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This review of Sasaki to Miyano contains spoilers!! If you’re still interested in watching this anime, then please do so before reading this. There will also be a spoiler free TL;DR at the end of this review for those interested in a short summary of my feelings about this anime.

To start off, I supposed I’d call myself a fan of BL. I have read quite a few BL manga and watched some of its anime and live action adaptations, but I wouldn’t say that I’m someone who obsessively consumes every piece of media that stars a romantic or sexual relationship between two men. By that ... I mean, I’m not a fujoshi and I absolute DESPISE the terminology surrounding BL. Uke, seme, fujoshi, fudanshi, it’s all very reductive and has a lot of uncomfortable baggage attached to it that I really don’t enjoy. Same thing with the actual content, there are lots of tropes and isms in BL that make consuming it difficult for those who do so critically. And though it’s not entirely impossible to enjoy it while still being critical of its content (you can enjoy some BL simply as trashy, erotic schlock), the portrayal of the central relationships are more often than not very toxic and unrealistic and end up making BL an unwelcoming genre to those who simply want to enjoy romantic stories between two men. The representation of innocent, pure love is also rather lacking in the works that get adapted to animation. But that's where Sasaki to Miyano comes in. After finding it while looking through the list of seasonal anime, I watched its trailer, which wasn’t exactly stunning, but still managed to capture my interest nonetheless. Because of this, I didn’t go into it with a lot of expectations and mostly grew curious through my personal interest in the genre and the way the story and characters were hyped up by a lot of its fans. This hype can’t be understated. It was often touted to be a BL story without the bad, reductive tropes of its ilk, or more often as an “unproblematic” BL. Seemingly, its supposed “unproblematic” nature was, for many, part of its appeal and didn’t detract from the story in the way that the “problematic” nature of some BL often did for these fans. For them, Sasaki to Miyano filled a hole within the genre, a portrayal of innocent, gay love without any of the baggage associated with its contemporaries. In this instance, its representation was an important factor for those who enjoyed it.

But I’ll be honest when I say that Sasaki to Miyano ended up feeling like a waste of my time.

While I could fully go into every issue I have with this anime from a visual standpoint, I think it really speaks for itself. The actual presentation in Sasaki to Miyano was clearly not a priority and although that isn’t odd in this genre, it really shows in this particular instance, especially in the animation. Jerky, stilted movements or little to no animation at all; animation that doesn’t match the intensity of the performance; still frames that last far too long; awkward, claustrophobic or really odd framing; and of course, what feels like the cherry on top, the overuse of floating shapes to cover up for the lacking animation. Like I said, I could go further into exactly why I think these things are bad and give examples of them, but as I have already made clear, my interest in this anime particularly lies in its representation and the discussions had about it. Because, besides these rather surface level flaws, the real problem I have with this anime is that it’s boring. REALLY boring. From its set-up to its ending, the relationship between Sasaki and Miyano was rather unexciting and grew stale very quickly, despite the fact that that’s the whole premise of the anime; watching their relationship grow and develop. None of the dialogue was particularly interesting and while I wouldn’t exactly say that the characters are flat or have no personality, they by no means feel unique or exciting. Even the whole ”fudanshi” angle ended up feeling really inconsequential. The inciting incident, being Sasaki defending Miyano’s friend from a group of bullies, is very disconnected from the overall plot, only really seeming to be for the purpose of replicating shoujo aesthetics. But it doesn’t feel like a subversion or a parody and it is so disconnected that it ends up being kind of a bad inciting incident. It also ended up feeling so confused with the “fudanshi” plot. Nothing really connects the two and, at the end of the day, it feels more like shallow set dressing for the sake of comedy or maybe even relatability. I just don’t find any enjoyment out of a rather plain depiction of high school romance with a shallow twist, even if that depiction is of a type of relationship that only occasionally gets the spotlight. However, there are many defenders of this anime that SWEAR by the merits of its “unproblematic” and “realistic” representation, saying that it’s better than something wild and exciting, but with unhealthy, unrealistic dynamics. I’m not entirely against this perspective or even necessarily disagree with it, but I really have to question if this representation is as good as it supposedly is or if good representation is even such an important factor in the quality of a piece of media, particularly a BL such as this. Would representation really save what is otherwise an unexciting, bland romance story or would it falter regardless?

Firstly, It definitely avoids the more common isms of its genre. No assault, denial of male attraction or uncomfortable power dynamics. This is in part due to the seeming self-awareness of the author of those particular tropes and their deliberate attempt to try and subvert them. The story and characters also go out of their way to show the audience that it doesn’t just not use them, but actively refuses to. Authors of BL manga often tend to make one of the men in the relationship small and feminine so the audience can project onto them easier, but that has been (rightfully) criticized for conflating masculinity with physical and emotional dominance and femininity with physical and emotional submission, which isn’t necessarily true. It also ends up feeling a little heteronormative, because not every relationship, especially between two people of the same gender, has to have that dynamic. In some, both are masculine, both are feminine or it fluctuates. The same goes for their position in bed. Despite the fact that Sasaki and Miyano look like they have that kind of typical masculine/feminine dynamic, Miyano doesn’t like being seen as or presenting himself as feminine. Many characters later on in the anime even comment on how Miyano doesn’t have a feminine build anymore, which clearly speaks on how the majority of teenage boys grow out of their more feminine or androgynous build and how unrealistically convenient it often is in BL that the “uke” never does. Sasaki even says that he would still love Miyano if he became more masculine. Additionally, after his confession to Miyano, the audience sees how, unlike most “semes” in BL, Sasaki wants to give him the physical and emotional space that he needs to figure his feelings. In most BL, denial or rejection is more often met with one forcing themselves on the other. This dismissal of autonomy is then shown as “passionate” and “romantic”, even thought it really isn’t and the story of Sasaki to Miyano doesn’t romanticize it for that very reason. Now, this would’ve made for a great, subversive story, but this is purely what it presents on the surface. The moment you dig deeper, it feels rather shallow.

