child abuse cw | adventuresofcomicbookgirl

So for last anime season, I was not really into the pickings. What ended up happening was I ended up watching the anime where the cast was pretty much 90 percent women because whatever else happened, at least I would be getting my female characters fix. Did I find any of them any good? What were the best? FIND OUT.

Akuma No Riddle (Riddle: Story of the Devil)

Akuma No Riddle was billed as a yuri anime, at least in the West, with the description being that the main character Touko, is a child assassin who is sent to participate in a class of 13 girls. All of the girls in the class except “the target” are trained assassins who must compete to assassinate the target first. Whoever manages to assassinate the target first gets any wish granted to them. Touko is of course, sent to compete, but ends up falling in love with the target, Haru, and vows to protect her from the other assassins.

The anime boasted a completely ridiculous and contrived plot that often eschewed logic with an incredibly silly dues ex machina ending. But it’s biggest crime was despite being billed as a yuri, the main couple never…explicitly confesses romantic love or make out, which is generally what you go into a yuri expecting to see. This issue could be fixed in the OVA released in December, but I’m not holding my breath.

Despite all this, it was actually probably the best of the three new anime I watched this season, which says a lot about the quality of the other two. The action scenes near the end of the series were really fraught, tense and fun to watch and some of the character drama was fun. I also found myself genuinely becoming attached to the main characters and their relationship (which is why I was deeply disappointing with the confusing lack of explicitness about them). I really rooted for a happy ending and looked forward to the next episode.

A lot of the other girls weren’t given incredible depth (well, pretty much no one was), but it was an interesting enough range of stories and archetypes. I dreaded the idea of all these teenage girls with sad backstories getting killed off, but that was very much not what happened- the majority of them left the school peacefully. This was not a show that reveled in the idea of a huge gaggle of teenage girls (who were often hinted to be queer) being doomed to hopleless, tragic fates, which was a relief and pretty much saved the show for me.

That’s not to say this show is really good enough to recommend to anyone. I ended up enjoying it more than I hated it, but I was also kinda ashamed of myself at the same time because it’s so riddled with problems. Again, I’m going to emphasize that the way the conflicts between characters play out are often RIDICULOUSLY contrived- especially the fights between the two obvious couples of the series that climax their arcs (Haru and Touko and Hitsugi (greyhaired teddy bear girl) and Chitaru (short red hair, carries a sword).) The needlessly dramatic and extreme ways said couples choose to respond to the conflicts and uncertainty in their relationship is illogical, not well written, and silly for their characters. And a total dues ex machina brings the series to a close. But I really didn’t mind the dues ex machina as much as the how the events that set up the need for said dues ex machina was ridiculously unnecessary and could have easily been written in a more sensical way.

But really, again, it’s the fact we DIDN’T GET MAKING OUT that bothers me more than any of that, which shows where my priorities lie. All we got was a cpr-style kiss. I feel certain we’d have gotten more explicitness if these were het couples. However, a good note- one of the girls was explicitly raised by two dads who are a gay couple and has a very good relationship with them. True, they are both assassins, but they are also presented as parents to saved her from far more abusive parents, and her relationship with them is her redeeming quality.

There are other uncomfortable elements- there’s definitely some male aimed fanservice here and some of it is pretty skeevy- there’s a girl who explicitly sexually gets off on murder and who strips Haru down to her underwear (the underwear part was also NOT in the manga, so the anime added it in completely gratuitously) as well as an uncomfortable scene where Touko flips Haru’s skirt to see her scars after Haru explicitly says she doesn’t want her to- this was more lack of social skills or ability to relate to people normally on Touko’s part than intentional sexual harassment, but seeing Haru’s panties without her consent was definitely supposed to titillate the viewer, I’m sure.

There’s also the fact that a girl who looks like a grade schooler and a girl who is at least about to enter high school are heavily implied to be in a relationship- it’s never confirmed if the girl is actually a grade schooler or just looks like one (looks like one seems a bit more likely) but that can be uncomfortable regardless.

Finally, one of the girls backstory is being sexually abused as a child and she ends up developing mental illness because of that- it’s not really handled with the sensitivity it deserves, but at least it doesn’t doom the girl forever or anything. Also as you might expect form the premise, there’s a lot of child abuse. a fair amount of death, suicide, murder, etc, and TONS of violence.

