“I just wanted to live a normal life.”

“Nothing amazing happens here. Everything is ordinary. ”

These phrases summarize the two primary teen narratives found in anime — in addition to a myriad of other media and fiction. The former is from Studio Trigger’s latest short, Space Patrol Luluco. The latter is from the gold standard for male adolescence in anime: Studio Gainax’s FLCL. Naturally, the fact that Trigger is in many ways an offshoot of Gainax, founded by former Gainax animator and director Hiroyuki Imaishi is highly relevant.

More importantly, Imaishi is responsible for Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Gurren Lagann is arguably the last big Gainax property depending on your feelings regarding Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt, which was also directed by Imaishi and more of a cult in comparison to Gurren Lagann‘s larger scale and scope.

Imaishi’s seedling from the now-gutted Gainax is responsible for two anime this season: the aforementioned Luluco and Kiznaiver. Put them together and they tell a slightly new story of adolescence — one that’s a bit more personal with fewer robots and galaxies chucked around for fun. Your mileage may vary with both, as robots and galaxies are generally considered to be pretty cool as far as anime story lines go.

Luluco is the story of a girl’s adolescence — one of the most direct portrayals of such since FLCL‘s third episode and Eri Ninamori’s Marquis de Carabas. That whole changing into a gun in the middle of class? Yeah, that stands for something super embarrassing that could possibly happen to your body which is now changing without your permission and oh god help this sucks. All Luluco wanted was to blend in, which is impossible when you’re a part of the Space Patrol, or your body isn’t your own, or you’re a teenage girl.

Of course the hot boy transfer student’s transformation is cooler, and he has control over it, because everything he does in Luluco’s mind is perfect. Of course he instinctively inspires her to fire her own Space Patrol gun because hot boys inspire your body to do all sorts of things that you don’t understand but generally feel good for reasons. Quick, bright, and colorful — Luluco nails its premise in a way that’s fun to watch and never overstays its welcome.

Kiznaiver is a bit trickier to define. It doesn’t work nearly as well as Luluco in highlighting its premise, which boils down to “sharing pain.” This illustrates a slight shift from “nothing amazing happens here” to “I don’t feel anything at all.” Much of protagonist Katsuhira Agata and likely love interest Noriko Sonozaki’s expository conversations

There’s an easy comparison to be made between Imaishi’s Gurren Lagann and Hiroshi Kobayashi’s directorial debut, Kiznaiver, especially considering a few of the character archetypes. Hajime Tenga immediately comes across as a Kamina clone where similarities can be drawn between Agata and Gurren Lagann‘s Simon, especially when the two characters are together. However, where Simon’s narrative is an amped-up version of the traditional super robot show, Agata’s already seems more internally focused. It’s less joyful and far more gloomy to a fault. He’s not kept down by others bullying him as much as he’s kept down by his own inability to feel anything at all, which is admittedly dull to watch.

What saves Kiznaiver is it’s apparent focus on interpersonal relationships. Agata’s dreariness is also balanced by a cast of far more colorful characters. While Sonozaki’s repurposing anime archetypes as the seven deadly sins is a bit hamfisted, it further drives home a newer adolescence that’s more representative of the times. This isn’t to say that Kamina and Simon’s genki spirit is dead, but it’s significantly less applicable in the present day than it was even as late as 2007.

“You said that I’m bullied because people can’t find themselves in me. I . . . don’t know about myself. Before sharing another person’s pain or sharing their thoughts, I don’t even understand my own pain or thoughts.”

-Katsuhira Agata to Noriko Sonozaki, Kiznaiver, Episode 1

Wrapping back around to Luluco, Agata’s wish in Kiznaiver to understand his own pain is curiously similar to the titular Luluco’s struggle to fit in. If feeling pain is “normal” then that’s what Agata lacks, and presumably wants to understand.

Full of gigantic hair, bulging muscles, and rapid-fire poses more grandiose and ridiculous than the next, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure has always been big. A single glance at both Dio Brando and Jonathan Joestar in the first episode of Phantom Blood immediately lets the viewer know just what they’re getting into. At 12 years-old, Dio and Jonathan are already hulking giants who appear closer to the age of 25. Even a pre-vampiric Dio is appropriately menacing, with his comparatively smaller-scale dastardly deeds framed by hyperbolic commentary, dramatic poses, and visible onomatopoeia.

Until Diamond is Unbreakable, this first episode of Phantom Blood — the introduction to the most recent anime adaptation of JoJo’s as a whole — is the last time we see JoJo’s in the small scale. Events quickly spiral into mystic masks, vampires, massive power creep for the series’ protagonists from one generation to the next, and exotic foreign locales.

By contrast, the setting of Diamond is Unbreakable, a sleepy town called Morioh, appears quaint and miniscule. Rather than engaging in the steady one-upmanship that permeates Phantom Blood through Stardust Crusaders, Diamond is Unbreakable starts slowly. Its initial conflict is personal, with Josuke Higashikata unwittingly dragged into the thick of things by coincidence and birthright, instead of wanderlust, a desire to become stronger, or any sort of personal ambition. What follows is a series of events where Josuke is tasked with protecting his loved ones and friends.

As JoJo’s protagonists go, Josuke is simple yet remarkably endearing. He takes action when conflict comes to him, but his general manner is deeply caring — additionally reflected in the healing powers of his stand, Crazy Diamond. This makes the scope of the various disputes he ends up involved in feel a lot more personal than previous iterations of JoJo’s. Not since Dio inexplicably kicked Jonathan’s dog Danny upon meeting him, or later stole Erina Pendleton’s first kiss has JoJo’s been this internally focused, and even those incidents were used in the purpose of showing how rotten Dio is prior to any supernatural powers.

Adding to the insular feel, the trappings of Morioh seal the events of Diamond is Unbreakable away from the rest of the world. All roads leading away from the center of town appear to curve back inwardly, making the city limits appear inescapable. Buildings, trees, and other town landmarks often loom in the distance, or frame character interactions, separating them into isolated vignettes. Morioh oozes a small-town, low-budget horror movie vibe that fits the more personal nature of Josuke’s conflicts perfectly.

Nothing exemplifies this more than the ending sequence of Diamond is Unbreakable, which further builds on in-episode usage of switching from the foreground, to midground, to background much like a stage play. Morioh is, for all intents and purposes, a stage. The ending, set to Savage Garden’s “I Want You” is a dream-like diorama where flat cut-outs of characters, landmarks, and buildings pop up while the camera travels from one end of the town to the other. This firmly grounds Diamond is Unbreakable as a tableau of a small town, where the creeping horrors within are more terrifyingly intimate than the Indiana Jones-like adventures of Joseph and Jotaro.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure excels in the weird and wonderful. If you’re watching the series, chances are that you love the ever-expanding universe, massive scale, and all-embracing grandeur. However, nestled in between Stardust Crusaders and Vento Aureo is the closed set of Diamond is Unbreakable, Morioh, and a more personal narrative that’s a welcome respite against the natural expansiveness of previous JoJo’s experiences.

In between “these look so pretty” and “this is a pointed message for a specific person” is the flower language of the Kiznaiver ending sequence. Tasked with closing out a series that identifies common anime character archetypes as the new seven deadly sins, the concluding piece of each episode features the four main female characters — presumably because they have a higher marketability than the male characters — and assigned flowers, in addition to flashes of various other flower species.

Kiznaiver‘s assortment of colorful characters trapped together à la The Breakfast Club — the former is far more hamfisted than the latter — are pressured by their captors to reveal the one secret they don’t want others to know in a forced bonding session to strengthen their ties. The flowers assigned to them in the ending fill in subtle details about their respective characters and potential roles within the series.

Rose: Noriko Sonozaki

Noriko Sonozaki is a part of this ending sequence, which is of particular note as she’s one of the overseers of the kiznaiver system rather than an unwilling participant in the social experiment. Her flowers resemble carnations at first glance, but are later revealed as a bouquet of white, green, and orange roses, more formally arranged than any of the other flowers shown.

While her manner is dour and serious, Sonozaki’s flower bouquet is overwhelmingly cheery by most interpretations of rose colors. White represents purity and innocence — often used in wedding arrangements to symbolize a new beginning — while orange stands for excitement and passion. Should orange be interpreted as a yellow color, the meaning changes slightly to a joyful friendship. Lastly, green, which unlike blue is a color that exists naturally although many are dyed, is said to invite renewal and rejuvenation of spirit. Together, her flowers herald a new path in life and new relationships. This is an interesting contrast with her role in bringing this group of kiznaivers together, since they are not presumably the first group of kiznaivers and this is another attempt at attaining a specific bond that she alludes to during her closing speech in the series’ third episode.

Marigold: Honoka Maki

Initially aloof with an air of perfection and disinterest, Honoka Maki is a girl who possesses a self-described “bad personality.” She confesses to killing someone during her introduction before brushing it off as a joke; however, the series continues to visually hint at Maki’s overwhelming guilt. Kiznaiver’s second episode shows a distraught Maki conveniently wandering into a morgue, haunted by a dead girl with short hair.

This girl later appears in the series’ ending alongside Maki while the latter cradles what appears to be a marigold to her chest. Of the many interpretations of a marigold, the most common are related to pain or the death of a loved one. Victorian-era flower language links it to the ill-treatment of a loved one, while marigolds are still commonly used to celebrate Mexico’s Day of the Dead, which honors the deceased. Maki’s personal issues appear rooted in guilt over this one girl in her past. While her part in the girl’s apparent death is unknown, this incident is something that Maki is obviously still chained to, which is further reflected by the marigold flower.