Miyano disliking his femininity was intriguing at first. The way his peers denied his masculinity and maleness and how it affected him felt realistic. It wasn’t just him saying “but I’m a boy!” and pouting, like every other BL tends to do. Even so, his mannerism and dynamic with Sasaki still feels very familiar. Sasaki is still more masculine, dominant and taller than Miyano and he’s still the one who is actively pursuing the relationship. Even if these dynamics are open to change in the future, they are still the way that they are and don’t even remotely change by the end of the anime. Just because the story admits to having this typical dynamic, romantic not sexual, doesn’t mean that it’s suddenly exempt from any criticism that may come along with it. And while the author purposefully (at least, I assume) used that familiar dynamic to then subvert it, they don’t follow through. The way the characters describe Miyano having become more masculine is either not visible at all, like Hanazawa saying that his shoulders are broader than a girl’s, even though they don’t change throughout the anime and are really narrow, or completely counteracted by Sasaki’s comparative size, like Miyano’s old classmate saying that his hands have become bigger than hers, even though his hands aren’t nearly as big as Sasaki’s. While the subversion doesn’t fall completely flat, it feels incomplete. Like I said, it feels as if the author goes to subvert the dynamic, only to hesitate and not do it, either in fear of alienating their audience or just not really being that interested in the subversion in the first place. And while Sasaki is, by far, much more respectful of his love interest’s boundaries than most guys in BL are, it’s only comparatively so. Even after he agrees to letting Miyano figure out his feelings, he refuses to stop flirting, being very touchy with him or being possessive of him. The more egregious but not the only cases of this being; him suddenly pulling Miyano away when his classmate merely goes to compare her hand to his in episode seven; aggressively grabbing and hugging Miyano at the end of episode eight and him pushing Miyano against a wall and moving his lips really close to his in episode eleven. But this isn’t shown as kind of uncomfortable and a little invasive, it’s shown as Sasaki “enduring” being close with and to Miyano. In a weird way, it portrays him as being respectful for not just jumping on Miyano and having his way with him, like in most BL. When the audience hears the inner thoughts of Sasaki in episode five, when Miyano is sleeping alone in the student council rooms, it seems very clear that the author is saying that touching and especially kissing him (even through a cloth mask) while he’s sleeping is inappropriate and I entirely agree. But showing that to be some kind of difficult level of constraint is weird, because that’s just a REALLY low bar to clear when it comes to respecting another person’s personal space and autonomy. Sure, Sasaki is giving Miyano all the time in the world to figure out his feelings, much longer than I would’ve had patience for, and that’s good! But this constant portrayal of “constraint” ends up feeling like the author is saying that Sasaki is being really, really respectful of Miyano’s autonomy, even though he is still shown to not respect the physical and emotional space one would realistically need to figure out their romantic feelings for the other and being really possessive of him despite them not being in a relationship yet. Miyano doesn’t vocally oppose this and as the audience we can hear his inner thoughts, which also don’t oppose it, but that still implies that there’s some kind of implied, divine consent. We know that Miyano doesn’t oppose it, but Sasaki doesn’t know that. To avoid a full-on discussion on implied consent, I’ll just say this; though it's normal for romantic anime such as this to have these kinds of isms, it does feel a bit odd for something touted to be a "unproblematic BL anime" to contain implied consent.

Mind you, I’m not too bothered by these particular things or isms. I’m moreso using them to illustrate that this strive towards “unproblematic” or morally clean representation is not useful or entirely possible in the romance genre. Implied consent, the pushing of boundaries, both physical and emotional, are all part of what makes a romance story dramatic and interesting. Many BL anime (and their source manga) tend to take it WAY too far and it’s by no means difficult to create a story with healthier dynamics. The bar is in hell, at this point. But those isms are still very common in every kind of romance genre and subgenre, which are things that would, in real life, be really uncomfortable and a little invasive. Not saying that they’re beyond criticism, some romantic depictions in media push the boundaries too far, but they’re still stories and depiction isn’t the same as endorsement. Still, to imply that Sasaki to Miyano somehow is some perfect, moral representation of a healthy relationship feels a little dishonest and misguided.

Anyway, to answer the first question. The representation is fine, certainly better than other stories in its genre, but by no means entirely exempt from playing into the tropes it attempts to subvert. But then how about the other question? Well, I left that one for last for a reason and that’s because it doesn’t have a completely solid answer. But I’ll attempt to answer it anyway.

Personally, I do believe that proper representation is important. To recognize yourself and whatever aspects that you heavily identify with in media is something that can feel really validating and satisfying and even educate those who are unfamiliar with whatever is being portrayed. The value of representation in that regard is undeniable to me, I’m by no means arguing in bad faith here. However, in this instance, only really the former applies to the anime at hand. I honestly doubt that anyone’s going to watch it and be educated about the gay experience, in large part because it doesn’t exactly examine it very thoroughly. I can’t speak on that experience personally, so I hope I’m not speaking out of line here when I say that it doesn’t really seem to touch on the feelings of both Sasaki and Miyano when they realize their attraction towards each other and how pursuing it would fundamentally change their position in society. Especially because it takes place in Japanese society, one which is focused heavily on tradition and blending in. They would likely have to hide their relationship or else possibly be met with scrutiny, harassment, future workplace discrimination and all that comes along with being openly queer in Japan. The story is obviously supposed to be light and fluffy with very little angst, though, so it makes sense that they wouldn’t get into that too much. Nevermind that a story about two guys falling in love shouldn’t always be doom and gloom, there are already more than enough exploitation films about that. Regardless, I find it strange that there isn’t even a fleeting thought between the two of them, though moreso with the particularly anxious Miyano, about how their relationship might affect their social lives. Which, it doesn’t, everyone around them is overwhelmingly positive or just ambivalent. So, the representation that’s being praised here isn’t, or really shouldn’t be, necessarily about its realistic depiction of the surrounding identity, but just it being a much healthier, romantic relationship that isn’t extremely common in BL adaptations. While I would never fault anyone for valuing or enjoying that, I do have to say that that really doesn’t carry a story on its own, especially because the relationship itself is by no means as perfect as some portray it as. I would argue that the best BL adaptations, such as Doukyuusei or Given, do have much less problematic representation than is common, but I don’t think their value is entirely within that representation. The aesthetic value isn’t largely derived from the audience’s moral response and I dislike the notion that it would be. Everything that surrounds it is intriguing and has a high quality, from the character writing to the story to the presentation. Even then, I’ve enjoyed much more trashy schlock than that too. Junjou Romantica, Sekaiichi Hatsukoi, Love Stage, etc. Because despite them having HORRIBLE representation, they’re often very dramatized and exciting, even if the “romance” falls completely flat for me. Besides, while the specific anime I just mentioned do have a problem, mainly the exploitation of gay relationships for the consumption of a largely straight audience, I don’t think that every instance of “bad representation” like it makes a piece of media instantly bad. I much prefer broad representation than ONLY “good" representation. So while I can't fault those who enjoy this anime for its representation, I can't say that the representation itself could save something that, in my opinion, is rather boring and bland. Representation can absolutely detract or add to the quality of a piece of media, but it can't rely on it.

