CanvasWatches: Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll
Didn’t expect to return to this world, but I am happy to see it again. It’s important to consume media that makes you want to be a better storyteller. Keeps you humble while keeping the creative fire lit.
Like a well tended cooking fire.
Perhaps I need to take inspiration from Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll, and focus more on character exploration and dialogue in the major project I keep stalling on. The ‘Protagonist meets someone and they talk’ format is how I got through that one near-notable fanfiction I wrote until I actually figured out a plot.
The Violet Evergarden movie felt like two episodes of the series put together. An arc that could’ve fit easily into the television broadcast without missing a step. Which is what I wanted: more gentle vignettes in a beautiful world.
Violet herself makes a great supporting character. The stories are at their best when it’s more about the client than Violet. Violet’s a character in her epilogue: a former soldier who found someone who believed in her, lost him, and reached the end of the war in need of purpose, which she ultimately found as a scribe and courier company worker. Her love was found and lost before she truly understood what love even was, and the action’s over.
Which is part of why the story appeals to me. There’s a certain satisfaction in watching life go on after the life-defining events are over.
In a turn, the first story of the film positions Violet as the teacher introducing Amy/Isabella to a society after emerging from war times, paying forward the charity given to Violet when she was an adrift war orphan with medical problems.
Isabella is attending a finishing school for young women waiting to be married off. She’s uneasy around her classmates, as Isabella York is an identity given to Amy Bartlett, a homeless girl who was barely scraping by attempting to take care of a younger girl she’d adopted as her sister when a noble man appears to adopt Amy[1] with the promise of arranging care for the adopted sister, Taylor.
Now as Isabella York, the girl is first resentful of the prim and proper Violet Evergarden, keeping her at arm’s length. However, as Violet assists Isabella in her education, the two bond through various ship teases, and Violet’s method of polite bluntness helps Isabella bridge the gap with her classmates, and eventually Isabella trusts Violet enough to share her backstory and request a letter be written and delivered to Taylor. Violet happily obliges, and also dances with Isabella at the debutante’s graduation.
Because Kyoto Animation has found their niche in winks to Yuri fanbases, I guess.
Job complete, Violet leaves as Isabella suddenly gains friendship from an incidental character that was cleverly coded as a bully character, what with her royal ringlets and fufu laugh. Nice use of cliches to give the audience the same assumptions as Isabella.
Back at her postal company, Violet passes Isabella’s letter onto mail carrier Benedict, as well as a letter of her own.
Taylor Bartlett was placed at an orphanage, which is an obvious improvement from the shack she and Amy were living in, but she’s still lonely and forcing a distance between herself and her adopted sister. Further, Taylor received little education, as Benedict is forced to read the letters to the poor illiterate child.
Violet’s letter offers the girl, whom Violet hasn’t actually met, support should Taylor ever need it.
Isabella/Amy’s letter gives reassurance and an explanation for why she had to abandon her.
End part one.
Then we get a three year time skip (four years from the war ending). The steampunk tech has evolved, as more automobiles are on the roads and Benedict has taken to riding what is essentially a steam-powered ebike.[2]
I admire media that uses time skips, as it requires a dedication to committing to off screen changes and lost opportunities. Although, considering the strength of Violet Evergarden’s vignette based storytelling and ambiguous time scale, this particular skip leaves three years the production staff can go back and fill in with more stories.[3]
Everyone’s lives seem largely unchanged, however. Violet still resides in the company headquarters, the same staff are in their same roles, and so forth. Guess there’s not much career mobility in the courier business.
Anyways, Taylor snuck away from her orphanage and made her way to the city, tracking down the Postal Company that brought her a letter from her estranged sister. Upon finding the company and Benedict (who she recognizes as being the one to deliver her happiness), Taylor moves onto phase two: getting a job as Mail Carrier herself!
Company President Hodgins is reluctant to hire a literal child, but Violet steps in to convince him to take Taylor as an apprentice until arrangements can be made to return Taylor to the orphanage. It seems Violet feels kinship with this young orphan trying to find family and a place in the world.
It’s pretty cool that the greatest strength the once emotionless Violet developed is empathy. It’s a pretty cool trait to give your protagonist.[4]
Benedict briefly attempts to take Taylor on as his helper, discovering over their shared route that Taylor remains illiterate. So Violet steps in to teach Taylor to write, as well as getting out her old mail-carrier uniform to assist with teaching Taylor the job.
Eventually, the Evergarden family adopts Taylor,[5] and Taylor writes a letter for big sister Amy.
But no one actually knows where Amy/Isabella went after graduating from the finishing school.
So Benedict starts making calls and practicing some clever detective work to select the estate of a Duke Neville. The price he asks Hodgins for this work is a new motorcycle with sidecar, which carries both him and Taylor to the estate.
He arrives, finds Isabella content but alone, and delivers the letter as Taylor hides in the bushes. Both sisters cry happy tears, and Benedict and Taylor leave as they discuss Taylor’s decision not to actually reunite with her sister until becoming a proper mail carrier.
Thus concludes the film.
I quite enjoyed the movie as an extension of the original series, and I believe it is self-contained enough to stand on its own. There’s plenty of questions left unanswered, and it feels like the middle portion of a long story that the postal employees get only a brief glimpse of, which is appropriate for the tone. I wish the promotional materials made it seem less like the story of Violet sweeping a woman off her feet and more on it being an extra long episode of Violet Evergarden, as that’s what it truly is.
Now I need to cross off more things from my backlog.[6]
Hulu’s got the second season of Log Horizon...
Kataal kataal.
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[1] Amy Bartlett either is legitimately the lost heir of a noble family, or was selected to take that role. I’m not clear on the truth.
[2] I’d be jealous if it didn’t look so beat up and impractical.
[3] I hope the production staff goes back to fill the three years with more stories.
[4] Try it at home!
[5] Considering it’s where Violet gets her last name, it’s odd how little a role Tiffany Evergarden plays outside of adopting girls for plot convenience…
[6] Digimon Adventure's getting a reboot, and I still haven’t watched Tri!
A charming SciFi anime focusing more on the cast’s day-to-day lives than some major sociopolitical conflict that requires laser gun diplomacy? Set on a Terraformed Mars with brick and mortar solarpunk aesthetic? I can get into that.
The fact that Carole & Tuesday is a science fiction story came as a surprise, as most of the buzz and promotion that crossed my social feeds focused on the street performance aspects. Then, surprise! Tabletop fast food ordering and pizzerias that grow their tomatoes in house![1] Which is the sort of speculative fiction I’m enjoying nowadays: normal life with the fantastic acting as seasoning to spice up the world around them.
I’ve never paid special attention to music. I listen to music obviously, but rarely in any sort of analytical capacity. It’s pretty sounds that help fill in the background while I write, or to convey emotion in a musical, or to mark the start and end of a show I’m watching. I’ve never sought out music to listen to when looking for entertainment, it’s always a byproduct of whatever media I’m engaged with at the moment. Heck, these days, when I’m too lazy to set my car radio up to play a podcast, I just drive in silence.[2]
I sometimes feel I’m missing something by not engaging with the art form in a more conscious manner, and I only recently became aware that albums are a carefully curated thing instead of a collection of the performer’s most recent songs, so… yeah. Kind of a cultural blindspot.[3]
This tangent doesn’t even end with a neat little note of how Carole & Tuesday had inspired me to consume music in a more deliberate and contemplative manner. The soundtrack includes plenty of insert songs I happily threw on my background noise playlists,[4] and what few albums I seek out are video game and anime soundtracks.[5]
Carole & Tuesday was chiefly directed by Shinichiro Watanabe, who’s name was made with the Jazzy Space Epic Cowboy Bebop and Hip-Hop Samurai Series Samurai Champloo. It was probably inevitable he would produce an anime where music took front stage instead of informing tone.
Carole & Tuesday takes inspiration from Pop, but is unafraid to feature and mix other genres, such as Opera and Rap.[6] What’s really exciting is the decision to have the insert songs performed in English.
Historically, when diegetic music is present in anime, the song is performed in Japanese, and most dubs make the smart decision to leave the japanese audio and subtitle them. I may prefer dubs for my various reasons, but I wouldn’t dare ask for the policy on subbed music to change. Carole & Tuesday took an international view to its production, and thus used the most widely spoken language when no one (reasonable) would begrudge the use of Japanese performers.
Netflix picked up the show as part of their continued haphazard attempts to seize the genre with an attitude out of the early 2000s, and the company tapped to record the English dub did an admirable job matching voice performances believably similar to the singing voices.
Which may be the first time that speaking actors were hired to fit the singers.
The story takes place on Mars in the future year of… 50 years after humanity started migrating to Mars. I cannot find a year cited, which is the smart and wise choice and I am super annoyed I’m not going to be able to make jokes about the production's attempts and failure to predict the future.
50 years after starting to migrate over to the red planet, humanity has terraformed large swathes of Mars into a Solarpunk paradise. Earth is apparently not in a great state as refugees are desperately making their way to the planet, but Earth remains offscreen for the entire run. Fortunately no one has any giant robots,[7] so the two planets aren’t at war. While Mars has been made hospitable enough, the atmosphere does occasionally mess with the genetics of residents.
That’s just background details, however. The story is really about the titular duo. Tuesday is introduced fleeing the mansion of her politician mother, hopping onto a cattle train like Kiki, and riding off to Alba City with only a quitar and robotic luggage to keep her company, where she stumbles upon Refugee Orphan Carole busking with a keyboard. The two have a jam session and decide to become a musical act.
Meanwhile, famed child star Angela Carpenter[8] is setting to transition from a modeling career to an exciting career singing. Her mother pulls strings and utilizes her connections to team up with Tao, a genius of Artificial Intelligence Design who is willing to use his technology to provide Angela with computer generated music and lyrics.
Thus we have the start of a sci-fi John Henry Tale where the battle is not hammer and steel but instruments and voice.
I say ‘the start’ because while the two teams utilize different methods to produce their music, their methods are never weighed against one another. In fact, there’s barely a one-sided rivalry, as Angela is jealous of the titular duo’s ability to enjoy their career, and our two heroes take only a polite, professional view of Angela’s rising career.
Carole and Tuesday are both weighed down by a common problem with anime protagonists: they’re just nice. There’s a certain fear when writing protagonists, especially females, of accidentally making them off-putting that the writers overcorrect and don’t let the hero make mistakes or have much personality, to the point that Carole and Tuesday have very little agency.