Daisy: Chidori Takashiro

Above all else, Chidori Takashiro wishes to return to her childhood, which she has built up to others as the best time of her life. Admitting in Kiznaiver‘s second episode that she loved Katsuhira Agata when the two were children growing up together, Takashiro wants Agata to go back to the happy kid that she remembers, rather than the husk of a human being who appears in the scope of the series’ timeline. Any viewer with half a brain will realize that she still loves Agata regardless, and nearly every action she takes is in service of returning Agata to “who he was” — the person that Takashiro loved.

Not-so-coincidentally, daisies represent a return to childhood or innocence. Takashiro appears to carry a small bunch of purple and white daisies which further symbolize innocence, purity, and true love.

Blue-eyed grass: Nico Niyama

Of all the flowers appearing in the Kiznaiver ending, the fake eccentric Nico Niyama’s are appropriately the most difficult to identify. Specifically six-petaled and blueish purple, they most resemble blue-eyed grass which are wildflowers closely-related to irises. In other images Niyama’s flowers appear to be blue clematis, inferring a beautiful, artistic mind.

Other featured flowers

Each Kiznaiver leading lady carries a specific flower in the ending, but they’re also ascribed a sequence of other flowers followed by a quick cut to their eyes.

Sonozaki is given a sole peony before the ending shows her eyes. Often used in ukiyo-e art, peonies are said to represent bravery and are seen as a masculine flower that symbolizes a less-disciplined, flippant attitude towards things, regardless of consequence.

While her personal flower of the daisy is fairly straightforward, Takashiro is given cala lilies, six-petaled purple wildflowers that resemble Niyama’s bouquet, and daffodils, all with headier meanings. Cala lilies are divisive, sometimes representing the utmost purity, nobility, and holiness but also an untimely death, pride, and lust. Daffodils plead for a return of affection or love, which is often ultimately unrequited. This could be taken as a hint that, in spite of the supposed purity of her love for Agata, Takashiro’s devotion will only lead to her downfall, due to her pride and what Sonozaki describes as an annoyingly self-righteous nature.

I initially had erroneously identified these as plum blossoms. They’re actually far more likely to be a type of magnolia (thank you, whitecat). The magnolia is another fairly traditional flower that is interestingly ascribed to Niyama, a person who wishes to divorce herself from her wealthy family. Magnolias are sometimes thought to represent the utmost in feminine beauty and innate nobility. As one of the oldest flowering plants, magnolias are said to additionally stand for strength and grace through the ages.

Last in the flower sequence is Maki, with a difficult series of flowers to place. Her initial dark red flower appears to be a rare orchid, while the cherry blossom look-alikes only have four petals, hinting at a dogwood tree rather than a flowering cherry. Cherry blossoms are the shortcut icon to the Japanese feeling of mono no aware — the transience of life or ephemeral sensitivity — where dogwood flowers have an odd tie to Christianity and are said to resemble the crucifixion. In both cases, these hints would tie back to Maki’s extreme guilt towards whatever happened between her and the unnamed purple-haired girl of her past.

In the wake of Macross Delta‘s spring debut a rush to identify its spiritual predecessor has cropped up. While a line of progression can be drawn from Super Dimension Fortress Macross‘s Lynn Minmay to Macross 7‘s Fire Bomber, it’s reframed a bit with the advent of Delta‘s Walkure: a highly-specialized military tactical unit. Song in Delta is unabashedly weaponized, not used as a surprisingly convenient source of confusion, or a reckless and unsolicited effort.

One of Macross creator Shoji Kawamori’s properties between Macross Frontier and Delta was AKB0048 — for all intents and purposes, a Macross series without variable fighters, solely focused on idol competition and wielding music as a weapon.

AKB0048 the in-universe group is the distant continuation of real-life Japanese pop idol group AKB48 in a world where entertainment has been banned. Tasked with bringing entertainment to the masses, they hold geurrilla concerts and must learn to fight, if only to defend themselves. Delta takes this one step further with Walkure similarly held up as a beacon of entertainment but rather than fighting an oppressive government system, they are the part of the government’s military force. In both cases idol music is brandished as a weapon, but only in the case of Delta is it specifically used to quell disputes. Where AKB0048 and other iterations of Macross upheld music as a means of celebration or distraction, Delta‘s VAR syndrome can seemingly only be cured by the songs of Walkure. AKB0048 are the terrorists of their world, Walkure suppress terrorist-like pockets of war.

Layered on top of this are the separate processes by which a girl can become a member of these respective idol groups. When leads Chieri Sono and Nagisa Motomiya audition to become members of AKB0048, they form the 77th Generation along with five other girls. Advancing to the primary performing squad of 0048 requires them to go through a process of succession, where they’ll be chosen to succeed one of the original real-life AKB48 analogues and be assigned a version of that original AKB48 member. For example, natural leader Kanata Shinonome is chosen to succeed AKB0048’s leader, Minami Takahashi. The only problem is that there’s already a current Minami Takahashi the 5th, which leads to all sort of musings on identity and ambition. Becoming a member of AKB0048 in part means temporarily discarding one’s name and personality to perform as a different individual entirely. The selection process is based on how well one’s own personality fits into one of the pre-packaged original AKB48 idols.

By contrast, Delta‘s Freyja Wion doesn’t have to become anyone other than herself; however, being a part of Walkure has its own dazzle, transformation, and most importantly an inherent ability to generate fold resonance while singing. It’s this specific talent that Walkure seeks, as it’s seemingly the only thing in the Delta universe able to reverse VAR syndrome.

Freyja’s is an easy archetype to dismiss — the genki girl with a cheerful attitude who repeatedly says that she’ll do her best. However, to write off Freyja as a simple character archetype undermines one of the more intriguing avenues that Delta could choose to travel, a route that begins with her age and caveats attached by the series. Freyja is 14 years-old in a race that physically trades lifespan for extraordinary powers. In other words, her natural ability to sing, and subsequent fold resonance, is the reason why she can join Walkure. It’s also the reason she’ll likely die by the age of 30.

There’s a lot to unpack here, and much of it has to do with idol culture in general, which is admittedly creepy. Even AKB0048, which most would consider heavily in favor of idols — at the very least least how their so-called culture can positively affect the hearts and minds of the general populace — doesn’t fully shy away from the creepier parts, albeit muted by a sugary coating. One of the more prominent moments is the introduction to Tomomi Itano the 11th’s family, where it’s revealed that all of the women in her lineage are bred and chosen with succeeding the original Tomomi Itano in the subsequent generation of AKB0048. There’s also the story of Mii-chan, formerly Minami Minegishi the 5th when she was a part of 0048, whose in-series betrayal eerily echoes the trajectory of Minami Minegishi’s own fall from grace in AKB48. Heaven forbid that an idol, a product meant for the masses, have a significant other. Echoes of this creepy insistence on purity above all else are inherent to Freyja’s age. The tradeoff for being a part of Walkure is that she’ll conveniently die young before any sort of horrible aging that so obviously ruins women for good.

A tertiary plot thread involves Freyja’s home world of Windermere, instigators of the VAR syndrome that declare war on the United Government. Their prince’s song causes VAR syndrome to emerge, just as Walkure’s song cures it. Freyja initially begins her journey to Walkure having stowed away on a ship leaving Windermere in order to try out for the idol group while also escaping an arranged marriage. She cites a recorder that was dropped by a human on her world as inspiration for her pursuit of an idol career, a recorder that carried songs of former Macross artists Lynn Minmay, Fire Bomber, Sheryl Nome, and Ranka Lee. In Delta, Macross has come full circle from unwittingly teaching the military society of the Zentradi about “culture” with Minmay to inspiring Freyja to escape her own society in order to become a military idol, by way of AKB0048. Similar to Freyja, both Nagisa and Chieri’s respective families do not approve of their choices initially, particularly their fathers, one of whom heads anti-entertainment legislation while the other is the CEO of the corporation supplying weaponry to anti-entertainment fighters.

“Kids can’t choose the adults in their lives, least of all their parents. Ninamori’s father is the mayor of our town. I don’t really get it, but it must be hard for her.”

-Naota Nandaba, FLCL, Episode 3

For others, FLCL resonated with them instantly. They saw themselves in Naota Nandaba, a confused 12 year-old boy on the cusp of adolescence surrounded by classmates, teenagers, and so-called adults all struggling with what it means to be mature. My own affinity for the Gainax staple that has since become near-required viewing in most anime circles bloomed late, much like my personal experience with fumbling my way through puberty.

While the majority of FLCL focuses almost singularly on the male experience of maturation, the OVA series’ third episode offers a welcome female perspective by contrast thanks to the full introduction and subsequent narrative of Eri Ninamori. A classmate of Nandaba, Ninamori appears to be everything he is not — mature, put together, and confident. However, much like the seaweed eyebrows of Commander Amarao, Ninamori is yet another example of someone attempting to act mature when they have their own mountain of unaddressed and seemingly insurmountable problems.

“I’m not worried. You seem to know how to handle yourself. You slept over last night, but put on a different suit for today.”

-Eri Ninamori to her father’s mistress, FLCL, Episode 3

Much of Ninamori’s malcontent stems from her father — the holder of a highly-visible public office — and his affair with his secretary, who incidentally was not as adept at hiding the relationship as Ninamori gave her credit for in the opening moments of the episode. Ninamori’s high-and-mighty manipulative personality is presumably a byproduct of her parents and the social standing inadvertently forced upon her due to her father’s job. She attempts to speak like an adult rather than a child, and places herself above childish things, in spite of being prone to her own outbursts when things don’t go her way.

Ninamori assumes a role of authority and shoves her personal feelings aside in service of acting mature. No other scene in FLCL showcases a desperate attempt to play the role of an adult quite like Ninamori’s dinner with Nandaba and his family where she eats curry while repeatedly stating that her parents’ situation isn’t a big deal to her. She comes down with an acute stomachache towards the end of the dinner and ends up rushing to the bathroom — an action repeated throughout the episode when a character is unwilling to drop their false mask of maturity.