Regardless, bland, clean representation absolutely has its place, both for the purpose of education and in normalization. Personally, I would much rather have something filled with heart but messy or something exciting but with dated sentiments, but I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with preferring one over the other. But I still can’t get myself to enjoy Sasaki to Miyano or believe that its representative merits somehow make it worth watching. If you enjoy it, great! But I still believe that representation, even that which is helpful or resonant, doesn’t make up for boring storytelling and I can't imagine that the representation is Sasaki to Miyano was particularly helpful or resonant anyway.

TLDR; While Sasaki to Miyano has better, healthier representation than most of its contemporaries in the BL genre, it’s still only by comparison and contains some scenes that end up feeling rather uncomfortable. The author also attempts to subvert the common tropes and isms of the BL genre, only to not really go through with them and inadvertently playing them rather straight. But besides that, the story is REALLY boring. The characters aren’t very interesting, the story progression feels strange and disconnected and the “fudanshi” angle feels like shallow set dressing. All in all, the representation ended up not feeling as realistic or as “unproblematic” as its fans claimed it was and I don’t think it really made it worth watching either. Just watch Given or something.

DISCLAIMER!! This review contains slights spoilers. There are also some episodes of this anime that I didn’t completely watch or skipped entirely for personal reasons which I’ll elaborate on later. Take my review of those particular parts or episodes with a grain of salt, as I can only really speculate about how that part of the story may have turned out, though I genuinely doubt that my interpretation ended up being far off.

I’ll be honest when I say that I’ve never been much for the fantasy isekai genre, particularly those inspired by video games. Arguably spearheaded by the .hack series and popularized by ... Sword Art Online (though not entirely, of course), anime of its ilk are often just not my thing. I find that each incarnation of the next big fantasy isekai tends to feel derivative to me. Its only innovation is most often in one aspect that may or may not change the overall trajectory of the anime, but that innovation is gone with most of its surrounding world, which tends to feel interchangeable. Never mind that quite a few of the most popular of these anime seemingly have a male protagonist to whom any woman in a five mile radius is inexplicably and wildly attracted to. I know that this seems like a generalizing and uncharitable perspective and, well, I would kind of agree. Regardless if it’s nuanced or not, it’s obvious that I enjoy very few of these fantasy, video game inspired isekai. So when I say that I really wanted to enjoy ‘Kumo Desu ga, Nani ka?”, also known as “the spider isekai”, you know I mean it.

Now, my history with this series is pretty extensive. I read the bad fan translation of the light novel roughly five years ago. And while I enjoyed it despite being simple and a little formulaic, the terrible and I mean TERRIBLE translation really didn’t do it justice. Some sentences were nearly incomprehensible and some were clearly a case of being lost in translation. Eventually after getting well into the story, I decided to quit, as I didn’t see myself getting very invested. Roughly a year later, I read a few chapters of the newly released manga and was actually surprised by how much I ended up liking it. It wasn’t anything particularly groundbreaking, but the artist clearly did a great job adapting the story from a written medium to a visual one. However, since I had already read most of the light novel, nothing that I was seeing was new to me and the thought of waiting months to finally read a chapter that I wasn’t familiar with wasn’t one I was going to entertain for even a split second. Then, in winter 2021, I saw an anime listed on the front page of seasonal anime on MAL by the same name and I honestly have no idea why I checked out a piece of media I had dropped twice already. I’ll be coming back to this history later on in this review. Put a pin in it.

The first thing anyone will notice when starting up the first episode of this anime is also one of its biggest problems; its visuals, AKA the dreaded 3D animation. Normally I’m not one to focus heavily on visuals in reviews, because I’m much more interested in the story and characters of an anime. But to only mention it in passing or even completely gloss over it would understate how much of an eyesore the animation can be at times. The environments and textures are very hit or miss, sometimes looking pretty decent and sometimes like I’m playing classic RuneScape. The model for Kumoko, while not at all terrible, takes a lot of time to get used to. It and any other models clash heavily with some of the 2D artwork though. This isn’t too much of a problem in the beginning, as most of the monsters in the labyrinth that Kumoko shares the screen with are also 3D. This problem then becomes much and MUCH worse when Kumoko escapes the labyrinth she was reincarnated in and meets some of the important figures in the supporting cast. Because when some of the characters in a scene are clearly less important and thus drawn instead of given a full model and one or two aren’t, it looks extremely awkward. Just to pick a few random examples that I can remember from the top of my head, when the Demon Lord and Kuro are standing over the corpse of the Earth Dragon in episode twenty-two or when Wrath and Sophia are talking and literally standing right next to each other in episode twenty-four. These two scenes and scenes like it give me total visual whiplash. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying the 3D is necessarily the problem here and I won’t demonize 3D animation in general. The models look fine and some are obviously somewhat competently made, but the team over at Millepensee just didn’t manage to make it look good. Studio Orange productions such as Beastars and Houseki no Kuni are great example of anime that utilize this combination of 3D and 2D in a way that doesn’t just look good, but enhances the experience. They do actually use the 3D animation in a clever and logical way to avoid having to constantly animate things that would be too difficult to animate in 2D, such as Kumoko’s spider legs and the occasional rotating camera angles, so it’s not as if there was absolutely no reason to make it 3D. However, the main problem still stands; it doesn’t look good most of the time. It’s also kind of sad to imagine what the anime could have been, as some of the shots that are meant to be more expressive, particularly the small visual gags that Kumoko does throughout the story, are animated in 2D. These scenes always look great, but make me wish the anime was made by a completely different team and/or studio.

