What's in the bag? WHAT'S IN THE BAAAG?!

Regular readers of this blog may remember I listed Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta (The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses) as my top Summer 2023 show with only a few weeks remaining in the season. However, the word-of-mouth reputation of BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!! (at least on the 𝕏-Twitter) convinced me to give it an eleventh-hour try despite my lack of interest in the franchise. (I dropped First BanG Dream! after eight episodes in 2017.)

Anon is so frustrated, she turned into a Force ghost.

The all-3DCG aspect of It's MyGO!!!!! also probably would have put me off a bit, were it not for Bubuki Buranki and Seikaisuru Kado (KADO: The Right Answer) getting me most of the way on board years ago. Honestly, though, it looks fine. My main issues with 3DCG in anime tend to involve scenes where it's combined with regular 2D animation while looking weirdly different in motion. No such problems here. But I digress.

Begging always works.

BanG Dream! It's MyGO!!!!! is about girls being self-absorbed, inconsiderate, manipulative, and deceitful with each other. Sometimes they're outright cunts about it. So, yeah, it's pretty good. There are a few characters who care more about music and bands than starting shit or being mean for no reason, but I like them anyway, too. What I like most about It's MyGO!!!!! is that the series begins on a low point and mostly stays in downer mode throughout. This is a departure from the uplifting narrative arcs that I'm accustomed to seeing in anime about A Bunch of Girls Who Like a Thing.

I like Umiri even though she is not a cunt.

Viewers who form deeper emotional connections with the characters will likely enjoy the series even more than I did. However, don't expect things to get wrapped up in a tidy way by the end of the series. If you've heard about MyGo!!!!! before reading this, you've probably also heard about Ave Mujica (or have at least seen illustrations of their not-exactly impenetrable disguises). It seems that band is also getting its own anime, so we can expect more disastrous girl-band drama in the future, except gothic-chuuni flavored this time. I'm looking forward to it already.

There was a time when I would have been so stoked to see this.

Until I watched Suisei no Majo (The Witch from Mercury), Kidou Senshi Gundam SEED (Mobile Suit Gundam SEED) and its sequel Gundam SEED Destiny were the only two series from that venerable franchise I had ever watched. I did enjoy Gundam SEED and thought it was good enough to buy the giant DVD box, but I probably enjoyed blogging about Destiny more because it's easier to get more mileage out of deeply flawed shows. I wrote most of those posts before adopting WordPress, and never got around to properly migrating all of them. I keep meaning to, though, someday.

Kira looks normal.

At the time, I thought a third season of Gundam SEED would not be too far away. As it turned out, ah, a variety of reasons prevented that from happening. I won't go into it since I don't have a complete understanding of the relevant facts (or at least not a confident understanding). In any case, a 20-year-anniversary movie project is expected in early 2024 now. The details I've been seeing about it do not exactly inspire much enthusiasm, though, at least in my case.

You ARE the villain, right?

At a minimum, the way the already distinctive character designs have evolved appear distractingly silly. Maybe I'll get used to them, but I can't take any of the promotional materials that I've seen so far seriously. More importantly, I'm skeptical a movie project can cram in all the things I'm expecting it to include in any sort of coherent way. I suppose it doesn't need to necessarily wrap everything up as a single movie. I had my doubts when I first heard the GIRLS und PANZER follow-up would consist of six movies, and that is working out well so far. They sure are taking a long time, though. Perhaps, if the FREEDOM movie is popular enough, Sunrise will make more.

Enjoy this apple. Or else.

Somehow, Suki na Ko ga Megane wo Wasureta (The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses) is my top show this season. I say "somehow," but I know why: It's because the girl Potato-kun likes squints when she doesn't have her glasses (which is often), and it makes her look angry as fuck all the time. This is a dumb gimmick, but I love it. The juxtaposition between her appearance and her demeanor is so good. More surprisingly, outside of the trailer and first episode that made everyone (including me) assume GoHands was going to commit anime crimes all season long, the visuals have been fine. If anything, I'm sort of disappointed it looks as normal as it does. Maybe Sukimega would be a bottom-tier show during most quarters, but you go to Seasonal Anime War with the shows you have, not the shows you wish you had.

Carcinization.