While the two series are obviously different, Space Patrol Luluco — of former Gainax animator Hiroyuki Imaishi by way of Studio Trigger — takes me back to this one Ninamori episode with its spot-on portrayal of adolescence. (It’s worth noting that Imaishi did work on FLCL, and was the assistant animation director to Shouji Saeki for Episode 3.) Ninamori is taught that her own desires are to be hidden from others, and her goals achieved through underhanded schemes rather than honesty. Additionally, her personal emotions are suppressed for being “childish” and she must wear the mask of normalcy while maintaining the status quo for the sake of others.

All the titular Luluco of Space Patrol Luluco wishes is to be normal. Placed in a similarly offbeat environment as FLCL‘s Mabase, Luluco finds herself pressed into intergalactic law enforcement when her father is accidentally frozen and unable to perform his civic duty. In the process, she is publicly embarrassed in front of her classmates — a young woman’s adolescent nightmare — and given both a dreamy love interest and a snarky rival-turned-friend.

Unlike Ninamori, Luluco is fairly honest with her emotions and desires, whether she means to express them to the world or not. This is a probable result of her bumbling and seemingly simple father’s influence. The series reveals that Luluco’s mother left the family when Luluco was young after constant parental infighting. Like Ninamori, Luluco cannot choose the adults in her life and her parents’ respective positions infringe on her dreams of going through puberty as normally as possible.

“Luluco. You’re still obsessed with being normal? You’ll never make it in this universe if you’ve got your head in the clouds.”

-Lalaco God Speed to her daughter Luluco, Space Patrol Luluco, Episode 5

Mocked for her desire to be a normal adolescent girl by her exceptional mother, Luluco is faced with the reality of her parents’ relationship and their role in the development of Luluco’s own personality in the series’ fifth episode. Most of us won’t have a pirate mom who hijacks an entire city only to turn around and sell it on intergalactic eBay. Most of us won’t have a high-profile father who is caught in a public scandal. My own parents were very unassuming, but equally if not more embarrassing in my warped teenage mind while I was going through puberty. Parents are people that more often than not are muddling through how to be adults themselves while attempting to raise children.

No series gets this quite like FLCL, where all of the older, authority figures are just as confused and lost as kids like Nandaba and Ninamori; however, Luluco comes close with its straightforward and ultimately charming portrayal.

“He states the ordinary, the obvious. That is how he moves people.”

-Emi Kino on Devilo, Concrete Revolutio, Episode 17

Sometimes, a simple statement is more powerful than the most eloquent of speeches.

The world of Concrete Revolutio is populated first and foremost by ideas. Characters are introduced, reintroduced, and exit the series’ stage when the time for their outlook or belief is no longer needed. This isn’t to say that these characters cannot be incredibly emotionally resonant in the process, but in the end their actions are all in service of conveying the myriad of ideas that make up the noxious stew of Concrete Revolutio‘s world. Attacking on multiple social and bureaucratic fronts, most of which are deeply-seated in Japan’s own post-war history, Concrete Revolutio has a lot to say.

As the series winds through its second season, Concrete Revolutio has become far more straightforward with its timeline — previously different parts of episodes were presented out of chronological order in service of certain narratives — making everything seem quicker in pace. Episodes now fly by with one overarching thematic story that ties into one of the many points the series is attempting to touch upon. The end result is less chaos with tighter self-contained vignettes that require the viewer to think a bit harder on how they fit into the series oeuvre. Where the first season was about people meeting and then separating as time passed, the second season picks and chooses specific paths to retread much later in time.

Additionally, the narrower method of dispensing information in chronological order allows the series to introduce new characters through which to dispense certain ideas. In Episode 16, it was singularly focused on the fact that a person, never mind an entire country, cannot disregard their past or move forward without in any way acknowledging it. The story of the Three Birdmen — manufactured superhumans who underwent surgery to augment their abilities in order to become olympic icons at Concrete Revolutio‘s version of the 1972 Sapporo Winter Games.

Sapporo had actually been scheduled to host the 1940 Winter Games, but declined the offer following their 1939 invasion of China. The 1972 Games were seen as a chance for post-war Japan to show off their newfound modernity and commitment to move beyond their lengthy list of war atrocities during a time of rapid economic growth. Test ski jumper Koichi Amato used to be on the Japanese team with three athletes now known as the Three Birdmen. His choice not to undergo superhuman surgery is a personal one that ties into his own self-doubt and inability to face the pressure of representing his country. It also alienates him from his former teammates, who see the decision as a way of looking down upon them.

When relative disaster strikes, tensions are further heightened and nearly everything that is said is very obviously applied through characters’ respective personal filters. Misunderstandings and clashes of ideals are part and parcel of Concrete Revolutio, but the lack of a timeskip in this specific episode results in a much tighter and tenser conflict. All sides talk and blame each other — Amato aside, who speaks very little and this too becomes a problem — without listening or thinking beyond their personal frame of reference. The conflict, which ties back to how the best efforts of a singular human or an entire country cannot discard their past, is resolved. A goddess, or force of nature, is the culprit.

This particular episode importantly precedes the similarly tight and presumably one-off story of siblings Devilo and Devila. Devils that live in the deep underground beneath Japan, Devila and Devilo are forces of nature much like Episode 16’s goddess. They are lumped in with the rest of the world’s superhumans despite being significantly more powerful and notably different.

Where Episode 16 introduced augmented humans now classified as superhuman, Episode 17 introduces beings on the complete opposite of the spectrum — all-powerful devils. To the Superhuman Bureau, which is controlled by the government, they are one and the same, a sticking point in this particular episode, especially when the varying parties try — or automatically assume — Devilo and Devila’s intentions. Public Security Forces assume that Devilo is responsible for a recent tunnel fire that injured more that 700 people. Immediately, superhumans are blamed in the media for the incident, all in service of the government having more control over the superhuman population. Again, tensions run incredibly high in this episode as everyone is talking and no one is listening or attempting to understand a different perspective from their own. The Public Security team runs rampant with their assumptions and make matters worse for all involved. There are a slew of real-life parallels to be made not only to past events but to political and social maneuvers occurring in the present.

Hilariously enough, Devilo is a charming, charismatic boy who only speaks in obvious statements. His actions unintentionally incite public security as well as movement from the Superhuman Bureau and the half-human, half-yokai Emi Kino. All parties collide — the Bureau, Public Security Forces, the wayward Jiro Hitoyoshi — with Devilo and his sister Devila at the center of the conflict. Devilo ultimately disarms the entire situation simply by stating his obvious truths before he and his sister leave Earth, the planet that they love. While simple words won’t always work — all-too-often time, distance, and nuance are needed to take the appropriate action — there’s a place for Devilo’s words both in and outside of the scope of the series.

“Nothing is definite. You and I are different but we can live in the same place. I’ll head to space before you guys. There’s the city, and there’s everyone. There’s him, and her. And then, flowers will bloom. People can’t be birds. People can’t be flowers. People are merely alone. But people like birds. People like flowers. People like people. That’s the kind of planet that it is.”

-Devilo’s parting words, Concrete Revolutio, Episode 17

It’s an oddly hopeful note for Concrete Revolutio to end on, Even as a simple member of a distant audience, I want to believe in Devilo’s words, not only for the series but for the multitude of real-life parallels that can be applied to the ideas and situations touched upon by Concrete Revolutio.

“You see us as you want to see us – in the simplest terms, in the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain…

…and an athlete…

..and a basket case…

…a princess…

…and a criminal…

Does that answer your question?”

-closing narration of The Breakfast Club

John Hughes’ high school movie classic The Breakfast Club is oft-considered quintessential movie viewing, with countless pieces of media referencing or parodying the iconic story of five teens stuck in Saturday detention. By opening up to each other throughout the day, they reach across their varying social stereotypes and school cliques. While it’s doubtful that their fleeting friendships, and romantic entanglements, will result in anything long-term, they leave with a deeper understanding of each other and people in general.

On the surface, it would seem like Kiznaiver aims for a similar outcome. The expressionless Noriko Sonozaki introduces her Kizna System charges as the new seven deadly sins repurposed as common anime archetypes — imbecile, cunning normal, annoyingly self-righteous, high and mighty, eccentric headcase, musclehead thug, immoral. They are tasked with forming emotional bonds through their forced physical connection and closeness. It’s this very slickness of Kiznaiver and Sonozaki’s Kizna System that casts an artificial sheen over the series itself, making the hominess of The Breakfast Club an even more interesting point of comparison.

“Everyone wants to be special to someone, whether that’s due to positive or negative feelings. Because you don’t express pain, because you don’t struggle, people can’t find themselves within you.”

-Noriko Sonozaki to Katsuhira Agata, Kiznaiver, Episode 1

Boldly laying out the purpose of Kiznaiver in the premiere episode — it’s a bit forced, a recurring theme with certain pockets of dialogue throughout the series — Sonozaki highlights that everyone wants to see a bit of themselves in other people. Katsuhira Agata neither expresses nor feels pain, making him Sonozaki’s perfect guinea pig for the Kizna System. A clean slate of a person likely due to yet-to-be-revealed emotional trauma, Agata is chosen along with six others and made to undergo a surgery that unites them through shared physical pain.

In later episodes, the kiznaivers move beyond only experiencing one another’s physical pain to sharing emotional hurt as well. This is seen by Sonozaki and her overseers as a major accomplishment, a strengthening of their bonds, yet it’s all done under duress and backwards. Not only do the kiznaivers feel each other’s pain, but they’re continuously placed in controlled environments where one or multiple members must be “saved” or at the very least made to express some sort of hidden desire or personal secret.

