Summer 2023 Preview: Blue Eyes and Blood Rainbows

Welcome to this week’s installment of ANIWIRE! This time we’re recommending anime series airing this summer season. Before that, though, here’s the news from the past week.

News

• Hayao Miyazaki’s film How Do You Live? Is set to premiere on July 14th. No idea what my expectations are for this thing, but I hope it lives up to them!
• US manga publisher DENPA announced at Anime Expo that they licensed Holiday Junction by excellent manga artist Keigo Shinzo.
• Anime News Network reported that Hitoshi Yoshioka, the original creator of sci fi comedy The Irresponsible Captain Tylor, passed away in January per the Kaoru Asakura Theater Company. Rest in peace.
• A new trailer aired for The Apothecary Diaries, the anime adaptation of a fan-favorite mystery series riffing on classic Chinese palace dramas. I’m unsure about the staff working on this series–I still haven’t forgiven Norihiro Naganuma for fumbling The Ancient Magus Bride. The source material is excellent, though.
• VOTOMS director Ryousuke Takahashi is back to direct an anime adaptation of hitman manga The Fable for Tezuka Productions. Here’s hoping this turns out better than the studio’s recent production My Home Hero.

Bookmarks

• For Full Frontal, Matteo Watzsky interviewed genius opening director Ken’ichi Ketsuna of Magical Destroyers and VLAD LOVE fame.
• For Anime Herald, Coop Bicknell investigated the story of mysterious Macross tapes found on the Crunchyroll Store by writer Mark McDonald.
• Anime journalist Frog-kun wrote about why the second season of Mushoku Tensei may not be as good as the first–but why that may not be such a bad thing.
• On Cohost, Ruby wrote about Dragon Quest I’s many translations, including quotes from translator Nob Ogasawara.
• On Cohost, Nate A.M. translated an interview regarding the upcoming film Sound Euphonium: Ensemble Contest between director Tatsuya Ishihara and assistant director Taichi Ogawa.
• Covid-conscious anime convention Anime Lockdown uploaded their video panels from this year to their YouTube page. I recommend all of them, but especially “That 2008 Feeling: Exploring the Era of the 2000s Anime Bubble” and “The Story of Animerama.”

AMV of the Week

Here’s “Neapolitan,” a classic by Copycat Revolver.

According to conventional wisdom, spring and fall anime seasons attract the biggest hits while winter and summer seasons suffer by comparison. In my experience, this isn’t always true. Some of the best anime series have aired during these “summer and winter doldrums,” if only because the lower stakes allow for risky programming. Penguindrum, Mob Psycho 100 and Keep Your Hands Off Eizouken! are all examples of artistically successful summer and winter anime. That said, there’s not much on par with those shows airing this summer. Most of this season’s airing schedule is devoted to discount isekai (portal fantasy) sagas and sequel series. Originality is in short supply.

There are always exceptions, though. From the risky sequel season of a Shonen Jump hit, to the continuation of a classic Chinese donghua, these are my picks to keep an eye on through the tough summer months. Alternatively, you could always sit back and wait to see what’s left standing at the end of the season. There’s plenty of old anime to watch in the meantime. Have you watched Skip and Loafer yet? Get on that.

Jujutsu Kaisen

Shonen Jump is the most popular comics magazine in the world in part because it’s so formulaic. Jujutsu Kaisen is no exception, but that’s not to say it lacks qualities of its own. Manga artist Gege Akutami hits the expected beats with a puckish wit inspired by his idol Yoshihiro Togashi. He delivers grunge horror and fantasy urban action with aplomb, and even gives his female cast things to do; a shockingly rare trait among his peers in the magazine. Jujutsu Kaisen was adapted into an anime by MAPPA in 2020, and its stylish fight scenes (not to mention excellent opening credits sequences directed by Shingo Yamashita) earned the show an international following. Still, though, I never made it past the first two episodes because I couldn’t shake the sense I’d seen it all before.

