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.

僕だけがいない街 / Boku Dake ga Inai Machi / A Town that Lacks Just Me / Erased

Anime by and large has been lacking ambition lately. Possibly it’s just that I’ve been watching less of it, but there are relatively few titles that people bring up as challenging or sophisticated these days, in a world of fanservice and idol anime. But there’s still noitaminA, the programming slot that usually at least attempts to do something a cut above the average.

And so it was with Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, which takes a more serious seinen tone with its murder-mystery storyline and brings together themes and modes of a variety of recent hits. Directed by Itou Tomohiko, buoyed up by his successes with Sword Art Online but having rather more in common with his breakthrough work with Hosoda Mamoru – in particular TheGirl Who Leapt Through Time, this series was also well-marketed. My own interest was piqued by a large and attractive poster for the show in Shinjuku station. It looked like a cute coming-of-age story and over this Christmas break, I binge-watched the 12 episodes very quickly.

To be honest, it’s not what I hoped it would be. It aims for the cleverness and paranoia of Monster with the mind games of Death Note and the cute, smart kids in peril of Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 and some of the glib, vaguely Murakami-esque detached observations of Bakemonogatari. While there are some superbly-done parts of Boku Dake ga Inai Machi, ultimately I don’t think it hangs together nearly well enough, nor are all the extraneous parts necessary.

In a convoluted time-travelling plot, our hero Fujinuma Satoru has a magical power. When something terrible is going to happen, he inadvertently goes back in time a few minutes so that he can put it right, saving lives and avoiding disasters. This is presented in a very direct echo of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time using film effects. When a far more dramatic crime erupts, he is sent back much further, to his elementary school – where the events that led to the recent crime were set in motion. This is an interesting, if not particularly original, set-up – Satoru is a 29-year-old in a 10-year-old’s body and must investigate a set of child abductions to save himself and his loved ones in the future.  

However, this whole section didn’t ring true at all. Satoru doesn’t have much personality beyond an endearing tendency to speak his thoughts out loud and then get embarrassed, and there’s no exploration whatsoever of the strangeness and hilarity that must come from a 29-year-old, with the mind of a 29-year-old, going back into his 10/11-year-old body. Indeed, the kids around him, with only a couple of exceptions, all speak in the weirdest artificial diction, almost all of them preternaturally smart and basically miniature adults.

The pacing of the series is all off-kilter because the set-up is saving the first child who will be abducted. This not only rings false when the danger to one of Satoru’s closest friends who will be the second victim is barely even raised, but creates an awkward set of overlapping arcs where even if the problem is solved we then lose the sense of triumph and get an uncomfortable jolt of then moving to the next stage of the plan because the murderer hasn’t been dealt with. The romantic undertones are half-baked because the script calls for a cute budding love story but also occasional reminders that this is a 29-year-old mind starting a romance with a 10-year-old girl. And ultimately there’s only so much satisfaction that can be derived from a crime detective story where ‘How can you predict what’s going to happen?’ can only be answered with ‘Because of my magical time-travelling powers.’ The idea of eyes flashing red with fury or malevolence doesn’t work either, and there’s no attempt at sophistication when giving the bad guy motives.

There are things I certainly much admired here. The show does an amazing job of examining mother-child relationships, with some of the warmest moments are simple family affairs. There’s at least an original, if unlikely, ending arc to finish things off and further complicate the timeline. I enjoyed the dynamics of Satoru’s gang of schoolmates and wanted to see them developed more. And I did enjoy how the series was drawn and animated, which was very reminiscent of A1’s big-screen debut, Welcome to the Space Show. But I have to say, I hoped for much more, and feel that the same things have been done much better elsewhere. 

ソードアート・オンラインII / Sword Art Online II

By the time SAO’s first season ended, I had gone off it in a big way. At the start, pretty-faced Kirito was an underdog I rooted for, sweet-natured and ostracised in an unoriginal but interesting world. By the end, he was the undisputed master swordsman of all the universe, replete with powers that were his alone and not just a beautiful and adorable – if rather dull – girlfriend, but a whole harem of girls to suit any taste. Including those who like the idea of their sister having a crush on them. He was no longer in any way an underdog, the way situations resolved themselves were very contrived, and the cloying way everyone worshipped his every action – including pseudo-government types taking him on as a kind of consultant – became annoying. Kirito became far too like a male Bella Swan, who everyone also loves for no reason.

