348 | pokémon, more pokémon, & final thoughts on magical girl & evil lieutenant

[straightforwardly]

► Someone made a Pokémon animatic based on the song Would You Fall In Love With Me Again from EPIC the Musical where they reinterpreted this love song between two character as being a love song for Pokémon as a series instead, and first of all, I love it, second of all, I have feelings, and third of all, I’m impressed by the creator for coming up with the idea of reinterpreting it in that way!

Also, for my fellow Red/Green fans—they get the husband line <3

► Another youtube-related rec, this time a Vocaloid song: I’ve been playing “SAY IT” ft. Kasane Teto + Kagamine Rin & Len so much over the past few weeks. Definitely a new fave!

► Speaking of Pokémon—the next generation of main games, Pokémon Winds & Waves was announced! The new region looks gorgeous, and I’m excited to see more of it—and very curious about what the box legendaries are going to be like. As for the starters… I’m reserving full judgement until we see the final stages, but right now, as a grass-type and grass starter enthusiast… I’m actually fairly disappointed by the grass starter? We’ve already had a grass bird (who was great, from its Rowlet start to its Decidueye finish<3), and this one’s design isn’t speaking to me. I feel like it looks like a color-swapped Angry Bird sdfghjk:

I think, currently, I’m leaning towards the water starter, but only very slightly. And the main reason for that is that while I do think the fire starter is adorable too, I have trust issues from Tepig… I have fears that its final stage is going to look like that buff corgi meme asdfghjkl; But we’ll see!

tl;dr right now I think the fire and water starters look cute, but don’t yet have a real opinion on which I’ll pick; mostly, I’m just waiting to see what the final stages will look like!

► Yesterday, I finished watching The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant Used to Be Archenemies. If you want to know what my observational skills are like, then know that it took until a little over halfway into the series for me to realize that the episodes were half the length of standard anime episodes…. and that I didn’t actually notice on my own; I only realized it because I saw a comment elsewhere noting it. (I did notice that the episodes felt like they were going by fast, but I just thought that was because I was enjoying it asdfghjkl;)

Also about halfway through the series, I saw a comment about the original mangaka, Cocoa Fujiwara, that had me looking up more about her… it turns out that she actually died about ten years ago, at the age of 31, and that Magical Girl & the Evil Lieutenant was the series she was working on when she died—meaning that it never got finished. That definitely colored the lens through which I watched the rest of the series, and particularly how I viewed the ending—but more on that in a moment.

I was interested to see that I was familiar with some of her other works… and that I had completely different reactions to them. Apparently, she was the mangaka for Inu × Boku SS, an anime I am on record for having rather disliked when I watched the first few episodes back in college—but she also drew Watashi no Ookami-san, which I read via scanlations when I was a teenager, and was a favorite of mine! Like, not the top tier of favorites, but maybe one tier below that? I don’t remember much about it anymore beyond a vague impression that it was short, but I do know I reread it a fair number of times.

…and now that I’m reading up on it via baka updates, apparently the characters from Watashi no Ookami-san show up in a different series of hers called Dear? I might need to hunt that down at some point…

Anyways, back to Magical Girl & the Evil Lieutenant! Ultimately, it’s a rather slice of life-feeling kind of anime, but with plenty of intriguing elements in the background that could have been fleshed out and built into something pretty satisfying over time. Overall, it did end up feeling unfinished, but that makes sense, because… it literally is unfinished…

Originally, when I found out about the mangaka, I was hoping that they’d make an anime-original ending to wrap things up a little more, but after having seen everything, I understand why they made the choice to end the series where they did instead. In the final episode, instead of putting in some type of meaningful relationship progression (like a first kiss, or something similar), instead, it focuses on reiterating what the two main characters already have. We’re shown how much they care about each other, what their meetings mean to each other, the fact that both sides are aware of their feelings for each other, and it ends with showing us that they will always continue to choose to meet with each other, again and again.

It gives this sense of… we don’t know what the future will hold for these two, and can’t know it, because the series is literally unfinished—but regardless of what the future holds for them, we do know this: that they’ll continue reaching out to one another, no matter what.

When the final image faded to white, the word “end” appeared on the screen in English, which isn’t an unusual way to finish off a series. But after a beat of pause, another half was added to the word, so that it read endless instead. And… yeah, that got me. I did not expect such a cute series with, let us be real, not that much real substance to it to leave me with such bittersweet feelings, but the way they ended the anime, combined with the context of why the original manga was never finished… yeah.

Maybe it’s not the most perfect storytelling, but I do think it was the most suitable ending to such a series, all things considered.

a few other notes:

• this series occasionally has ecchi elements to it, in a way that I usually didn’t particularly like (that damn cat…), but never to a point where I felt like I couldn’t watch it. This is mostly an interesting data point for me, because I’m starting to notice a pattern where, every time I watch a series that has more fanservice than I’d usually find acceptable, but am still willing to continue watching anyway, I end up finding out that the original mangaka was a woman.

• I feel like Hibana is the character most cheated by the unfinished status… She’s mostly a recurring joke, but I would have liked to have gotten to dig more into her! Her relationship dynamic with her bird familiar was intriguing, and I’m actually really into how much she genuinely seems to adore the main character and value her friendship, and how sad it is is that she can only express her feelings through violence—which in turn only pushes Byakuya away. Yes, it’s played for laughs each and every time, but I can’t help but having feelings about it anyway! Especially since—nearly every time when we do see Hibana speaking seriously (rather than just yelling FUCK and committing acts of violence), it’s to defend Byakuya against something her familiar is saying. There’s something there!

I do suspect that, had the manga continued, we probably would have gotten a little more about her—maybe a flashback or two digging into her backstory. And we almost certainly would have learned more about the angels and what’s going on with their familiars. It’s really a pity.

• Unless I missed something in the beginning (very possible), it’s interesting that we don’t actually find out Byakuya’s magical girl name (Glass Happiness) or her abilities until the end of the series… and we never actually see her powers on display, because it involves her transforming her own unhappiness into good fortune, and Mira is so very terrible at making her actually unhappy <3

► Tomorrow, I have to go back to work... obviously, more days off would be nice, but I'm not upset about it either. In regards to Pokémon Brilliant Diamond—didn't finish it, which is more than fine (I'm happy with how I used my time this break), but yesterday I did go and defeat Cyrus atop Mount Coronet, so I at least hit a major milestone.