魔法使いの嫁 / Mahoutsukai no Yome / The Mage’s Bride / The Ancient Magus’ Bride

Apart from watching much less anime these days than I used to, I also tend to watch trash. Trash is relaxing, enjoyable and brainless. If it’s not trash, it’s mostly light shounen fare that’s only slightly above trash, or sequels to series I began ages ago. Beyond that, well, what have I watched recently and finished? There are a couple of shows I haven’t quite finished yet, but discounting those, probably nothing since Boku dakega Inai Machi, over a year ago.

So this show was if anything a pleasant contrast to the rest of my anime fare. And very enjoyable it was too: a supernatural story with a slow pace, strong characters, a British setting and some really iconic visuals. It put me in mind of several strong series – Natsume Yuujincho, for the whimsical feeling and the supernatural influence on everyday life, only the introverted main character who attracts supernatural beings and slowly opens up thanks to getting close to them is female rather than male, and the mythology is British rather than Japanese. Kuroshitsuji for the British setting and strong but dark deuteragonist, only with less abrasive humour and without that unpleasant taste in the mouth recent manga chapters of that series have left me with. And Fullmetal Alchemist, for the physical presence of the deuteragonist, snappy but tasteful humorous style changes and strong supporting cast. Pretty impressive company to be in.

Mahoutsukai no Yome follows a young Japanese woman called Chise has a difficult and traumatic childhood, compounded by terrifying experiences with supernatural beings (expanded in the rather slow OVA prelude episodes), as she sells herself into slavery and is bought by Elias, a strange combination of fairy and human who appears like a huge man wearing the skull of a wolf with the horns of a ram. A pretty fantastic design. Elias buys Chise for two reasons – because he wants to understand humanity better, and because she is a sleigh beggy, which in this world is not a little fairy from the Isle of Man, but a kind of human spiritual conduit, able to draw magic from all around it and from within.

The show has a rather charming approach to British folklore and culture that occasionally shows fantastic research and precision (I used to feed ducks at that exact spot in Regent’s Park!) and sometimes just makes up its own systems or seems to take vaguely British images and throw them together in what seems right to a Japanese sensibility (was that…fish and chips served as a side dish to a proper meal in an upper middle-class household?!). The episode titles are taken from what seems to be a very dated book of British idioms (I doubt anyone has said ‘What is bred in the bone will not [come] out of the flesh’ in a hundred years, especially when we have ‘The apple never falls far from the tree’).

But uneven as it may be, it’s always a thrill to see England represented in anime, whether it’s K-On girls running around Camden or aerial battles between dolls in Rozen Maiden, or even the first arc of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure. They don’t have to get every detail right, and it’s always enjoyable to see things like Anteros at Piccadilly Circus made the location of an exciting climactic showdown. There’s some fun mythological elements, too – Shakespeare seems to have been heavily referenced, for we not only get Titania and Oberon as king and queen of the fairies, but a helpful little spirit called Ariel. Otherwise, we have a cute Selkie – though not as cute as the one in Song of the Sea – and of course some mighty dragons who are unless they lose control somewhat less fearsome than the ones in Arthurian or Christian mythology.

Probably the most interesting element of Western mythology is the use of the Cartaphilius character. Thankfully the term is never used, but this is the Wandering Jew, who was cursed by Christ never to die in response to jeers on the way to Golgotha. I don’t know whether the mangaka changed this to ‘The Wandering Sorcerer’ for politically correct reasons or simply thought the audience wouldn’t understand if the term was left unchanged, but either way he generally goes by the names Cartaphilius or Joseph, two names that have been given to the legendary figure over the years. The show creates a new an interesting backstory for the character, implying there was an original cursed figure and that Joseph was an (adorable) innocent whose body and identity were essentially stolen while the memories and suffering remained, but he is the primary antagonist, is capable of extreme cruelty and yet still evokes sympathy. An intriguing and compelling enemy, I wonder if we’ll see more of him in the future and whether he’ll be properly punished for what he’ll do. The characters may forget his crimes, but there was one scene where the voice-over, delivered by a very sweet-sounding seiyuu, was pretty devastating to hear. One of the darkest moments in anime I’ve seen since Bokurano, and rather surprising from what was a generally pretty safe and harmless anime – excepting where Cartaphilius was concerned.  

Well-made, well-acted, pleasant to look at, intriguing conceptually and occasionally emotionally resonant, I really enjoyed this show and want to see more. I believe it was quite a hit, and certainly the visual impression Elias makes will stick with most people, so hopefully we’ll see a fair bit more.