For all that, though, I was willing to give the second season a chance. There was a lot of talk about the later arcs being much better from fans of the books, and it was after all a cover of Kirito with a mysterious cute boy that drew me into the series in the first place...though the boy, Eugeo, has yet to appear. Guess I’ll have to see in season 3.

Sword Art Online’s big problem is Kirito, and this season doesn’t quite deal with that problem – though the second arc here finds an interim solution. Kirito is just not very likeable, nor identifiable as wish fulfilment. His skills continue to be a cut above, and he seems just a little smug about that, and more crucially the stakes are very low now. He’s in online games, not fighting for his life. Plus he is pretty enough that when his character gets long hair, people think he’s a girl. Perhaps that’s meant to make him the butt of a joke, but its effect is to make him seem yet more perfect and beautiful. And it’s annoying!

The reason he has a new avatar is that he’s sent into a new game to track down a killer. A mysterious figure seems to have the ability to shoot a gun in the game and kill someone in real life. Of course, Kirito is the one to be sent to sort this out. Though this is an American shooting game, Kirito of course not only adapts to it immediately but decides to use a lightsaber and charge down all the campers and duellists. Because he’s super special.

Of course, he finds a new girl whose deep mental issues he manages to solve with a few platitudes, so he can add one more to his harem. Sinon is a sniper and using the game as therapy. By sheer coincidence she has a personal connection with the bad guy in the picture, and super Kirito figures everything out.

After a brief and not very interesting side-quest wherein Kirito and the gang finish a quest that might have destroyed their whole world and of course rewards Kirito with Excalibur, Best Sword in the Game, the final arc begins – and yes, it’s the best arc since the first one. That’s largely because Kirito is taken out of the picture – a little like how the best part of the Suzumiya Haruhi franchise is when she disappears. Instead, Asuna is placed centre-stage when an incredibly good swordswoman takes an interest in her and recruits her into defeating a boss with just a small but elite party. Not only does Asuna figure out why the party had been failing until that point (they are being spied upon) and lead them to final victory, she comes to understand the swordswoman well. Yuuki and her friends have come together because they are all terminal patients with extremely weak bodies, eager to make a lasting impression at least on a virtual world, which will record their names. Some parts of the story I find rather weak and exploitative, with overwrought sexual tension between the two girls screaming fanservice rather than something sweet, and the set-up being blatantly contrived to have an attempted tear-jerker ending. As a result, I found it rang a bit false.

But overall, it was beyond a doubt a breath of fresh air. Asuna may not be a very interesting character, but she was given some new dimensions here. The scenes in the real world were quite delicate and sweet, especially when Asuna fixed it so that she could take Yuuki’s virtual presence with her for an ordinary day at school, and I’d quite like to know more about the other group members...especially the cute boy whose name – a little gratingly for me – was Jun. Perhaps they’ll crop up in future episodes.

The fact is, I’m fairly sure there’ll be more Sword Art Online, and that I’ll watch it. But I can’t say it will be with much enthusiasm. The series outstayed its welcome, and thus far not enough has been done to make it better. It’s one of the success stories of recent years, but really it’s a show that’s still trading on its strong opening episodes and cute designs...

That said, it surprises me that Kirito remains a very popular character. There’s still a very loyal fanbase to this series! I guess there are people who don’t want to root for the underdog – but want their avatar in a story a bit overly perfect. Which I suppose would also explain No Game No Life.

黒執事・サーカスの書/ Kuroshitsuji: Saakasu no Sho / Black Butler: Book of Circus

Well, at the end of the second season of Kuroshitsuji, which I really didn’t like, I considered the anime finished. There were the strange OVAs, but they were mostly gag side-stories. How could the anime continue? It showed us the inevitable end of the pact between a boy and a demon, and that was the best thing about it.

Meanwhile, the manga continued and got rather better. What a shame, I said, that the anime writers went off on their dreadful tangent about Alois rather than following the manga to its best arc, that revolving around the Noah’s Ark Circus.

Well, the property is still a hot one after all these years. That combination of pretty man/grumpy child paedophilia is still irresistible to the fujoshi and there is after all plenty of manga material yet – though I have to say that apart from Lizzy kicking butt in it, I can’t remember much at all about the arc that follows this one. So A-1 Pictures decided to just shrug off continuity and backstory and plunge into an adaptation of the arc as a stand-alone piece. We can just say that it took place at some point before the end of season 2, right? Honestly, that was probably the best thing they could have done.

