I know I’m late on this one, like, desperately so, but I have compelling reasons for not wanting to talk about it.
The discussion around Magus’ Bride has swung back and forth, both during and after its airing, and I will say that I don’t think I was ever completely
sold on it, but it took me a while to figure out what was bothering me
so much. WIT Studio has created something that looks very good, but has
some…p r o b l e m s when examined critically.
But let’s start with what Magus’ Bride does well. As I’ve said before, it looks great for a TV production. It’s not quite at the level of Made in Abyss,
but it stands up to WIT’s other productions. The artwork also does a
great job at commuting a sense of wonder to the viewer as we get
absorbed into the classical fantasy world applied to a modern setting.
But
that setting is the first of the problems I have with this series –
it’s ultimately completely wasted. This story takes place very much in
the modern day, in the real world, but it’s so irrelevant most of the
time that it may as well be in a generic Victorian alternate universe.
Something that I greatly appreciated about the later Harry Potter films was that they added more interaction between the major characters and modern-day London – Magus’ Bride
sort of feels like it shows us a smartphone, but then we just stay in
Diagon Alley for the entire rest of the show. While the cast does
occasionally visit London, it’s so incidental that, again, the
modern-day setting really doesn’t matter.
But ultimately, that can
be mostly overlooked. More pressing are the issues with our main
characters, and I’ll start with Elias, who very frequently fails to come
across as the sane, calm voice of reason he seems to want to be. His
behavior reduces him to basically just being Edward Cullen – a needy
boyfriend who doesn’t exhibit or understand emotions other than sadness,
and who spends a lot of time telling his supposed loved one what to do
in the interest of “protecting” her. While occasionally he is called out
for his behavior, he never really faces consequences for his lack of
understanding until the very end (and even then they’re temporary and he
gets away without owning up to it), so his character arc ultimately
just drags on forever, as he continues to behave appallingly and make
incredibly selfish decisions with no regard for the feelings of anyone
else.
Chise is very nearly as bad, because despite Elias’
habit of throwing destructive tantrums and manipulating people, she
essentially swears her devotion to him in a story that is meant to be
about her finding her self-worth. So many Beauty and the Beast
reimaginings end up totally failing to make their main couple actually
fall in love convincingly, instead taking for granted that their
audience will understand the coding and fill in the blanks themselves,
and Magus’ Bride takes way too many shortcuts in this department.
Even worse, this particular Beauty is, and I’m really sorry to point
this out, a full-on Mary Sue. She’s an audience surrogate character
whose issues with her own worth are ultimately only played as evidence
of how wonderful and selfless she is in her actions, and much of the
dialogue in the show is dedicated to people talking about how special
she is. She is always one hundred percent set on doing the right thing
and is never tempted to act in self-interest.
And in the end, the
status quo is restored and they both just continue the relationship with
Elias never actually having to apologize.
This show is sort of an inverse of Twilight,
honestly. The world building and side cast are great, but the setting
is totally irrelevant to the story, and at least Edward Cullen
ultimately realized what an asshole he was and how dangerous he was to
be around, and even acknowledged that Bella was smart enough to take
care of herself. Right up to the end, Elias treats Chise like a six year
old who can’t make decisions for herself, and ultimately, that kills
this show for me. In the very last scene, Elias attempts to promise
Chise that he’ll never do anything to make her unhappy again, and I do
not for one second believe he would ever actually consider her feelings
before acting.
I’m willing to be charitable and give it a
6/10, because it’s beautiful and funny, but I likely would have placed
it into the Hall of Fame with a 9/10 at least, if only the central relationship weren’t toxic and awful.
In real life, I can come off like I dislike MHA, and that’s not really correct.
I don’t hate it at all, as a matter of fact I like it a lot, which is why it bothers me so much when I see it at the level of just an average shounen romp when I know how good it’s been. The second half of the last season and the first half of this one were running at a steady 7/10 and it was bumming me out when compared to the fact that it delivered one of, if not the most effective tournament arcs I’ve ever seen, and it frustrated me that MHA was getting a ludicrous amount of recognition (looking at you, Crunchyroll Awards) when compared to Food Wars, which I felt had only gotten better and better since its premiere and has consistently presented me with fresh ideas and new ways of delivering its weird brand of action.
I was very thankful, then, when the Provisional License Exam arc rolled around and we finally got a return to the excellent character writing that I know this show is capable of. The second half of this season didn’t quite meet the level of quality that the Sports Festival arc brought to the table, but the sense that the plot was finally moving again in a meaningful way did wonders for my sense of investment.