Instead, it’s Gus, the ex-rock star manager the duo acquire, that does the leg work and takes risks while Carole and Tuesday just sing nice songs then sit back while the plotlines orbiting their rise to success are resolved by the men.
The show also can’t choose a lane, playing with several story threads that could carry full 24-episode stories by themselves, but instead are dealt with as lightly as possible.
We start with the story of a run-away from decadence and a refugee bringing their world views together, but that instead goes into a tournament arc disguised as a talent contest, then the drama of navigating the music industry, before ending with the presidential run of Tuesday’s mother causing public unrest. Carole and Tuesday don’t make a meaningful choice that affects any of these stories.
Meanwhile, Angela gets a story of asserting her identity while already in public view, facing dangers both external and internal on her journey.
Surprisingly, this is the first show in a while that I didn't resent for transitioning out of the episodic, playing with the premise portion. While Carole and Tuesday were attempting to get their big break, bopping around misadventures trying to get contacts, gigs, and filming a music video, Angela looms in her plotline, building up to the inevitable rivalry.
Angela is introduced just before her mother, Dahlia, starts reworking Angela's career from modeling to singing, hiring Tao, renowned AI designer, as Angela's producer. Angela experiences mild paranoia from Tao's standoffish nature, machinery, and making a holographic simulation of Angela. So Angela had a more consistent narrative during the first arc.
Introductions out of the way, it's time for everyone's favorite trope: the tournament arc! In the form of ‘Space!'s got Talent’ Generic Brand Named into Mar's Brightest. The main duo meets their rival, backstage drama ensues, some very good music is performed, and things are set up to technically give both Carole and Tuesday as well as Angela a win at the end.
With publicity achieved, Gus starts getting to work preparing the girls' debut album and booking appearances, as well as meeting other artists and (briefly) Carole’s father. We learn about Gus’s past client, Flora, who dropped Gus as soon as she found success, then found herself without a support base and spiraled into depression and addiction. Carole and Tuesday remain upbeat and optimistic.
Meanwhile, Angela starts getting harassed by a stalker and feeling helpless and poorly supported by those around her. Tao takes point on stopping the stalker when the police fail, ultimately taking him down before the stalker could pull a Mark David Chapman.
The story bleeds into the final act, as the presidential campaign of Valerie Simmons, Tuesday’s mother, moves forward in prominence. The AI algorithm Valerie is utilizing suggests she take an anti-immigration stance, which the woman follows in an attempt to further her career. Musicians are getting harassed by law enforcement, Tuesday’s brother Spencer is becoming uneasy with being an accessory to the campaign, and starts meeting with a reporter with information that Valerie’s campaign manager orchestrated a terrorist attack to villainize immigrants. Spencer and the reporter argue over how many chances to give Valerie, and agree on Spencer taking the evidence to Valerie, and if she doesn’t back down, then they’ll leak the scandal. Valerie, seeing the crimes committed for her benefit, gracefully renounces her candidacy. It’s very heart warming.
Carole and Tuesday write a protest song, and gather friends to sing it. This protest song has no observable impact.
Meanwhile, Angela learns she’s adopted, and her mother suffers a heart-attack shortly before Angela is set to win a Martian Grammy, and Angela spirals into depression and prescription drug abuse, to the point of collapsing at the end of her Grammy performance, being rushed to the hospital and missing her mother’s passing and funeral. Angela is adrift. She has no family, no support, and is just lonely.
Tao, who was working to sabotage Valerie’s campaign and burning as many bridges as possible after being targeted for refusing to assist the campaign, appears in Angela’s hospital room to drop a bomb: both he and Angela are designer babies, and though Tao must go into hiding now, he does intend to look out for his little sister.
Angela joins the performance of Carole and Tuesday’s protest song.
If it’s not already clear, I feel the story of Carole and Tuesday themselves was pretty lacking.
So, how would I rework this? Step one: we’re either cutting Carole and Tuesday, or combining them into a single character and making Angela the second. With the second option, Angela can maintain her backstory, but take Carole’s introduction of fleeing her family mansion and attempting to strike out on her own, meeting up with Carole and forming an act. To maintain the final arc, Carole would need to be reworked into the abandoned daughter of Tuesday’s late father, making her the half sister of Spencer and something to be hidden by Valerie Simmons’ campaign.
We then intermingle the two plotlines: Gus maintains his managerial position, and eventually convinces Angela to use her connections and mother to get her career jumpstarted, Ms. Carpenter still brings in Tao to write music, and now we can lean more into the AI-written music versus human compositions subplot as well as creative differences, which can lead to an arc where Angela and Carolday split to attempt solo careers, each taking a different manager.[9] Dahlia still has her issues and passes away, Angela her depressive spiral, but now Gus gets pathos by being there to help his client out of self-destruction, and the final number can also be a reconciliation of the main musical duo. The song can even be a combination of AI and human composition.
Carolday, meanwhile, discovers her relation to the anti-immigrant candidate and has to decide if she wants to finally have a family with Valerie and Spencer or stand up for her beliefs and assist a politician in bringing the campaign down. The resolution of the political plot can remain a happy compromise, but Carolday gets a slightly more active role in it.
The animation and world-building is great, and Angela’s arc is very strong. But the writing was too afraid to let either Carole or Tuesday dip into unlikeability that they become props to their own storyline, which is made further unfortunate as their supporting cast that do make decisions are mostly men.
The series is also riddled with a lot of good starts. Many short vignettes or minor details that could be made into full animes by themselves. Show more of Carole and Tuesday’s attempts to break into the music industry while also trying to pay bills and put food on their table. An expansion on the other competitors at Mars Brightest.[10] Heck, expand the roster of the competition and dig more into backstage drama. Carole’s father, who was sent to prison and found his wife dead and daughter sent to another planet upon his release, could carry a story of his own on his back! Valerie’s presidential run and the plight of Earth immigrants given more attention. Heck, even the story of how Earth, the origins of the human species, fell into being a third-world planet people are desperate to leave.
I’d even watch a series about the solarpunk pizzeria that grows their own tomatoes.
The music is really good, however, featuring many artists and styles, and those by our main duo wouldn’t sound out of place on a car radio or licensed on a primetime television show.
It’s a good show, but not an eternal classic. Maybe a second choice for someone digging deeper into anime. However, if its placement on Netflix means it’s someone’s introduction to Anime, that wouldn’t be terrible. Give it a watch if you want something to wind down for bed, or want inspiration for your own speculative fiction.
Kataal kataal.
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[1] Solarpunk’s neat.
[2] Mostly because I lost all my preset stations last time I took my car in for fixing, and I don't actually know any to punch in. Also, I use youtube for music when writing.
[3] Also means I’m wholly unprepared to find music when I finally get a podcast project off the ground.
[4] The soundtrack is very present on Spotify, which is nice.
[5] I am finding myself increasingly intrigued by vinyl records, however. Probably a bit extravagant, and difficult considering my narrow interests.
[6] Presumably to annoy fans of both.
[7] Bam! Gundam reference! Anyone have Bingo yet?
[8] Though I could swear they never use her last name on screen.
[9] I’d find it amusing if Angela takes Gus and Carolday teams up with Dahlia, but the rest of my outline works better if Angela remains with Dahlia.
[10] Though this one’s not a major loss. Typical tournament arc stuff.
Okay, what if we could catch serial killers by entering their subconscious minds (referred to as an Id-Well), where the amnesiac avatar of a investigator must search for clues while also solving a murder mystery created within the bounds of a fantastic, mind bending world? Isn’t that an amazing premise for a combination platformer/puzzle video game?
Anyways, Id: Invaded is an anime. The only major complaint I have is how I would much rather be playing it than watching the proceedings, which probably just means it’s got a good concept.
Uh… it’s a mystery show with a season long arc and character progression so… spoilers? It’s a good show if you’re into that stuff. Handles grit and mature themes well, but… well, mature themes and violent images abound. So be careful of that.
So that’s the spoiler warning.
After watching the first episode and learning the basic concept, two truths were immediately evident: the young-looking police girl (Koharu Hondomachi) hearing the exposition is going to kill someone so she’ll be a candidate to dive into the id-well, and the elderly director guy overseeing the project is 100% the big bad.
Still, just because a couple things are easily solved by knowledge of narratives doesn’t mean there aren’t surprises. Like trepanning is a plot-important element in this for… some reason… it gives a secondary character superpowers!
Don’t… don’t blindly emulate your media, kids.[1]
The first couple of episodes telegraph what elements to pay attention to pretty clearly. Hondomachi is wide-eyed and overly interested in the Id Well machinations, and asks about how one becomes a candidate for entering the machine, and doesn’t look put out by the need to be a killer.[2] She also headbutts a drill to assist in the capture of the first serial killer of the show, so she’s not hesitant to take extreme measures. Which leaves the question: will she kill with the intention of joining the Id Well delving team?
Meanwhile, Takuhiko Hayaseura appears only long enough to be marked as important, but he doesn’t take an active part in the plot. Then the mysterious John Walker Phantom appears with similar old man body language, those dots are connected and you just have to wait for the plot to catch up.
Finally, our protagonist, Narihisago, dwells on wanting to save the perpetual victim of these murder dinner parties he’s investigating, signalling that Kaeru is more than a prop of the gimmick. I didn’t have enough details to take a guess at what her larger role would be, so the reveal in the later episodes was a successful twist.
There is a small tragedy with the structure of the anime course. While I typically prefer the 12 to 24 episode style, as it allows for limits for the artists to work with (like a trellis), and means that the series maintains a consistent narrative without flailing about to maintain momentum until given permission to die, we occasionally get a show like Id: Invaded where the central gimmick lends itself so well to an episodic, killer of the week style stories that I just want to watch the variations and not care too much about the myth arc. Because it’s set to conclude with episode 13, the show can only play with the gimmick for about half the course before having to buckle down and start telling the larger narrative, leaving me yearning for more new id wells and mysteries.
If the show were twice as long, it would’ve been able to play with the gimmick more, and have space to flesh out the investigative team to have actually interesting characters.
The first episodes introduce six characters watching Narhisago and analyzing the world around him to deduce the actual identity of the serial killer, but they have very little dialogue outside of exposition, and their mystery is opaque to the viewer until they solve it. The team could’ve been cut in half without losing anything.
But if Id:Invaded had two cours to stretch out and tell stories, the investigation team could have subplots and character revealing dialogue. But there’s no space for them, so… lost potential.