So would I recommend this show? No. Did I enjoy it enough I’m gonna check out the OVA when it comes out? Unfortunately, yes. I got attached to these ridiculous girls.

Soul Eater Not!

Soul Eater Not! is a spin-off of the relatively well-known shonen manga and anime Soul Eater. It is based off a spin-off manga created by the author of the original Soul Eater. I’m going to emphasize again- THIS SPINOFF WAS WRITTEN AND CONCEIVED BY THE AUTHOR OF THE ORIGINAL SOUL EATER, since a lot of people in the tags didn’t seem to get that.

The basic story is Tsugumi Harudori is a young Japanese girl who find she has the power to turn into a weapon. She decides to enlist in the American academy called the DWMA (or Shibusen, in the Japanese version) to learn to control her powers. The DWMA trains both weapons and those who would wield them, “meisters”. Meister’s partner up with a particular weapon and their souls have to resonate well. In the beginner’s class, called NOT! since it doesn’t train for combat, Tsugumi makes two friends- prim and rich Anya Hepburn, and the forgetful and easygoing Meme Tatane- who both want to be her meister. Tsugumi has the unenviable task of eventually choosing between them. In the meantime, a witch is plotting behind the scenes…

The obvious first note of the series is the animation isn’t very good. It starts out well enough with action, character consistency and motion, but deteriorates super fast as the series goes to the point where the bad quality of the movement and off-modelness is obvious to even someone who doesn’t tend to notice that stuff like me. It was clearly very low-budget. In addition to that, the aggressively “moe” style of the animation can turn a lot of people off- with the cutesy faces and permanently blushy cheeks. It was true that in the original manga, the mangaka was definitely going for the “moe-loving” demographic and drew them as pretty cutesy compared to the parent manga, Soul Eater, but the manga’s style wasn’t quite as intense about it as the anime.

Thanks to http://sekaiyumeotaku.blogspot.com/2014/07/analisando-soul-eater-not-o-divisor-de.html for the comparison

Yeah, the permanently blushy cheeks and super shiny eyes do a lot to up the moe. So I can see why is could be too much for some people, especially combined with the poor animation in general.

This is undeniably a moe-fanservicy show, and has the same level of fanservice as the manga that spawned it. We get to see the main characters nude, in maid outfits, in ridic revealing gym uniforms and a lot of focus given to one character’s huge bouncing breasts. If you have absolutely no tolerance for that, do not watch this show or read the manga.

It’s often focused more on “slice of life cute girls” stuff rather than the plot, though the plot swings into full gear for the last three eps. The cutesy slice of life junk is fine and all, but it also leads to a lot of things that should be handled with way more attention being glossed over- like one character’s attempted suicide, the DEATH of a character, etc- it was all very rushed, especially at the end. A lot of character arcs are not given proper resolution- though admittedly, Jackie and Kim’s character arcs are more or less resolved in the Soul Eater manga itself. But like, there’s this awkward part where Jackie and Kim get into a fight near the end of the series and it seems like it’s going to be a plot point but it’s just…dropped and they’re back together with no explanation. And Eternal Feather’s arc is just kinda dropped completely. It pretty much leaves the whole plot feeling scattered.

The three main girls are very fun characters and gel together well and are obviously hella shippable. I mean, the first episode ends with Tsugumi comparing the three of them to a love triangle and in the last episode she’s complimenting her friend’s legs and talking about her urge to touch their breasts. It stays in the realm of fanservicey subtext though. Tsugumi is a cute character who’s struggling with wanting to grow into a more heroic and decisive person, and trying to find a goal in life- she really goes to bat for and looks up to the women around her and adopts Maka Albarn (the main character of the Soul Eater series) as her personal hero, inspiration and role model, and prevents other girls from being bullied because “that’s what Maka would do”.

Obviously that kind of love and respect between women is nice to see, and Tsugumi’s whole character is basically loving the crap out of other women.

Anya is a very cute character too, balancing her dorkiness and fascination with the world of “commoners” and desire to appear ladylike- she works hard, is hard on herself and loves people hard. Meme is easily the least developed character, mostly made up of cute dunce traits and big boob jokes, but she’s also brave, sticks up for her friends and has great moments of heroism too. The trio is well rounded and their interactions are fun.