I think the other half of the problem is that I have not latched on to the League of Villains the way I know a lot of people have, and that’s mostly because now that Stain is gone I just find them deeply derivative and uninteresting compared to the students focused on in the best moments of the story. I recognize that the show needs a greater-scope villain, but I don’t care about any of them nearly as much as I care about Bakugo’s character arc, since we don’t have nearly as much insight into him as we do into Deku. I also didn’t really care for Ochaco’s subplot about developing a crush on Midoriya, since even though it isn’t exactly a drain on screentime (it gets only a few minutes, total) it doesn’t ultimately go anywhere since she just decides not to tell him, meaning we’ll be on the hook for a while here if it ever actually comes to a head.
Thankfully, All Might gets a much-needed character rerailment as the natural conclusion of his subplot, and finally realizes (in one of the more touching moments) just how irresponsible he’s been regarding his training (and surrogate parenting) of Izuku, to the point where in his freshman year of high school he’s already one injury away from permanent retirement. All Might is forced to own up to his failures to Midoriya’s mom, who is rightfully furious of his mostly-reckless endangerment of her son. Deku’s mom is one of the most under-represented in the show for how much impact she has ultimately had on her son, particularly because she is an excellent foil to Endeavour, being a mother who wishes every day that she could do more for her son, as opposed to a father who expects more and more from Todoroki. It was really relieving that we got to see her feelings acknowledged once the plot completely removes her from Izuku.
I also really liked the other schools introduced to us during the exam, because I find the competing ideologies present in the new cast to be a much more interesting source of conflict than bad guys who are evil because they are evil. I’m not the biggest fan of the author’s Kubo-esque habit of introducing new characters in large groups when the show is already aware that the audience can’t remember everyone in Class 1-A (because there are name cards in every episode), but as long as they’re still as effective as Yoarashi and Shindou (both of whom are fantastic foils), I’m down.
Ultimately my biggest fear is that My Hero Academia, by nature of its seasonal run over just constantly airing, and the amount of progress made in 63 episodes, will end with the cast either still in high school, or at graduation. That might work for Assassination Classroom (because the central theme of the story was that Koro-sensei was preparing his students to live better lives in the future), but I’m far more fascinated by what these kids will look like ten years from now. I don’t see Academia pulling a Shippuden-style time skip, so we’ll have to see how far this goes.
(Yes, I’m aware of how ridiculously successful this property is, but Naruto wasn’t exactly failing when Kishimoto decided it was time to finally call it quits.)
In the meantime, I’ll continue to examine MHA through its already-confirmed fourth season and hope that it continues this upswing, as we potentially finish freshman year.
I should at least mention the production here if only to say that Studio Bones is still doing an excellent job as per usual, and in an industry where the new season of One Punch Man was shopped to another studio so that Madhouse could produce more of Overlord (a show which, let’s face it, does not need their expertise nearly as much), it’s nice to see a studio willing to go in for the long haul on a show that could run this long. It’s made MHA a pretty good comparison to Boruto, a show I tried multiple times to get into but couldn’t because Pierrot dropped the ball right after the first episode and it looks terrible because of the year-round approach in comparison to the seasonal handling in MHA.
8/10, I’m eager to see where we go from here.
Final Thoughts – As Miss Beelzebub likes.
It’s cute, but that’s about all it is.
I’m kind of frustrated by the trend of shows that could have worked perfectly well as half-length or even quarter-length experiences being drawn out into half-hour shows they don’t have enough to fill. The one joke this show has is the concept, and if it were six minutes long, I could see it getting more creative about how it explores the idea each week, but this is literally more fluff than substance.
Oh, and the puffballs were completely taken from The Morose Mononokean; they look exactly the same.
4/10.
Premiere Impressions – Karakuri Circus
Quite a stylish premiere from a studio without much to its name.
From the same author and production team as Ushio & Tora, we have the story of an orphan boy running away to the circus, and it gets way more complicated and violent from there. See, there are these men in suits chasing him relentlessly, and it seems like literally nothing will stop them. His only protector at first is a man in a bear mascot costume who knows martial arts, but also can die if he goes long enough without making someone laugh, followed by a woman in a yellow bodysuit who claims to have known him years ago.
It’s all pretty wacky, but it’s presented with a fascinating tone of complete seriousness that manages to sell it anyway. This one will run for three cours, completely unpromoted by Amazon, so do yourself a favor and check it out.
One of the cutest and most original concepts I’ve seen in a while.
