the environment were 3D, but it looks so weird alongside the rest of the film. Now, there are some great character moments during this fight. I haven’t talked about Mari much, but she’s generally a pretty fun character, and her pairing with Asuka in this fight was pretty sick. Asuka goes through a lot in this fight, and we get to learn a decent amount about the Rebuilds’ Asuka’s backstory. Asuka had already shown how much she had changed in the early parts of the film, but this segment solidifies that Asuka Langley Shikinami is not the Asuka Langley Souryuu that we know from the TV series. Side characters like Fuyutsuki and Akagi get moments to shine, and Misato has heartfelt moments exploring her role as a mother, despite her attempts to reject that role. Everyone gets time to shine in this huge fight scene before we scale back to focus on Shinji and Gendo again. I do think that the characters in the Rebuilds still don’t have the foundation to make their character moments as strong as they were originally. The films don’t spend as much time on their interactions and the ways in which they connect with one another, and so this last hoorah for them doesn’t quite hit as hard as it might have if this were another 25 episode run of Evangelion. Nonetheless, I do still appreciate these moments to some degree.
As for the confrontation of Gendo and Shinji, I think it’s beautiful, and brings us a very different approach to an ending to Evangelion by giving a window into Gendo’s motivations and who he is as a person, as well as his relationship with Shinji and how his connections with others. Gendo is still an awful person, and awful parent, but learning about how he would destroy all of humanity just to be able to connect with his lost wife again was really neat, and then to have Shinji be the mature voice of reason is a fantastic role reversal and gives proper resolution to Shinji’s development in this film. It’s also some of the best presented content across all the films, revisiting the imagery from throughout the series and incorporating the two and their conflict into it. It’s a nice way to cap off the film and the franchise on the whole, bringing us back to the key relationship of Shiji and Gendo and giving that a resolution I don’t think we ever quite got in the other endings.
Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time Score: High 7/10
Akuyaku Reijou Level 99: Watashi wa Ura Boss desu ga Maou de wa Arimasen
I would not describe myself as particularly familiar with the “villainess” subgenre. In fact this show, Villainess Level 99, is actually the first show of the genre which I’ve watched to completion. I’ve seen the first few episodes of Tearmoon Empire, and I’m a little familiar with otome game tropes, but I wouldn’t consider myself particularly experienced with this specific kind of anime. I am, however, very familiar with isekai as a subgenre, and the villainess genre is, as far as I can tell, just a specific type of isekai which features tropes typical of otome games. As such, this series didn’t quite end up standing out to me despite not actually having seen much of the genre, and instead ended up feeling very generic. It does kind of try to stand out by having the story take place in a game which the main character, Yumiella, wasn’t particularly fond of in her past life, and as such she’s actually not too interested in involving herself with the characters from the game. However, the main game characters keep involving themselves with her, so I kind of struggle to call that aspect unique. It plays pretty heavily into the video game aspect of its fantasy world, which for the most part is kind of boring, Yumiella’s obsession with leveling being one of the more boring recurring gags and the meta talk not being funny or entertaining. The way the story uses the game narrative as an excuse to push the story forward and create unnatural drama or situations also bothers me. The only part of this element which I kind of liked was Yumiella’s reflection on why the character whose identity she has assumed would have acted the way they did in the game having lived life in her shoes instead of looking from the perspective of the player. That part was actually pretty interesting, and I wish the show did more to explore who the Yumiella of the video game was as a character and how the person now living as Yumiella connects with that. But alas, it really only comes up a few times.
Nothing about this show is particularly remarkable or standout to me. The show very specifically dedicates itself to following the story track of what is presented as a fairly bog standard otome game. The characters outside of Yumiella and Patrick are presented as not only the standard otome game tropes anyone vaguely familiar with the genre would have seen before, but also goes out of its way to explain how uninteresting they are through having Yumiella declare at the start that when she played she didn’t actually like any of them by the end of the game. I don’t know how the show expected that to make us at all invested in its characters, but at least it doesn’t try to pretend these characters are novel or interesting I guess. It introduces world-building aspects such as other kingdoms and conflict between regional lords and lords in the capital, but it really only uses these as filler and as crumbs to have Yumiella piece together the Demon Lord’s motivations later on. Yumiella is largely an oblivious deadpan character, showcasing poor social skills and weird obsessions which freak people out for comedic effect. She has a kind of nice romance with Patrick, and that’s probably the narrative element which most stands out, having Yumiella fall for some background character. No production aspect elevates itself above the standard anime production, and in some areas is fairly poor. The fact that it decides for one of its opening shots to have a poorly composited, poorly rendered 3D horse and carriage put onto a 2D background with out of focus stills of NPCs in the foreground and background around the carriage is…indicative of some of the most jank moments of the show. There are no scenes which stood out as particularly well produced. This show is basically mindless popcorn for people who want a power fantasy anime, and while it’s not an incompetent or offensive one, it’s largely forgettable. And that’s fine, I watched it for that very reason, because I wanted an inoffensive power fantasy anime to just kind of vibe to, and that’s what I got. I would have appreciated a bit more nuance to the show, but I don’t mind having some fluff every now and then.
