#Ryou SCREECHES into the void

[ryoukio]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHGSUFXUFXIGJLJFYDGSLHZVKPHUECKCUVONGATSYRHSFUBIBONLMLJOFhvkbivonhvihofahsgdhdksjsdksjflkhdkslaiajlfjhkfjkkckblg ( Peter Griffin death pose )

[purpledragon57]

Dragon Reviews: Tokyo Mew Mew

I recently finished watching the magical girl anime Tokyo Mew Mew. I’ve been meaning to get into the habit of writing reviews for things I watch, and I had quite a lot to say about this show, so it seemed like a good place to start. Full review under the cut. Apologies in advance for any misspellings - the subs were incredibly inconsistent.

I’m going to break my thoughts up into categories, starting with the characters and ending with the overall plot and themes:

The Magical Girls

I like the overall visuals of the magical girls. The outfits, transformations and attacks are all good looking and mostly well animated. The outfits hit a good balance between uniformity and individuality, which I like.

Personally I didn’t enjoy the girls very much as a group? The best magical girl teams are fun to watch even when they’re just hanging out, but the Mew Mews’ dynamic just didn’t click with me. Most group interactions consisted of arguments and running jokes - they barely seem like friends half the time. This also made it hard to feel invested when things get emotional or during battles

On to the girls as individuals:

Ichigo was a perfectly fine magical girl protagonist. I liked the focus on how her magical girl and regular identities affect each other, and how this wove into her romance plot.

Minto was my favourite initially because I love Tsunderes, but ultimately she was more annoying than anything else and her arc wasn’t particularly interesting to me. She still has the best transformation though.

Retasu is the Shy Nerdy One, which made me like her initially, but there wasn’t anything that really stood out about her most of the time. I think maybe she was supposed to be a ‘straight man’ to the others’ wackiness (esp. Bu Ling), but her demeanour is too reserved to really pull this off in an entertaining way. I liked that she provided a side romance, but it never really went anywhere, which was disappointing.

Bu Ling is best girl. Her childish behaviour and Wacky Antics can get a bit annoying, but she’s cute and genuine enough to avoid being grating. I like her incredibly friendly and determined attitude. Also her focus episode was great and made me cry a little bit.

Zakuro is great just for having punched Kish in the face. 10/10 most satisfying scene in the whole series. On a more serious note, I think Zakuro was the most unique character on the team, but I’m not really sure what to make of her. She’s kind of cold and distant with high standards but occasionally soft, but I don’t really understand why she is this way. There’s hints that she has some kind of tragic backstory and possibly ulterior motives but I feel like this is never properly explained??? Maybe it’s something that didn’t translate well from manga to anime. It’s weird.

The Villains

This segment is gonna get spoilery so skip it if you care about that. The tl;dr is that the villains just kinda suck.

I just have to say it, this show had the ugliest villain designs I have ever seen in a magical girl series. I hate their outfits and the massive ears just look weird.

The Aliens have the theoretically sympathetic desire to return Earth to it’s old state now that their race is dying out on another planet - though doing so will wipe out humanity. This could be an interesting motivation, but unfortunately they are way too self-righteous and hypocritical about this and it just gets annoying. It’s possible this was the point but it’s still tiresome.

The most grating example of this is when Kish gets wounded in a fight and the other Aliens have the audacity to get angry at the Mew Mews for hurting their ‘friend’, even though neither of them showed anything but dislike for Kish, and they’ve been hurting the Mew Mews all the time.

Thoughts on the villains individually:

Kish is the most complete character of the lot - he at least succeeded in getting me to hate him with a burning passion. When he’s not busy being disturbingly possessive of Ichigo, he’s an obnoxious brat but largely a fairly competent villain. He also has the most braincells in the group, being able to come up with almost successful plans and figure out the big bad’s true intentions before the others. I think if his arc had been better paced he’d be a pretty solid MG villain over all.

Tart is just the ‘bratty child’ villain archetype, which I always hate. His relationship with Bu Ling is cute and actually has a satisfying payoff though.

Pie is just confusing. He has a ‘priorities orders over morality’ thing going on but it isn’t made very clear why he’s like this, and his last minute redemption-by-'death’ comes out of basically nowhere. The other villains are annoying but Pie is boring, which is even worse.

Deep Blue is just a generic pure evil villain once he actually becomes a character and not a voice in a void. He also had a possession plot line, which is a trope I like, but they didn’t do anything particularly interesting with it.

The Supporting Cast

Quick shout out to the Blue Knight for being the first time I’ve seen a mysterious ally character get introduced without their secret identity being immediately obvious. It’s fun to try and figure out what’s going on alongside the protagonists instead of knowing straight away.

Masaya was my favourite secondary character. His relationship with Ichigo felt a bit flat at first but after we find out what it is specifically that they like about each other I was sold. Cute and wholesome.

Ryou was an ok character. I feel like his story lines were kind of underutilised?? Feels similar to Zakuro in that he had hints at being a deeper character but couldn’t get me to connect to him.

The other guy felt like barely more than a background character. I can’t even remember his name and most of what I remember about him was ‘makes cake’ and ‘gives exposition’

Presentation

Besides the magical girl designs, I didn’t really like the visual aesthetic of this show. The colours are mostly either too saturated or too bland and the way the characters are drawn is not appealing to me.