Bee and Puppycat: Season 1

The episodes of Bee and Puppycat trickled out between the end of the kickstarter in late 2014 and the season finale at the end of 2016. I had decided to wait for a full season to watch before seeing if the show lived up to the promise of its pilot, but 2017 was a kind of busy year and I guess it just wasn’t a priority, so I only just got around to watching the short, uneven 10-episode season.

While a lot of what was promised for the show was developed a teeny tiny amount in the last episode – in unexpected ways – I’m a little disappointed by Bee and Puppycat. Though Adventure Time staffer Natasha Allegri is still the driving force here, a lot of the spark of the original is gone, and in story, character and visual terms it just isn’t as fun as the pilot promised it would be. Plus I’m a little disappointed that instead of Puppycat being the one with the surprisingly dark past and hidden power (as hinted at in his song from the pilot), that role has instead fallen to Bee, who I felt was much more interesting as an everywoman figure.

Some of the new additions to the series are great. I absolutely love Cardamon, the little tot who’s taken it on himself to become the landlord since his mother is no longer capable, and whose final scene is the saddest and most emotionally believable in these ten episodes. The idea of a Pretty Patrick cooking show is fun, especially that Puppycat loves it and ‘Pretty Patrick’ is the only English he speaks. I really enjoyed the weirdness of some of the worlds our main duo visit, especially when they’re morally ambivalent, and many of these new characters – especially Cardamon and Moully – have the most wonderfully natural vocal performances. Especially since Cardamon’s voice actor is a child.

Other characters fall pretty flat, like the oh so random wrestling club member. 

While there’s still plenty of time for more to happen, I was a little disappointed by the direction the main characters went. Puppycat could still certainly become much more interesting in future seasons, but we had no hints of him perhaps having a dark past and saving the day with mouth lasers. Instead he remains just a grumpy, cute sort of a mascot character and there’s more of an emphasis on him being put into embarrassing situations. I’d like a balance between him being a silly pudgy cat-thing and being a hidden badass. They also did far less weird things with Oliver this time, so he mostly sounds like he’s just speaking an alien tongue rather than making lots of bizarre inhuman sounds.

Deckard, while a nice character and very well-acted, didn’t really get to do anything much. His dilemma over staying around to be with Bee and to go off to chase his dream is drawn out a bit too much, even over the course of such a short season. I want him to hurry up and talk it through with the others to reach a sensible decision.

And then there’s Bee. Not only did the animation style of the show get a lot more generic and Steven Universe-y, with Bee in particular looking very different from the pilot both in appearance and dress sense, she got markedly less interesting even as hints at a very strange past culminated in a big cliffhanger. She’s still a very strong character, natural and flawed while still very likeable, but as the series progresses she seems less empathetic to others, less rebellious and less pro-active. I want to see more of the everyday side of Bee, more of her trying to fit into the world rather than solving problems with interdimensional temp jobs.

The show still has a lot of potential and I’m keen to see more if it really does get made. But I feel like an opportunity for something really great was missed here.

The Idolm@ster: Side M

Idol shows continue to dominate the anime time slots on Japanese TV, with more and more of them being devoted to cute boy idols instead of cute girl idols. One of the most prominent of these is the continuation of the Idolm@ster franchise focusing on the boys and men in 315 productions.

It may be all the rage right now but this sort of set-up is nothing new. Focusing on male entertainers with a wide cast so that everybody has a type they like has been old news since long before Uta no Prince-sama, and this sort of cast with episodes devoted to lots of different cast members is in the time-honoured tradition of adapting visual novels and otome games. The likes of Love Live! and School Idol Project have devoted fans willing to spend a whole lot on merchandise, so it only stands to reason that the companies making this trash should go after the fujoshi dollar too. Or yen, I should say.

And it is trash, but that’s unlikely to be a problem for anyone who enjoys it. Nobody wants to have existential revelations watching idol shows, or be overawed by the original writing or characterisation. They want to see cuteness, familiar safe storytelling and – in probably the biggest departure from most visual novel/otome game adaptations – no romance, thank you very much. Idols are above that sort of thing and strictly forbidden from having relationships. Besides, it’s probably more fun to imagine them getting together with one another than someone from outside the pretty little circle.