I don’t really like Kuroshitsuji, but this arc is as good as it gets. A strong premise, what is effectively Ciel’s backstory finally made plain, and then a morally ambiguous ending where there really aren’t any good guys – this works well. The lack of a strong villain – the antagonist essentially being a crazy, feeble old man – creates a hole filled by the notion that the bad guy is, in fact, Ciel himself. With his demon sidekick, of course.

The set-up is a clever one for the kind of dress-up escapades that this sort of fanbase loves. Ciel, still the ‘Queen’s watchdog’ (despite her having so many incredibly strong people around her who should be able to take care of any business), is sent to investigate the disappearances of children near a circus. To gather information, Ciel and Sebastian pose as performers and thanks to Sebastian’s skills, manage to be accepted. Ciel, meanwhile, is pretty useless, and is very cute taken down a notch or two, teased by the others and striking up a friendship with his kind-hearted roommate. Nicknamed ‘Black’ and ‘Smile’, they get to know the rest of the peculiar cast – including ringmaster Joker, cross-dressing tightrope walker Doll, anachronistically-named trapeze artists Peter and Wendy and my favourite, animal tamer Snake, who has named his numerous serpents after prominent Victorian and pre-Victorian writers: Bronte, Keats, Wordsworth and both Oscar and Wilde. Quite pleasingly, Snake is also not involved in the main conspiracy – and so can appear again later.

‘Black’ strikes up a rivalry with ‘Suit’, a shinigami named William T. Spears who has also infiltrated the circus – indicating to Ciel and co that they’re on the right track – and after a while they find the clues they need to uncover the truth: the circus folk, while good-hearted, are eternally indebted to a rich old man who saved them from street life. However, they do his bidding, kidnapping children for his entertainment. Driven mad by having seen Ciel as a child, as well as his father (whose form Sebastian adopted when he manifested), and realizing he will never be as beautiful as they are, this crazy old man has children put through such suffering their minds break, then has them perform deadly circus tricks, dying horribly while he laughs. Because of his obsession with Ciel, he has also exactly replicated the room where Ciel first made his pact: an old operating theatre-style ritual chamber, with an altar where he was to be sacrificed by mysterious shady occultists, that favourite of Victorian books about demons. Incensed, Godzilla stomps on Bambi, and Ciel is merciless – even with the surviving children, who he considers broken beyond repair.

Meanwhile, the circus members storm the Phantomhive manor, intending to threaten Ciel so he will be easily controlled. However, the staff members are finally able to show how truly formidable – and frightening – they are. This is one of the highlights of the series, and I’d probably rather watch an anime about the exploits of those three than one about Ciel. The shinigami show up to mop up the mess, though their presence is largely extraneous and rather sillier than the rest of the arc, especially with one of them wielding a lawnmower. But I can overlook that, and the comic relief just about works.

As a narrative arc, it has its faults – mainly with the antagonist not really having been much of a threat and very little being at stake to Ciel himself – but overall it’s excellent as part of a larger narrative. It gives Ciel a huge amount more depth, showing him being hapless, being vulnerable, being authoritative and being tyrannical. It shows his dark past and the dark present that has resulted. It fleshes out his staff’s stories and makes them more formidable. But most crucially, it sets up a group of enemies who are very likeable – while they do things they can’t be forgiven for, they have been conditioned from a very young age and have very little choice in their actions. 

The anime will continue – first of all with two OVAs entitled ‘Book of Murder’. If they maintain this quality, I might actually start to like Kuroshitsuji.

フラクタル/ Fractale

I start watching Fractale. It looks like a pretty normal anime. Nice characters. Looks like a Germanic world. Very classic. And then Clain’s parents appear. One of them seems to have a bowl of water for a head. The other is defined by giant lips protruding from either side of her robotic head. What is this?!

An anime like Fractale occasionally comes along and reminds me why I love anime so much. The kind of anime I instantly fall in love with and must watch through as soon as possible, and will stay with me forever. They’re usually accessible but with an element of high-concept, often with sci-fi elements. I think the last I had such a strong reaction to was Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, but Fractale very directly follows on from two recent anime I’ve adored and aired at more or less the same time: Dennou Coil and Kaiba.