The animation isn’t the only big problem the anime has. It has one, arguably bigger issue on its hands, which I’ll illustrate in an small anecdote. Episode one. Despite some of its flaws, I’m enjoying watching the wacky hijinks I expected to see. Even though I’ve already gone through the beginning of the story twice before, seeing it animated still feels like somewhat of a new experience and Aoi Yuuki’s voice acting makes the character of Kumoko even more endearing. Cut to three quarters into the episode and suddenly, the story takes place at a party. Outside of the dungeon. With humans. And no Kumoko. This scene seems inconsequential and pretty uninteresting, but I brush it off and assume it’s some early set-up for later into the anime. Come episode three and these same human characters show up again. But this time, they take up almost half of the runtime. And that’s where the problem starts.

I’m not exaggerating when I say that the low score that I’ve given to this anime is almost entirely because of the human part of the story. With every one of these scenes, and sometimes even full episodes, the story stops dead in its tracks to show something OTHER THAN the primary draw of this anime; the reincarnated spider girl. It completely takes away focus from and doesn’t aid the main story and its existence is almost completely irrelevant to it. They influence each other in only a few ways, but more often than not, it’s Kumoko influencing the human story and not the other way around. You could theoretically skip all of the human parts and still understand the main story just fine, which is what I ended up doing about a third through the anime. Its lack of influence on the overall story is obviously something I only noticed in hindsight though, so then why did I end up skipping these parts? Simple! The human parts are also excruciatingly generic and uninteresting. The world and its magic are par for the course. Nothing even remotely unique or compelling is introduced in these parts that I did end up watching. Its characters also seemed just as generic. With its bland, cookie cutter protagonist; its token adult “loli” character and its brother-complex ridden sister character that were all introduced in the first or third episode, I already had a feeling I was going to end up skipping that part of the story entirely. Now, remember that pin that I mentioned about nine hundred words ago? Because when I originally watched these episodes, I was really confused. I didn’t remember reading anything about these characters, especially not so early into the narrative. So, I took to the forums and asked about this storyline, only to be met with the claim, ‘it was supposed to be a satire’. I can’t find any particular interviews where the author made this claim, but I see fit to debunk it regardless. That can be done easily by saying that no matter if it was originally written as a satire, the anime plays that part of the story completely straight. Derivative characters and character archetypes are regurgitated with seemingly complete sincerity and none of these, in my opinion, rather grating tropes of generic isekai anime and its fans are questioned or mocked like a satire would do. But even if it was a well-written satire, I don’t really know if that would’ve helped the main story either. It still probably would’ve ended up taking away focus from the main story. While I do understand that these parts were likely added so the story wouldn’t be spending half of the runtime in the same cave environment, they should’ve been much shorter, if included at all.

To round-up this review, I’ll shortly talk about some things I didn’t get to work in between the more pressing matters about this anime. The music wasn’t really anything to write home about and the voice acting seemed okay across the board. Nothing particularly memorable about either, except the stellar voice acting of Aoi Yuuki, who voiced the main character. Kumoko, by far, is the best part about this anime and her performance really helped with that, even with the questionable script at times. Her voice acting managed to make her isms very endearing, though I do know that some people find Kumoko to be a little grating. Different tastes, I suppose. Other than that, the designs were decent. The villains such as Ariel and Keren definitely had way better designs than the heroes, who all ended up having rather stale and uninteresting designs and, although it was only used in part of the last episode, Kumoko’s half human, half spider design was extremely clunky. Because it was animated entirely in 2D, I imagine it will be disposed of pretty quickly, but that doesn’t really excuse the fact that it ended up literally being a female torso stuck on a spider’s head.

TLDR; The main character is very fun to watch and it could’ve been just an entertaining though somewhat generic anime. Unfortunately, it ended up being dragged down by the lack of effort at blending the 2D and 3D animation together and the human parts of the story, which were almost completely inconsequential and extremely generic. I ended up skipping these parts later on and if you’re planning on watching this anime, I would advise you to do the same.

This review of Magia Record contains spoilers to both Magia Record and some plot points of the original Madoka Magica!! For anyone who has not seen Magia Record, there will be a spoiler free TLDR at the end of this review.

Let me preface this review with a disclaimer as well. I will be comparing and contrasting some aspects of Magia Record with the original Madoka Magica, which I know is a point of contention among some viewers (though I will not compare it to Rebellion, because I feel it’s unfair to compare a TV anime with an anime movie because of the scheduling constraints TV ... anime usually have). While this is NOT a comparative essay, I believe it's fair to compare the two to a certain extent, as they take place in the same universe and because you would have to have seen Madoka Magica to fully understand its spin-off. You can’t judge Magia Record on its own merits, simply because to understand its world, you would have had to have seen the original. To expect people to judge these two anime like they are separate entities is quite frivolous, in my opinion. Anyway, on with the review!