One of the reasons why The Breakfast Club works is that it isn’t forced. Tension between various characters is initially due to differences in their respective upbringings as well as their current social status at school. Despite being in the school building, the social construct of the high school — barriers in the form of cliques, their families’ economic income brackets, etc. — melt away as they slowly open up to each other. They meet as five kids who think they know each other, due to their archetypes, and end as five kids who understand each other a bit better, recognizing how contrived these barriers can be.

Most importantly, The Breakfast Club gives us continuous glances at these looming constructs that the kids themselves have no control over. A large part of their bonding experience comes from discussing the various pressures and genuinely awful living conditions — John Bender, in particular — that they’re forced to live with and hide from the rest of the world. These adults are barely featured in the film — Principal Vernon is the stand-in authoritative voice — yet their overwhelming presence is felt.

Like the vast majority of anime featuring high schoolers, Kiznaiver‘s landscape is mostly absent of adults, aside from the school’s counselor and Agata’s homeroom teacher both of whom are part of overseeing the Kizna System. They’re not authority figures as much as they are additional keepers of the kiznaiver experiment, placing them on the same level as Sonozaki who is also, presumably, still a child like the kiznaivers themselves.

Certain influences and pressures are hinted at. In her admission that she isn’t the eccentric she pretends to be, Nico Niiyama expresses her personal struggle with being slotted into the smart, rich-girl archetype that’s readily available to her due to her actual intelligence and parents’ wealth. She eschews this in favor of the fake exterior of a nutcase who talks to fairies and other imaginary creatures — a reinvention of Allison Reynolds without fully knowing how much her home life actually influences Nico’s drive to construct a different personality.

Tsuguhito Yuta was left to his own devices growing up, leading him to get fat off of convenience store lunches and dinners. The revelation that he used to be a “fat kid” is only part of the story, yet Kiznaiver is still a bit clunky, and the purposeful choice to do things in reverse — beginning with forced emotional sharing in constructed environments — makes the series’ execution all the more difficult.

When Kiznaiver succeeds, it’s in the moments that are more natural, usually when the group spends time together outside of Sonozaki’s mission setups. The fact that Agata has deep-seated issues and cannot express or feel pain makes him fairly unrelatable to the majority of viewers, but his personality works in moments like the closing scene between him and Sonozaki in Episode 6. Spurred by Sonozaki’s recent treatment of Honoka Maki, he openly questions her actions and if they actually saved Maki when the emotional pain is still present. His “I’m disappointed in you, Nori-chan,” hits hard because it’s a nod towards Sonozaki’s own emotional development, something independent and more natural than her Kizna System experiments or even Agata’s personal growth.

It has yet to be seen whether Sonozaki’s kiznaivers will discover that they’re each an imbecile, and annoyingly self-righteous, a musclehead thug, and high-and-mighty, cunning normal, an eccentric headcase, and immoral. Going about emotional development in reverse is a difficult path to take, and Kiznaiver‘s setup of controlled experiments doesn’t make it easier. Yet, when it hits, it hits fairly hard with purposeful visuals to back it up.

“Good morning!” an affable voice blares from the boombox next to the kitchen table, following the trademark jingle of “Morning, morning, morning, mojo radio.” The voice belongs to disc jockey Kai Harada, a friendly, average sort who always has the perfect song to start the day. Sure enough, as eggs and bacon sizzle in a frying pan, an upbeat song starts to play, accompanied by the soft background noise of the morning news on the television.

No sooner has the table been set — a small salad, toast, eggs, bacon, and orange juice — than white noise and static interferes with the radio and the song dies out. The camera pans back to reveal a severed hand. Blood drips onto the floor from the otherwise pristine breakfast table setting.

The anime adaptation of the fourth part of  JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure — Diamond is Unbreakable — thrives in the in-between and eerie spaces of small town life. Diamond is Unbreakable takes place in 1999, set in the sleepy, fictional town of Morioh. From the initial camera pan across the town prior to the scene just described, the anime embraces this setting and, in true JoJo’s fashion, augments it to a larger than life status, juxtaposing picturesque homey vignettes against the violent and flashy nature of previous JoJo’s parts.

This entire opening sequence, even prior to the reveal of the severed hand — whose recent owner has assuredly been dealt with in the process of this idyllic breakfast scene — sets the tone for the entire series. Something is rotten in Morioh well before the arrival of Jotaro Kujo and halcyon small-town snapshots clash with general JoJo’s ridiculousness.

Diamond is Unbreakable reiterates the pastoral framework of Morioh time and time again, only to herald the arrival of the next stand user or problem that lead character Josuke Higashikata is tasked with solving next. The friendly neighborhood milkman is actually a serial killer who specifically wants to murder Josuke’s family — and succeeds in the case of Josuke’s grandfather. Friendly neighborhood jockey Kai Harada returns to introduce another beautiful day, only to have Koichi Hirose run over a kitten on his mountain bike. Late-night airtime on Morioh Radio is time for Harada to answer questions on love, life, and other seemingly small matters that plague the average Morioh citizen. Naturally this is interrupted by the listener stabbing himself in the eyeball off-screen.

The Diamond is Unbreakable anime oozes with style, using a dulled color palette that relies heavily on yellows, greens, and blues effectively isolating it from the rest of the world, including previous iterations of JoJo’s. After the larger-than-life climax of Stardust Crusaders, marking the end of Dio and “The World,” this aesthetic immediately separates Diamond is Unbreakable in the mind of a regular JoJo’s viewer. It allows Part 4 to push the limits of its own creativity through the stands and more down-to-earth characters in a closed set environment rather than exotic locales and an obvious “big bad.”

Isolation is a tactic used often in horror films — becoming increasingly difficult with the advent of cell phones — particularly during the 1990’s small revitalization of the genre. Precipitated by Wes Craven and Keven Williamson’s Scream (December 20, 1996) which was released after Hirohiko Araki penned Diamond is Unbreakable (final volume released on March 4, 1996), horror films briefly returned to the forefront of filmmaking in the late 90’s.

While Scream was obviously not any sort of influence on Araki and the original source material, David Production borrows heavily from this 90’s horror film aesthetic for the anime adaptation. Scream toed the line between following the blueprint of horror films that came before it and commenting on the derivative nature of the genre itself. Thanks to Araki’s presumed love of rock music and other aspects of pop culture, JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure is already rife with various references, making this particular framing of Diamond is Unbreakable seamless.

There is also the unmistakable combination of mystery and horror that Scream embodies present in Diamond is Unbreakable. The audience, and Josuke, are both tasked with discovering and identifying the creeping darkness present in Morioh before the body count overwhelms the town. Visuals do a lot of the heavy lifting, borrowing horror film techniques to create an increasingly more claustrophobic Morioh with problems that are on an obvious timer.

Transitions like the one above serve to show how close in proximity every occurrence in the town is while the main characters continue to narrowly miss the objects they seek. In this particular case, Jotaro Kujo — who is investigating, among other things, the location of a stone bow and arrow that creates stand users as referenced by the defeated Angelo — drives directly past the location of the bow and arrow while an unwitting Josuke confronts the bow and arrow’s current owners. In another more recent scene, the stand that Josuke seeks, Red Hot Chili Pepper with the bow and arrow in tow, lurks in the background as Koichi Hirose, Josuke, and Jotaro witness the aftermath of their latest clash with another Morioh stand user.

The answers in Diamond is Unbreakable, like in most horror films, is always behind the protagonists, one step out of reach despite Morioh’s obvious city limits. Weekly confrontations are further sealed off and isolated from the rest of the town. Josuke’s first adversary, Angelo, attacks him in his own home and kills Josuke’s grandfather. Koichi similarly battles Tamami Kobayashi in his own home after Tamami attacks his mother and sister. Josuke and Koichi do battle with the Nijimura brothers in their dilapidated mansion — conveniently located next to Josuke’s house — uncovering the Nijimura family secret in the process. Koichi is later trapped in Yukako Yamagishi’s house in a Misery-style setup where she attempts to groom him into the perfect man for her.

Everything is personal, intimate, and closed-off as personal secrets are slowly revealed, reiterating that sometimes the most horrific of things lurk within one’s own periphery vision, despite an outwardly idyllic setting. The larger-than-life aspects of the JoJo’s oeuvre only compound this. That milk you’re drinking may not only be poisonous — like a traditional horror setup — but it could hold a stand that will kill you from the inside. Your new next-door neighbors want to kill you, with stands. Your reflection just might be a stand in disguise, controlling your body from a short distance away. Or, the cute girl that confesses to you just might be a stand user, fully willing to kill you if you don’t love her back.

I’m not usually one for overt blog updates; however, this news is fairly big and I’m really excited about it. It also affects actual content here. Going forward I will be one of Crunchyroll’s weekly featured writers. The series I have been called upon to blog about is Kiznaiver, which is great since I’ve had a lot to say about this series thus far.

This in no way means that I’ll stop writing about Kiznaiver on this blog — sometimes I just have a great deal to say — but I will be prioritizing episodic posts for them. You can find my first post (on the series’ seventh episode) here.

Thank you.

Let’s talk fanservice.

Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Studio Trigger are no strangers to fanservice — their first major title, Kill la Kill, revolved around the traditional type of fanservice that immediately comes to mind upon hearing the word. Gravity-defiant breasts, barely-covered women — and men, in the case of Kill la Kill — often in suggestive poses or highly-convenient settings makes up what is typically referred to as “fanservice.”

While there is some of this in Space Patrol Luluco, the series services their fan in a different way, one that threatens to overwhelm the titular Luluco’s emotional narrative.