And all this is very similar, be it girl idols or boy idols. I doubt there’s many people around who, like me, watched both The Idolm@ster and The Idolm@ster: Side M and found them equally enjoyable. In general, though, they’re basically the same thing. In anime it’s often next to impossible to tell a character’s gender without exophoric references, and these androgynous characters are the ones I usually find cutest. So I liked tomboyish Makoto in The Idolm@ster and here, the small and girly male idols like Pierre, Shouta and Jun. The lack of likeable tomboys is probably why I haven’t been able to maintain an interest in Cindarella Girls, though I’ll likely finish it at some point.

If there’s a difference in the shows, it’s that in the shows about all-female companies, all of the girls are to some degree cute. Some try to be dark and mysterious or have an ice maiden persona, but they still have cute moments. So everything is generally on a continuous level of sweetness, some characters breaking out into being adorable on occasion. But with the male units, there has to not only be cute but also cool. I mentioned the cute boys, some of them very similar to girls, but then there are the men as well. 315 hires not only young teenagers for its Johnnie’s-like entertainment – two cute but slightly obnoxious former school soccer stars being hired right from the hospital in one episode – but also full-grown men. The anime’s main trio are Dramatic Stars, whose gimmick is that they are former professionals – lawyer, doctor and airline pilot. Another is all former teachers. Honestly, these groups are some of the most unlikeable in the show, full-grown men who are meant to be cool rather than cute, but I just don’t find a goateed lawyer doing twirls to a disco beat to be cool.

Thus the problem I had with this show, more than with the previous seasons of The Idolm@ster, was that there were some episodes that focused on characters I liked, which was fun, and then some that were focused on characters I really disliked. Just about all the girls were likeable enough to carry an episode, but 20 minutes of some stuck up former doctor being rude to everyone and demanding to take on more work until, surprise surprise, everyone was right and he collapses of exhaustion … it’s just not characterisation I enjoy. I don’t even know that girls who enjoy the aloof, know-it-all type would enjoy seeing him being such a fool either.

When it’s cute, though, the show is definitely cute. And definitely fun. It worked best when the ensemble was together, like when they all went off to stay at a training camp together. That way, nobody gets too tedious. That includes for people who don’t like endlessly bright and optimistic boy-princes with girly voices, of course, and I can totally understand why a lot of viewers would find Pierre annoying as well. Unfortunately, there really aren’t many episodes in this short season that find the balance, and too many episodes just weren’t engaging at all.

Because there were only 13 episodes, the anime also cut out a lot of the cast from the game. Several of them got little random cameos, usually passing the main cast on the street and getting a few lines or something like that. For someone like me who doesn’t know the majority of these characters, the moments were very jarring and bizarre. That said, I do wish they’d included fussy violin prodigy Kagura Rei. He looks totally adorable.

Technically, the anime is by-the-numbers. Climactic concert scenes have a bit more work put into them, though I’m still not a fan of the interpolation of cel-shaded CG to make animating dances easier, especially as in this show they sometimes have normal animation in the foreground and computer animation behind. The songs are generic and a lot of the guys have kind of annoying nasal singing voices. Animation is on the cheap and stiff side, but character design is nicely varied and fits in with the overall style of the wider franchise very nicely.

Just like the original, I’d categorise this one as a guilty pleasure, and when it was cute it was very, very cute. There’s a Pierre figurine I just might buy and regret not pre-ordering before the price went up 50%. But I can’t say I didn’t hope the show would be better, and I certainly think keeping the focus on Jupiter, like in the pilot, rather than on the uninteresting and unlikeable Dramatic Stars, would have made for a much better show.

Song of the Sea

I really do think that Cartoon Saloon’s feature films are the future. Or at least Tomm More’s films. They may not make much money right now – according to the internet, they don’t even crack $1m gross, on considerably higher budgets – but they are artistic, beautiful and hopefully after getting more and more established will eventually break through to the mainstream.

I really enjoyed The Secret of Kells, though it lacked a certain sense of scale and excitement. Song of the Sea is better in narrative and character terms, and the animation has also stepped up considerably. Underwater sequences in particular are very beautiful. This film also focuses on more well-known, though still esoteric, elements of Irish mythology, which is a great niche for this studio to have. At the same time, as has been noted elsewhere, there seem to be several nods to Ghibli here, especially in the old witch Macha. Her hair flares up like Yubaba’s and she struggles up the stairs like the Witch of the Waste. Some of the pacing choices also echo Spirited Away and its famous sudden slowdown for a train journey.