Like Dennou Coil, Fractale explores the interesting concepts that arise from being able to project digital data into the real world, and create avatars as well as whole new landscapes. Like Kaiba, it raises the philosophical question of what humanity will do if given the chance to wholly choose their outward appearance – albeit to much less depth and without nearly so much darkness as that anime, which remains an all-time favourite. Fractale is slightly less ambitious than these, wrapping its ideas in a fairly conventional young-boy-meets-strange-young-girl-who-is-centre-of-a-world-changing-conspiracy-and-joins-a-rebellious-airship-crew-to-protect-her plot exemplified by Eureka 7 but also seen in the likes of Xam’d. At only eleven episodes, that noitaminA hallmark, it perhaps could have been given slightly more room to breathe, but in the time it has, takes us to a whole lot of interesting, thought-provoking places.

Clain is a pretty young adolescent boy who despite living in a world of great technological advancement, loves old-fashioned relics – mostly from our own era, which is cute. Unlike most in the world, he stays in one place – not even his parents live with him, as the possibility of digital avatars (‘Doppels’) means that it’s the norm for people to drift around the world wherever they please and interact with their loved ones only remotely. One day, he rescues a strange girl from some daft Team-Rocket-Meets-The-Blues-Brothers pursuers, falls for her, but wakes up to find her gone, leaving behind only a locket – which contains a very unique doppel, advanced enough to give tactile feedback and look like a real human.

While the world is pretty utopian – under the ‘Fractale’ system, nobody has to work or runs short of food – the fractale system is starting to go wrong and displace large numbers of people, and ‘terrorist’ groups try to espouse the virtues of living free of the system. Those behind Fractale are also pretty sinister, a group of priestesses who demand daily ‘prayers’ and are after our heroine. Clutzy, thoroughly adorable Clain thus ends up on a quest not only to find out the truth behind the young doppel Nessa, but to reunite with the girl Phyrne – and the only way to do that is to join up with the terrorists.

With A-1’s usual high standard of good design  and cuteness (in conjunction with the fledgling Ordet), doing what has rapidly become their hallmark of filling a cast with very cute teenage girls and at least one very cute teenage boy, it succeeds in making its lowbrow elements the comic relief and foregrounding the epic adventure, working rather better than, say, No. 6, which attempted something similar. It was certainly more consistent than Sword Art Online, if not such a big hit. Clain is also probably the most sexualised shota since Ciel Phantomhive, with a girly look reminiscent of Joey Jones.

For an eleven-episode series, Fractale was paced well. The expository episodes did a superb job making us like Clain and Nessa, though they’re both character types I love – well-meaning but goofy, pretty-faced young boy and naive, innocent, energetic, wholly good-natured little girl. When joining up with the airship crew and being made dogsbody, apparently a signature of these series, things did not drag and the simmering rivalry with the captain Sunda actually worked, as well as the comedy and cuteness from tsundere Enri. When there are losses in the ranks, they are actually deeply sad. And the ending, while it was never going to be that profound, is nicely open-ended while giving a sense of bittersweet closure.

If there were things I didn’t like, they would be Phryne’s ‘father’ figure, Barrot, who in his slimy, groping ugliness is a bit too exaggerated for the sake of trying to make Phryne more complex, and the fact that the ‘doppel’ system feels like it needed more exploration. I was also no fan of the opening – indifferent song over kaleidoscope images – or the ending – one shot, still until the end, with an awkward rendition of a Yeats poem. But these were far outweighed by how much I enjoyed Fractale, the world we glimpsed and especially the delightful characters we got to know. 

マギ/ Magi season 2: The Kingdom of Magic

With its opening episode containing a play about the adventures of the main characters with some exotic casting, the similarities between this series and Avatar came to an end...with it instead becoming Harry Potter with Dragonball Z-style flying battles and power-ups. 

If that sounds disparaging, it isn't: I continue to love Magi and its cast of daft characters, its colourful world and its occasional very affecting tragedies. This second series opens with an awesome flash-forward, a cold opening with Aladdin showing his real powers, and possibly going rogue - and then the action returns to the point we left off at. 

The four main heroes each go their own way, seeking to improve their powers. Alibaba joins some formidable gladiators; Morgianna manages to meet a wandering Magi; Hakuryu seems to have fallen in with Judar; and little Aladdin? Well, he goes off to wizard school, hiding his true powers to infiltrate a country where he feels something mysterious and sinister is happening. 