Score: 5/10
Sokushi Cheat ga Saikyou Sugite, Isekai no Yatsura ga Marude Aite ni Naranai n desu ga.
So I mentioned above how at least Villainess Level 99 wasn’t incompetent or offensive. I cannot say the same of Sokushi Cheat, which is truly inept in so many ways, and occasionally decides to be offensive at times to boot. I want to try listing positives, but frankly every positive I can think of has a list of caveats to it which keep me from considering them real positives. The world is somewhat unique in that it combines a myriad of tropes from anime and film instead of just going with a standard JRPG format, but it’s still overall unoriginal because its world is comprised of a bunch of tropes, and the way these tropes come together is nonsensical and confusing, making everything just end up more annoying than actually interesting. We start with dragons and castle towns and magic powers tied to a JRPG quest system, but there’s later revealed mechs, and other dimensions, and a city which is very similar to modern Japan in the fantasy world alongside all these fantasy castle towns…Yeah it’s just all kinda thrown together so that it can make jokes about different things. Why is there a modern Japanese city in this fantasy world? The show wants to play with different apocalypse movie ideas.
Now, the show doesn’t want to be super serious. Its title makes clear it doesn’t have stakes, and it’s constantly killing off characters so that you don’t have time to care about them much if at all. It also has most characters just be generally awful people so that the main character is further justified in straight up murdering them without much of a care. You don’t have to feel bad about hundreds of people dying, they were terrible people to begin with and deserved to die I guess, by the show’s logic. In fact, the show has the mentor character tell the MC at a young age that it is ok to kill people simply because they annoy him. Quite the dubious moral center for our main character… But the show doesn’t want to be serious, it wants to be funny. So what’s the humor? Well, the main recurring joke is that the main character kills anything just by thinking about it, and characters are either surprised, or scared, or confused, or if they’ve been around long enough bored by his absurd plot armor. Unfortunately, the audience falls into the category of people who have been around long enough, and thus I at least found myself bored pretty quick with the main gag of the series. The show follows a format of building up some badass who’s got special or unique powers who is tasked with killing the MC, only for them to either be easily killed with a single thought or intimidated into fucking off from the story. The other main form of humor is sex jokes. The main love interest gets constantly harassed and ogled by the various scumbag male characters across the series, and gets repeatedly flustered either when put into a scenario where she’s sexualized or when she misunderstands something the MC said or when someone implies sexual intimacy between her and the MC. The main duo is a very standard bland, oblivious guy paired with a tsundere, so plenty of jokes revolve around the MC doing or saying something which makes the main heroine think that he’s interested in her, only to reveal that he wasn’t thinking about that right now. Anyway, everything described here just ends up feeling bad. Yes, many of the characters in this world are awful people, but I can’t say I’m satisfied watching a bunch of terrible people be shitty, and there’s no gratification in seeing the MC quickly kill them because that’s not something I want out of a power fantasy. Even if you think the death penalty is just (which I personally don’t), did the cat girl who lured the main duo into a trap because her main income is helping a gang rob tourists deserve to die? She was running for her life and the MC still decides to kill her simply because she had wronged him. Many characters are killed for simply being cocky or to prove a point. It just doesn’t feel good. The humor falls flat most of the time, especially when the joke is that some guy is skeevy and wants to sexually assault women.
I really struggle to find anything to like about this show, honestly. Any positive about it is marred by some set of negatives to where it’s hard to call them positives anymore. It’s even the ugliest show talked about in this post, on top of everything else. I have this show at a 3/10 for now, but the more I write about it and think about it, the more I wonder what it does to deserve above a 1/10 besides not quite being as offensive or poorly constructed as some of the things below it, so maybe upon doing a rescoring, this show will see a drop in score.