Hirogaru Sky! Precure is only sort of average as far as Pretty Cure seasons go, but it's such a step up from Delicious Party♡Precure that it seems wonderful in comparison. God, they really fucked that one up. Anyway, Hirogaru Sky! has made notable changes to the existing Pretty Cure formula. It has a "blue" lead instead of a "pink" one, it has an adult Cure, and it has the franchise's first male Cure. Nevertheless, despite these departures, the series as a whole seems really...normal.

Not even bothering to make a magic umbrella.

Maou Gakuin no Futekigousha: Shijou Saikyou no Maou no Shiso, Tensei shite Shison-tachi no Gakkou e Kayou II (The Misfit of Demon King Academy: History’s Strongest Demon King Reincarnates and Goes to School with His Descendants Season 2) re-started after a mid-season interruption that forced a delay for the remaining episodes of the cours. It's a lot of magic bullshit, none of which seems as interesting to me as the first season's Misha and Sasha content, but I haven't gotten tired of the constant ass pulls yet.

Dia still sucks, though.

Genjitsu no Yohane: SUNSHINE in the MIRROR (YOHANE THE PARHELION -SUNSHINE in the MIRROR-) needs more music. And where the Hell is SAINT SNOW? C'mon. I mostly like what it's doing anyway. It's had a few twists that are sort of interesting. I'm not sure I'm entirely on board with what the series has planned for what I presume will be a big finish, but I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt. The Yohane focus has rehabilitated my opinion of Love Live! Sunshine!! to some degree, but I still think Nijigasaki and Superstar are superior installments overall.

Maybe tomatoes count as a Miorine surrogate.

Continuing from my previous post about Kidou Senshi Gundam: Suisei no Majo Season 2 (Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Season 2), I'm gonna go ahead and voice my primary beef with the way the show depicted Suletta's & Miorine's relationship. The short version is the series simply did not have enough episodes to adequately develop it. Or rather, it did, but it would have had to do so at the expense of something else. I suspect this is true of most of the areas that lacked sufficient elaboration for many viewers. (For example, anyone clamoring for more details about Miorine's mother, or about what tomatoes had to do with her Quiet Zero plans.)

It's an act, but can you imagine Suletta doing something like this?

With regard to Suletta and Miorine specifically, nearly all of the slow, getting-closer parts that 'shippers might want occur almost entirely off-screen. Instead, we're treated to multiple instances of Miorine being distant, or cold, or outright cruel, and subsequent cathartic moments when she's realized she has fucked up and makes herself vulnerable to Suletta. All the less flashy (but still critical) incremental bond building occurs during time skips. It relies on the viewer to already be on board with the pairing, and willing to fill in the gaps with "head canon." Actually, not all of it was off-screen. A lot of it occurred during anachronistic dates across contemporary Japan shared on the Twitter.

I guess this counts as a date.

I don't intend to belabor the point about these short vignettes that the @G_Witch_M account posted between cours, but I am serious about how these Suletta and Miorine Japan-tour snapshots are the clearest examples we have of the two actually going on dates or acting like a couple. This doesn't change the groundbreaking importance of their prime-time teenage lesbian marriage, but it is unfortunate that including regular romance material would have crowded out all the other Gundam-critical-type stuff that G Witch barely managed to include.

I heard you liked helmets.

Now that Kidou Senshi Gundam: Suisei no Majo Season 2 (Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury Season 2) has finished, I should probably capture my concluding thoughts on the series while they remain somewhat fresh. However, I get the feeling that would result in a long blog post, so maybe I ought to break things up into multiple entries despite the risk I might simply lose interest in writing more before completion. Anyway, the first post in this series (?) is about Elnora. If you've been following me on the Twitter, this should surprise you not at all.

Notably, I never stopped seeing Elnora as the girl she used to be.

Many viewers (if not most viewers) seemed to regard Prospera as the main villain of the series. This is not an incorrect perspective, but I think it's incomplete. I take the position that she is both an antagonist and a protagonist. This is not to say that I thought of her as the protagonist—that's clearly Suletta—but I do see her as a protagonist. (Fuck your deuteragonist and tritagonist nonsense. You're reading an anime blog, not a fan wiki.) That's not a controversial position for me to take, is it?