I think like most people who ended up watching Magia Record, I’m a big fan of the original anime and, if not more so, the Rebellion movie. While I didn’t necessarily expect much from a spin-off based off a mobile gatcha game, I can’t deny that I DID expect a lot more out of this anime than I maybe should have, primarily due to the fact that the franchise is such a huge and well-respected intellectual property within the anime community and due to the fact that animated installments of the franchise are far and few between. With how talented the staff over at Shaft is, I at least expected Magia Record to just be a dumb fun experience, if anything. But then I saw how little of the original staff had worked on this spin-off and I started to worry a little. My main concern was with how Gen Urobuchi and Akiyuki Shinbou (and to an extent, Yuki Kajiura) were barely involved with Magia Record and how the responsibilities of directing and series composition was instead given to the quite inexperienced Inu Curry, who originally only concerned themselves with things such as background art, character design, etc. From how this anime turned out, I suppose my concerns were justified, at least for me.

Firstly, I’d like to discuss some of the things I did like about Magia Record and some things I believe it deserves some genuine praise for. Starting off with the animation. While it had flaws, which I will elaborate on later in this review, the animation of Magia Record was usually very consistent, even more so than the blu-ray version of the original. There were no weird faces or off-model proportions as far as I noticed and, generally, the presentation of this anime was very stylish and sleek. I would especially like to praise the scenes that introduce the individual uwasa. Very reminiscent of the pop-up book art style of the witches, these scenes are interesting and great alternatives to characters simply exposition dumping to Iroha about what they’re going to fight next. The way the Endless Solitude uwasa was introduced in episode nine is a great example of this. Besides that, Magia Record occasionally had its subtleties. Things such as in episode ten, where Mami recalled “the girls I guided”, these girls being Madoka and Sayaka, Madoka’s face was obscured as a somewhat subtle reference to the fact that in the timeline of the original, Madoka doesn’t exist anymore. Or how Iroha owned a plush that seemed to be modeled to look like the witch called Candy, who appeared in episode four. Magia Record had quite a few scenes and references like these and occasionally alluded to the original and to the gatcha game it was based off. Though this clearly doesn’t affect the anime narratively very much, I still appreciate it rewarding attentive viewers for paying attention to the direction and presentation. Anyway, that is about it for the positives, now onto some of my grievances.

A common complaint targeted at Magia Record is that the cast feels bloated and I can’t help but agree. Because of its source material as a gatcha game, where the whole point is to have a large cast of characters to collect, it’s only natural this problem would arise. The first arc revolving around Rena and Kaede (and arguably Momoko, though she’s more involved by proxy rather than actually having something to do with the conflict) was especially emblematic of this. After the first episode introduced the main character, Iroha, a throw-away side character called Kuroe, and Yachiyo, whose introduction felt quite awkward and forced, three separate characters were introduced at the same time, these being Rena, Kaede and Momoko. Now, I have no problem with them quickly setting up and introducing side characters to use later on in the anime, similarly to Hitomi in the original Madoka Magica whose involvement in the story had actual impact later on Sayaka’s character arc, I find that these characters are issued in way too quickly and leave very little narrative impact. Instead of being given the time to develop and to care about these character, as a viewer, I didn’t find myself becoming invested in them or their conflicts. This is exacerbated by the extremely fast pacing in the first few episodes of the anime and even after the story slows down after the first arc, the pacing still remains an issue during the entirety of the runtime with how inconsistent it is. In the case of Rena and Kaede specifically, when I watched them fight about eight minutes later into the same episode they were introduced, I couldn’t help but feel like it was melodramatic and forced. But due to its cast size (I assume), Magia Record doesn’t have enough time for the viewer to become really invested and even if it could, its script isn’t nearly as charming or interesting enough to really carry its relatively tight episode to character ratio. None of the characters had an impact on me, even characters that were more developed such as Yachiyo or characters that the audience got to spend a lot of time with such as Iroha. Never mind that, to me, both of these characters ended up feeling like hollow shells of Homura (Yachiyo being Homura, of course) and Madoka. In the end, I found Sana to be the only remotely memorable character in this anime and that was due to the fact that she had clear motives, an interesting story and the anime took its time to introduce her to the audience by showing her back story and her relationship to her family and to Ai. Even then, all of these characters felt rather shallow and it didn't help that Magia Record didn’t seem to have a message or clear themes like the original Madoka or the Rebellion movie. Magia Record didn’t elaborate on the original themes, didn’t even seem to touch the same themes of hope, despair, selfishness, selflessness, martyrdom, etc and didn't have any themes that could have been specific to its story. Magia Record ended up adding very frivolous details to the canon of the universe, but generally felt like it had no other reason to exist other than to capitalize on the success of the original. Yes, I acknowledge this anime was based off a mobile game that was probably made purely to make money, however, this doesn’t mean that I’m just going to let Magia Record off the hook. From the little I have played of the game, the anime didn’t follow the exact same story and many things were tweaked, presumably to fix some of the more awkward and convoluted scenes that pad out the games story mode, so I feel like with someone experienced or simply very competent in series composition and/or script writing, I feel like these issues could have been avoided. Magia Record is clearly not restricted in trying to be a faithful adaptation.

Going back to Rena and Kaede’s “arc” in the first few episodes, another issue I have with Magia Record presents itself; its needless tendency to spell things out for the audience, instead of letting them figure things out for themselves. At the end of episode two, Kaede apologized to Rena and asked her to be friends again and, like the audience was told would happen, the uwasa of the Friendship Ending Staircase showed up. Its familiars then proceeded to basically spell out what Rena was thinking in the most cheesy, heavy-handed way possible, with the familiars talking in human voices instead of the creepy, modulated ones that were used to introduce the individual uwasa (which I feel cheapens their horrifying and incongruous nature by having them sounding so familiar and human). Never mind that this scene felt very melodramatic and awkward, I find it quite agitating that Magia Record even felt the need to tell the audience what Rena was very clearly thinking or at least what she was thinking when she wrote her and Kaede’s names on the staircase. The simple fact that an uwasa showed up after Kaede apologized should be enough for the audience to draw their own conclusions, mainly that either of the two had written both of their names on the stairs (though I actually would have loved it if Kaede was the one who did it, as a sort of twist). This is just one example of the anime telling the audience things they should already have picked up. Another particularly frustrating example is in the last episode, where Yachiyo called Iroha by her first name for the first time, which I actually thought was a really nice moment……… until Iroha literally said, “this is the first time you called me by my first name”. This honestly completely ruined the moment for me. Being told something which, as a somewhat attentive audience member, you should have picked up on is inane and feels like you’re being talked down to. It feels as if the script writer had no faith in their audience to simply pick up on this fact. Another example that is somewhat similar is in episode twelve, when the main cast get explained in a literal lecture how soul gems work and how witches are born, which the audience should already know and thus ends up doing very little but waste the already relatively short runtime of Magia Record. While it helped setting up Yachiyo’s back story in a more interesting way than simply having her tell Iroha (or any other character who didn’t know), again, it’s a waste spending so much time telling the audience things they should clearly know already.