Pictured above is the world of Little Witch Academia, the now-famous Yoh Yoshinari short film that was initially part of the Anime Mirai project in 2013. It exploded in popularity, spawning a wildly-successful kickstarter for a second short — Little Witch Academia 2: the Enchanted Parade. A Studio Trigger favorite despite the fact that its not had its own full series, Little Witch Academia is near and dear to the hearts of its cult fanbase. I am one of these fans, and constantly lament the fact that we’ll likely never see a full-length Little Witch Academia series.

However, the screenshot pictured above is not from Little Witch Academia. Although this shot depicts the world of the beloved short, it’s actually from Trigger’s most recent short series, Space Patrol Luluco.

Fanservice rooted in referential material is admittedly low-hanging fruit. In order to elevate a self-referential series beyond its fanservice for a pre-existing fanbase, it has to have some other intriguing or resonant narrative present otherwise the series becomes a hollow shell of what made the original property it’s referencing so successful. The Disappearance of Nagato Yuki-chan is a fairly strong example of this.

Aside from one small emotional arc, Yuki-chan is a series of recreated scenes from The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya and The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya. In fairness, the arc in question also riffs on Haruhi, but does so with dramatic tension for the characters involved that moves beyond the fact that they were in Haruhi Suzumiya, and connects with the very human worries of identity and death. Being characters from Haruhi Suzumiya becomes a background, where the rest of the series simply revels in these characters that a Haruhi fan finds dear and rarely rises above that.

Unfortunately, recent episodes of Space Patrol Luluco have unfolded in a similar, lazy fashion, concerned more with nods to Studio Trigger’s admittedly small catalogue over the last five years.

Space Patrol Luluco is a five-year anniversary project celebrating Studio Trigger, which denotes that it’s a self-congratulatory series from the start. The entire reason given for Luluco‘s existence is that the studio wanted to commemorate their fifth birthday. Yet, from its opening episode, Luluco was a surprisingly keen look at female adolescence, picking up where Eri Ninamori and FLCL‘s third episode left off. Luluco must deal with her own burgeoning adolescent transformation, her dysfunctional family, her alien crush Alpha Omega Nova, and frenemy Midori all while lamenting that she wishes for an ordinary life.

Divided into “seasons” of three episodes, Luluco first deals with her own coming-of-age, followed by her parents’ squabbles. The third season finds Luluco in search of the original Ogikubo, which her space-pirate mother stole from Earth. Conveniently this leads to Luluco and the Space Patrol visiting planets that are each full-blown references to Studio Trigger series — first Kill la Kill, then Little Witch Academia, and finally the recent short Sex and Violence with Machspeed.

Luluco was always filled with references to other Trigger anime. For example, the Space Patrol’s General Manager of Over Justice is the titular Inferno Cop from Inferno Cop sporting Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Kamina’s glasses. However, these were always background nods, much like Isaac and Miria’s (Baccano!) appearance in Durarara!! — a wink at the fans without having much bearing on the overall narrative. This is referential fanservice done right. A property has to stand on its own and have something to offer beyond references to other series. For its first two seasons, and even the Kill la Kill episode in season three, Luluco did just that. It was a coming-of-age story surrounded by original jokes as well as in-jokes, striking a strong balance between the two.

Unfortunately, the more recent references to Little Witch Academia and Sex and Violence with Machspeed drowned out what made the series so charming — Luluco’s adolescent struggles and character interactions between Luluco, her family members, Nova, and Midori. While I love Little Witch Academia, Luluco’s interactions with Sucy Manbavaran dragged, slowing down the pace of the series. The Sex and Violence with Machspeed episode that followed not only referenced a fairly obscure part of the Trigger catalogue to begin with, but forced Luluco to further take a backseat in her own story while Machspeed and company bounced around, blowing things up. In both cases, these references completely overwhelm the original narrative of Space Patrol Luluco, making their episodes obtrusive and uninteresting.

Is it just me? Perhaps. I’m fully willing to acknowledge the fact that my own expectations based on Luluco‘s first few episodes are now playing a large role in my recent disappointment. This isn’t the first time that this has happened and it certainly won’t be the last. However, I think it’s also important that referential material doesn’t overwhelm what once was a poignant and emotionally-resonant narrative, something that many properties struggle with, all-too-often settling for the lowest common denominator — throwing out references and expecting an automatic laugh or nostalgic feeling.

“My grandfather was an Earthling, and my grandmother a Zentradi. They were the first such interspecies couple in history. Even worse, their species were at war with each other at the time. Nonetheless, they married each other, and showed everyone how Earthlings and Zentradi can live together in peace.”

-Mirage Farina Jenius, Macross Delta, Episode 5

It’s not an unspoken requirement to have seen another Macross series prior to Macross Delta, but Delta does have inescapable parallels and references to previous iterations of Macross. Macross is a franchise that constantly builds upon itself, both directly and indirectly.

For example, in Delta‘s tenth episode, Freyja Wion — along with fellow Walkure members Makina Nakajima and Reina Prowler —  fulfills her required Macross idol duty of advertising a food product in a silly way. Macross Frontier‘s Ranka Lee had carrots, and a Chinese restaurant — which was a callback to Super Dimension Fortress Macross‘ Lynn Minmay. Macross Delta‘s Freyja has jellyfish buns. These types of references are winks to the pre-existing audience that differ from directly referencing the Macross oeuvre. A sage audience can draw parallels between Messer Ihlfeld and Guld Goa Bowman but there is no canonical reference between the two characters.

By contrast, Delta‘s Mirage Farina Jenius isn’t given this luxury. In case you were unclear about her heritage — hinted at by her last name “Jenius” — the series’ fifth episode concretely states that she is a descendent of SDF Macross‘ Maximilian Jenius and Milia Fallyna Jenius by way of their daughter Miranda.

The moment she reveals this to Hayate Immelman and Freyja is telling. Windemerean by birth, Freyja struggles with how to reconcile her own heritage with her place in Walkure — the tactical military unit that directly opposes Freyja’s home world following Windemere’s declaration of war on the New United Government. After Freyja expresses frustration as to why everyone just can’t get along, Mirage offers the story of Max and Milia as a platitude. Hayate quickly calls her out on it, spurring yet another argument between the two which unfortunately derails the conversation.

She isn’t wrong to tell Freyja this story, but Mirage’s application of Max and Milia’s narrative as a verbal panacea lacks nuance, placing an unfair burden on Freyja. She has no response for Hayate’s prodding because, despite being their granddaughter, she seemingly hasn’t thought of their story beyond the grandeur of what she’s been told. As a pilot, Mirage is fulfilling her duty to her government and her family — she knows nothing else, and is visibly shaken when confronted with others who have passion or emotional attachment. When comparing Mirage’s flying to Hayate’s, her commanding officer Messer commends her for her technical prowess, but warns that she’ll die if she continues to fly like that.

Macross Delta‘s messy conclusion of Messer’s emotional narrative paves the way for Mirage to, for lack of a better phrase, “find herself.” Messer lived to fly. Before he died in combat, he had already figuratively passed away. He died as soon as he was taken off of active duty with the Delta Platoon and relocated as a training officer in the Aramis System. Hayate and Freyja recognize this immediately because they understand Messer’s feelings to some extent. While watching Messer say his goodbyes to Kaname Buccaneer, Hayate muses on what would happen if he was told he couldn’t fly. Freyja thinks the same of her singing. Mirage awkwardly echoes, “To my heart’s . . . ” of Hayate and Freyja’s, “To my heart’s content.” before realizing that she has yet to pour her heart into anything.

Hayate Immelman has flying. Freyja Wion has singing. Mirage Farina Jenius has a heritage. Here’s to hoping that Delta gives her more than that.

“And we realized that a reckless, ignorant middle schooler’s foolish first love was the most worthless, trashy garbage in the universe . . . The first love of a stupid middle schooler is a boy who is nothing but his looks. This is the pinnacle of worthlessness!”

-Blackholeian, Space Patrol Luluco, Episode 10

After a few weeks spent bogged down by references to other Studio Trigger material, Space Patrol Luluco returned to form with more hilarious and poignant musings on female adolescence in its tenth and eleventh episodes, addressing the vapid yet passionate nature of a first crush. Worthless, trashy garbage — in the words of the series itself — first loves are something that have little meaning to anyone but their source, often based on superficial factors and well-advertised ideas of what love is supposed to be or look like.

What better time to look back on my own, ultimately meaningless, first love: Tyler [last name redacted because that actually is his real first name], my third grade classmate.

Tyler had all the trappings of a traditional first crush. He was my childhood friend — we grew up in the same neighborhood — was nice to me, and had blond, wavy hair like a Disney prince — not unlike Luluco‘s Alpha Omega Nova, an idealized representation of a first love recipient. Needless to say, the hair was a defining factor in my crush.

I’m generally terrified of confessing to people that I like, and was even less-inclined to do so as child. There were no thoughts of ruining our friendship, or any idea of what love actually was, just a simple desire to be with him, look at him, and fervent wish that he would like me back. Why? If you had asked third-grade me, I wouldn’t have been able to tell you beyond, “Because I like him.”

As an expression of my love for him, I drew Tyler’s campaign posters when he ran for student council. This tangentially led to my services as a student council campaign manager for the next two years of my elementary school career. Inevitably, one of my friends would run for student council, and I would be enlisted to draw them posters, buttons, and come up with a campaign slogan. However, Tyler’s campaign was special because I offered to be his campaign manager without waiting for him to ask first — a big step for dumb, third-grade me.