In fact, if this story was told as a video game,[3] there’d be plenty of space for the Wellside team to have incidental dialogue to develop them. The audience/player can also get more direct satisfaction out of solving the gimmick of each Id-Well, as they get to directly utilize the solution to complete the level. If the hypothetical game takes a page from Pheonix Wright, which is the game I most mentally aligned with the show, there can also be a section after the level where the clues found within the level can be analyzed and the player gets to piece together who the killed is.
It’d be fun.
But… er… the actual story.
It’s fine. The characters make a lot about learning who this John Walker fellow is, but the obvious culprit is sitting right there, so the viewer is just patiently waiting for the characters to catch up, amusing themselves with the episodic portion of the story.
Then, a twist: they find the device used to enter Id-Wells within an Id-Well. So, what would happen if someone used it?
So our protagonist does, and finds himself seemingly back in the real world, though before the death of his wife and daughter. He can set right what once went wrong!
Although… he knows this can’t be real. He remembers everything that led him here, so surely this is permanent.
But what if it is?
First order of business: Narihisago sequence breaks and puts a stop to the serial killer who murdered his daughter early, the fight placing him in the hospital, where he finds… Kaeru? Except her name’s Kiki, and when she sleeps, those around her experience her dreams.
Dreams where she’s constantly getting murdered, often in very brutal fashion. Huh.
Despite the characters attempting to lean into the mysterious nature of the machine allowing them to place people into Id-Wells, I took it for granted and assumed it wouldn’t need explanation.
Instead, we learn Kiki’s power is being exploited to enable the gimmick, which I should have seen coming considering how much the anime is built on women suffering.[4]
Eventually, Narihisago and Hondomachi (the girl who becomes a second Id-Well diver partway through) are able to use the time and space given in this recreated past to find a solid lead on who John Walker is. Just in time for the system to kick them out and for them to climb back out to actual reality.
Hayaseura, learning the jig is up, releases Kiki from the hidden chamber she’s been in, and lets her loose, where her powers rage out of control and pull everyone in the building into various Id-Wells.
He then goes to the chamber with the machines allowing the well-dives, and upon being confronted, he activates a machine to take him in as he shoots himself, intending to wreak havoc in the collective unconscious or whatever.
In hindsight, they probably could’ve just unplugged him and moved on to resolve the Kiki problem. Instead, our nominal[5] heroes follow him in for the final confrontation!
Then Covid-19 struck, and I had to wait three months for the final episode to get dubbed!
All my dubs are delayed. Which is fine. It’s fine and fair. I don’t want anyone to risk themselves just for my entertainment, but I’m allowed to be a little disappointed by fate.
So after a three month delay, I sit down to watch the final episode, not bothering to rewatch anything because I’ve waited three months and a not insignificant portion of my motivation was to just finish the dang thing.
The final episode was okay. The two detective characters work together to outwit John Walker, sending him to the time displaced universe via a machine in the Id-Well of someone who’s now dead.
Which… upon reflection, isn’t a permanent solution. Both Narihisago and Hondomachi went through that experience, and eventually got ejected to their original Id-Wells, and the death of an Id-Well’s owner doesn’t collapse the place (as proved by Hayaseura/John Walker using his own Id-Well to jump about despite being dead himself.
Outside the Id-Wells, the leader of the Wellside Team puts on a prototype suit version of the machine to attempt to get Kiki to stop making a mess of the building. He meets up with her, refuses to shoot her, and they all agree to put her back and maybe try and solve her problem.
So, at the end of the series, we’re mostly back where we started: using an applied phlebotinum girl to chase serial killers. Which keeps the premise open for a sequel,[6] but they’ll need to write a new overarching plot, as I don’t thinking curing Kiki’s dream projections lines up as a murder mystery. It’s possible, but I find it unlikely.
In the end, I enjoyed the show, and I’m glad I watched it. I’d recommend it to anyone looking for a more obscure anime after getting through the Canon of the artform. Still, the amount of female characters suffering, to the point that the plot itself operates off a woman’s suffering is uncomfortable. If there is more, hopefully they can lean off that element.
Also, let me reiterate one last time how Id:Invaded would make a great video game. I buy that Visual Novel in a snap.
Kataal kataal.
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[1] Not that kids should watch this one.
[2] The reason for this limitation is not explained, and is likely unimportant.
[3] A desire I wasn’t being facetious about.
[4] Most of the murder victims are woman, and there’s a worrying tendency for the killer’s methods to be based on maiming.
[5] All three are killers: one a serial killer killer, a second a killer due to self-defense, and the last just a straight serial killer who happened to be useful.
[6] And, indeed, a manga continuation started at the same time as the show, so the premise lives.
CanvasWatches: KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World!
You know what was a surprisingly nice discovery? Crunchyroll has the english dub of the first… season? Cour? First ten episodes of KonoSuba: God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! (also known and henceforth referred to as KonoSuba) with the english dub. How magnanimous of the Dub-unfriendly service.
Konosuba was a pleasant follow-up to Kill la Kill (the review of which I’d been struggling with as I write this essay, so we’ll see if anything from that materializes). The network of Youtube Anime Reviewers had decided this was real good and funny and is worth the time. And, hey, I did have that free month courtesy of Twitch Prime, I might as well![1]
I thought it was fine! But the massive hype might’ve dragged it down. Comedy’s difficult. A lot relies on the unexpected, so if you prime viewers with “It’s really funny,” you raise critical expectations, which can undercut the weaker material.
Or maybe I’m too much of a comedic writer to get the full effect. Learned to read set-ups and such.
But I can recommend it if you have access and are interested. You won’t be disappointed.
Possibly another hurdle to my enjoyment is I went in intending to mine ideas for my own works. Spoofing RPGs and such is something I’ve long been wanting to set my skills towards, and it’s not always clear the best way to interpret mechanics.
Anyways, Konosuba has decided to parody the increasingly popular isekai[3] genre.
First ingredient: an average loser everyman for the viewer to project on. Filling the role is Kazuma Sato.[5] He goes out to buy a video game, decides to save a girl’s life from a perceived threat, and dies.
So, he needs to be reincarnated. As part of the typical Isekai set-up, he’s allowed to ask for whatever he needs to make himself massively overpowered.
So he takes Aqua, the sassy goddess offering him the choice.
This is the point where the typical formula breaks down. Kazuma has no notable advantages, and Aqua isn’t actually competent. Thus, we spend the 10 episodes stuck in the starting town of the pseudo-video game world.
So, when you throw someone into a video game or (less commonly) TRPG world, there’s the question of how to depict the actual GUI and game mechanics.
There’s the Sword Art Online and Log Horizon method, where the mechanics and their relationship with the world is unchanged, including the “players” being able to pull up a system menu to do… system menu things.
On the other end, we have Overlord, where the menu and other visuals vanish, and the tasks they accomplished must either be intuited by those translated into the world, or become part of their innate knowledge.
KonoSuba has everyone talk about the mechanics and such freely (in a tutorial NPC sort of way), but the menu has been replaced by an Adventurers ID, which shows stats and allows the adventurers to swipe and learn skills. Functional and easy for the viewer to accept.[6]
From this starting point, we have Aqua as the healer, and Kazuma as… an unclear role. He learns a Steal skill early, but he then starts learning magic, so he’s a bit of a Jack-of-all-Trades. The show’s not shy about the Master of None side of that, because the only decent stat our protagonist has is Luck, which counts just enough for him not to die and get the crucial things to fall in his lap.
Such crucial things include a Mage (who refuses to cast any spell except an excessive explosion spell) named Megumin, and a Tank-Fighter (who is… rather excited to take damage) named Darkness. Not the ideal companions, but functional.
But that also means we don’t have a straight Rouge, so I’m required to be salty about that.
Kazuma attempts to build a sustainable and fulfilling life, but the quests available are either above his capabilities or menial labor. Because life is more funny whenever things don’t go well for the hero.
The first three episodes are dedicated to establishing the setting and the characters, and aren’t actually that funny. Yes, there are things I can identify as attempts at comedy, but they’re modest attempts that don’t really build to a satisfying laugh. Kazuma’s attempt at straight-manning the shenanigans of his allies is restricted to complaining and feeling put upon, which flattens the funny moment by drawing attention to how wacky it’s meant to be.
Episode four, however, finally introduces a desperately needed element: a victim. In the form of a Dullahan who is up to his nonexistent neck with annoyance at Megumin casting a daily explosion spell on his castle.
His attempts at intimidation fall flat due to the apathy of our main party, and then Darkness steps in with her masochism, which bewilders him. He casts a death curse on Darkness, to her delight, and rides off to await Megumin to fight him in his castle.
Aqua then casually removes the curse, and our party forgets about the encounter.
A character desperately trying to do his job in spite of the ideocentricies of the main cast is much funnier than a character that just complains.
Comedy works better when it builds off what is established in narrative than over-relying on meta-knowledge and lampshade hanging. Those things have their place, but they work better as augmenting jokes or to speed up delivery, not as whole jokes themselves.
The next episode does a better job in that respect by introducing another guy with the same deal as Kazuma, except he’s a more traditional Isekai protagonist, and thus kind of a loser NEET. He also chose a massively overpowered sword instead of Aqua, and is doing better because of it.
Kazuma easily outwits him, steals the sword, and fences it. This sets a stronger character base for Kazuma: a genre savvy jerk willing to exploit the world around him for a quick buck. It turns him from a put-upon everyman into a jerk able to cause the same sort of chaos as the rest of his party.
Unfortunately, such moments are few and far between, as the rest of the season has Kazuma back to being a useless whiner. We do get closure with the Dullahan, which showcases Kazuma is actually pretty good at analytical thinking and tactics, but lacks the personal capabilities to actually fight.
The show then introduces an important character (a lich named Wiz) in a manner that clearly cut segments from the source material that, if shown in full, probably would’ve strengthened the rest of the story.
Instead, that time is used for an episode where Kazuma patronizes a succubus business that offers customized dreams. We watch an extended Q&A segment that raises uneasy implications about Kazuma’s predilections, then an uncomfortable encounter between him and Darkness which I don’t know how to fairly judge, since Kazuma is forcing Darkness into foreplay and intends to go further, but he thinks it’s a dream while Darkness doesn’t know that and thinks he’s being forceful, but she also could very easily overpower him and the show’s established…
Look, episode 9 should’ve been cut and I don’t wish to dwell on it any further.[7]
Anyways, the fall-out of that adventure is suddenly ignored as Howl’s Moving Castle (Dark Edition) lurches towards the town. Deary dear.
It belongs to the Dark Lord, though the exact nature of it and it’s controller is rather ambiguous. But it’s scary, powerful, and has immense defense. What will the town do?