Some other characters have minor arcs too- mainly Kim and Jackie, which is the most interesting because Jackie very obviously has a crush on Kim- she dreams about making out with her, and gets hearts in her eyes and blushy when interacting with her and obsesses with her and questions whether she’s in love with her. Jackie is in total denial about this though, and goes though the whole “THAT CAN’T BE IT BECAUSE WE ARE BOTH GIRLS” deal.

While denial is a realistic response, just ending it with Jackie being in denial and a “lol but despite what she says look at the hearts in her eyes” rather than continuing to show her struggling with her feelings and being forced to acknowledge them is a pretty much a cop-out so the narrative doesn’t have to really deal with the issue and represent it. It allows the narrative to allow the viewer to write it off as being a “phase” or even agree with the character’s denial, and not really have to think about the issue. Jackie is undeniably either a lesbian or bi, but the narrative presents it in a way that allows the viewer to enjoy the fan service aspect, but not really have to deal with a gay character coming to terms with herself and her identity, because even she won’t admit she’s gay.

(I also thought the way Jackie reacted was not exactly how someone raised in America would generally react- it would be more “NO I CAN’T BE A LESBIAN I’M NOT LIKE THAT” rather than “but how when we’re both girls is it because she’s boyish”…but it’s still possible she could react that way I guess and it’s not like American media is great at knowing how Japanese culture deals with certain issues either, so obvs not a big deal)

However, Kim and Jackie do majorly bond and learn to understand each other, which is nice. Liz and Patti are another pair of characters that get a decent focus episode that has female bonding.

Again, I’ll reiterate that the climax is pretty rushed and a lot of things aren’t properly built up to are resolved- there was one twist I didn’t see coming and that was nice, but after that everything was incredibly standard and predictable. It definitely wan’t an incredibly well written show. A lot of serious issues were glossed over, and the final episode especially was rushed.

And again, there is TONS of moe-style fanservice and nudity with underage girls hopefully just aimed towards teenage boys, but there to arouse them nonetheless. So if you’re uncomfortable with that, don’t watch. That combined with the general “meh” storyline and poor animation makes me not really want tor recommend this show, though I don’t regret watching it. I should also warn for suicide, violence, casual gender essentialism, death and one creepy bit where a character is injected with something that kinda coils around her breast for the majority of the episode, in a way clearly meant to outline them, and it’s very distracting and unsettling in what’s supposed to be a serious situation.

Basically, cute characters with a lot of potential, nice setting, there’s fights, too bad about everything else.

Selector Infected Wixoss

aka “tries really hard to be Madoka Magica but manages not be as well-written”. Yeah, it may seem unfair, but when it’s show about a bunch of teenage girls desperately fighting to get their wish granted by a mysterious being, ONLY PLOT TWIST AND THEY SUFFER A LOT, you’re definitely going to get compared to Madoka. There’s also no doubt that Wixoss is part of the stream of shows where teenage girls with magic abilities go through tragedy that have followed in Madoka’s wake.

The basic plot of Wixoss is there is a card battle game(think Pokemon or Yugioh) that is very popular with teen girls. It turns out that certain girls are selected by some mysterious force and given sentient cards that they can summon as their own fighters to battle other girls and their sentient fighters. If these girls win the game enough times, they have a chance to become an “Eternal Girl” and get any wish the want granted.

This goes about as well as you’d expect.

The main character doesn’t really have any particular wish (like Madoka…I’m sorry, but it’s true) but finds herself attracted to the game and the high she gets from fighting. Her friends all have their own reasons for getting entangled.

This show really tries to be Madoka, but it’s actually not as well written, and watching it had to make me give Madoka some credit. Sayaka, Madoka and Mami- they all felt like close friends, right off the bat. The girls in Wixoss are friends, but they don’t really feel as close, and it makes their closeness at the end kind of abrupt. Yuzuki is clearly the Sayaka of the group- she’s kind of tough-acting and she’s hung up on a boy- but in this case, it’s 100 times more uncomfortable because the boy in question is her brother, and her wish is to enter an incestuous relationship with him. And the incest is the majority of her character. And her twin brother is HELLA BORING so in addition to being really skeevy, it’s uninteresting.

Comparing her to Sayaka, from the beginning had a very peppy can-do attitude (backing up her friends with baseball bats, etc), a devotion to justice and complicated relationship with Kyoko because of it to round out her character to be more that just “about a dude”, but Yuzuki, not so much. Her fixation on her brother is basically her character for the majority of her storyline, and though she does begin to value her relationship with her friends later, it’s kinda late.