The show’s second season, though, brought a changing of the guard. Sunghoo Park stepped down from the director’s chair to make anime for Adult Swim. His replacement is Shota Goshozono, one of the most exciting new directors currently working in the anime industry. Goshozono has spent the past few years experimenting with Blender to produce scenes that would otherwise be unfeasible within television anime. His episodes of Ranking of Kings and Chainsaw Man transformed the source material to conform to his ambitious cinematic vision. Jujutsu Kaisen’s second season is his first credit as series director, and the first episode is packed with ambitious storyboarding and fun animation. It even works for a relative beginner like me, since the beginning of this season is a prequel arc meant to set up the next big throwdown.

There’s no guarantee that MAPPA’s factory pipeline will keep up with the big ideas of Goshozono and company. But seasonal anime is a gamble to begin with. Why not gamble on a young upstart?

Undead Murder Farce

Undead Murder Farce is a big messy pastiche in the vein of The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen or Anno Dracula. All your favorite British pulp characters are here, including Sherlock Holmes, Arsene Lupin and the Phantom of the Opera. The larger than life personalities remind me of Ryogo Narita’s character-driven domino chains, while their conversations are as long and convoluted as any Nisioisin novel. So there’s not much original here, but that’s fine. The charm of works like Anno Dracula is in how they repurpose hoary old narratives, as well as how many deep cuts the author can fit into their anything-goes world. Undead Murder Farce begins with a sadistic half-oni, a maid with a sniper rifle and a headless immortal voiced by Tomoyo Kurosawa. Early word of the second episode is that the series just gets more bonkers from here.

It helps that Undead Murder Farce is directed by an expert in dramatizing long conversations. Mamoru Hatakeyama (the pen name of Shinichi Omata) is best known today for Kaguya-sama: Love is War, a comedy that kept finding new ways to make classroom dialogue between pretentious high school students funny, weird and romantic. Others remember him for Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, a drama that made its extended rakugo “storytelling” scenes compelling through voice acting and visual implication. The first episode of Undead Murder Farce uses every trick in the book to keep the viewer engaged in its long dialogues, from splitscreen to visual metaphor to just changing the background scenery. Hatakeyama is aided here by Lapintrack, a studio founded by ex-Brains Base staff that (together with anime auteur/difficult man Kunihiko Ikuhara) made 2019’s wacky musical comedy Sarazanmai back in 2019. If you’re looking for a fun action show but Jujutsu Kaisen doesn’t interest you, this is the series I recommend keeping an eye on.

Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead

Zombies have appeared so frequently in film, video games and television that it’s tough to make them scary rather than just disgusting. But their ubiquity makes them an excellent prop. They serve as metaphor in the film Dawn of the Dead. They illuminate humanity’s contradictions by contrast in the Walking Dead television series. In this summer’s Zom 100: Bucket List of the Dead, the zombie apocalypse is a second chance for its long-suffering worker bee protagonist rather than an ending. “Aren’t you tired of being nice?” the show asks. “Don’t you want to go apeshit?”

The zombie story as a liberatory fantasy isn’t particularly new. Shaun of the Dead pulled a similar trick in 2004 to great effect. What distinguishes Zom 100 is execution. The protagonist’s descent into depression and nihilism is represented by a tight aspect ratio and the gradual loss of colors from the screen. When zombies take over the world and change the protagonist’s life, their blood becomes technicolor and the world erupts into motion. These tricks could potentially work in live action (a live action adaptation is set to debut this August) but are realized to their fullest potential in animation. Whether or not the series keeps up this level of quality, I’d recommend the premiere of Zom 100 to any curious anime fan. It could stand alone as an excellent short film.

Smart folks have pointed out that the hero’s company logo in the anime is eerily similar to that of OLM, the former home of Zom 100’s staff. That couldn’t be a reference to OLM’s dysfunctional workplace environment, leading its talent to quit and work out their frustrations elsewhere…right?!

Ooku

Fumi Yoshinaga is a beloved manga artist who specializes in depicting witty dialogue between handsome men. Her most ambitious work is Ooku, an alternate history of Japan in which men die en masse and women take over the shogunate. Readers unfamiliar with the nuances of this history may be overwhelmed by the scope of Yoshinaga’s narrative. But the heart of the story, its messy characters and relationships, are accessible to anybody willing to read closely. Even those bored by “gender apocalypse” stories may find something of value here.