Maybe she'll start calling you Mom without sounding sarcastic.

I'll need to put more thought into this, but my initial impulse is to suggest Elnora embraced the forgiveness aspect reflected in (or constrained by) The Tempest a lot more readily than I expected. Like, she had already forgiven Delling during the scene where she's fucking with Miorine's head to get her to aspire for the Benerit leadership role, right?

I wonder how soon Elnora realized she was going to end up in this chair.

I also found Prospera's Quiet Zero plot to be a lot less sinister than what most people were assuming. (Never mind that I still have no idea what Notrette's original Quiet Zero plan—or Delling's intentions for the project, for that matter—were meant to be.) Now, I'm not part of the "Prospera Did Nothing Wrong" faction, but I do view her actions from a position that is decidedly more favorable to her than most seem willing to adopt. Let's just say I'm grading on a curve.

Asirpa is short.

The fourth season of Golden Kamuy was supposed to finish at the end of 2022. A staff member's death delayed production, and the cours restarted as a Spring 2023 show. As with other long-running anime (well, longer-running, relatively speaking), there's not much I can tell you about this series if you're not watching it already. Read the manga. It's great. I would tell you to start watching the anime, but that's probably a harder sell now that there are nearly 50 episodes (more, if you count the OVAs). You should have started already.

Don't stare. It's impolite.

This is one of those series that does everything well. There's comedy, there's drama, it's wacky, and it's serious. There are a lot of characters, and most of them are mental cases, but you'll also spend enough time with them (well, the ones who don't suddenly die) to appreciate what they've got going on and what motivates them. We already know the anime will cover the entire manga, so it's at least something newcomers can start without worrying about it being incomplete. There are honestly still some rough parts where the scenes or action are clearly difficult to animate, but we're at least well past the immersion-breaking 3DCG bears and fire from the first season.

Being confident helps.

No one who has been following the previous installments of Dr.STONE NEW WORLD (Dr. Stone 3rd Season) should be surprised it's still entertaining for basically all the same reasons. If there are criticisms to levy against it, they'll probably relate to how fast science is advancing. Or, I suppose more accurately, how fast production is advancing. There are no quality control problems or time constraints in the story that prevent the characters from designing and constructing whatever marvel is necessary to overcome the latest predicament. Everything just works. And that's okay! This is not a series about the 99-percent perspiration part. It's also consistent with the other feats regularly displayed.

Kohaku knows what she's doing.

Frequent readers of this blog (and of my grousing on the Twitter) may recall I regularly complain about tropes and storytelling conventions that I broadly describe using the pejorative "shounen jive." I don't have strong opinions about this from a taxonomic perspective, but my general sense is I'm perfectly fine with it (if what Dr.STONE does even qualifies as being shounen jive) providing that it's done in this way. I guess what I'm saying is I'm unsure if I regard Dr. Stone as the exception to a style of anime that I typically don't like, or if I like it because it does not adopt the elements I disfavor. In any case, the anime is still good, and the story seems to moving along well, and you should start watching it (from the beginning!) if you ain't started already.

I can't see a green chav suit without thinking of Squid Game.

I can't identify anything I think the Mahoutsukai no Yome (The Ancient Magus Bride) anime is doing wrong necessarily, but I don't enjoy it as much as I like the manga. On the surface at least, the anime is great. It looks beautiful. The casting and voice acting are both spot on. The production values in general are high. And yet I mostly only find the overall experience simply okay. Does that mean the direction is at fault for not optimizing the presentation of all these elements? I dunno. I still like watching it, but it doesn't astound me, and maybe I'm just griping because I feel as if it ought to.

This is not Yuru Camp△.

As far as the currently airing second season goes, I suppose I'm naturally disinclined to be interested in its subject matter. Specifically, it is about Chise going to magic school. Aside from a few notable exceptions, I'm generally not enthused about magic schools as a setting. And taking someone out of an environment that was already interesting as a starting point, and then placing her in a magic school—well, that is objectively a step down. Nevertheless, I still find myself enjoying the corresponding manga arc despite my misgivings. In any case, the magic school setting is not exclusively why I'm never in a huge hurry to watch the latest episode of Mahoutsukai no Yome Season 2, but I can't rule it out as a contributing factor.