Song of the Sea is about an adorable 10-year-old boy called Ben, voiced in the sweetest lilting Irish accent by the kid from Moone Boy, and his discovery that his sister is a selkie. In Irish mythology, selkie are seals who transform into women in fur coats, and the way to keep them human is to take away that coat. Well, Ben’s mother was a selkie, and his sister is one too, but his father is deeply broken-hearted from being abandoned by the one he loves, and so keeps his daughter’s coat hidden away. Little Saoirse (‘Sheer-shuh’) doesn’t talk, only wants to be back in the ocean, making music with her seashell and regaining her voice. When they leave the isolated lighthouse they call home to stay with their granny, but attempt to return home on their own, an adventure into the world of faeries begins.

With Saoirse mute and the rest of the cast – mostly eccentric faeries like the Great Seanachaí who knows all the world’s stories, recorded in strands of his hair – appearing briefly, the whole movie rests on Ben’s shoulders. And young David Rawle gives a fantastic performance to carry it all, petulant at first and resentful because he believes his little sister is the reason his beloved mother is gone, but increasingly gentle, generous and brave. He has to convey stubbornness, fear, exhilaration and wonder, and it all works very nicely with the vocal performance and a funny little character model more basic than most you’ll see in animated feature films.

The ending is a little overly convenient. In particular, I’d like an explanation as to why Mac Lir’s sadness, which is the catalyst for all the action in the story, just vanished. And it could have been explained away in a line, but I felt that was necessary for a satisfying conclusion. Otherwise, though, the spectacle and happy resolution are both impressive and moving.

The art is beautiful, the music is lovely, the performances are all good and the sense of place is very strong. There’s not that much to hook the young kids who love action and explosions, and I suspect that critics and animation buffs will have greater connections with this than kids will, but it’s a wonderful movie that I hope will touch those who take the time to watch it, and look forward to more of More’s work. 

Powerpuff Girls: Season 6

I didn’t finish watching Powerpuff Girls for a long while. In part, it was because it’s a shame to see the end of a classic show, but mostly it was because by season 6, it wasn’t really feeling like a classic any more.

The show had been on air for over 6 years by the time it finished, and felt like it was running short on ideas. Weird and politically incorrect Rocky and Bullwinkle parodies, returning a monster baby to its mama and poor Buttercup being told she’s got no particularly special talent over the other girls don’t feel like the playful and inventive episodes of old. The season plays out without the sparkle of inventiveness or irreverence that characterised its early run. A steampunk episode, featuring the Steamypuff Kids, is pretty fun, though.

The Powerpuff Girls have endured in a way that not many similar shows have. There was the anime spinoff, the spiritually similar early My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and now a new revival that I haven’t seen yet. The designs are enduringly popular and rewatching old episodes never fails to put a smile on my face.

But the problem is that there’s only so far you can go. Sure, you can give the little kindergarten-age heroes crushes on some boys and have them go from fist-fighting with their antagonists to going camping with them, but they’re still funny little bug-eyed kids with insane super powers. There’s nothing to discover about their pasts and no angsty teenage plot arcs they can go through. So flipping to alternate worlds of the wild west or making a whole episode in the style of the Who’s concept albums starts to feel a little like scraping the barrel.

But apparently there are enough stories to tell for a new series to come out. So I guess my Powerpuff adventure doesn’t stop here.  

Adventure Time: season 9

There was a bit of confusion in regards to where season 8 ended and where season 9 begun, but now it’s been officially determined what season goes where, and season 9 covers the multi-part saga where the elementals have taken over and transformed Ooo, then the handful of episodes in the aftermath where Jake looks weird, Finn has to deal with his rogue clone Fern and there’s one more battle with a leftover bit of the Lich.

This sets up the plotline that will dominate season 10, revolving around members of Princess Bubblegum’s family, but feels like a bit of a throwaway season. It doesn’t have a strong identity, not even having been defined as a full season until a while after it finished, and is dominated by a multi-part series that not only isn’t very exciting (Slime Princess’s episode being the most memorable but mostly for being a little disturbing) but is in the shadow of much more compelling and plot-driven multi-part arcs in the season before it. The episode with Jake and his brother Jermaine is a nice human touch in a weird series, which I say in full awareness that the characters are not humans. Otherwise, though, this season is very light on the real character development and world exploration that made Adventure Time hit compelling new heights a couple of years back.

I’ve definitely moved on somewhat from Adventure Time. Obviously it’s a long way from the silly short that kicked it off, and it’s been wildly successful especially with older stoners. But it feels like time to wrap it up, because most of the intriguing background elements that were slowly revealed have now all been shown. There’s not much more to say about Simon’s past, Finn’s parentage, the Mushroom War or the weird alternate universes, and morsels like what happened to Marceline’s mom centuries before the show begins are probably best left understated.