Score: Low 3/10
Mahoutsukai Precure!
I finished Mahoutsukai Precure! with my friends during this time. The show did remain light fluff through to the end pretty much. It was pleasant and somewhat fun all the way through, but also never really achieved much beyond that. Many of my praises and criticisms held true, although I would say the ending did elevate it a little bit.
The more plot relevant episodes still felt somewhat weak, partially due to the antagonists just not being that interesting. I still didn’t quite like the two sets of antagonists, even when the show tried to blend them a bit and justify why they were separate. There are a lot of evil henchman type characters who act as the antagonists for the series, which I think is pretty standard of all Precure series. In Hug tto though, even the henchmen had struggles which were presented and many of them continue to show up and change after being defeated. Some are executed or expanded upon better than others, but they at least took the time to humanize each of them a little bit. I didn’t really get that from the Mahoutsukai henchmen for the most part. They also weren’t very well characterized to begin with, their motivations largely being tied to their service to their lord, even if sometimes it was a little bit more than that. I will admit, exploring the first big villain after their defeat was a bit interesting, as their life prior to becoming a villain did have more to it than I was expecting us to get after they were defeated. It’s still only explored in a few episodes across the run though, so it’s nothing so substantial as to be a big factor. The final villain is also absolutely without any characterization outside of the desire to consume everything. The way in which they affect the world upon their introduction is interesting, and does play into some of the desires and anxieties of the characters in ways which work kind of well, but they aren’t really anything themselves.
I still enjoyed the interactions between the main characters right through to the end. Mirai, Liko, and Ha-chan are all delightful to follow, especially in the more slice-of-life episodes. Now, I did somewhat feel like some of the struggles it set up for the characters never got proper resolutions. Liko’s insecurities about her motivations and role are probably the biggest character specific exploration of character struggles which we get in the series, and I never really felt satisfied with how it ended. I did like the student council election episode, because it felt like it set Liko on a path to trying to find what she wanted to do. It was a good character moment after Liko had started to be more confident in her own abilities, so I was kind of surprised that that was kind of where it ended for her character development. I don’t necessarily think that Liko needed to have her life planned out by the end of the show, but I would have liked it if she had put more into trying to find her own direction in life. The episode ends with her giving someone else the presidency because she realizes he has paid attention to what needs improving at the school and actionable plans to improve those things, while she had simply asked others what they wanted improved but had no personal attachment to making those changes and realized she didn’t have a plan for how to change things in a realistic manner. I would have liked to see her develop in the direction of finding things she wants to do and figuring out ways to do those things, but her development really stops there. Mirai and Ha-chan don’t quite have something like this, something specific to them which they struggle with or which motivates them. They do both perpetuate the themes of connection, which are nice and do get some closure, but while I do enjoy both of their characters I never really felt like the show was exploring much with them individually. Ha-chan has some longing to know her own past, but that’s pretty easily solved by discovering her past. Mirai as a character is great for helping people come together and overcome their problems, but she’s not got a ton going on herself. And this is all fine, the show is light fluff and just isn’t very ambitious, but it does leave me wanting for more depth, and I find it hard to praise it beyond a certain point when it doesn’t seek to do much overall.
Everything in this show is exceptionally simple, which you might be saying is fine for a kid’s TV show, and I don’t necessarily disagree. However, while I think the show is fine as is, providing light entertainment and a simple, easy to understand narrative kids can follow along with, I do believe it can still strive to be something more. As such, the show ends up somewhat middling for me. I know this review seems mostly negative, but I do want to emphasize that I did overall enjoy this show. In a format like this where I am tasked with picking things apart and examining the details though, there isn’t a ton for me to dig into, and as such I’m left with just talking about how little there is to the show.