“Others don’t get to dictate what’s normal and what isn’t. It’s something we decide for ourselves. That’s why it’s the most important thing to us . . . If something is truly precious to you, it’ll never disappear, especially if it’s something intangible. “

-Inferno Cop to Luluco, Space Patrol Luluco, Episode 11

After dying due to the loss of her first love, it takes a pep talk from Inferno Cop in hell for Luluco to ultimately realize that her own first love isn’t something that can be shoplifted or taken from her by force. Like Ogikubo — which the Space Patrol members have spent the previous few episodes searching for — no one can tell Luluco how she should feel about something, her feelings are hers alone.

Luluco opens the series by saying that she wants a normal life, and often laments at how weird her everyday world becomes when she is made part of the Space Patrol — signalizing her budding adolescence. However, through experiencing the pain and ultimately meaningless value of her first love, Luluco comes to realize that worth and normalcy are things that she defines for herself.

As for Tyler and third-grade me, he moved away before I could confess my feelings. The end result was a fleeting, shitty first love based on looks that made me the campaign manager of friends’ successful student council runs for years to come.

Hiroyuki Imaishi’s Studio Trigger have made a large name for themselves with admittedly few series produced — Space Patrol Luluco as a five-year anniversary celebration seemed a bit excessive — creating their own strong fanbase and distinct style rooted in Imaishi’s oeuvre and the studio’s first major project: Kill la Kill. Trigger’s Kiznaiver and Space Patrol Luluco easily invite comparisons, with the studio sometimes overshadowing both projects in the same way that series composer Mari Okada is brought up as a point of comparison between Kiznaiver and Mayoiga — her two series of the spring season.

Despite their different directors — Imaishi heads up Luluco while Kiznaiver is Hiroshi Kobayashi’s series debut as a director — the two properties find common ground in the way they address emotional connections with others.

As early as their respective premieres, both Luluco and Kiznaiver had similar ways of addressing adolescence. Turning away from the old, “Everything is ordinary, nothing ever happens here.” of Studio Gainax, these two Trigger properties focused on wishing to return to the ordinary, or be “normal.” The titular Luluco of Space Patrol Luluco, like most teenaged girls, wishes for a normal life. From personal experience, especially around the dangerous ages of junior high school, fitting in is the primary objective. Standing out from the crowd is a very bad thing, likely to result in social ostracization, public humiliation, and shame. For her part, Luluco experiences all of these things in the series’ first episode when she transforms against her will into a gun in front of her junior high classmates.

By contrast, Kiznaiver‘s Katsuhira Agata struggles to feel emotions like a “normal” person. Enlisted into the Kizna System along with childhood friend Chidori Takashiro and five others, Katsuhira is told by Noriko Sonozaki that he’ll be able to get his emotions back. All seven of the kiznaivers — labelled by Sonozaki as the new seven deadly sins — have trouble making or recognizing emotional connections with others, making them prime candidates for the system’s method of shared pain through wounds. However, Katsuhira’s Luluco equivalent isn’t Luluco herself. Instead, it’s her love interest, Alpha Omega Nova.

Nova is an empty shell called a “Nothingling” who was crafted as the perfect, hunky dream boy for Luluco, in service of taking over the Space Patrol and gathering her worthless love as a treasure. Throughout the series, Nova is seen only through Luluco’s warped perspective as she projects her own feelings onto him without actually being straightforward enough to confess. When he steals her heart — fulfilling the aforementioned nefarious plot to accumulate all things of worth in the universe — Luluco dies of heartbreak, feeling betrayed by the person that she loved.

“Nova-kun, I was shocked when I thought you had betrayed me. I was so sad, my heart became an empty shell and I died. But then I realized that you never once lied to me. You never betrayed me. Yeah, I was all a misunderstanding on my part. But you also never told me the truth, how you really feel.”

-Luluco to Alpha Omega Nova, Space Patrol Luluco, Episode 12

Like Chidori Takashiro in Kiznaiver — who dotes on Katsuhira, hoping that he’ll return her feelings someday — Luluco has a seemingly never-ending wellspring of love for Alpha Omega Nova. Luluco’s emotions are first mocked by the series, and then held up as something ultimately worthless and incredibly valuable at the same time. No one can take away her love for Nova, because she owns that feeling herself. Upon realizing this, Luluco goes to properly confess to Nova, prompting him to grow his own heart and love despite being a previously-empty shell. Not-so-coincidentally, the scar of the Kizna System is visible on Nova’s back as he begins to show emotion.

For Katsuhira, it takes a face-to-face meeting with his old friends from the initial kiznaiver experiment — who are missing their emotions completely — to recognize how others, especially Chidori, must have been viewing him this entire time. While he still can’t quite grasp how he feels emotionally, he clumsily addresses his current friends, stating his emotions plainly for the first time since the first experiment.

Meanwhile, Chidori could learn a thing or two from Luluco with regards to facing her fears head on. Her prior proclamation that she cannot possibly understand Hajime Tenga’s feelings because those feelings aren’t her own rings true, but also provides an interesting foil to Katsuhira’s confessions in Kiznaiver‘s latest episode. She’s able to understand Tenga’s feelings after Katsuhira calls her to express his own. Following Katsuhira’s speech, all of the kiznaivers feel pain in their hearts, similar to the shared pain that they experienced while connected by the Kizna System. Unsurprisingly, these are their own feelings, born of empathizing with Katsuhira on their own, rather than any forced system or pre-constructed experimental situation.

Both series’ penultimate episodes come to predictable climaxes that are no less affecting for their predictability. Luluco finally abandons her former wish for a normal life, accepts her individual feelings, and goes to confess to the boy she likes. Katsuhira comes to realize his own emotions thanks to the support from his friends — regardless of whether these awkward individuals see themselves as his friends, they are — and manages to express his own emotional development. As Kiznaiver and Luluco both approach their respective finales, the common threads are that emotions are worth feeling despite necessary pain, and relationships are worth having, allowing shared pain to further strengthen the bonds made with others.

This wasn’t the post I was initially going to write.

My original post dealt in more personal anecdotes, much like my first take on Concrete Revolutio Choujin Gensou. The series has always concerned itself with time, reorganizing it’s own chronology as it has seen fit. It was going to return to the young woman on the balcony, wondering just how her personal choices had led her to that specific moment. My experience with Concrete Revolutio was an extremely personal one due to the series shifting timeline from episode to episode.

Yet, Concrete Revolutio tackles many things, almost too many things to the point where the series is bursting at the seams with a myriad of ideas too large to fit into one series and too nuanced to be adequately addressed within such a small scope.

This wasn’t the post I was initially going to write, but it’s the post I feel compelled to write at this specific moment in time — in my own timeline that I, in this very moment, feel like I cannot change.

Many have cited Concrete Revolutio‘s adherence to a non-chronological story structure as a hindrance to the many ideas that it juggles simultaneously. There are obvious real-life tie-ins to our own timeline or history as we know it, despite the fact that the minutiae around the same events are wildly different due to the addition of superhumans, ancient youkai, and aliens.

When a series scrambles its own chronology, it’s often for a very distinct purpose. Haruhi Suzumiya and the Monogatari series are both strong examples of anime franchises that eschew presenting events in order for a greater focus on specific emotional narratives of their respective characters. Concrete Revolutio‘s approach is similar, but the end result was a bit different for me as a viewer. Due to the series’ focus on actual historical events I, like many other viewers, sought to organize the historical tidbits into a timeline that somewhat resembled what I knew of the actual history.

By the time of Concrete Revolutio: Choujin Gensou THE LAST SONG, the series becomes a bit more linear, but still focuses on certain events in history, establishing parallels between the in-universe world of Concrete Revolutio and real-life historical events. There are many sayings regarding history of which people are urged to be aware — that it’s written by the victors, that only certain perspectives are taught. Concrete Revolutio reiterates this idea by breaking down the chronology, isolating events that audiences are at the very least vaguely familiar with, and then reframing them within the series’ own context.

This means that, within the scope of a single episode, we see a character confronted with the results of their actions. Fuurota the ghost is the first prominent example, forced to face the consequences of his initial deed for the Superhuman Bureau that, unbeknownst to him at the time, wiped out the entire race of the Tartaros Bugmen, the people of his friend Campe. The idea that even the smallest actions have far-reaching consequences inconceivable at the time of the initial action is something that Concrete Revolutio returns to again and again.

It’s in these smaller character moments where Concrete Revolutio‘s lack of chronology works for me. Yes, these events all have monumental historical significance, and they aim to poke and prod at the past, shining a rather unattractive spotlight on the results. Perhaps some of the grandeur and climax around these moments is lost, but what’s gained is how it affects the individuals that we’ve grown to care about through the series’ progression.

At the end of THE LAST SONG, we’re left with Yoshiaki Satomi and Jiro Hitoyoshi — two men born of similar monumental events, keystones formed from a divergence between our timeline and the world of Concrete Revolutio. Jiro’s divergence involves the United States’ bombing of Hiroshima, with the hope that such a cataclysmic event would lead to a more peaceful world in the parallel timeline where the bomb exploded. As viewers, we know that this is not the case — or at the very least, that the comparison is negligible — because this is our world, still fraught with the same shortcomings and similar mistakes of humanity. With or without superhumans, the timeline is eerily similar.

Yet, Concrete Revolutio ends with a message of hope, despite the fact that superhumans, youkai, ghosts, androids, and time travelers are just as fallible as humans. We can all inspire hope and action from each other — just as superhumans are used as beacons of hope and justice after the fact in Concrete Revolutio — even in the darkest of times.

After the first few episodes of Kiznaiver, I wrote a piece detailing the flower language used by the series’ ending sequence where each female cast member was paired up with a specific flower. These flowers were chosen very specifically for each cast member, sometimes foreshadowing their backstory or role within the series.

Now that Kiznaiver has ended, I wanted to return to the series’ use of flowers in addition to reexamining the flowers, and the young women, portrayed in the ending sequence.