This starts sweetly enough, with his suppressed power meaning he ends up put in the lowest class and has to work his way up, gaining allies and rivals on the way, of course, eventually finding what he is looking for in wizened old Mogamett, who has lived a long time - and developed a philosophy of wizards being an oppressed people who need to be raised to dominance. 

Unfortunately, Mogamett's extreme measure of having an underclass providing 'Ryuk' for a wizarding society while trapped underground sets him against Aladdin, but things really develop when the Leam empire - led by Scheherazade in the last of the Arabian Nights references - launches an invasion against the small wizarding kingdom. The Kou Empire is also on the move, and it seems very likely that Sinbad will want a piece of the action as well. 

The real antagonist, however, is none of these powerful nations, but the hidden society manipulating Mogamett from behind the scenes, giving him power that might just bring their dark god into this world. 

The story is a little convoluted, but comes together well - even if poor Alibaba, even vastly improving his powers, gets totally overshadowed. 

The series remains one of the prettiest on television just now, and shows its shounen colours rather more clearly this season. It's another one where the power creep with the characters has now reached a point that it's a little absurd, and I do wonder where the series will go from now, but I must say...providing they may more, and I sincerely hope they do, I will certainly be on board. 

And if they don't, well, I will just have to become a manga reader. 

ソードアート・オンライン Extra Edition / Sword Art Online: Extra Edition

Not a whole lot to write about this 'special episode', but since it is, after all, movie-length, I thought it worth an entry. 

Extra Edition is a mishmash of throwaway extra episode - about an underwater quest that gives Kirito yet another chance to be the one who saves the day - a recap of the series and a whole lot of swimsuit fanservice of the main girls. None of them are particularly interesting, and it's quite odd to say that it was actually the part that usually so rankles - the flashbacks - that I enjoyed the most. Because it reminded me of what Sword Art Online looked like it was going to be back when it first aired. 

I don't think that the backlash against any popular season has been so universal and so harsh. Attack on Titan is beginning to have the customary backlash every popular series has, but it's still mostly small pockets of detractors against legions of fans. My personal dislike for Code Geass outweighs my dislike for Sword Art Online, but I was aware that was a minority view. With Sword Art Online, though, not only was the swing from it being a big hit to what seems like every anime fan in the world sneering at it more extreme than even what the likes of Naruto and Dragonball Z suffered, it happened before the initial two-season run had even finished. 

Which, of course, SAO did to itself. What the recaps reminded me was that the series began with great promise - a likeable, vulnerable adolescent protagonist adrift in a fantasy world, stuck yet given the tools to protect himself, even putting himself forward to be seen as a villain for the greater good. Only later did it devolve into the meanderings of a do-no-wrong sap and his bland harem overcoming the constraints of computer programs through the power of feelings. For a while, Sword Art Online looked like it was going to be very good. 

Which is why, I suppose, it got a big fandom, and why episodes like this could be made. But what follows is pretty embarrassing. The underwater adventure is sub-Digimon prattle, without a likeable crew to spice up the journey. And the swimsuit parts are the kind of brainless fanservice that people rolled their eyes at - yet bought - in the early 2000s. Everything about this feels regressive, well-trod and boring. I didn't even watch the whole thing in a single sitting, or even two - something very rare for me. 

Yet something keeps me coming back. This was bad, but I know that if another special were released tomorrow, I'd watch that too. I still like the art style, and Kirito's design - and want to see him become vulnerable and interesting again. I still like the concept and am curious about the other worlds I've seen on the covers of the light novels. I still feel like something clever might come out of the whole thing, despite all the evidence to the contrary. And if I'm a sucker for thinking so, oh well - it's not a whole lot of time to commit, and I will go on being suckered for as long as they pump this stuff out. 

マギ / Magi / Magi: The Labyrinth of Magic (season 1)

So there’s this animation set in a culture different from that of the creators. It’s about a young but very energetic and likeable young boy who’s been trapped alone for a seemingly very long time but has mysterious powers that mark him as a chosen one. He is joined by a girl born with powers of her own but little training and a boy who despite being quite goofy has great promise and learns to be a gifted swordsman. After a while they are joined by a prince from a warlike country with dangerous ambitions to take over the world who at first looks like he is going to be an antagonist, but soon turns out to be a strong ally – who has a large burn mark disfiguring the area of his face around his left eye.