Score: Low 6/10
Oomuro-ke: dear sisters
I didn’t watch any more of the actual main Yuru Yuri series over the past few weeks, but I did watch this! This being a spin-off movie following the three Oomuro sisters and their home and school lives, the school portion focused less on Sakurako and more on her older and younger sisters, Nadeshiko and Hanako, since Sakurako’s school life is plenty covered by the mainline series to begin with. I’m still not finished the 2nd season of Yuru Yuri, let alone having made it through the 3rd season or the myriad special episodes. I was told you really only needed the first season to watch this, though, and so when a friend asked if I wanted to join in watching it, I decided it was worth doing so. And honestly, it was! All it takes is a general familiarity with who these characters are to jump into this movie, and the first season had given me that. It probably fits wherever into the series you want to watch it past the first season, although I suspect the more familiar with and attached to the characters you are, the more you’ll get out of this film. That said, it introduces and plays with the character dynamics fairly well, and is able to explore several fun scenarios across each group of characters. I think one thing that makes it work is the diverse age range. Jokes made involving the high school characters are different from the jokes involving the elementary school characters, and at home the Oomuro sisters are each of a different level of education, giving the dynamics at home a unique feel to them. This diversity allows the film to do more in terms of its humor and its characterization, letting Nadeshiko have more mature relationships while Hanako deals with someone very childish at school. These aren’t the most nuanced interactions or jokes of any particular set up, but they keep things light and fun. The film is also capable of providing us some solid heartfelt moments, especially between the sisters. It balances really well the sentimentality and the comedy to make both effective, even beyond what the show has been able to do up to where I’ve seen I’d say. It’s really pleasant, and pretty well animated to boot. All in all, I recommend anyone who’s a fan of the series to check it out, but even if you weren’t a fan of the series, if you’d rather a toned down entry of Yuru Yuri, this might be worth checking out for you as well.
Score: Low 8/10
Still Watching
ARIA The Natural
Across these 3 weeks, I watched quite a bit of Aria. Enough that I will not be doing the individual episode thoughts in this post, as that would be 15 short paragraphs, and this post is already bloated by the section on Evangelion. It’s also been a few weeks since I’ve seen some of these episodes, and so they’re not quite as fresh in my mind. So instead we get my general thoughts on the show for this stretch of the show.
In general, I haven’t enjoyed this rewatch as much as my first time watching the show, unfortunately, to the point that I do think I’ll probably do another rewatch sooner than I might otherwise. Some of that has definitely not been the show’s fault. There have been a few nights where I wasn’t quite all there while watching, either because I’m tired or because while watching something else just happens to be needing my attention at that time. My friend that I’ve been watching with and I have also been getting more people hopping into the voice call while we’re watching who aren’t watching the episode, but rather just want to hang out in voice chat, which is nice and all that they want to hang out, but I do sometimes find it difficult focusing on the episode when I have people in the call talking about football drafts or Pokemon or whatever. I’m going to try and find a way to make sure this doesn’t happen for Origination, especially since this will be my first time watching it, and it’s supposed to be the best part of the whole series.
All that said, I do still very much enjoy ARIA The Natural. I have somewhat lamented not doing these blog posts, because I do really think that reflecting on each episode afterwards helps me appreciate every episode more. Much like Akari reflecting on the events of that episode in her correspondence with Ai, I feel like sitting down to think about the episode and what it meant in a grander sense is something Aria is well suited for. There are definitely some episodes which I’ve come away without as solid an idea of what it’s trying to say, or which I think aren’t executed as well as others, but overall I do still feel like this season keeps a more consistent quality than ARIA The Animation, but without peaks as high. There are, of course, also standout episodes this season. Episodes focused on Alice are still fairly nice. I also like the pair of episodes about Akari retiring her training gondola, although it likely could have been condensed into one episode, there being quite a bit of repeat footage between the two episodes, on top of other flashbacks. In general, episodes which highlight Akari’s various friendships and connections have an emotional impact to them, as they build into the main theme of encounters. The show has had some more interesting and intense supernatural episodes, which I still don’t quite like as much as the more grounded episodes, but they’ve featured some pretty great imagery and direction. Every episode still at least has something special about it.
Started Watching
Blue Archive
I’ve decided to keep up with Blue Archive from week to week this season, so expect it to be part of every update for a while I guess. I’ve actually been playing the gacha game this anime is based on for a few years now, so this is a story I’m familiar with, which I think makes me less hesitant to watch it week-to-week instead of waiting to binge it.