Another big issue in Magia Record is something I mentioned before; the pacing. Like I already said, the pacing is extremely fast in the first three or so episode, but the witch fights in Magia Record are an especially bad example of this and suffer from this issue a lot. Despite the fact that the witches of Kamihama were said to be much stronger than the ones in Mitakihara, fights against witches took very little time and seemingly very little effort. Witches such as Rebecca, Candy and Gertrud were dealt with extremely quickly and end up adding very little to the overall plot or story, often even detracting from it. Zenobia was the only witch who was more difficult to deal with, but that was mainly because Iroha was a weak magical girl and Yachiyo made quick work of her when she stepped in. Candy was one of the most egregious examples of witches simply being there to pad out episodes. She added literally nothing to the episode, was completely unrelated to the plot, detracted from that episodes story and was dealt with in one hit by Tsuruno. The witches of Kamihama simply don’t live up to what the audience is told about them and that’s really sad, considering the witches were such a huge selling point of the original. Their unique art style and alien designs/cries made them such intimidating creatures. Though even some witches were dealt with rather quickly in the original, such as Roberta, there was a genuine possibility of character death in the original after episode three, which made the witches much more threatening. Never mind that there were much more difficult fights, such as with Elsa Maria and Oktavia, which then reaffirmed the genuine threats witches were. To make an example, in episode four of the original, when Madoka escaped from the people who were brainwashed by the witch Elly, she ended up being trapped in a room with the witch and was forced into her labyrinth. Her genuine screams of terror and desperate pleas for help (props to her voice actress) while being faced with a monster similar to the one who killed her friend and the person she looked up to the most right in front her eyes felt so chilling. Like I said, the death of Mami in episode three really established witches as a threat, but scenes like the one in episode four just reaffirmed that. Anyway, to summarize this point a little bit, I’m just disappointed the witches were so underutilized in Magia Record and I feel as if they should have just put their focus into the uwase, considering they’re the main intrigue (I really didn't find myself caring or being interesting in Ui as a plot hook) and new concept introduced in this anime.

And last but certainly not least; the animation. While consistently on model in non-action scenes, Magia Record had extremely few interesting fight scenes. Due to its limited and rushed schedule, the original Madoka Magica had its moments of very inconsistent animation, mainly during dialogue driven scenes, where some characters had weirdly drawn faces or proportions. However, it also had extremely beautifully animated scenes such as the cut of Mami mowing down Charlotte’s familiars with her shotguns in episode three or pretty much the entire fight against Elly in episode four. Clearly for me and for a lot of other fans of Madoka Magica, its spectacular fight scenes were part of the anime’s appeal, together with its unique witch art style. Magia Record on the other hand, has literally one fight scene that barely even comes close in quality, that being the cut from the last episode where Sayaka blocks a Tiro Finale from Mami (which I will admit, was a beautifully animated sequence and just really damn cool). Instead, its fights often looked stilted and quite unimpressive from an animation stand point. The animation quality didn’t improve during fight scenes to really make an impact on the viewer. If anything, the quality tended to drop during these kind of scenes and seemed to heavily rely on Inu Curry’s unique art style to carry it (and relying on there being a lot of things on the screen). So, besides having less intrigue narratively, I feel like visually Magia Record was also a step down and unfortunately musically as well. While I absolutely didn’t expect a relatively new composer such as Takumi Ozawa to create an original soundtrack even remotely as iconic as the original (or the Rebellion movie) composed by Yuki Kajiura, I’m still quite disappointed by the downgrade that this OST turned out to be. Very few tracks really spoke to me and quite a few tracks from the original soundtrack were reused, especially in the first few episodes, but otherwise it’s not even really worth discussing. The voice acting is similarly not worth discussing in my opinion. The voice actresses did a solid job, but nothing really outstanding. The only thing I will say on this matter is that I’m sad they wasted Kana Hanazawa’s voice acting skills on a throw-away character.

Now I understand that this is the first season, so questions like “how do Doppels work?”, “how do they interact with the stopping of entropy?” and “where is Kyubey in all of this?” are most likely going to be answered in the second season. I’m actually glad that there will be more episodes, because I hope this will counteract(?) the extremely fast pacing a lot of people, such as myself, had issues with, but I doubt it will make up for the whiplash from the first season. I think I will watch it when it comes out, mainly to review it and hope it becomes better, but frankly, my hopes aren’t very high.

To give a quick and spoiler free summary of my review:

TLDR; While some of the animation is quite consistent, the visual presentation can be intriguing from time to time and it rewards attentive viewers (which I always love to see in any visual medium), Magia Record has quite a lot of issues. The cast is bloated with characters and none of them particularly stand out or are very memorable in the end, even when NOT compared to the stellar main cast of the original. The inconsistent and often break-neck pacing exacerbates this issue a lot and the lack of impressive fight scenes (or impressive animation in general) makes Magia Record even a bad “turn off your brain” show. I would seriously advise not wasting your time on this anime, but if you’re still interested even after reading this, don’t let me stop you from doing so. Play the mobile game instead?