As good as Ooku is, I never would have expected the series to receive an anime adaptation. The anime industry typically showers its blessings on comics for teenage boys, and avoids those aimed at women. So I was shocked, excited but also a little afraid when Netflix announced an adaptation of Ooku. Netflix’s past anime adaptations aimed at a female audience, like Way of the Househusband and 7 Seeds, have ranged from disappointing to excruciating. Ooku is better than I feared, but still no substitute for the manga. If the anime lacks the inspired direction of a Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinjuu, though, its faithful script keeps it viable for folks who either dislike or can’t read comics.

That said, I recommend seeking out subtitles for this year’s J-drama adaptation of the story. Ooku makes for a decent anime but I bet it’s an even better live-action costume drama.

Link Click II

Chinese animation (or “donghua”) has gradually been making inroads within anime fan communities after years of dismissal. Scissor Seven is as rude as any ONE comic, while the fight scenes in Legend of Hei put most superhero films to shame. But the best of them in my book is Link Click, a time travel suspense thriller produced by the always ambitious Studio LAN. Link Click has everything: two handsome frenemies, tragic twists and turns and the best cliffhangers in the business. Each episode’s storyboards were as elaborate as the scripts, and found consistently creative ways to frame each scene even as the animation struggled to keep up. Best of all, the show’s opening credits sequence was a stone-cold banger. It’s no wonder that the show has won itself a cult following among fans looking for something a little different.

Link Click II proceeds directly from the first season’s cliffhanger ending, which I will not deign to spoil here. The first episode has not yet been aired, and China’s current repressive atmosphere may very well hinder the show’s ability to address difficult topics. The new opening credits sequence, though, is nearly as good as the first one. All things considered, I’m excited to see Studio LAN in action once again. They’ve been a highlight even on cursed projects like the second season of One Punch Man. With luck, Link Click II will be the breakthrough hit they’ve been working towards over the past decade.

Helck

Helck was a sleeper hit on the scanlation circuit before Viz Media started publishing the series in English. It’s a fantasy series that plays with the conventions of the genre, lampooning cliches before hitting the reader in the face with a tragedy curveball. I have yet to read the source material, but I’m curious to see whether the anime adaptation attracts new fans to the comic. I’m not sure about the staff though. Director Tatsuo Sato hasn’t made anything great in a long while, and the studio Satelight has lost plenty of talent over the years. Helck may very well suffer the fate of my beloved Lucifer and Biscuit Hammer, a long-awaited adaptation that fell on its face at the starting line. Here’s hoping Helck proves to be an exception!

The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glasses

You may have seen this tweet going around about Studio GoHands. While I’m saving my full thoughts on this show for a later newsletter, keep in mind that this is the series to watch this summer if you want your brain to melt out of your ears.

Ultraman Blazar

Tsubaraya have been working hard to make their tokusatsu productions accessible abroad.  Recent entries like Ultraman Geed (featuring scripts by mystery writer Otsuichi!) and Z (featuring a JAM Project theme song!) are easily accessible via streaming. Mill Creek Entertainment has released early 2000s classics like Ultraman Gaia and Nexus on DVD in the United States. Now the company is pulling out all the stops for their new series Ultraman Blazar. The first episode is free on their YouTube page in Japanese and English for two weeks after airing. There’s even an English dub starring voice actor Johnny Young Bosch.

Blazar pays homage to earlier Ultraman seasons but exists in a new continuity. It’s a military science fiction tale confident enough to throw its audience directly into the action, context be damned. The special effects look outrageously good, far beyond the CG vomit of Blazar’s tokusatsu peers. The first episode’s kaiju is a highlight as well. I love the horrible noises it makes, its big scary eyes and its movable horns.

If I have a complaint with Blazar, it’s that the show’s military science fiction affectations are surface level. I’m a big fan of Ultraman Nexus, a series that painted the Ultraman “science team” as a morally complex organization even as it celebrated the character’s heroism. Blazar gestures at Nexus’s “mature” stylings, but as of the first episode seems uninterested in that complexity. I can imagine losing interest in the show if it continues in this vein, even if it otherwise remains entertaining.