Our main character is not a mighty warrior, but instead a healer who teams up with his new friend (a fairy who seems to be trapped in a floating mason jar) to help the local monster population with his magic, since healthy monsters don’t attack humans.
After sitting through Conception, the fact that this show features actual charming animation was like fresh air. The monsters remind me a lot of Digimon in terms of design variety, and altogether this looks like it’ll be a pretty fresh take on the young-hero-saves-the-village concept, finishing fights with kindness rather than might. We even get an easy-to-recycle magic sequence!
While it definitely gives off the impression of being meant for kids, Merc StoriA is still out there enough to get hooks in me, and I must say that since the other kids show I watched this year (Gundam Build Divers) ultimately disappointed me with how heavily it leaned on its age group’s most annoying habits, this one already looks like it’ll break the mold.
I don’t honestly know what to say here about the show itself aside from the fact that it doesn’t act like there’s been any break at all, so let me instead use this as a platform for a quick diatribe about the new way these studios seem to define (or undefine) “seasons”. See, Golden Kamuy here joins fellow fall offering Tokyo Ghoul:re as an ostensible “second season” despite the fact that the gap between the first and the second was only one cour (meaning that it was pretty obviously planned that way), but other shows like Food Wars still counted what should then have been its fourth season as part of its third, even though there was, again, a single-cour break between the first and second half. Now, we have Attack on TItan declaring that the second half of its third season will premiere in April, six months after the end of the first half.
This is ridiculous and convoluted and I hate it. I know this is unreasonable but it makes classifying what to score where to be very difficult, and with my new system, rather than two separate seasons, I’m declaring Golden Kamuy and Food Wars to be in the same boat – namely, that they are multi-cour shows and should therefore be judged against each other at the end of the year rather than contending with shows that only had three months to make an impression on the Best of Season roundup.
So, like, we all know at this point that as a series, Conception is just bad, right? Like, the games are genuinely mediocre at best and boring at worst, and the whole thing comes across as strange, creepy fetish wish-fulfillment.
That’s certainly still true of this adaptation. Like, the main couple are abducted by some magic portal and transported into a weird cavern, and they both declare that this situation is less important than talking about the heroine being pregnant, which is a contrived setup because she’s gonna have her magic demon baby right there and then, in one of the most hilariously poorly-animated scenes I’ve ever seen. The demon is defeated, and suddenly neither of them feel the need to talk about the fact that a giant monster just emerged from the heroine’s mouth.
In short, these characters make no sense. At least they protest the suddenness with which they have the fate of the world thrust upon them, but the fact of the matter is that this show was pretty much doomed from the start. It’s nice to see sex-positivity in anime, but the strange, alien way this show treats sex, along with the fact that it essentially treats the heroine as a waifu factory, kind of washes that out.
The pacing is also ridiculous, which is because in “obscure” JRPG’s like this one or Etrian Odyssey, the setup is given to you all at once at the beginning, and this one couldn’t adapt properly if it didn’t present everything in this episode at once.
That being said, the fact that Mahiru is essentially forced into sex regardless of how she feels about it is creepy as hell and sends this show into a realm so schlocky that I honestly feel like Conception would have been better adapted as a six-episode hentai OVA or something. It’s a level above the 1/10′s I’ve given thus far, but it also looks utterly awful, so I’m not okay giving it anything higher than a 2/10.
I know this one’s already been dragged through the mud, but how is this not just the two most famous Tsukasa Fushimi stories blended together and then made even trashier?
Maybe that was the idea, but OreImo never got Kirino so nude that she needed nipple censors. This is garbage on every level, and even before the censors show up, I hated this even more than My First Girlfriend is a Gal!, but they do pretty easily sum up the mentality on display here. See, a while ago, there was this gratuitously censored ad for a random mobile game on YouTube, and when the uncensored version came around, there were no nipples at all, it was just cleavage bouncing around as the girls fought with magic. This reminds me of that. There is a scene in this premiere where the main character fantasizes about his little sister’s breasts, right before another scene where he points out that his coworker looks like an elementary schooler. Her perfectly flat chest and normal tanktop suddenly balloon out when the camera goes for a porno POV shot of her, and not in a funny way, more an unintentionally funny way. It also censors her very covered nipples, because obviously she’s not wearing something that would expose her, because she’s at goddamn work.
This nearly challenges UZAMAID! in terms of sheer tastelessness. I would still call that one worse (if MAL would let me give a 0/10, I would have) but this one still deserves a 1/10 and consignment to the garbage bin of history.
The Arcane Archive 