Buttercup/Kingcup: original kizna experiment children

As the ending theme plays, researchers Mutsumi Urushibara and Kazunao Yamada watch their kizna system charges play in a field at the former facility. The flower that they’re picking is a yellow buttercup — more specifically a kingcup. Yellow buttercups can mean joy, happiness, friendship, and new beginnings — as is common with many yellow flowers — and kingcups/buttercups specifically are often used to represent childishness, humility, and occasionally a lack of gratitude.

The original kiznaivers, Noriko Sonozaki and Katsuhira Agata aside, were reduced to a wholly emotionless state as a side effect from the kizna system and Sonozaki’s emotional defense mechanism. At the end of Kiznaiver, they’re slowly starting to regain their emotions and are shown picking buttercups in a field as they embark on their own new beginnings. Sonozaki mentions to Katsuhira that their friends gave them the flowers that now sit in their hospital room, which then become a sign of their old friendship as well as their collective childishness due to the initial experiment. The buttercups connect the two groups — Asuka and company, Sonozaki and Katsuhira — as they both move forward from the kizna now that their physical connection has finally been severed.

Rose: Noriko Sonozaki

While Sonozaki is often shown framed by elaborate floral arrangements throughout the series at her desk and in her home, her flower in the ending sequence is a rose — more specifically, a bouquet of roses that is pre-arranged.

Everything about Sonozaki is seemingly elaborate and prepared. She is one of the overseers of the new kizna experiment and becomes the key to ending the experiment once and for all, returning the emotions that she had absorbed from the first iteration of the kizna system. As mentioned in the previous post, white roses often represent purity and innocence, orange roses excitement — if you chose to interpret them as yellow they take on more of a friendship meaning like the aforementioned buttercup — and green renewal and rejuvenation of spirit.

These roses take on a new meaning now that Sonozaki’s narrative arc has ended and we know more about her at series end. Sonozaki was squirreling away others’ feelings as a defense mechanism, unintentionally taking away the emotions of Katsuhira and the others. Her releasing these emotions, thereby ending their physical connection but returning their emotional one, is the start of her own renewal. She did this unwittingly, and was therefore innocent, and excitement at having friends also played a large part in why Sonozaki hoarded the feelings of others.

Nico Niiyama: Scottish Bluebells

I had originally identified these as blue-eyed grass; however, an astute commenter pointed out their similarities to Scottish bluebells, which have a lot more in common with Nico’s personality.

Nico goes through a great deal of character growth during the scope of the series — arguably the most of the kiznaivers aside from Katsuhira and Sonozaki. Initially introduced as a fake eccentric, Nico becomes the voice of reason by the end of the series, willing to make herself wholly vulnerable in an attempt to express her feelings. Due to her genuine honesty, she often becomes a guidepost for the other kiznaivers who end up following suit after Nico breaks the ice.

Scottish bluebells are not-so-coincidentally associated with fairies — it’s said that they call fairies by ringing — in addition to unending love, gratitude, and loyalty. Always seeking others’ friendship, even when she doesn’t realize that she already has it, Nico shows unwavering loyalty to her friends. In the final episode, Nico admits that she doesn’t like Sonozaki very much but wishes to help her because Nico cares about Katsuhira, who in turn, is in love with Sonozaki. Nico also is the character who expresses the most gratitude, both towards her friends and the experiment itself for bringing them together.

Chidori Takashiro: Purple Daisy, Honoka Maki: Marigold

Both of these flowers and their respective meanings don’t change much within the scope of the series. Chidori’s purple daisy — innocence, purity, everlasting love, royal beauty — still represents her ties to Katsuhira, which she only begins to release in the waning moments of the series. Whether she ends up with Hajime Tenga or not, Chidori’s love for anyone is always going to be very steadfast and emotionally heavy.

Honoka’s marigold still represents her ties to Ruru — honoring the deceased and death in general. At the very end of the series, she and Tsuguhito Yuta are seen together in front of a field of pansies. Pansies often stand for love or admiration of another person as well as thinking of love — a pensive love. This could be seen as a representation of where she stands towards Yuta, thinking over their relationship.

“It’s such an ancient pitch.

But one I wouldn’t switch,

‘Cause there’s no nicer witch than you.”

-Frank Sinatra, “Witchcraft”

It’s always easy to write about something emotionally resonant, something socially relevant, something that wishes to make a specific point. Regardless of whether these types of series actually succeed, I’ve always found that they leave me with something to say, be it complimentary or not.

More difficult is writing about something that’s consistently good — something that, at every level, delivers exactly what it promises in a charming and pretty package. I rarely write about series that simply please me because there’s often not much more to say aside from, “This is really good. Go watch it.”

Keeping my own writing inadequacies in mind, I’m going to make an attempt at writing about the most delightful series of this past spring: Flying Witch.

From its first episode, Flying Witch juxtaposes a sleepy mountain village with the mystical perception of witchcraft. We’re told that Makoto Kowata is a witch thanks to the title of the series, but during Makoto’s arrival and introduction of her cousins, Chinatsu and Kei Kuramoto, never expressly say that she’s a witch.

Flying Witch continues to play with its audience throughout the first episode by teasing the knowledge of Makoto’s magical abilities without visually revealing them. The opening scenes of the series simply covers Makoto and her cousins walking through the village, and Makoto settling into her room. Makoto’s “conversation” with Chito is the only thing out of the ordinary, and even this could be written off as Makoto being overly attached to her pet.

The visual reveal comes in the middle of the episode when Makoto flies on a broom in front of Chinatsu to test it out. Flying Witch is masterful, unveiling Makoto’s — and later various other characters with magical abilities — witch activities with perfect buildup and framing. There is no big announcement from Makoto of her witchcraft, the series is content to show us rather than explain.

After a wholly mundane shopping trip, Makoto spots brooms for sale outside of the store. As soon as she spots them we presume, as a sage audience that knows Makoto is a witch, that she’ll be using them for flying — that’s what witches do, after all. She eyes the broom before shrugging that it will do, and the series cuts to her feet as she mounts it.

Interspersed between our first glimpse of Makoto flying and her shoes kicking off from the ground are shots of wind blowing through price tags and a leaf that moves through a puddle with the breeze. The background music adds the perfect amount of ambience to the scene making it, for lack of a better word, magical. We also see Chinatsu’s stunned reaction to Makoto’s powers followed by an overall shot of Makoto in front of the store — a perfectly normal scene aside from the high school girl flying on a broom.

This mixing of the magical and mundane occurs throughout the series. Episodes focus on the charm or isolation of small-town life, and even Makoto’s or her sister Akane’s spells are simple in execution. The oddest events of the series all surround Akane — a fully-fledged and extremely talented witch — whether they involve doing silly things with friends while drunk, or traveling to exotic locales in order to test her spells. Flying Witch mixes these in with the most average or ordinary scenes of daily life, like watching a pancake rise on a griddle as it cooks, or shopping for fabrics.

Despite the fact that we know Makoto and other characters in the series are witches, Flying Witch’s dedication to displaying the charm of its setting and simple, daily routines means that we never know when the witchcraft will begin. This has the added bonus of making even the most common events seem magical. The series also uses both pillow and establishing shots for added effect, continuously breathing life into Makoto’s new surroundings.

Flying Witch also builds on itself. No event is forgotten, and often previous events will be referenced throughout the series — not by the characters’ dialogue but through specific visual framing or nods.

In the series’ second episode, Chinatsu is terrified by the Harbinger of Spring, a magical being. The Harbinger gives her a pot of flowers as a gift, which are then seen in later episodes including the series finale. This continuously reminds the audience that we are privy to specific character moments and growth, creating an in-series nostalgia that rewards viewers for returning week after week.

Sometimes it’s enough to say that a series is good at what it wants to do and leave a recommendation at that. However, Flying Witch far exceeds even high expectations with surprisingly strong visual direction that perfectly juxtaposes commonplace events with witchcraft, making both magical in the viewers’ eyes.

“In this moment, I had the greatest epiphany!”

-Honoka Kousaka, Love Live!, Episode 1

Unlike The Idolm@ster, which already had a legion of fans from the original arcade game prior to the anime’s 2011 debut or the 2012 series AKB0048, which drew on the pre-existing AKB48 fanbase, Love Live! was still a relatively new multimedia project when the anime aired in early 2013.

Love Live! has always operated on a few different conceits than other idol series, even back in its first season when it was this weird and corny thing with janky computer generated animation. The Idolm@ster poked a bit at the exhausting lifestyle of an idol and AKB0048 prodded at the creepiness of it all while both sold their respective products and tie-ins, banking on the fact that audiences would resonate with one or two girls — or in the peculiar case of AKB0048, support them because of their real-life counterparts.

Meanwhile, Love Live! wants to charm you from the get-go, in the same vein of a hammy musical production. The latest iteration of the series, Love Live! Sunshine, is no different.

Love Live! Sunshine‘s premier sticks to what is now the Love Live! formula, but thankfully avoids presenting a palette-swapped new µ’s. Sunshine’s first episode, more than anything, reiterates that Love Live! is now wholly its own entity — multiple anime series and a movie, a manga, a highly successful game, and countless singles and albums later, Love Live! is now the multimedia project promised by the original anime series.

I mentioned earlier that Love Love! operates on a different set of conceits from other idol series. The first of these is a complete lack of drama that’s made up for by character interactions.

Even in the first episode of the original Love Live! series, there’s very little by way of legitimate dramatic tension despite the obvious and somewhat convoluted setup to get Honoka started on her way to school idoldom. The more poignant moments are small — Honoka glancing through her mother’s high school photo album the night after she learns that their high school, Otonokizaka Academy, will close down — and the rest of the time is filled with over-the-top acting and silliness.