The anime thus far definitely feels like it’s made more for people unfamiliar with the game than for long-time fans. Its first episode spends a lot of time introducing us to the world, scenario, and characters (in fact I’d probably go so far as to say that’s the only thing it does). It plays up the tropey traits of its characters a lot, at times somewhat naturally and at times somewhat awkwardly. The exposition is especially poorly delivered. I find myself annoyed at the show’s need to have characters sitting around explaining to each other something all of them should already know, especially since much of the information in each exposition scene has been more diegetically explained earlier in the episode, and information about things like the Eden Treaty are not really relevant at all to this season’s content. I don’t begrudge a show for being accessible to people who haven’t heard of the game before, but its first episode isn’t going to be fun for either long time fans or new watchers when so much of it is just setting up Kivotos as a world when the way they introduce us to that world is so boring. Sensei isn’t even really introduced until halfway into the episode due to all the exposition. The first shots are in reference to a recently passed event we’re not going to see anything more of this season probably, and then we spend half the episode on the Abydos students’ character intros and the exposition about Kivotos and Abydos. When Sensei shows up halfway through the episode, we get formal (but frankly unnecessary) character introductions for the Abydos students, followed by some more exposition about Abydos while Shiroko shows Sensei around the school, and then we have our awkward fight scene. We get a post-battle scene of the students celebrating and Shiroko reflecting on Sensei’s involvement. Then the episode is basically over, with a short and vague after-credits scene showing Arona, the girl inside Sensei’s iPad.
It kind of pains me, because this episode does follow the story of the game somewhat, and I do understand that they needed to pace things out to episode length and introduce the world in a way which could be understood by someone unfamiliar with the game, but it should be done in an entertaining way at least, and this just…isn’t. The exposition and character intros have jokes occasionally throughout, but they’re mostly tied to the character tropes and it doubles up on a lot of the information. The way they show the disorganization of the Abydos students in battle prior to Sensei’s assistance and then the more organized approach after Sensei is instructing them isn’t particularly convincing, either the ways in which they were disorganized or the ways in which Sensei helps them coordinate better. Why did Shiroko run into Nonomi? I get the idea is their lack of communication made it unclear to Shiroko that Nonomi was there, but was Shiroko not looking where she was going on a battlefield full of junk? Why did Hoshino struggle with the grenades before but doesn’t now? She doesn’t have her shield anymore, so she’s more mobile I guess, but I doubt the grenades stopped coming just because of the smokescreen put up. What was actually Ayano’s role in the fight before Sensei showed up? She wasn’t coordinating the students before or doing supply drops, she was just sitting there watching I guess and then when things went to shit she called them back. After Sensei steps in, it acts like this more cohesive strategy is hype, but it’s littered with cheesy lines and, similar to the slice of life moments before, feels more intended to explain to the audience what role each character plays than to actually convey an idea of what is happening. The whole thing is just kind of a mess.
The second episode is definitely better. It starts off with what was the tutorial mission of the game, going back to before the events of the first episode of the anime. We get some more exposition here, including Arona’s proper introduction, but it’s pretty quick and doesn’t go into unnecessary details really. This is followed by the OP, and then we’re back in the present day, first introducing how Sensei has been helping Abydos with the Kata Kata Helmet Gang recently and Serika’s continued mistrust of him, followed by another exposition scene, although one which makes a lot more sense than many of the ones in the first episode, and kind of one which I wish was in the first episode. The Abydos girls explain to Sensei how Abydos became largely abandoned and then how the school got shackled by debt, things which Sensei pretty understandably might not know, similar to the audience. It’s still a scene of characters sitting around explaining things, but I would much rather have cut all expositions scenes from the first episode and put this scene in there, as it directly explains the most pertinent information to the situation this season is going to deal with succinctly, rather than spreading it out and repeating certain aspects multiple times. Throw in a bit about how the General Student Council has been too busy with the disappearance of the Student Council President and the chaos that ensued to help Abydos deal with its problems and you literally have everything covered from the first episode but with more relevant information. Anyway, this episode is much less focused on expositing than the first, despite this double exposition lead-in. Instead, we get a more in-depth look into Serika’s character and what she’s all about. This is a pretty natural progression for the story and Serika’s character to follow, and as a fan of Serika’s character from the game I enjoyed getting to see her in the spotlight. Serika is a pretty stereotypical tsundere, taking a while to warm up to people and not wanting to let people into her inner circle too easily. She’s mistrusting, but at the end of the day she’s earnest where it counts, and others can earn her trust through showing care for what she cares about. It’s stereotypical, but it at least shows a pretty decent understanding for this trope and executes on it properly. We get to see Sensei’s character in a much better light as well, as Serika learning more about him as she struggles with the decision of whether to trust him gives the audience a window into his personality and drive to help Abydos despite not having a connection to the school like its students do. It’s not a masterfully done episode. It’s actually pretty standard all things considered. But it does provide something at least kind of charming in how it focuses its episodic story on these two characters and their relationship. We even get a little bit of flavor for the world as Sensei connects with the Shiba Seki Ramen owner over passion for their work, and seeing how the change in Abydos has affected the area in a broader sense than just the school. I will say, the fight scene is still very stilted due to random dialogue and its insistence on having characters each take turns showing off. Overall though, this is by no means a bad episode, it’s just a little basic.