Fortunately, Kazuma’s surprisingly powerful party and his tactical scheming allows them to stop it. However, in true villain lair fashion, the moving fortress starts a self destruct sequence. So now that needs to be addressed.
While searching the place to figure out how to deactivate it, Kazuma finds the corpse of the builder/driver with his diary.
Turns out, the guy was hired to build it, but thought the requirements were excessive and he didn’t really want to do the job. So he told his employers he needed a rare relic to power it, thinking it’d never get supplied.
The relic gets supplied.
So he builds the fortress, turns it on, and immediately loses control. The fortress goes on an unstoppable rampage as the builder is stuck inside. Oops. So he just kind of kept bluffing his way along.
Which tells us something crucial about this world: it runs on a narrativium fueled by malicious luck. Kazuma’s form of luck is not unique, wherein he is only fortunate enough for the next inconvenience to come along. He gets a rent-free manor not because he particularly deserves it, but because fate demands he be able to survive the winter. His companions are just competent enough to excuse their quirks. Even a second isekai protagonist finds success for only long enough to become a punchline.
It is a universe with a cruel sense of humor, and the greatest success goes to those who stumble uphill while trying to avoid detection.
It’s a world that rewards not the Aragorns, but the Rincewinds. So that’s fun.
This is best exemplified when Kazuma’s rousing success in saving the town results in him being arrested for at least property damage if not regicide.[8] And that is where the first 10 episodes end.
Now to wait for the season 2 and OVA dubs…
It’s a fine anime, but I think it’s been oversold. The premise is strong, the characters are fun, but the storytelling felt more like an attempt to hit the Greatest Hits beats. It might be worth the effort to read the Light Novel, as I suspect that might be the superior version in this case.[9]
Still, there are strong ideas, and a few things I’d aim to emulate. Especially the distinct leads. I do struggle with making a cast of diverse personalities.
If you enjoyed reading this review, please consider paying me. I have a patreon, a Ko-fi, and a burning desire to branch out into other projects but require investment to make it worth it.
We can’t all reincarnate into a fantasy world. Some of us need support to create them for ourselves.
Kataal kataal.
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[1] My brother, meanwhile, has been binging Deltora Quest for… some reason… I know the books were pretty good for elementary school Canvas, while the succeeding series made less of an impression.[2]
[2] Which is to say, bother Vulpin if you think it deserves a review.
[3] Isekai (Japanese: 異世界, transl. "different world") is a subgenre of Japanese fantasy light novels, manga, anime, and video games revolving around a normal person from Earth being transported to, reborn, or trapped in a parallel universe. (Wikipedia)[4]
[4] Yes, I actually used a footnote to cite a source and provide further information. Don’t get used to it.
[5] I desperately want to make a Yakuza joke, but I got nothing.
[6] The solution I devised for Penn & Pauper puts the Stats read-out on smartphones, with everything else being as it is in the normal world. IE, you have to manually equip weapons and armor and such.
[7] Not just because my Mom is my only patreon patron.
[8] They don’t specify if anyone was in the manor that got exploded.
[9] Not that the Light Novels I’ve read thus far have been particularly strong. The writing of Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and Spice & Wolf felt very stiff on the other end of the translation process. Log Horizon, meanwhile, has meandering Light Novels with a poor sense of rhythm for page breaks.[10]
[10] Also, the Mighty Santa Clara Library System refused to accept my Spice & Wolf books, so now I don’t know what to do with them.
Not going to do a Summer 2018 write up because I only lasted through one anime, and Chio’s School Road had… issues I don’t feel like discussing.
Also, haven’t had time to continue the Digimon Rewatch (which is exclusive to the Patreon until I finish season one).
Doesn’t mean I’ve been slacking! Netflix’s most recent license camping for it’s tedious binge watch format is Dragon Pilot: Hisone and Masotan, which was a delight to watch! Go watch it, right now! Do it!
Anyways, time for my… whatever this thing is... on it.
Hisone is a woman who joined the airforce because, near as I can tell, she didn’t have any other ideas for what to put on her school’s career plan worksheet that shows up in every anime, and she saw a fighter plane soar by.
There’s… worse motivations, I guess?
Anyways, while working a desk job, she’s invited to an interview at a far away hangar.
She goes to the hangar and is promptly eaten by a dragon.
But it’s okay! The dragon just wanted to eat her old flip phone! And the crew got her thrown up pretty quick! And now they want her to pilot the dragon.
By getting swallowed and controlling the thing but prodding its soft innards.
Anime
So, Dragons are a thing that exist, and the world governments have been helping hiding them because… that’s the deal they made? Anyways, Japan hides their dragons as fighter planes, and has their air force manage them.
Because we need to explain this bizarre premise somehow.
Dragons are selective about who they will swallow and not digest, and Hisone is one of those lucky few. So she’s a D-Pilot now, which is probably a promotion from her ill-defined desk job.
Also, now she has to put up with Nao Kaizaki, initially the only member of Gifu Base’s D-Pi program, and a woman who couldn’t get the dragon to swallow her, so her position is more theoretical.
Kaizaki is introduced exhibiting the mannerisms of your typical High School Thug boy character, so you know she’ll be interesting.[1]
Hisone’s superior officer, Remi Kakiyasu, was also once a candidate for dragon piloting who couldn’t get the dragon to accept her. So the entire program is kind of low on practical experience.
Then there’s the woman selling yogurt who is clearly important, but it’ll take a few episodes for yogurt woman to reveal her purpose.
So Kaizaki and Kakiyasu train Hisone up as she comes to grips with her new responsibilities.
Hisone finds a plaque embedded in the dragon to learn his name is Masotan.
And so, the title is complete.
Then three more pilots fly in in episode 4, and the main plot starts to meander in a direction.
Let’s meet the other three team members!
Elle Hoshino: Enlisted to become the first female fighter pilot, and is displeased to have been placed on the OTF (Organic Transformed Flier) program instead. So her dragon, F-2/Norma, refuses to leave it’s plane form to please its partner. Eventually Elle comes around and loosens up. She’s fine.
Mayumi Hitomi: A matronly shaped pilot. She’s soft-hearted and soft spoken. Flies a large, goofy looking dragon named Futomomo. She’s fine.
Lilico Kinutsugai: Winner of the Canvas’s ‘Wait, I want more’ award, Lilico is a shut-in with a wry sense of humor and love of manga. Her dragon is the samurai-looking Akemi. Lilico is also apparently asexual, something I wish they’d given space to explore a little more.
She could’ve been my favorite pilot,[2] but the show didn’t commit enough.
So the pilots are placed through a couple adventures to become friends as the creepy Iboshi (some vaguely defined government guy) watches and plots.
Iboshi is the closest thing the series has to a villain, despite it being more of a Man vs. Nature affair. He possesses a callous disregard for the people of the D-Pi program, focused on the looming Ritual the D-Pi are needed for.
This cold-naturedness made me dislike him, but also allows the series to run relationship drama in a really interesting direction.
Because, guess what? If the D-Pi fall in love, the dragons will instinctively reject them. And they need the D-Pi to keep the Dragons healthy, and also escort a giant dragon to ensure it doesn’t destroy Japan in its wake! Oh dear. This frames the ‘will-they, won’t-they’ of Hisone and Haruto of the maintenance team into an major conflict with dramatic consequences and justifies a dumb ‘misunderstanding’ plot with one of the other D-Pi.
This shows builds a very grounded, mature, and compelling view on romance, and I am super game for it. And super down to sing its praises.
I’ve found that the sweet spot for making me care about a romance plot isn’t tsundere antics, or fear, or dumb misunderstandings, because there’s nothing I crave in my media more than emotional honesty.
No, the slow burn I crave is sheer ignorance. It takes several episodes for Hisone to understand she may have feelings for Haruto beyond friendship, then more for her to actually accept and admit her feelings to herself, then the fantasy takes over to prevent a tedious ‘Oh, will you two just talk’ subplot, because Hisone can no longer do her job lest she get digested by her dragon! So the conflict of “How does Hisone deal with her feelings” becomes augmented to “How does Hisone do her freaking job now!?”
The answer, seemingly, is just have a level head on the topic: Mayumi Hitomi also has plenty of ship teases with another character, but never is at risk of being eaten. It doesn’t get examined, because Hitomi’s ability to just kind of… casually acknowledge it and not let the Doki-Dokis mess up her stride doesn’t draw attention.
And because Hitomi’s resolution to the conflict eventually comes down to “I don’t want to abandon anyone ever” means her love for Haruto[4] is just added to the pile of things Hitomi is just anxiously passionate about, in equal measures to her love of flying Masoton, and that seems to work out.
Which, I guess means the secret to flying the dragon’s isn’t a creepy expectation of a pure heart, Iboshi, but emotional maturity.
Which brings us to the jerky, playboy wannabe breaking Elle’s heart. Like a monster.
Take note, writers: this is the first time ‘I broke your heart to protect/save you!’ has ever been successfully executed without one or both parties catching a case of the stupids! Watch this and learn!
So, early in the series, we meet Yutaka Zaito, a wannabe womanizer who has no success, but maintains his illusion of charisma nevertheless. Then he meets Elle, whose serious attitude and cold shoulder grabs his attention, and he suddenly abandons his swarm and tries to, gently, ingratiate himself to Elle, who gradually warms up to him.
It’s nice.
But then the whole ‘Dragon digests those with unsteady hearts’ plot point happens, and Elle is in a position where she can’t even fly her dragon, sending her ambitions even further away. And she hasn’t realized it’s Zaito causing her heart flutters.
But Zaito, upon learning the situation, does understand. And knows that it’s either him or Elle’s career.
So, he turns up the creep, approaches Elle, and proposes a friends-with-benefits arrangement, claiming not to want a serious relationship, and subtly mocks Elle’s dragon rejection. This breaks Elle’s heart, of course, but resolves the matter. She can fly Norma again, and Zaito is left to bite his tongue and let his crush pursue her best life.
The sequence is well executed. It’s a misunderstanding perpetuated intentionally, knowingly, and selflessly by one party, and exists for reasons beyond ‘Neh, let’s have some dumb romance drama now’. Zaito knows what he’s giving up, but still breaks Elle’s heart because she legitimately needs him to so she can pursue her dreams. There’s no other timely way.
On the other end, the show introduces Natsume,[5] a childhood friend of Haruto, who comes in to be Hisone’s rival!