This isn’t to say that dramatic moments don’t exist, but that our expectations as Love Live! viewers are shaped by monologues from Honoka — and now Chika Takami in Sunshine — to look forward to how it all unfolds rather than what will happen or even why things are happening at all. Thanks to their narration, we can presume that they achieve their goals of forming an idol unit and saving their school. Just as we know that headliner Judy Garland and Gene Kelly’s characters will inevitably fall for each other in a musical, the girls in a Love Live! series will get their group and attempt to compete in the Love Live! competition. As Love Live! viewers, and probable fans, our primary role is to watch fun characters that we’ll eventually grow to love — and who will be developed beyond their initial archetypes through the course of the series.

Sunshine‘s first-episode formula is very reminiscent of Love Live!‘s premiere, down to both Honoka and Chika’s personal realizations in front of a public television screen while watching A-RISE and µ’s respectively. What makes Sunshine enjoyable is that it follows the Love Live! script but ensures that its cast has their own chance to shine. Chika may fill Honoka’s role in Sunshine, but she’s not Honoka, something that the series makes abundantly clear through more intimate character moments.

“Well . . . they look normal. I didn’t mean it in a bad way. I just thought they’d look more like celebrities since they’re idols.”

-Riko Sakurauchi to Chika Takami, Love Live! Sunshine, Episode 1

Otonokizaka transfer student sums up another conceit specific to Love Live! when she sees µ’s for the first time — despite presumably having attended school with them — the idea of a school idol rather than a larger industry idol.

While Love Live! indubitably sells merchandise to a similar crowd, the inherent creepiness of idol culture as a whole seeps into the franchise less than other series. The Idolm@ster, AKB0048, and Wake Up Girls! all shine a light on the darker corners of being an idol at different moments — some are more incisive than others — but Love Live! doesn’t have to because its idols are all shown as normal girls. Honoka’s initial impetus for becoming an idol was to save her high school, not to pursue a career as an idol. Similarly, Chika wishes to be a school idol in search of something meaningful and wholly her own, rather than remaining firmly in the background. The fact that the girls of µ’s are so ordinary is actually what initially inspires her.

This does mean that Love Live! is very pro-idol. If you’re looking for another property that skewers idol culture, Love Live! is not what you want to watch. Yet, sometimes you just want to watch a good popcorn flick, or see something fun. Love Live! is pure fun with strong character interaction, surprisingly effective quiet moments, and musical performances that toe the line between a movie musical and an idol concert.

A new season means a new series to cover over at Crunchyroll. Previously I blogged Kiznaiver, which was a series that caught my attention thanks to its subject matter, visual direction, and attention to floral details.

For the 2016 summer season, I’m happy to say that I’m going to be blogging Orange weekly. I picked up the Orange manga earlier this year due to several recommendations from friends and have written about it previously in relation to Erased (major spoilers for both in that post). My episodic entries for Orange will include letters to my sixteen year-old self — also general high school/early college-aged self — regarding personal regrets or past mistakes. Hopefully they’ll be as enjoyable to read as they are to write.

My post and letter for Orange‘s premiere can be found here. Thank you.

“Million Clouds” sung in dulcet, relaxing tones by Maaya Sakamoto is the perfect opening song for Amanchu!. As Futaba Ooki looks out at the vastness of the ocean while waves lap at her feet in the sand, it’s clear that Amanchu! is going to be another Kozue Amano property in the similar vein of Aria — allowing viewers’ cares to melt away throughout the episode, or with each beautiful note of the opening song.

I was initially going to write about Futaba’s first day in school, comparing Amanchu!’s focus on establishing the seaside setting of Ito on the Izu Peninsula as a main character of the series alongside Hikari Kohinata and Futaba. When revisiting the opening, I was struck by how pointed the visuals were, especially having watched the first episode entirely.

Amanchu!‘s initial sequence in the opening shows Futaba — a newcomer to the area from Tokyo — stepping into the ocean barefoot. It begins with a close-up of her feet as they hit the shallow water before the water recedes, cutting to a shot of her staring out into the ocean with an uncertain look on her face. As the title comes into view, the camera pans out to show the vastness of the ocean.

Since Amanchu! is trying to establish the ocean, and Ito, as its own character, it pans out to show not only Futaba’s tiny figure against the expanse of the ocean but it shows the ocean by itself, panning out further so that only the ocean, the sky, and a small outcropping of land is visible. When the camera returns to Futaba, she smiles as Hikari walks up beside her.

The first episode makes it abundantly clear that Futaba suffers from social anxiety, evidenced by her stunted conversations, inner monologue prior to her in-class introduction, and the few words she does manage to squeak out to the class during said introduction. Going back through the opening sequence reiterates this over and over, with the aforementioned worried look across the sea and another scene that shows her isolated in the classroom by her window seat, gazing out the window.

Presumably, much of the series will involve Futaba finding her own place in Ito through befriending Hikari and learning how to scuba dive.

Diving is featured prominently in the opening, including another sequence that involves Futaba acquainting herself with the ocean — initially bracing herself before gazing, wide-eyed, at the scenery. She is then surrounded by her new Ito friends. Later, when she gazes up at the sun, she smiles.

The next sequence was my personal favorite, and what caught my eye when I rewatched the opening after the first episode. Throughout Amanchu! Episode 1, Futaba is glued to her cell phone. When she first meets Hikari’s grandmother, she’s flipping through old photos of her friends and checking for new messages. Futaba repeats her constant scouring and scanning for messages several times during the first episode, but is always met with an alert indicating that she hasn’t received any.

This casts a slightly melancholy shadow over her presence and demeanor — Hikari is quick to distract her from this — hinting that her Tokyo friends certainly aren’t as concerned about her well-being as she is with theirs, or any ties to her former life. Her checking is natural — when moving to a new place we often struggle to move forward, grasping at anything familiar. The opening promises that Futaba will eventually find a new life in Ito with Hikari and others, but doesn’t forget that she must acquiesce to moving forward first.

First come pictures of the sky and sunflowers, followed by an old picture of Futaba and her Tokyo friends, and finally a new photo of Futaba and her comparatively boisterous Ito crew. Futaba then squeezes her cell phone tightly in her hand. Her hands are next shown in Hikari’s hands as the two hold hands underwater in wetsuits.

It’s simple and straightforward, but Amanchu!‘s opening also underlines Futaba’s anxiety and upcoming transformation through its visuals in a surprisingly effective manner. Amanchu! doesn’t disregard Futaba’s apprehension or unease at relocating to a strange and unfamiliar place, but promises that she’ll find happiness once she’s ready to move forward.

My first day at a real job — something in my field of study, journalism, and not a retail position — was actually a paid internship at a newspaper. The moment I walked in on my first day also marked my first time seeing an actual newsroom in action. My expectations were shaped by television series, movies, and my personal experience working for the school paper — the latter was simply a university computer lab, trashcans overflowing with crushed Red Bull cans and empty coffee cups. A group of seniors would drop by once a week to scour the room for these precious recyclables in order to earn more beer money.

I had expected a high pressure environment — and later learned exactly when the pressure would come, towards the midnight rush — but was met with a fairly dingy corner in an old building. To this day I don’t know if this particular setting was limited to the sports section, or if the rest of the newsrooms were similar environments because I never saw them. Our windows faced the downtown shopping area, which we could look down upon from three stories up. The same low ceilings and florescent lights that characterized the computer lab were also present in the newsroom, but desks were much closer and piled with files, papers, and various office supplies. A television that was permanently tuned to ESPN was mounted to the wall next to a small, sealed office that had been placed haphazardly in the corner of the room. This is where my boss worked, although it offered little to no privacy as the large glass windows made it easy for us to look in. More often than not, he kept the door open, or would come out and sit on the opposite side of one of our desks.

New Game! might not be the most realistic interpretation of a game company, but it nails the small worries that accompany a first day on the job. Aoba Suzukaze’s first day at Eagle Jump is fraught with misunderstandings, understandable nervousness, and awkward situations that you wish would remain in the high school lunchroom until you realize that certain things don’t automatically become easier with age.

My own first day was full of these things. In lieu of a formal introduction, one of the senior staff writers — M, who also was an adjunct faculty member at my school and a large reason why I received this internship — introduced me before taking me to Boss’s office.

Boss was somehow both stern and lax, a bit like Kou Yagami in New Game! — minus the fanservice, of course. As previously mentioned, we could easily see into his office from the newsroom, and Boss would frequently hang out in the newsroom when unoccupied. I was given a small desk, a computer, and shown how to scan the Associated Press newswire for stories. Next to M’s desk, there was a large office printer/fax machine/copier and small wire basket below. Whenever one of us received an e-mail of a press release or local event, we were to print it out. One of my main tasks as an intern was to sort through these releases and identify which events we would cover, in addition to the usual local news of the minor league baseball team among other things.

“I wouldn’t last if I stayed overnight every night.”

Kou Yagami, New Game!, Episode 1

Unlike my expectation of a newsroom, things were rather slow during most of the official office hours until it came down to the 11 p.m. crunch time. Much of our work was done outside the office, covering events or doing interviews in our “off” time, something that New Game! also touches upon when Kou’s co-workers tease her for not staying late, which she presumably does often. Even as a lowly intern, my work life became my life, for better or for worse. Yet, when I left on that first day, and didn’t get home until around 1 a.m., I felt oddly revitalized.

The first episode of New Game! has its highs and lows. While I love the idea of an all-female game development team, the cynical side of me says that it’s more to sell another series of cute girls doing things — this time around, it’s making video games. However, the less cynical side of me recognizes newbie Aoba Suzukaze’s struggle to introduce herself to her superiors, anxiety about knowing less than others and how to ask for help, and above all, her genuine love of what she does, especially when she learns that she’ll be working on the continuation of a game that inspired her.