I don’t think this adaptation has presented anything that makes this anime really stand out thus far in the sea of anime which come out each season, and knowing what’s to come in the story, I’m not entirely convinced we’ll get anything which really makes this season worth watching for anything more than the promise of future content, even if it has some very fun moments later on. Two episodes in, the adaptation is poorly paced, repetitive, and fairly basic in its presentation. Here’s hoping it improves before we get to the content I actually care about.
Mahouka Koukou no Rettousei 3rd Season
This is the other show I’m watching week-to-week this season. I’ve got a bit of a history with this series. When I first started watching anime early on, one of my friends who was introducing me to anime recommended the first season of this show to me and watched it with me. He also had me read the backstory light novel which explained how Tatsuya and Miyuki got so close and why they’re so powerful in the world, as well as their struggles with their family. At the time, I enjoyed the series somewhat. I wasn’t crazy about it and definitely inflated my score a bit because my friend was such a fan of it, but I thought its world-building was pretty interesting and I liked some of the characters. Fast forward to more recently, some of my friends were interested in the 2nd season which was coming out, and as such invited me to watch the first season and then continue the series with them. This was a very different experience, as they were not as fond of the show. Instead of being in a room with someone who is invested heavily into the magic systems and political dealings of the world, I was in a voice call with one person who mostly wanted to check the show out since he thought Miyuki was hot but didn’t care much for world-building in general, and another person who wanted to watch the show for flashy magic battles but couldn’t stand the abundance of talking scenes and found the incest annoying. And I can’t blame them. Having seen so many more anime now, I was shocked I ever liked the show as much as I did to begin with, most of the runtime being characters standing around explaining either how a type or aspect of magic works, or some political angle, or what is about to happen or just happened with little regard for making these exposition scenes interesting. That isn’t to say I have lost interest in the world constructed, but I have become much more aware of how the show sucks at presenting this world to us. It’s not creative or interesting or entertaining, it doesn’t bother with inventive presentation. It’s very dry, much like its main character. So why am I still watching, you may ask? Well, for one, those two friends I more recently watched with are still watching despite their own dislike of the series, and I may as well tag along. Besides that, I’ve already made it this far into the franchise, now having seen the non-canon side story film, the 2nd season, and the spin-off reframing of the 1st season from Miyuki’s perspective. It’s something of a sunk cost fallacy you could say, but I’m still invested enough to continue.
Anyway, long backstory of my personal history with the show aside, let’s talk about the first couple episodes of this season. I do kind of like the framing of this season so far, even if it is largely still characters standing or sitting around explaining things. We’re now in Tatsuya and Miyuki’s 2nd year of high school, having changed the social structure of the school and introduced the new freshmen, and the senior class having graduated. This saddens me a bit because I expect Mayumi, my personal favorite character from the series, will likely be largely written out of the show, but in these first two episodes she’s actually played a more major role than I expected, so I’m satisfied thus far on that front. The Freshmen haven’t quite grabbed my attention yet. The Saegusa twins are probably the most interesting of the new characters, but they’re also fairly generic. Shippou stands out a bit more, but he’s also kind of a jerk for no real reason so far. They keep implying that he’s got his reasons, but what they’ve presented us with at this point is a pretty piss poor explanation, and he’s clearly very set in the class division that the previous seasons worked so hard to villainize, so I don’t see them trying to make him out to be sympathetic. The Kuroba twins…exist? I’ll just assume they haven’t gotten their time to shine yet. Minami similarly kind of exists and hasn’t done much. This show is still about Tatsuya, not these newly introduced characters, but it would have been nice if, with so much time dedicated to showing off these new characters, the show had made them more interesting. Still, at least things seem to have moved forward and changed, and we have some new characters to see interact.