Ruko, our main character, has some potential with all the various crises- why she likes to fight, her mother leaving her, her lack of wish- but it isn’t used incredibly consistently in the show- Madoka’s low self-worth was enforced at the very beginning, but Ruko’s isn’t as explicit to me. Hitoe is a very lonely girl who wants friends, and she’s very pitiful and easy to feel for, but her character is basically “incredible woobie” and nothing else, which cuts off potential.

The antagonists aren’t particularly complex as of yet either- both are just cruel with no real explanation, and thus not that interesting as characters at the moment. We’re supposed to be horrified at what happens to one of them but she’s so unsympathetic it’s kind of underwhelming.

The pacing is also kind of slow and full of exposition, and a lot of things feel disconnected. As I’ve indicated, a lot of characters don’t get explanation or development at all, and one just shows up ten minutes and leaves, serving no plot purpose or anything so far.

What I will give this show over Madoka is that there’s yet to be any gratuitous gory child deaths and the suffering is still pretty reversible, so it has the potential to feel less like torture-porn than Madoka did.It does have the kinda “teenage girls punished for wanting things or enjoying a competitive card game” like Madoka did (substitute “liking the idea of making a difference” with “card game” for Madoka obvs), but. The animation is nice enough too.

The season basically ends on a confusing and despair-filled cliffhanger that is based off some fairly contrived events, like a character randomly saying something she should KNOW would upset another character and cause them to behave rashly. There’s obviously going to be a second season, and I don’t know if I should watch it- on one hand, I hate cliffhangers and I’m kind of curious if the second season will be any better and resolve things, but on the other, it’s probably obvious to you I didn’t really like this show. We’ll have to see. At any rate, warning for teenagers suffering gratuitously, parental abandonment, SO MUCH INCEST, body horror, and child death being alluded to.

Happiness Charge Precure continues!

Our old friend Happiness Charge Precure premiered way back in winter, but kept trucking along nicely last season. The problem with all the Cure being light-skinned, even the ones from India and along the Nile, persisted, unfortunately. It also looks like some love triangle stuff is set to start up in future episodes, as well as the possibility of the villain being spurned in romance, which I am so uninterested in.

However, the show continued to have solid character development, focus on complex and evolving female relationships and focus on girls as heroes and fighters. The recent episode focusing on Cure Fortune that took a major step forward for both her character arc and conflict-filled relationship with Cure Princess was AMAZING and epic and heartwrenching and everything it should be. The show is well paced, especially according to other examples in the franchise, and everyone’s development ticks along nicely. The focus continues to be more on Hime’s development from cowardly childish girl to brave responsible hero and that’s great- she’s easily the character who deserves that kind of growth, and it’s nice to have the pink leader cure not be the focus for once, and have the blue partner cure shine instead. There’s also an episode where Megumi’s guy friend admits he changed his life because he was inspired by her heroism, which is great.

The rather poor treatment of other races and cultures remains and issue, and the whole romance business has the potential to be handled terribly (and already is kind of uncomfortable with lines like “I want to be like a normal girl and fall in love, of course I want to be a cute bride”) but plotwise and characterwise, this remains a really solid show and easily the best I watched this season. Yeah, a show for five-year-olds had better character development and plot than all these shows for older people. The fight scenes and attacks also remain nicely varied and very fun.

Of the shows that PREMIERED this season, I’d say Akuma no Riddle was the best one I watched, Soul Eater Not! was in the middle and Wixoss was the worst. This is not to say any of them are good anime or remotely recommended. None are well-written and all are full of uncomfortable elements. I should also note I did try Mahou Shoujo Taisen, but noped out of there as soon as the mascot sexually harrassed that girl for laughs, an easy decision since the show had no substance at all up to that point, so that’s not really recommended from what I saw either.

I don’t know why I watched so much bad anime this season, I guess I was just desperate for ladies and the pickins were slim. I should have tried the new season of Mushishi or something to even it out.

At any rate, this season will have a much better selection, since I’m watching Sailor Moon Crystal, Free!: Eternal Summer and Glasslip– Glasslip is the only one I’m kind of confused rather than optimistic about, but at least it seems very unlikely anything incredibly skeevy or objectifying will happen in it, so I doubt I’ll be forced to drop any anime this season, or feel guilty for watching.