I’ve enjoyed Adventure Time and I’m still watching season 10, but there are better shows to watch and I hope the show gracefully comes to a close soon. Ah, I see that’s what’s planned, so that feels like good timing to me. 

The Amazing World of Gumball: season 5

Season 5 of Gumball had some of the most enjoyable episodes of the show’s run, with some of the most interesting character development, though also a couple of the show’s only duds too.

Looking back to season one, Gumball has come a long way, looks a lot better, and tends to have very slick, economical writing with good jokes, very likeable characters and that same love for animation that drew me in the first place. I don’t remember ever laughing quite as hard at a cartoon as I did at the end of The Ex.

What I really like about Gumball is that while it sometimes re-treads old, familiar cartoon plotlines – love potions, working with a hated teacher to pass a test, trying to get rid of Granny’s unwanted gifts – it’s very much a cartoon that focuses on contemporary lifestyle. A lot of cartoons these days, not counting satirical comedies for adults, try to have their characters in some weird timeless setting where people don’t use the internet or have smartphones and high school is, well, the way the writing team remember it. Maybe they have a game console that bleeps and bloops and shows some 8-bit graphics. That goes hand-in-hand with the sorts of references that are safe to use – classic movies or 80s iconography, classic rock bands with iconic looks, perhaps even some classic literature. Well, Gumball throws all that out and references internet memes like Friendship Ended with Mudasir and Yu-Gi-Oh chins, has its kids use Facebook, Instagram and Wikipedia clones, catfish their grandpa and in a truly brilliant move has an episode made in collaboration with the makers of ‘Don’t Hug Me I’m Scared’ (which is superb in its own right).

There’s also a Yelp-reviews-as-blackmail episode, but South Park already did that, and it wasn’t really a highlight of either show’s run. The show’s take on social justice also went semi-viral last year, and while it was a very intelligent commentary on it often being used (especially online) by self-righteous people not because they care about the issues they’re talking about but because they want to dominate in arguments and cover their insecurities by being the most tolerant, it was a real shame the clips that circulated didn’t show how Gumball learns that he was misguided in the way he tried to debate. The show ultimately concluded that forgiveness and genuine compassion trump argumentative self-righteousness.

Other references are more safe and straightforward, and it seems like the show is embracing the referential aspect of its comedy and running with it, sometimes a bit far. I enjoyed the Final Fantasy parody episode, and the episode where Gumball tries to befriend Ocho to get to Mario works mostly for the character humour and not the references, but for example Harry Potter references fall flat (especially when two different episodes’ references to Ron being annoying and Gumball preferring Voldemort to Harry kind of clash with each other). Other than a surprising Kyary Pamyu Pamyu skit, ‘The Singing’ was one of the show’s worst episodes, a lazy compilation of unoriginal song parodies – also breaking the unwritten rule that Gumball and Darwin will always appear at least once. It’s these kinds of clip shows that don’t really work, with ‘The News’ another example, bringing to mind the worst random episodic gag episodes of Rick and Morty.

This season again devotes time to some of the more minor characters to develop them. Even Sussie gets an episode, which ends in truly bizarre, somehow uplifting style. Rocky gets an episode too, though not much new is said about him. We also get a relationship episode for Darwin, obliquely referencing his bromance with his adoptive brother, as well as a bit more development for Gumball’s grandpa Frankie, and a nice episode where Nicole reflects on what might have happened had she never met Richard. I really enjoy episodes developing the main cast, but subversions of what’s expected – like Gumball pining for his nemesis Rob when Rob decides to move on – are the most brilliant.

References to the likes of Gremlins and Jurassic Park aren’t particularly surprising, even at the same time, but unexpected references include the chest-thumping from The Wolf of Wall Street, the scream from The Invasion of the Body Snatchers. Gumball has always been a show that throws in unexpected and amusing references, and this isn’t the first time we’ve seen obscurities from the Internet – How-To Basic was referenced last season, there was an episode about going too deep on Youtube and ending up with Rickrolls and Youtube Poop, and there have been art choices very reminiscent of the Yaranaika face and Dolan in the past, so I’m not surprised how this aspect of the show is developing. There’s a need to be cautious, though – too much and it will become unfunny or detract from the heart and soul of the show. Already Gumball’s malleable 2-D nature is becoming a bit overdone, especially when it’s ignored when he decides he’s the only kid without special powers. Still, so far the show isn’t overstepping and I’ll be watching the show into its sixth season happily.

Oh, and there’s one throw-back to the awkwardness with the Hot Dog Guy. Marvellous!