In terms of the actual plot of each episode, the first is simply introductions to the new school system and the new students. We have an engineering class now, and I think the class of weaker magicians is no more. Seniors like Mayumi and Juumonji have graduated. I’ve already kind of discussed the new students. The first episode also has an extended sequence of Mayumi and Tatsuya flirting, and the Saegusa sisters and Minami playing into their flirting. This episode doesn’t really do much besides introduce us to these changes, see the new students slotted into roles in the school’s power structure, and at the very end set up what seems to be the main conspiracy of this arc, the fake news. Yes, this arc is going to be about anti-magicians and magicians each trying to use the media to spread misinformation to their own benefit, but overall to increase anti-magic sentiment, the magicians using this to weaken the power of the Yotsuba Clan, which Tatsuya and Miyuki belong to. Riveting. Anyway, episode 2 doesn’t focus on Tatsuya much, surprisingly. Instead, it spends pretty much its full run establishing the various players in this arc’s plot. I could spell out all the moving parts, of which there are many, but the main thing to know is that the media is being used to target Tatsuya’s school to prove a link between the school and the military, of which Tatsuya is now aware, including the fact that they plan to have a member of the government and several members of the media make an appearance at the school to try and create a story which links the two. The other plot thread going on in this episode is Takuma Shippou and his beef with the Saegusa Clan, but they’ve mostly reinforced his resentment of the Saegusas and that his family is less interested in conflict with the other clans so they’re holding him back. We do get a significant amount of Mayumi this episode, as she’s investigating her family’s involvement in the misinformation campaign, as well as talking with her sisters and their struggles with Shippou, so that’s a bit of a bright side to all these scenes of characters sitting around explaining over and over the whole episode that an anti-magician faction from overseas is planning a misinformation campaign, and some magicians are going to use it to their advantage, but the episode does still kind of end up being dull. The show has also had both of these episodes open with what seems to be a flashback (judging by the date on screen and the film grain filter) of Tatsuya and Miyuki at the Yotsuba Clan headquarters, seemingly setting up some sort of confrontation there. For the most part it’s just been Tatsuya and Miyuki sitting in a room talking about how they’re different from three years ago, which I assume is the last time they were summoned by the Yotsuba Clan. It’s got a bit of intrigue to it, but overall it doesn’t add a ton to the episodes.
Heartcatch Precure!
It feels a little bit disingenuous to put this in this section. For one thing, I only watched the first 2 episodes in this time. For another, I’ve sort of fallen off for the group watch and am unsure if I will continue with the group or instead opt to watch it on my own. This is one of the Precure series which is most celebrated in my social circles, so a group watch setting isn’t what I would describe as the ideal place to view it. I also feel conflicted about watching the Precure series so out of order. Yes, they are largely standalone, but there are episodes which aren’t, and I do feel like I’m missing a small piece of the puzzle every time one of those episodes comes up, say nothing of the films. I may still decide to continue with this show, but we’ll see.
Anyway, Heartcatch Precure! probably has one of the most unique openers of any Precure series I’ve watched thus far. The threat to the world is very much presented first thing, with our main character dreaming about the defeat of Cure Moonlight and the decay of a magical tree of some import. We don’t have a lot of details, but it gives us enough information to make us curious about what’s happening. After that, things are pretty standard for a Precure opening episode. Our main character is starting at a new school, is a bit of an odd ball, and by the end of the episode is faced with having to become a magical girl to defeat some monster of the week. I do like that the monsters of the week seem to be founded in negative emotions of people. It’s not an amazing gimmick or anything, but it feels more meaningful than just slapping an evil mask onto an object or two and making it big and angry. It also opens opportunities for us to explore themes and emotions in each episode, and in particular, when the character whose emotions are the foundation for the monster are actually significant, it opens a window into the feelings of those characters and helps us get to know them. The first episode does just that, having the monster form from Erika’s frustrations with her sister, and while I don’t quite like Erika yet due to her actions in the rest of the episode, this does make her more sympathetic and interesting than she may be otherwise. The episode also doesn’t end before the monster is defeated, which is a bit different than any other Precure I’ve seen. Instead, it extends that fight into the next episode. I do somewhat appreciate this decision, since it gives us enough space to get to know the characters, as well as get a proper resolution to Erika’s feelings after Tsubomi has defeated the monster created from those feelings. It helps establish a connection between Erika and Tsubomi through Tsubomi’s understanding of Erika. So overall, so far so good.