This review of Kyoukai no Kanata contains spoilers!
If you’re interested in watching the show, please do so before reading this, and if you’re purely interested in why I have rated this anime the way I did, you can read the spoiler free TL;DR at the very end of this review.

Kyoukai no Kanata is an anime that I actually enjoyed a lot when I first got into anime all the way back in 2013. While I wouldn’t say that it’s a show that I absolutely adored, I’m sure that I would’ve rated it something like a seven or an eight back then. Of course, I ... was about thirteen or fourteen at the time and had very little understanding or interest in the writing and direction of anime like Kyoukai no Kanata . I simply enjoyed anime for the pretty colors, cool animation and cute character designs. And while I don’t find a lot of fault in enjoying anime for that, it’s definitely not the way I enjoy watching anime now. With this change of perspective, I recently decided to re-watch a whole bunch of anime that I loved way back when. This obviously ended up with mixed results. Some of them I still enjoyed, some of them I even appreciated more now than I did back then and some of them I didn’t enjoy. Kyoukai no Kanata unfortunately ended up in the latter category. In this review, I will (hopefully) explain clearly why I ended up disliking Kyoukai no Kanata.

First, I’d like to get discuss the things I like about this anime, as that list is much shorter than the list of the things I didn’t like. Having been animated by the incredibly talented people over at KyoAni, Kyoukai no Kanata has incredibly polished animation, character designs and background art. For anyone familiar with KyoAni and their other works such as Free, K-on, Tamako Market, Hibike Euphonium and Haruhi Suzumiya, this is expected of the studio. The fight scenes are gorgeously animated and are clearly a huge selling point of this anime for a lot of people. Even just disregarding the action scenes, considering it seems like they tend to get the most focus during production (at least in the production of anime targeted at young adults like Kyoukai no Kanata), the more dialogue heavy scenes in this anime tend to be much less static than most of the TV anime I’ve watched. In most cheaply made TV anime, there tend to be scenes consisting purely of “lip flaps”, where nothing really happens except characters will move their mouths unsynced to the vocal performances of their respective voice actors. These scenes tend to mess with my enjoyment of a show, as there’s not much to enjoy past the dialogue, which also tends to not be incredibly gripping. While Kyoukai no Kanata definitely has some of these less animation heavy moments, the fun and expressive character animation tends to keep somewhat of the viewer’s attention. The character designs are sleek and appeal to my aesthetic sensibilities rather well. Most of the reoccurring characters such as Mirai, Akihito, Hiroomi, Ai and Sakura have fairly recognizable designs, though none of them have anything particularly original or interesting which would make their designs considered unique or iconic. Out of the main characters, Mitsuki is really the only one with a quite bland, uninteresting character design. Their designs fit the modern, high school setting rather well. Speaking of the setting, the backgrounds, while generic, are detailed and beautiful. Seeing as most of the story takes place in a modern world similar to ours, none of the backgrounds or set designs are particularly striking. It’s mostly just school buildings, parks and houses, but the backgrounds do their job and they do it well. Besides doing well in the general “art” category (a somewhat restrictive rating system, in my opinion), Kyoukai no Kanata also does well in the “sound” category, mostly concerning the background music. While writing this review, I’m listening to the OST of this anime, though only really the relaxing and more calm tracks, and I’m enjoying it. While I wouldn’t go out of my way to buy the soundtrack, I think it serves its purpose well enough and even has some quite interesting and unique tracks on it. Tracks such as Norikoeru Beki Kako, with its more traditional, calm instrumentation and sort of witchy vocals creating an intriguing and mysterious atmosphere, and Shinobiyoru Utsuru Na Kage, with its striking air-raid siren motif (or what I assume was meant to evoke an air-raid siren) creating a sort of tense and oppressive ambience as if you’re expecting something huge and dangerous to be heading your way. Generally, the background music in this anime helps to make the emotion or sensation a particular scene is trying to convey even stronger and more coherent. The opening and ending are both great and I could definitely see people (including myself) listing to it outside of the show. The performances of the voice actors, however, were nothing to write home about. None of the voices particularly stood out or appealed to me in any particular way. The voice actors did a decent enough job, but I wish they had done more with the vocal performances or made them more unique.

Even though I enjoyed Kyoukai no Kanata aesthetically and musically, the anime is quite lacking in the story and character writing department.

Firstly, I would like to start with examining some of the characters and particularly the relationship between the two main characters Mirai and Akihito. Neither of them, nor really any of the other characters, have some kind of interesting development or seem to have been written with something deeper and more complex in mind than other somewhat shallow anime aimed at young adults. It can be argued Sakura has development, her eventual alliance with the group would certainly suggest that, but her development serves no real purpose in the story and is resolved within one episode. If she was not restricted to fulfilling the deadpan archetype and instead showed more hatred towards Mirai for killing her sister, both vocally and physically, it might’ve been able to strike a chord with me. Her arc unfortunately ends up feeling more like filler and didn’t really add to Mirai’s character either. Don’t get me started on the plothole that Sakura is even able to see youmu, as normal people are said to not be able to see them at all. Anyway, back to the main characters. Typical of light novel writing, the characters are all very archetypical. Akihito has not much going for him as a character besides his strange fascination/fetish for glasses. This is played up for “comedic effect”, but much like most (if not all) of the humor in this anime, it completely falls flat and overstays its welcome by a long shot. Mirai’s personality and character as a whole similarly seems to be not much more than the cute, clumsy waifu archetype with a dash of tsundere. This, to me, makes their relationship feel very superficial. The only thing which seems to tie them together is that they’re considered to both be outcasts, something which would probably appeal to a young adult audience. Two outcasts who find love and happiness within each other’s company. But the way Mirai’s arbitrarily considered an outcast for her blood powers, which other Spirit World Warriors would really have no reason to despise her for from what the viewer is shown, just makes that narrative connection between them feel forced. Also, the way Akihito seems to sometimes treat Mirai as a piece of meat, ogling and objectifying her while she’s sitting right in front of him and making sexual and creepy comments about her for, AGAIN, “comedy effect” just doesn’t sit right with me. It’s not very funny to me and while Mirai’s attracted to Akihito romantically, he doesn’t know that at the time. So him saying these creepy things about her and paying for pictures of her in fetishy cosplay outfits just makes him look like a complete creep who doesn’t see Mirai as her own individual and thus doesn’t respect her boundaries when she’s clearly uncomfortable with him and Hiroomi speaking so sexually about her. Besides that, he (and Ayaka) takes advantage of her finical instability to make her pose in clearly sexual pictures. Don’t forget that Mirai is canonically fourteen during the events of the anime. Yikes.