If you think this sounds a lot like Avatar: The Last Airbender, just wait until you get to the scene in the second series where the heroes watch a play based on their lives with hideously inappropriate casting. It definitely feels as though the managaka here may have seen what is presumably a relatively obscure Western animation and taken some key ideas. But it could all be a coincidence. And despite these similarities, they are really on the superficial side, and Magi is a very different kettle of fish. Also going for the epic fantasy, yes, but in a way that is at once more likeable and more ambitious, and I have to say it’s the first action shounen in a very long time that has actually excited me, made me want to find out what happens next and root for its cast. Magi, which I only discovered while in Japan recently, has rapidly developed into one of my very favourite series, and is certainly amongst the cutest things airing at the moment.

It must be noted that though Magi seemed popular in Japan, it was visible more or less only in Ikebukurou, which is of course where the female anime fans hang out and proliferate lots of BL doujinshi. The manga is ostensibly for boys, but it is written by a woman and has a cast with designs that are the prettiest in anything I’ve seen since Dog Days and a cast of eligible bachelors who become very close to one another. And though the main character is a lil’ perv who likes to go for the boobies and his best friend clearly has a crush on the girl he rescued and became his lifelong guardian, and their mentor figure is a total womaniser, let’s be honest – it’s always to one another that they express the strong feelings of compassion, desperation and indeed, outright love. Though why so many people want Judar in their ships, I don’t know. He’s nuts.

I mentioned that there was an exotic setting here, and much as Avatar looks East, Magi looks West, though not to familiar ole Europe. For its inspiration, Magi looks to Arabia, and the 1001 Nights. Thus, the main character is Aladdin, his constant companion is Ali Baba and their protector is King of the Seven Seas, Sinbad the Sailor. Only glimpsed in this season is Scheherezade, which just about exhausts the household names from the famous stories.

Of course, these are only starting points of inspiration, not the basis of the story. In the world of Magi, a fantasy world that has similarities with Arabia, Mongolia, Western China and the surrounding lands, there is a force similar to Final Fantasy VII’s ‘lifestream’ called ‘Rukh’, represented by glowing butterflies. Though many warriors can make use of this force, there are certain ‘beloved of the Rukh’ who can use it indefinitely, called Magi (though pronounced ‘Maggie’, not like the word in English, though that’s what is meant). There have historically only ever been three, but now there comes a fourth, Aladdin. The Magi, in a nod to Christianity, are responsible for seeking out new kings and aiding them to claim the throne, and also for the appearances of ‘dungeons’, areas ruled over by powerful djinn that if defeated grant great wealth and powers. 

Aladdin, with a mysterious past, has emerged from a dungeon with a little golden recorder that can summon a djinn (albeit with his head stuck in the instrument) and a magic carpet that doubles as a turban. Meeting Ali Baba, a streetrat son of a prostitute elevated to royalty in a country in turmoil, the two of them fight injustice and slavery and soon become embroiled in a conflict between Sinbad’s country Sindria and the ‘Organisation’ bent on using the corrupted Rukh of despair to change the course of history to their favour. This will lead the young heroes to face death, despair, corruption, slavery, their own inadequacies and the responsibilities of leadership.

The best thing about Magi is how appealing its central characters are. It balances comedy and drama extremely well, and even dips into SD designs a lot, which is something becoming ever rarer in anime. The characters, good and bad, have their backstories that though often cheesy tend to be compelling and well though-out. And I adore little Aladdin, who is one of those little kids everybody underestimates until they realise he has awesome powers, but who just wants to help everybody and see them all happy. The main thrust of the series is Ali Baba and the troubles his country has on the brink of civil war as a result of a corrupt and inept ruler being manipulated, but Aladdin is the keystone to it all. Sinbad, though at first making me dubious, also turns out to be very entertaining, especially with the assassin-advisor Ja’far at his side (no, not Disney’s Jafar, though possibly an inspiration for a name) as his constant foil. Like so many successful shounen series, it makes the wise decision of having characters seem powerful then introducing a whole slew that make them realise how weak they are, and though there’s a certain amount of suggestion that nothing so far has been even vaguely threatening to Sinbad, how hard the main characters work to improve themselves is very entertaining.

Magi is lovely to look at, tells a good – if basic and unoriginal – story of good against evil and has characters that really appeal to me. For that reason, I loved it and season two is a must-watch. Oh! And I must mention the great music – two great openings by SID and Porno Graffiti and an interesting Supercell ending that sounded like they were trying something new.