Except Hisone is too oblivious and all-loving to care, and Haruto is straight disinterested in Natsume. And Natsume is a shallow Tsundere and lacks any appealing characterization. They could’ve given her role to Nao, who desperately needs something to do in the later half of the series, or, better yet, just have Haruto be the human sacrifice.
“But you need a girl for the sacrificial beauty role!”
Okay.
Make Haruto a girl.
“Are you proposing the show suddenly swerve into Yuri?”
I mean, Yogurt lady’s backstory is literally a Tragic WWII-era Yuri love story.[6]
Sada Hinomoto shows up selling yogurt and being charming and mysterious so you know there’s something deeper going on.
Turns out, she’s the last D-Pi from the last time they did the ritual, so she actually has proper experience to teach the new kids, and, oh yeah, she hates Iboshi, resents the entire procedure, and carries a lot of trauma from when her friend Yae was chosen to be the human sacrifice last time, and though the show doesn’t spell it out, the intimate blocking and their schemes to flee to Paris paints a super clear picture about what that relationship was about and, gosh dangit, is she one cool grandma.
All she wants to to get back to the giant dragon to find closure with what happened to Yae and force an alternate solution.
Fortunately, Hisone is just the sort of loveable goofball to find an alternate to the Giant Dragon’s bedtime snack!
So there’s another reason why Hisone’s love interest should’ve been a girl.[8]
Now, practically this could’ve been accomplished a couple of ways: gender flip Haruto, cut Haruto and use Nao, pr combine characters. Point is, no matter how you do it, this hypothetical female love interest is now the human sacrifice for Mitatsu-sama.
With this change, there is a new parallel drawn between Hisone and Hinomoto,[9] further underlines Hisone’s tendency toward heartfelt dedication to unconventional methods, and Hisone’s desire for saving the sacrifice changes from an impersonal “Human sacrifices are wrong”[10] to “Human sacrifices are wrong, and also screw you I love that girl!”
And if that girl had Tsundere tendencies (like Nao or Natsume), that’d make the pairing even cuter.
Also, points for the entire D-Pi team unambiguously disbelieving Hisone’s ambiguous fate at the end. It’s fun to see such trope-awareness.[11]
In conclusion: Dragon Pilot is super adorable and sincere, the premise is quintessential anime, and it’s just fun. Sure, most of the characters deserve more depth and exploration, but that’s always my complaint and it’s only a 12-episode series. Plus, it very good at portraying mature characters without stooping into immature means.
And it’s really cementing my love of BONES as a studio.[12] I need to put more effort into seeking out their work.
So go watch it.
Thanks for reading my review! These do tend towards inconsistent release, but they’re fun to do. Consider checking out my other reviews, essays, and the rarer original work. I’m also nearing the end of my Muffin Comics experiment, so catch those while you can! If you really like what I’m outputting, I’ve got a Patreon, set on a monthly schedule so you know what you’re committing to.[13]
Next time: a Netflix Original of a magical tone! (And hopefully more Digimon)
Kataal kataal
[1] At least, that’s the hope. Gets dashed once the other D-Pi arrive on base and Kaizaki slips out of the spotlight.
[2] The title goes to Hisone herself.[3]
[3] Anyone else have troubles saying the main character/romantic lead are their favorite? Like it’s too easy an answer or something? Because I do.
[4] All these H names are raising the hackles of my Mug Rule…
[5] Presumably so they can localize Harvest Moon games.
[6] Which means we were this close to a Yuri anime not about assaulting high schoolers and creepy family dynamics,[7] but one about Dragons pretending to be a spitfire and historical context and and light-hearted comedy and I honestly would trade this show for that and I love Hisone & Maston!
[7] Citrus did not sit well with Canvas.
[8] Canvas’s full tilt idea, by the way, is to combine Haruto, Nao, and Natsume. Condense characters and keep them all relevant longer.
[9] Way too many H names.
[10] Not that Hisone being a goofy all-loving hero isn’t super endearing.
[11] Though it’d be nice to know what Hisone and Masoton were doing. Had Hisone ejected out of the dragon at any point during the… months(?) long time jump?
[12] Wolf’s Rain notwithstanding.
[13] Not going to lie, nothing deflects me from lending support quicker than a ‘Per Update’ schedule.
Netflix is making a live-action Avatar: The Last Airbender series.
Just… no? I realize time and development has been put into this. People are employed. But… the first series was magic, stop trying to recapture it.
Netflix has this problem where they want to propel themselves forward with original content, but that content is very mediocre. They try reviving old series and produce productions that disappoint.[1] The original concepts mostly fade into obscurity, are Stranger Things (which had one pretty good season, and then a mediocre second season), or is BoJack Horseman which I haven’t watched but haven’t heard a bad word about.
Then there’s their irritating handling of Anime.[2]
Netflix is willing to experiment and let creators do what they want. I admire that. But (and trust me, I hate to say this), they need focus testing. They need a stricter format. Edges for creators to bump up against and work around.
A standard season length, for one. An allotted time per episode maybe. Make production a puzzle to solve.
Instead they say ‘Let’s do the live-action Avatar series no one asked for, and is a passive insult to the original!’[3]
Which drags us into The Dragon Prince.
Spoilers! You might want to watch it for yourself (it’s nine episodes), but if you don’t mind spoilers, go ahead. I’m not the City Watch.
So, I think we’ve finally figured it out. We had Avatar: The Last Airbender, which was great. Then we distilled the creative staff, ran experiments and isolated elements.
Legend of Korra was good. Had the creators produce it, but not the head writer. The world was the same, but evolved in interesting ways. Good character concepts and real heart, but still missing the magic and character relationships that resonated so well in the first series.
Now, with The Dragon Prince, we get to see what happens when you isolate AtLA’s head writer, Aaron Ehasz.
You get a cliche fantasy setting, weak main plot, and a lot of cheap AtLA mimicry. But you also get some super charming child characters, intriguing (if not currently complex) villains, and small details that could build up to something great.
Which is to say: go to Bryke for the world and myth arc, go to Ehasz for the character interactions.
There it is! The ultimate break down! Let’s pack this up and…
Okay, fine. You want to hear my opinions on The Dragon Prince. That’s… fair, I guess.
So, in this setting, magic comes from six source: The sun! The moon! The Stars! The Ocean! The Earth! I think the sky?[4]
However, then humanity created a seventh magic! Dark Magic! Ooo, so evil, so dastardly!
Sigh.
Just once, I’d like dark magic to just be misunderstood. If they called it Life Magic, they’d probably have better PR.
Anyways, humanity went to war with the elves, but the Dragon King got sick of the fighting, so he sent the humans west, elves to the east, and divided the continent in half with a lava river.
Humanity didn’t really like this, so they killed the dragon king and his egg. So that’s vengeance.
Except this upset the elves because, y’know, murder’s bad. So they send a party from the assassin elf faction: The Moon Shadow Elves! They turn invisible under moonlight![5]
They’re gonna kill the Human king and his son to make things even. Because suddenly murder’s not so bad?
However, a member of the group is a child who couldn’t will herself to kill.
Basically, that cool and exciting setting you created when you were fourteen? Good news, it’s a Netflix Show now! Yay!
Also, the first season is Book 1: Moon.
And the title card is formatted exactly like Avatar, but with white text on a black background.
So the world isn’t special, and they’re deliberately aping some Avatar trappings. But that’s fine, there’s still the characters and plot. We could bicycle this!
So, what do we have with the humans? A beloved king with a dead wife and two children? Okay… both are sons,[6] so at least it’s not the usual nuclear structure. And, hey, the eldest prince is the king’s step son! Nice change.
Who else? King has an advisor that uses dark magic, suggested killing the dragon king and the egg, and talks above his station. But, hey, Lord Viren has two charming children, and he seems genuinely concerned about his king’s survival and the good of…
Oh, he gets a magic makeover in the final episode to make him look more inhuman, and spends the season plotting to take the throne.
Ugh. Of course.
Well, what about Viren’s children? Claudia is a mage like her dad, and is a cloudcuckoolander. Good choice. And she doesn’t do much that’s actively evil. We’ve got Ty Lee in Zuko’s role. I’m game.
Soren is… well, he’s going to be Azula. He doesn’t have her sadistic streak, but he’s been given the job of eliminating claims to the throne, is a competent combatant, and Viren motivates him with being in line for the throne.
He could turn, but my money’s on just being Azula.
Now, to be clear, Viren wasn’t obviously evil. There were plenty of early moments that hinted that he could be sympathetic and non-evil. However, he does spiral into torture and deceit, so once the season is over, there’s no ambiguity. Sorry.
Hey, what about the main cast?
Prince Callum is voiced by Sokka! Awesome! Jack De Sena needs more work. This time, he gets magic and impressive artistic skills! But he had to give up his sword abilities, and kept the daddy issues. But there’s still that snarky edge and loving brother personality, though the weight of them have been swapped.
He’s the half brother of Prince Ezran, who is the heir apparent of the kingdom. He’s… a goofy young boy. I dunno. Aang light. No overt talents. He’s fine.
So those two are hanging out at the castle, when suddenly their father tries to send them off to the winter cabin, despite it being not winter. He suggests made making a dirt man or going mud sledding.
Callum finds this suspect, and eventually logics out that King Harrow expects to be assassinated and wants to get his sons a safe distance away.
Meanwhile, the Moon Shadow Elves are planning their assassination, making a vow on a magic ribbon that will amputate a limb if they fail. Two targets: King Harrow and Prince Ezran to make up for killing the Dragon King and his egg. Even, you know?
Of course, they dragged a literal child along and had her make the same oath with the same ribbon, so screw ‘em. Child soldiers are bad.
This girl is Rayla. She’ll be the rogue of the main cast! Yay![7]
However, after making this promise, they find out she let a guard go so the humans know they’re coming. You’re off the mission Rayla! Turn in your fancy switchblades and ribbon!
Except the ribbon is magic and won’t come off until the job is done, so keep that I guess. And it’d be mean to take away your knives, so… look, stay at camp while the five adults go murder a dude and an actual kid.
Please remember, these jerks wanted to murder an innocent child.
Rayla decides to redeem herself, and sneaks into the castle. She finds the two princes, Callum attempts to martyr himself for Ezran, shenanigans occur in secret tunnels, and… oh, look, it’s the Dragon King’s Egg. Guess they didn’t actually kill that?
Well, let’s call the whole thing off!
Oh, nevermind. Rayla’s Uncle still wants to kill the king and prince. What a jerk.
So our three heroes escape the castle with the egg, planning on returning to the Dragon Queen. We got our mission!