Elaborating on their characters and eventual developments as a whole, they are quite lacking. Mirai doesn’t change much as a person. If she was established to be a very selfish person, her sacrificing herself for Akihito’s sake would have more narrative weight. Considering she lived on her own and was shunned by her peers, it would make sense for her to have become very jaded, bitter and selfish. But of course, then Mirai wouldn’t be clumsy cute. As for Mirai’s sacrifice and disappearance at the end of the anime, it doesn’t end up meaning anything as she comes back only a few minutes after Akihito loudly and emotionally laments her death, making that scene feel artificially emotional and making the viewer feel cheated of their sentiment. I understand that the writer wouldn’t have nor shouldn’t have killed off his most recognizable and beloved character, but in that case he shouldn’t have had her “sacrifice” herself in the first place. Either have the death be permanent and mean something or simply don’t do it. Akihito doesn’t really develop much either and even if he did, he wouldn’t have much to develop. Perhaps he could’ve gotten over his preconceived notion that he’s dangerous/a burden to others by having the others express that they actively want to help him and keep him safe, not that they fear him and want to keep his potentially dangerous powers contained. Other than that, my grievances (which I already expressed) hold me back from being truly invested in or even just liking Akihito as a character, besides the fact that in my opinion he doesn’t really have anything interesting going for him, personality wise or story wise. His half-youmu arc doesn’t interest me much, it doesn’t do much more with it than other anime have done better before it, and only seems to be an excuse for him to justify calling himself an outsider. Besides Mirai and Akihito, the only characters really worth noting are Hiroomi and Mitsuki. They also don’t develop much throughout the story and aren’t very interesting or likable either. Hiroomi is the typical older brother with a little sister complex and Mitsuki is the snarky receiver of that complex. Speaking from my own perspective as a younger sister with an older brother, the way Hiroomi’s love borders on and sometimes even straight up seems to be incestuous is really disgusting and not very funny. Mitsuki doesn’t seem to be actively disgusted by her brother, though she obviously doesn’t like nor does she approve of how he speaks of her or thinks of her, but it’s still extremely creepy even if it’s simply meant as a joke. Hiroomi’s sister complex seems to be the extent of his whole character and reason for being in the story (as a comedic device), so even if it was a joke, Hiroomi ends up being very forgettable and has no narrative importance. His skill set just so happens to help to keep Akihito under control when his half-youmu form takes over, something which could also be considered his narrative purpose, but anyone with his powers could fulfill that same job. Nothing about his personality, his outlook or anything else about him suits him better for that particular job, so he has very little reason for even being in the story. Other than filling in the character roster, of course. As for Mitsuki, I don’t even feel like she’s worth talking about. She’s such a non-character in an already pretty poorly written roster of characters.

Besides the characters, Kyoukai no Kanata seems to have poor world building and a not very interesting world to begin with. It seems to be nothing much of note, a regular “super powered high schoolers” world with a dash of “modern day magical girls”. Don’t get me wrong, I do love me some modern day magical girl anime and the general aesthetic that Kyoukai no Kanata goes for is definitely up my alley. But in general, the world building in this anime gets a backseat to the animation and romance and thus the world and its powers/rules end up being vague and not extremely memorable. With no real rule set in place, the characters don’t end up twisting or bending the rules of the universe/establishment in any interesting ways, which is unfortunate. In general, I can’t say much about Kyoukai no Kanata’s lore, even after re-watching it, and neither can the fan wikis it seems with how small they are and how little information they provide. The pacing of this anime is also too fast for me. I know that a lot of TV anime have twelve episodes, though I see no reason as to why writers restrict themselves so harshly to this amount even when it’s not needed, but I wish it would’ve had more. I wish it would’ve had more time to flesh out the world and characters. I feel that if the characters were written to have more depth and written slightly better, the anime would’ve benefited greatly from having more episodes. Sakura’s arc would’ve been able to be paced much slower and thus resolved much less abruptly than it ended up being. Other characters like Hiroomi, Mitsuki and Ai would’ve been able to be fleshed out more and given proper backstories and an arc. Especially Hiroomi and Mitsuki, who have no arc to speak of in the anime even though they’re considered to be the main characters besides Mirai and Akihito. With more runtime, filler episodes like episode six (the idol training episode) could’ve been justified and could’ve even been a fun, breezy break from the more serious, dark main plot. Instead episode six ended up only exacerbating the pacing issues. I’ve liked other twelve episode anime before, but those anime tend to have more narrative intrigue or something which speaks to me on a personal level.

In the end, while I don’t hate Kyoukai no Kanata, I certainly don’t believe it’s a show worth watching unless the premise or presentation practically speaks to you in some way. I think this show serves its purpose however, which is that it entertains its core demographic well. I, however, didn’t enjoy it a lot. That isn’t surprising really, considering I’m not part of this demographic. Anyway, if you have any questions or comments, the comment section on my profile and my PMs are both open. And thank you for taking your time to read my review/short analysis on Kyoukai no Kanata.

TL;DR: While the animation and soundtrack are both good, it doesn’t save it from the poor character writing and breakneck pacing which makes this anime not really worth watching, in my opinion. Maybe look up some of the fight scenes on youtube, look up the GIFs of the character animation on google or listen to a few of the tracks from the OST on youtube, but besides that, this anime isn’t really worth spending almost five hours watching.