The animation mostly ranges from passable to janky, besides the transformations. I remember some of the late-series fight scenes just consisted of awkward loops and quickly cut together stills and it looked more hilarious than intense. Intense facial expressions are sometimes so exaggerated they become laughable.

The voice acting is mostly fine, and sometimes really good, but sometimes it gets really overwrought. The amount of screeching in the last few episodes made me want to slam my head against a wall.

Plot & Themes

I thought it was interesting how much emphasis they put into the puberty metaphor. The Mew Mew powers come with a bunch of uncomfortable side effects (acting more like an animal, sprouting animal parts at inconvenient times, etc.) and the show spends a lot of time focusing on Ichigo’s emotional reactions to her body changing. I haven’t really seen other magical girl shows explore this aspect as much.

Obviously one of the biggest themes in the series is the environmentalist message. This theme gets pretty heavy handed at times but since it’s a children’s show I’m willing to give them a bit of a pass. I think it would have added a bit to show the girls being more environmentally conscious in their day to day lives or something but it’s fine.

Like I mentioned in the character sections, some character arcs and story lines are just kind of left hanging and it’s weird.

The plot about the aliens’ families back home is just flat out ignored at the end????? This was the most bizarre to me because they spent the whole show trying to reshape the Earth into somewhere they could live but then at the end they just leave. You can’t just ignore the plight of a slowly dying alien race like that, what the heck.

For some reason at the end they pull out of their bittersweet ‘powers are gone forever’ ending and have the girls randomly transform and leave to fight some unspecified enemy. I don’t know if this was supposed to be sequel set up or the staff decided it would be too sad or what but it was weird and dumb.

Conclusion

Tokyo Mew Mew is a weird mixed bag of genuinely good ideas but unsatisfying execution. I will say it isn’t really bad, it’s just that I’ve seen most of what it does done better in other series, so it doesn’t really stand out to me for the most part. My experience may also have been skewed by the long breaks I took between episodes at times - perhaps the pacing just seems worse to me because of this. Though on the other hand the fact that I had so little motivation to watch it quickly is a bad sign in itself. If I’d watched this show when I was younger perhaps I would have enjoyed it more.

Overall Rating: 6/10

PS - I get a vague impression that some of it’s flaws may be adaption problems - perhaps I’m wrong but it sometimes gives that ‘weak adaption of good source material’ vibe.

Have you seen Tokyo Mew Mew? What did you think of it? And if you have read the manga, do you think it’s better than the anime?

[swingbakuraryou]

The Circus in the Void

@the-dark-riceball   [x]

Loud chatter and giggling filled the air. He could hear small children as they pulled their parents along for the ride. Gasps of awe inspired crowds as announces yelled the next acts. It wasn’t a normal thing for him to go search in such a crowded area on purpose, but sweet scents of sweets and cotton candy had drawn him closer, then the cheery music that played over head won. Long before the sounds of the other people who had decided to populate the area did. Big pitched tents stood out largely on the grassed area, balls were thrown in the air in some spots but never touched the ground. Feeling a smile tugging at his pale lips either way. Trying to feel the ground for others feet with his stick he’d chosen to drag out.

He didn’t want to run into too many people, one or two were unavoidable. So he didn’t put much thought into that, entranced by the soft song that was playing not too far from where he stood. Trying to focus purely on that as a goal he continued to weave through crowds, apologising and taking quick glances at the person if he bumped them. Pausing for a moment and letting his eyes fall shut, “I’m close,” he whispered under his breath, not overly sure why out of everything these songs had entranced him. Heck he hadn’t been to a circus since he was little, but he defiantly couldn’t remember the music like this. Taking cautious steps closer—closer—closer—BANG! Groaned for a moment off the ground and staring at the silver haired male he had bumped into soft almost inaudible apologies followed but didn’t get far just staring instead.

Laughter, excitement, and impatience surged through the grounds.  Minstrels and acrobats showing off samples of their acts.  Beasts rattled and screeched behind curtains and bars. Candymen and women with bright and glittering face paint walked weighted down by their sweet and savory treasures luring children and couples at the price of a nickel.  The circus had come to town.

And he, taking a vacation away from his city life had woven himself in as an extra hand.  Carts in, stakes out, tents up, crates piled and crowds swarm.  Then reverse. That was the basic life of a carnie, as rudimentary as it could get the Ring Master had explained.  Of course, there was more.  The seamless lie of being utterly laid-back coaxing vagrants was the facade they worked tirelessly to maintain.  And somehow, ever since hire, the family here had seen a boom in their luck and success.  The youngsters and starry-eyed would all leave singing:

Come on along and join our song!

This is a world where you belong.

Magics and wonders, waiting for you.

Just take a turn down the avenue.

Come on along and join our song!

Work, school, or church, please respond.

Lights and colors, will dazzle you.

From ages one to hundred-two.

Come on along and join our song!

Here there’s no right and there’s no wrong.

Fears you that have, we’ll subdue

And smile with sweet deja vu.

And it was not a song they played on the music box, but there they were singing their little hearts out.  Ryou was rolling and humming the song when -oof!-  someone struck him on the ankle and knocked into him.  He wheeled around to catch him, but only managed to soften the fall.  A string of inaudible apologies spilled from the young man’s mouth, then silence.  Ryou was taken slightly back at the fallen person.  He looked so much like him, but there was a strange thrall about him, his eyes.  “Careful here, old sport.” Was he blind? “There’s a lot of excited people here, people aren’t mindful when they’re excited.” He said helping the other up.