Oh, and the elves killed King Harrow. So… that’s fun.
To be honest, I wouldn’t discount Lord Viren using dark magic to sidestep this. But he’s also trying to claim the throne, so maybe the king is actually dead.
Could go either way.
The kids head off to the royal cottage, where they stumble onto Callum’s aunt. She’s mute! (Maybe deaf, not one hundred percent on that, since lip reading was referenced but also some ambiguity…)
She’s a military General, fights with a shield, is super awesome, and I’m sad how Callum didn’t bring her into the scheme.
Like, yes, for the plot to work, Lord Viren needs to know the princes are alive and the boys have to be careful and having General Amaya know and supporting the boys would’ve caused other troubles.
But… c’mon Callum, literally signing to Amaya that Rayla is a monster and forcing the elf to do a Blue Spirit act is terrible. Like… they’ve established a sweet way for Callum to communicate a secret past her soldiers, and they didn’t use it for a sweet twist?
Ugh. Intentional miscommunication and unnecessary secrets. They are hitting a bunch of my hated tropes.[8]
The children run off and… don’t really do anything very interesting for a couple episodes.
The villain side of things is where the real fun is! General Amaya goes to the castle to report on the survival of the princes and stop Lord Viren from taking the throne.
However, Lord Viren offers her the throne. Again, how the scene is written and acted, I still found myself doubting what role Viren’s supposed to take. He seems genuinely concerned for the general populace, and offers compromises at every turn, and communicates honestly and…
I want Lord Viren to be a misunderstood good guy. I really want Dark Magic to not be an irredeemable evil. A story without a Big Bad, just factions with cross purposes would be great. There’s so many good escape routes for a more interesting story.
Then Lord Viren throws the man Amaya chose (her interpreter, Gren. He’s neat! I like him!) to lead the Prince Recovery Team into a dungeon, where he can watch Viren torture Rayla’s uncle for information.
Yeah… this is who our villain is.
In Gren’s place, Viren sends his children. Soren is given secret instructions to insure the princes don’t make it home alive, and Claudia is given secret instructions to prioritize the safety of the egg. So that’s our Zuko and Azula doing the Avatar hunt.
They have a fun dynamic as Soren doesn’t put much stock in magic and Claudia is an adorable dark magician girl![10] I look forward to more of them.
Now, back to the D&D campaign of the kids: Callum is trying to learn magic after stealing Claudia’s storm magic orb, and he’s pretty good at it. Rayla is worried about the ribbon cutting off her circulation and is an awesome rogue. Ezran… needs to learn healing magic so we can have a Cleric.
They accidentally drop the egg into a frozen lake and are afraid the baby dragon within is dying, so they head off to get help at a town. There’s a fun kid moment with Rayla turning a snowman into a snow-elf (it was a cute moment and Rayla needs more).
Then the group picks up a girl, Ellis, so abruptly that she might as well have been a player that joined between sessions. Ellis rides a giant puppy named Ava, so we’ve got a beast-master fighter!
Ellis tells the boys about a magic healer on the top of a scary mountain filled with scary monsters. With no options, the four go to the mountain.
They fight one monster, have some self reflection, get to the mountain, learn Ezran can talk to animals,[11] and the monsters there are illusions.
They get to where to where the healer is, only to learn that, nah, she’s just a powerful illusionist and Ava only has three legs.
The only way to save the egg is to hatch it. But they need a storm to do so.
Thus, Callum shatters his magic orb to release a storm, the egg hatches, and the titular Dragon Prince is able to gently bite off the magic ribbon Rayla couldn’t cut off with a magic sun knife.
(Either the dragon is magic enough, or saving the baby dragon was considered equal to assassinating Ezran).
Soren and Claudia use a spell to pinpoint the group!
Lord Viren inprisons Rayla’s uncle in a coin and transforms into an eviller looking form!
Also, there’s some mystery with a magic mirror? Cliffhanger stuff.
So… The Dragon Prince is not amazing. The dialogue and character interactions and relationships are great, but the story and world is paint by numbers.
The next season has plenty of room for subversions and interesting experiments, but… until I see it, I honestly think the show’s skippable in its current form. Filler episodes to build the world and characters would do a lot to help, and committing to nuances hinted at for Lord Viren would be great.
Also, hopefully they improve the animation. I’m not normally one to care about frame rates, but boy did the animation stutter a lot for a finished product.
It’s average.
Thanks for reading this review! Consider checking out my other writings, sending me comments and questions, check out my webcomic or RPG Blog, or whatever. Next time, Netflix is releasing an Anime I’ve been excited for nearer the end of the month. Keep an eye out for that, which will post to my Patreon first. I’m also slowly rolling out a Review of Digimon there!
Until we go flying with dragons,
Kataal kataal.
[1] Admittedly, modern fandom is filled with loud obnoxious people, but I haven’t heard anything good about Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life, even from my less frothy-mouthed sisters.
[2] If you’re gonna simuldub series in Canada, you can do it in the US, you jerks!
[3] Everything can be improved. But actually remaking something just says the original wasn’t good enough. That’s why people hate reboots.
[4] Can’t remember if that’s under the purview of the stars or not…
[5] Which is Warcraft, Ehasz.
[6] Unless there’s a spoiler with Ezran’s voice cast.
[7] Canvas likes playing rogues.
[8] Let’s see if season two can get inappropriate student-teacher relationship![9] Then they can get a free sandwich. And my eternal ire.
[9] For the record: when Claudia inevitably defects and starts teaching Callum magic, that’s not going to count. The two are close in age and it’s not an institutional power imbalance.
[10] I want a show about Claudia, Rayla, and Amaya on awesome adventures.
[11] He’s a druid! Learn to heal, nerd.
Sarcastic lead? Goofy supporting cast? Loving use of nerdity? Maid uniforms? Fantastical elements stuffed into a slice-of-life narrative? Well, that’s certainly something for me!
Also, it’s alarming how often Quetzalcoatl's been popping up in my work and entertainment. I mean, it’s not an excessive amount, to be honest, but considering my original assumption was ‘Obscure Mythological Figure improperly transplanted into an anime film’, anything more than once is notable.[1]
Perhaps this is punishment for using a mondegreen of the name as my sign off phrase…
Anyways, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid! It was spoken of highly by an anime reviewer I follow, it was on Funimation, and I need to justify that subscription beyond letting my brother watch Case Closed all the time, so…
Let’s talk about the show.
In a bit of an oddity, I’ve found the Opening and Closing sequences very absorbing. Now, I’m not one to ever skip either in a series, as it’s usually well animated, the music is catchy, and it’s a couple minutes to settle in or grab food or whatever, plus (depending on the player) it can be a chore to skip anyways. There are often neat details hidden away, too, and it’s fun to learn the context of images as you go through the series.
The OP in this case struck me by how it triggered not the ‘Ah, Anime opening song’ switch in my brain, but a ‘Ah, Visual Novel opening song’ switch, which is a weird switch to learn I have, since I haven’t actually played that many Visual Novels. Still, the music itself is upbeat, very energetic, and very “Oh yeah! Let’s get into this! Time to read a bunch, make choices, and seduce a girl!” But I have no agency in the upcoming events, Anime! Why are you trying to make me hyped? It’s working, but I don’t understand the effort.
It’s also paired with the trippiest imagery I’ve seen in awhile, with fractal dragons and people spinning like falling seedlings. Still bright and colorful, and there’s faces to meet over the course of the show, but it’s just utterly bizarre. Maybe because I don’t get exposed to purely comedic animes that often I’m not used to it, but it’s still a ride that I lack the tools to properly contextualize.
Actually, now that I think about it and listen to the song divorced from the imagery, the song reminds me of Rune Factory Frontier’s opening. Huh…
The EP, on the other hand, is a more reasonable montage of Daily Life, with a song that’s also fun. It actually strikes me as more of an OP piece. I really like the song. Considering it’s been a very recent realization for me that Music Albums are intentionally curated objects meant to be listened to straight through to convey meaning, instead of a bunch of singles thrown on a disc, I may not be the guy for musical criticism.
Music is an ineffable magic to me. I lack the tools to create or understand it, but some songs are good?
This had been a tangent. Let’s go to what I’m comfortable with: storytelling!
So let’s take a brief look at something most people take for granted: the episode titles and, in relation, names.[3]
Naming things is a hard task which I have managed to become moderately good at, a fact I derive from the time a classmate in a scriptwriting class asked with mild awe at how I came up with so many names[4] for my 10-minute comedy play. The secret, as with all artistic aspects you find difficult, is figure out a functional system and maintain it.
So I’ve developed a few methods for characters:
Start with a theme (in the case of my play, I was actually going through alphabetically as characters are mentioned) but don’t be afraid to break it if you feel like it.
Stick with one or two syllable names. The longer the name, the harder it’ll be to remember. Same with not going too archaic or foreign with the name. If your audience can’t remember the character’s name or how to pronounce it, they’ll focus more on that than the story.
If you break rule two, it’s on you to have a nickname prepared that follows rule two. If you don’t, I’m going to call you Windy Jerk in my post RPG Session write-ups.[5]
Which is fine for characters, but then there’s titles, which I’m no good at. Titles need to be both intriguing and vague, to draw in an audience, but keep them surprised. This is compounded when you have 13-26 episodes to name. Some shows do a good job at consistently coming up with names, or at least semi-adequate puns, and others just call the episodes ‘[Episode/Chapter/Part]’ and the number in the sequence. Both of these are valid techniques.[6]
Which is why Word Salad Titles stick out so much, and why I love them yet can’t quite master using them myself. They manage being vague not by carefully revealing little information, but overloading with data so fast the audience doesn’t have time to parse it before the shows starts.
Also, they just sound funny.
What’s intriguing about Dragon Maid is that it’s not an extreme example of the Word Salad some comedy animes tend towards (Exclamatory statement! Vague plot summary), but it is a style very similar to myself.[7]
Dragon Maid’s episode titles follow the structure of exclamatory sentences, then gentle snark about the title in parenthesis. While I don’t use exclamations often, the statement followed by snark is something I do with my art work [[Maybe provide examples?]] and is even punctuated the same way, with parentheses implying an aside.
Which is also the speech style of our titular Miss Kobyashi. (Check out my sweet transition!)
Ms. Kobayashi is the first character I’ve deeply related to in a long while. Sarcastic and pretty asocial, she starts the series living alone in an one-bedroom apartment and has a single friend from work. Otherwise, Kobayashi is content with her solitude, engaging in quiet interests. It's not exactly emotionally fulfilling, but it's okay. She doesn't really feel the need for more.