俺の妹がこんなに可愛いわけがない. / Ore no Imouto ga Konnani Kawaii Wake ga Nai. / My Little Sister Can’t be This Cute S2

The season itself ended a few weeks ago, but in the last few days we once again had a handful of OVAs to offer a ‘true end’, so I’ve been waiting to write this. This time, we didn’t get a superior alternative the series badly needed. This time they took the show to its logical conclusion, and I’m sure there can only be a small section of fandom, Eastern or Western, that liked it. 

I was quite happy to have more OreImo after rather enjoying the first series, despite knowing consciously it was uninspired stuff and having big problems with the premise. Season two switches animation studios to Kuroshitsuji and Sword Art Online fan-pleasers A-1 Pictures, and despite some much-needed development of minor characters, it ends up being rather painful to watch, as it seems determined to make all of Kyousuke’s potential lovers and make them all deeply unappealing. As if his harem isn’t absurd enough, we then have to go through the process of elimination, and unlike nonsense like Da Capo or a Key VN, we can’t have the characters turn into foxes or turn out to be ghosts in an ostensibly more realistic story, so they all just get made to act really stupidly.

There are still things that are done very right here – Kuroneko’s silly pretenses, the little gags revolving around Akihabara and the outspoken fujoshi in the club. But, as the series goes so far as to make reference to, the same things are being done by other shows, and done better – the adolescent delusion thing in Chuunibyou, the otaku world with yaoi humour in Genshiken, and the harem angle…well, everywhere.

What really puts nails into coffins, though, is the way that almost the entirety of Kyousuke’s ridiculous harem gets dismantled personality-wise. Where before they were flawed but ultimately likeable characters with enjoyable quirks and foibles, here they become severely difficult to like. Apart from Saori, who finally gets the inevitable funny-looking-girl-is-actually-sublime-beauty-when-she-takes-off-her-glasses treatment and a remarkable trivial backstory, most of the character development goes entirely the wrong way. Cute Kuroneko made her fanboys cheer by finally taking the initiative and dating Kyousuke, but immediately began a programme of manipulation and callousness that destroyed what was enjoyable about her behaviour, especially as her ultimate goal seemed to be to establish some weird relationship between herself and the two siblings that put her in a bizarre servant-like position. Borderline Yandere Ayase, who was clearly introduced primarily to put forward the reminder that a lot of people consider otaku habits disgusting, ended up being one of the several million girls who fall for Kyousuke for no better reason than that he is a wish-fulfilment avatar, and having a very awkward attitude that showed her obvious attraction while also constantly calling Kyousuke disgusting. Then there was loli idol Kanako, who was also introduced to make a statement – cutesy idols are not necessarily cute on the inside – but then got shoehorned into being Kyousuke-Lover #7297327, finally getting a ridiculous confession scene that would kill her career and was so awkwardly shoved into the script that it was obvious she just needed to be dealt with and ignored – fading into the background much as Ayase did post-confession.

Then of course comes Kirino, who continued to drop from likeably divided character to selfish, whiny, irritating brat. Her finest moments after tearfully coming home with Big Brother from the States to share her life with him include getting a fake boyfriend to make him jealous, mood-swinging like a broody mother gorilla whose baby has been replaced by a bunch of bananas and seeming to think the most important part of a relationship is being able to dump your stuff in your lovers’ room. The only one who has her head screwed on right is ‘plain’ Manami, who ends up having a fist-fight with Kirino, humiliated by stupid and patronising speeches that amounted to ‘we don’t care what others think, nyeh nyeh’, and if she has any self-esteem at all, completely cutting ties with those cruel siblings.

As for any male characters who might have been introduced…well, one or two seconds of screentime at the end really fails to convince anyone they had a meaningful place here.

It’s even more of a slap in the face when you are told that the decision that was made to seem so life-changing, that they potentially threw away all their other friendships for, was something they agreed to do for only a few weeks. Really? They treated Manami like that for a stupid temporary trial run? Horrible, horrible people.

And so ends Ore no Imouto ga Konna ni Kawaii Wake ga Nai. The full series, not just this second part, which is differentiated by the full stop after ‘Nai’. I can’t say I’m sad to see the back of it, even though I most assuredly had fun with it at the beginning and don’t regret the ride it took me on.