Which is just the opening needed for a Manic Pixie Dream Girl! In the form of a Yandere Dragon Maid Girl.
Manic Pixie Dream Girls have received some negative press,[8] which isn't completely unwarranted, but sells the trope short. After all, when you really get down to it, they're the personification of the inciting incident. A character whose arrival kicks starts the protagonist’s journey of self improvement. Sometimes they need to be dragged kicking and screaming for the first leg, because it's funnier that way. Often times, when using a Dream Girl character, writers take a romantic angle because… that's a popular and relatable motivation I guess? The problem comes when the narrative is locked close to the protagonist, leaving not enough space to develop the Dream Girl beyond that scope.
Fortunately, since Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is a serial narrative, and it's Tohru bringing in most of the supporting cast, our Dragon Maid doesn't fall into that pit trap.
Tohru is a fish out of water, which I really love seeing when the environment is our own. It’s a good method to work observational humor into a work, as well as odd ball humor for the alien being. Usually, there is an air of innocence to the character. Tohru, meanwhile, comes from what is implied to be a war-torn fantasy realm, and prefers to default to chaos and destruction when unsure.
It’s a good take.
Kobayashi doesn’t take too much interest in Tohru’s origins, greeting (most) new acts of magic and property damage with half-lidded neutrality or annoyance. Since the focus of the show is ‘The supernatural adjusting to the mundane,’ Kobayashi’s disinterest is important. There are many other shows you can watch if you want to see a normal person come to grips with a magic world,[9] so Kobayashi needs to act as a guide character for the normal world.
Even as these dragon interlopers force her into a parental role and build out her friend circle.
That first point is possibly one of more unique traits, as rarely do Animes present their protagonist taking on the role of adoptive parent. Or parent at all. Maybe a few world-wandering shows will have found families, but I can’t think of another example where the character’s arc is that of becoming more domestic.
Which is why I appreciate Kanna.
Kanna is the second dragon to move from The Other World to Our World, banished for playing too many pranks to get attention from her parents. However, despite this supposed impish nature, she’s the most reserved of the Dragons, content to living like she’s Kobayashi’s nine-year old daughter, with Tohru acting as sort of an older sister. I think this is kind of a lost opportunity, because we could’ve kept all that, and also have Kanna play a few small pranks from time to time out of boredom and discontent. That could’ve been a nice, additional reason for Kobayashi to enroll Kanna in school: not out of malice but to give the young dragon some engagement during the day.
Then Fafnir and Queztal ‘Lucoa’ Coatl start visiting, then moving into the neighborhood.
Fafnir is my favorite of the dragons. He’s initially introduced as your usual bloodthirsty and treasure-obsessed dragon, which is fine, but then the series uses those traits to have him comfortably slip into a NEET lifestyle, which is hilarious. He gets to enact violence in video games and collect treasures in the form of promotional items, while still staying a grump.
Lucoa is… she started as the Sane member of the Dragon cast, giving exposition on what Tohru was like before and generally just being chill. However, in moving her to the world, she signs herself up as a familiar for a young mage, and starts… creeping on him is the best I charitably describe it. Shouta has no interest in these advances, and watching it played out on screen isn’t charming. Also, I’m afraid I have to align myself as opposed to the ‘Patriarchy’ line, because it does seem out of character.[10]
About halfway through, Elma arrives, after seven episodes of being the mysterious water dragon in the opening, inspiring me to see if I couldn’t align the dragons with the Rune Factory dragons.[11]
I… like Elma, but she’s underutilized. After her introductory episode, she’s just food obsessed and does literally nothing of consequence. She doesn’t even get a human to bond with like the others. Nothing is fleshed out for her. Unfortunate, as she looks cute with her glasses.
As a part of the theme, most of the dragons[12] are given a human to who they grow close.
Tohru, obviously, has Kobayashi. Tohru is very direct with her affections, while Kobayashi has to warm up to her dragon maid, and the exact degree Kobayashi returns the affections (whether it’s platonic or romantic on her end) isn’t pinned down exactly.
In contrast, Kanna has Saikawa, who has an obvious crush on Kanna, which she hides poorly. Though Kanna acts oblivious to what she does to Saikawa, Kanno does indicates an interest in… some sort of relationship that parallels Kobayashi and Tohru.
Actually, the show seems to have a problem with putting minors into sexual situations. It’s fine with Kanna and Rika, as they are essentially the same age and Saikawa’s squeeing, though transparent, is kept at an age-appropriate level. The two only have the one moment while visiting Saikawa’s house that’s uncomfortable, and that’s initiated by Kanna.
Shouta and Lucoa are just uncomfortable.
Fanservice is a contentious subject. What is okay, and what crosses a line? What level of slapback against perverts makes it even? Why am I (seemingly) one of the few that takes no umbrage against MHA’s Mineta but dislike Lucoa’s portrayal?
I typically avoid Anime that put sexual fanservice as one of its selling points. For example, before starting on Dragon Maid, I watched the first two episodes of WorldEnd: What are you doing at the end of the world? Are you busy? Will you save us? which is an epic word salad of a title which invokes the image of some shy person trying to ask someone out on a date that’s also a world-saving quest, but doesn’t want to over step. However, it quickly became clear the focus is pretty much a rescue romance focused on a bunch of characters the narrative goes through pain to tell you are 15 at the oldest. Also, a troll that wants to eat the protagonist which, recent meme culture aside, would’ve been an interesting dynamic to watch. Too bad the rest of the introductory episodes were too skeevy.
Which is to say, I’m easily tossed when a piece of media’s centerpoint is fanservice, made worse when it’s creepy fanservice to the detriment of world and narrative.
Then there’s Mineta who, foolishly, I’m going to try and defend now? Because the subjects of Mineta’s perversions are also approximately 15 years old, as above. However, Mineta is the same age as his classmates, which flattens the power dynamic.
‘But Canvas! It’s an excuse to show the audience fanservice of 15-year olds!’ you may say.
Okay. It’s a Shonen. The target audience are young males, approximately the same age as the cast. Are you really going to say you didn’t have a couple crushes on your peers as a teenager? It’s okay to let teenagers be attracted to other teenagers. As for the adult members of the audience? Let them smile whimsically at what it was like to be that age.
And his peers do admonish and punish him for going too far. If it’s not enough punishment for you, well, that’s up to your interpretation. I give it a pass because the tone is kept light and Mineta unable to do any actual harm. And comedy works best through exaggeration. A man getting stabbed is tragic. A man getting impaled onto an oversized firework that shoots into the air and explodes is slapstick. Also, the kid’s 15, he has time to mature and get character progression.
But you know who I never hear any ill words against? Midnight. Superheroine in a skintight outfit, whose schtick is bondage, and uses flirty tones towards students. Now that’s super uncomfortable. Because she is in a position of authority, and receives zero pushback for how she acts around her students.[13] Yet, the fanbase seems to give her a pass. Why? She actually acts more predatory than Mineta, and her power literally knocks her opponents out. She is dripping with poor implications.
I could go in depth, but I think that’s enough of a baseline to continue the review. The appropriateness of Fanservice depends on the viewer, and can be fickle, so excuse me if I can’t give a bullet point list of my own policies.[14]
So, let’s return to Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid, which undoubtedly has strong element of fanservice. Why does it (mostly) succeed?
Well, first off, it’s kept tongue in cheek. The adult female dragons have ridiculous proportions, which gets lampshaded heavily, but their huge tracts of land are rarely used as a value judgement on the cast. They’re magical beings, if they want to look that way, it’s on them.
Next, there’s little power imbalance in the relationships. Tohru begins the series making her intentions towards Kobayashi clear, but after a couple rejections, the lines are established and respected. Tohru loves Kobayashi, but she wants any return in affections to be gained honestly. So even with Tohru’s immense physical and magical strength, and Kobayashi being placed in the role of ‘Master’, they’re both equal in establishing boundaries and respecting them.
And tone is very important. It’s a comedy series, so actions and emotions can be big and exaggerated. So, exaggerated proportions, exaggerated yuri-teasing, exaggerated violence, and exaggerated reactions. Saikawa happily screams every time Kanna does something cute, and it works because it’s a comedic reaction.
However, Lucoa breaks these rules. She answers Shouta’s summons and becomes his familiar. However, Shouta is maybe 10 or eleven to Lucoa’s presented, let’s say, late-twenties, and Lucoa comes on to this literal child. A child who rejects the advances and explicitly tells her not to. And Lucoa can’t claim ignorance, so she’s intentionally violating boundaries. It’s unbalanced power, ignores established lines, and turns Lucoa’s physical form into a joke, which all shifts the comedic tone.
Then (and I originally wanted to avoid this topic) the dub gives her a line about changing to more conservative dress because she was growing tired of patriarchal pressure. Lucoa had spent the series to the point as the most overtly sexualized character by her own decision, even getting into legal trouble once or twice, and creeping on a child. Then the writing wants to try and shame the audience over a character placed before them. It’s a line that might’ve worked if delivered by Tohru or Elma,[15] as it would’ve continued the theme of the the world pushing back against Lucoa. It’s also winter, so passing it off as the ex-goddess caving to nature would have worked, especially since the feathered serpent is from a tropical climate, and is a giant snake, so needing to bundle up against cold works.
I should not be forming opinions about this mythology! Why are you doing this to me, anime?
So, late-run Lucoa aside, Miss Kobayashi’s Dragon Maid is a fun show with strong world building, an interesting story, and pretty good comedy. I recommend it.
If you enjoyed this review, you should check out my other writings. I like talking about things, so if you want to send me asks, I’d be happy to engage. Also, hey, I have a patreon, in case you want to support me and my various endeavours. Thanks for reading.
Kataal Lucoa.
[1] I was kind of sort of hired to write a children’s play about Quetzalcoatl once, and I was not the person to suggest it.[2]
[2] It was an okay piece. There was talk of maybe developing it further, but to be honest, South American Mythology doesn’t interest me.
[3] A topic I must’ve covered before, but I can’t remember where. Repeated lessons can be good, though, so tough it out.
[4] To be fair, there were only two active characters on stage, one body, and three further mentioned names, for a total of six. I still take pride because I lack confidence in names.
[5] I only do this when I’m a player. As a GM I try to respect player choices, but still, throw me a bone, please.
[6] This is why my reviews have the formula of Canvas_____: Review Subject.
[7] I am vain and like things that remind me of myself.
[8] Says the never been kissed white guy…
[9] I recommend Digimon!
[10] However, it’s a brief throwaway line, so I’m not one to make a fuss. Just gentle tutting.
[11] It falls apart very quickly. Terrable could be Lucoa, but there’s no one for Ventuswill.
[12] Or ex-goddess, in the case of Lucoa.
[13] Student-Teacher romances being, of course, a bugbear that’s been growing for me recently.
[14] It’d probably be mostly glasses focused, anyways.
[15] Who is lawfully aligned. And would’ve given her more than food to stress about.
If there’s something I needed in my Anime Repertoire, it was a fun, pulpy Shonen Series.
I have selected My Hero Academia because frog girl.
Tsuyu Asui and the various tumblr posts she spawned is what drew my attention, and I was hearing good things about the series, so I thought I’d give it a go. Plus I’m catching it in the early stages, so there’s not too much of an archive to panic over. It’s a good time to get in.
I’m not one for long runners, since I enjoy definite start and end points.[1] Media designed to just go on forever, stuffed with filler and formula is a quick eject for me. And I’ve never been one for fighty man Shounen.
I couldn’t get into Dragon Ball Z, because I only caught brief segments, and those segments were the parts with Goku floating there staring down his enemy. Or Buu turning someone into a cookie and eating them. Contextless nonsense that was very unappealing.[2]
Naruto began it’s dubbed broadcast as I entered Middle School. However, those were troubled times of much grounding due to academic indifference, and I couldn’t be bothered to monitor the broadcast schedule. So I fell off the Naruto train… basically after the second episode.
I didn’t care about pirates enough to try One Piece, and Bleach seemingly left no cultural weight to enter the equation.[3]
However, these reviews are nothing if not a bizarre justification for making up for my misspent youth. Because yearning for the nostalgic past is what adulthood is for.
And I finally committed to Funimation’s streaming service, so, yay! More dubs for Canvas![4] Which leaves only the Viz stable to have difficulties with.
So… why does My Hero Academia succeed where it’s predecessors fail?
Likeable cast, mostly. While other self-perpetuating shonens have large casts with various interesting gimmicks, usually only one or two will resonate with the viewer, and there’s often little by way of character complexity or arcs.
Meanwhile, MHA has a cast that, oddly, are mostly characterized by positivity. There’s one or two grumpy loners, sure, but they’re handled with an almost parody tone, and the rest are actually nice kids you can appreciate.
And our protagonist, Deku, is notable for not being uniquely special. At the outset, he’s in the minority of people without powers. He eventually gains some, a decision I’m… conflicted on, but he gets superpowers by earning them.
Deku’s a tenacious fanboy, particularly idolizing the biggest hero in the world, wanting to follow the man’s example. However, as he doesn’t have a gift, he’s seemingly incapable of reaching that point.
Our hero takes this in stride, instead dedicating his attention to analyzing heroes and their methods. He’s a very clever and intelligent protagonist, and considering he’s following the trail of Naruto and freaking Goku, that defining trait is a refreshing departure.
Then he earns his chance at his dreams by being undeniably heroic despite being a squib.
Now there are obviously two sides to Deku inheriting All Might’s power:
One one hand, we miss the story of a muggle climbing his way up the ranks through sheer willpower and analysis.
But, with him getting All Might’s power, we instead see a young boy struggle with a power well beyond his control and capabilities.
While I’d prefer the Rock Lee route, the physical struggle of Deku literally destroying himself with every use of One for All, and the ramifications (risk of permanent damage and Deku needing to use it strategically) is a compelling narrative thrust in its own right, so I can’t complain too much.
The duality of All Might is an interesting sight to behold. In full hero mode, he’s nothing if not positive and encouraging. Outside of that persona, All Might is a little pessimistic and grumpy, but he still has a clear streak of good that’s never suppressed, even when he’s feeling sick.
It would’ve been easy and in line with established tropes to make All Might a lazy and harsh task master, but even when sending Deku through an excessively intense training regiment, All Might’s encouraging and positive, pushing Deku not for his selfish purposes, but because he honestly believes in Deku.
Then, after Deku goes above and beyond the task All Might set (clear out a stretch of beach), All Might tells his student to eat a strand of his hair, which is precisely the sort of thing I make jokes about when watching television.[5]
The even more amazing thing is that this positivity isn’t exclusive to All Might. The entire hero cast are positive and supportive people. Besides Bakugo, who’s the childhood friend turned rival character, no one specifically puts down anyone else. Every challenge and lesson has the whole of Class 1-A cheering each other on.
Even during the admission trials, where they’re literally competing against one another, you never see any character go out of their way to sabotage another.
Normally, it’s so easy to make the main character a total reject, give them a whole community of opposition and conflict. So it’s refreshing that everyone who wants to be a hero is a positive person.
It’s the same reason so many people gush over pages featuring Batman offering sympathy to others instead of punches. We want our heroes to be the best example of humanity, something to aspire to be.
Which is the exact philosophy that brings All Might to take Deku under his wing.
Then Bakugo, who’s introduced as a violent bully, wanting to believe heroics is his birthright, becomes mocked for being such a hothead. He’s got a powerful quirk, was number one for the admission test, but the rest of the class silently agree that they don’t wish to abide by his attitude. And it’s not even bullying Bakugo, but more gentle mocking and pushback against his egocentrism and violence.
Because the class are still children, but their nature shows a preference toward acceptance and teamwork, and an openness for redemption. The class’s treatment of Bakugo is negativity towards his current actions, not the kid himself.
UA is structured to be a competitive environment, a whetstone to hone the next generation of heroes. You have to compete in a trial to get into the programs, teachers can expel whole classes, and you can lose your spot in class to someone in a ‘lesser’ course. However, even when the cast are explicitly telling one another they’re gunning for each other, it’s usually with a tone of ‘nothing personal, it’s just the situation,’ and there’s no hard feelings. No one resents anyone else, really, and there’s no hesitation to work together when the situation calls for it.
Which is important because this is a show for children, and it’s showing, by example, that intent and actions are a better defining trait than raw ability or natural born talent.
A lot of the quirks are explicitly underwhelming. Class 1-A runs the gamut between making explosions, nullifying gravity, sticky balls, being invisible, and having a tail, with various and unequal limitations. It’s not what you have that makes you good or evil, it’s what you do with it.
To further cement this, One for All is absurdly powerful, and after a training montage, Deku’s given a portion of the quirk. And that portion is so strong, so powerful, that even with the preparation All Might put him through, using it still physically breaks Deku.
Which means, while most Shonens are about the protagonist becoming stronger, working their way to being the best there is, Deku literally gets handed that strength in episode 4. So, instead of growing powerful, Deku has to learn restraint and self control when using One for All.
Because being a hero isn’t about being better than everyone else, it’s about using what you have effectively to make the world around you a better place, with both physical abilities and personality.
Deku has the right personality and philosophy, he needs to learn how to use his power.
Bakugo knows how to use his power, but he doesn’t quite have the needed interpersonal skills or humility.
Thus why the two are the rivals.
The actual arcs do a good job of tracing old structures while also bringing in its own twists.
There is, of course, the introductory arc, where we’re introduced to the protagonist whose dream seems impossible to him, until a mentor figure steps in and grants him the one thing needed to proceed (A quirk for Deku, headwear for Naruto and Luffy). Then he meets his crush and turns a few low-grade rivals into allies (like you do) as he begins the journey to become the best… hero/ninja/pirate/grim reaper?[6]
Deku takes the entrance examine, which he technically failed, but he put in such a good effort that he was given bonus points so he could enroll at UA anyways.
Then we get a nice mix of Slice of Life and implied opposition from a mentor figure, who turns out to have been performing a secret test of character.
Next, the main cast is given their first field mission, which suddenly becomes a lot more serious than expected.
Which brings us to the end of the first season.
So, a quality that I find takes a series from good to great is its approach to balancing drama and comedy: namely, no one’s truly exempt from either. Naruto had shades of it, Fullmetal Alchemist did it to the hilt. Sometimes it’s well set-up jokes, sometimes it’s just goofy character designs.[7]
Class 1-A is filled with goofballs, and even though they serious up when a horde of villains crash their first rescue training mission, their personalities are able to leak a good amount of comedy where needed.
Then the entirety of the second season is dedicated to the required tournament arc. Which… okay, time for Canvas to zone out, right?
Well, no. Because My Hero Academia is pretty good at both dynamic combat and interesting situations. Further, the previous season already did a good job of establishing people’s powers, so there’s space to split the focus between showing fine details and solid character work.
UA’s tournament is actually a broadcasted sports festival, so the competition starts with a obstacle course, which revels in all the slapstick potential inherent. Deku also wins it by looking at the mine field that is the final obstacle, and says ‘Nah. I can use this.’
Good for our hero!
Then, the second event is a cavalry battle,[8] where Deku’s reward for winning the first event is getting a 10 million point bounty on his head. It’s so unfair it turns to the realm of parody. Which I’m all about.
The second event is thus a showcase of Quirk Synergy, more of Deku’s strategy and resulting counter strategies, and more slapstick. So that’s nice.
Since Deku soundly won the first round, our protagonist is getting diminishing returns for the rest of the arc.
The third event is straight up tournament battles, but with most of the cast already eliminated, so that saves time, and the show only really focuses on the big events, split between the second half of one episode and the first of another. Between those, there are match ups that are just squashes[9] and comedy.
The final winner is then Hannibal Lecter’d on the podium in a great mix of character drama (he didn’t like the way he won) and comedy (because the final winner has to be actively restrained and muzzled. That’s just silly!)
Then the cast picks out their codenames.
Which pretty much brings us even to where the dub’s gotten.
I’m having a good time with the show, and I look forward to more episodes. It’s going to be interesting to follow an anime episode by episode instead of marathoning the whole thing through. Let’s see if I can keep my sanity.
Kataal kataal.
[1] There are exceptions, mostly in the form of webcomics and Discworld.
[2] Dragon Ball, meanwhile, had a youthful energy that drew me in. But it also aired infrequently so I never got totally invested.
[3] Okay, I had a high school friend who was interested, much to the annoyance of another high school friend, who had a weak understanding of difference in media interests.
[4] You had your chance Crunchyroll!
[5] Seriously, ask Vulpin, it’s exactly my humor.
[6] Again, never got into Bleach.
[7] Depowered All-Might looks like a muppet.
[8] A sport I’ve only seen in the context of anime, but should totally be more common.
[9] Following a wrestling podcast may be helping me appreciate some of the meta-aspects of fight scenes.
