Winter 2021 New Anime – Friday, January 8th 2021 Part 2

It’s always a good day for anime, so I’m moving forward with the other couple of new episodes from last Friday. I’m pretty pleased with my progress thus far. I always have it as a goal in my mind to watch the first episode of a series before the second one airs. I nearly never achieve this, but I keep hoping to at some point. I’ll say it outright – I’m a perfectionist in certain ways, and the way that manifests when writing about new anime is that, once I fall behind, I feel like it’s hopeless to try to catch back up. I’ve missed out on some good viewing opportunities because of this, because I end up moping and don’t have enough time to watch all the anime I would like to.

I can’t really say that this time will be entirely different, but I’m doing a lot to try to work on my attitude and refocus if I start to get off track. For example, I would have liked to have had the previous post up on the site on Tuesday, but I was feeling ill and couldn’t manage to finish it. But I used some break time on Wednesday to fix it up and post it without dwelling too much on the feelings of inadequacy that tend to creep in when these things happen.

This might not really be the proper place to talk about this, so I might write a separate post down the line. I’m just thankful and happy when people read and enjoy my writing, no matter when it gets posted.

Use the links below to navigate to the review you’re interested in:

Back Arrow
Scar on the Praeter

Back Arrow

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 24

Source: Original

Story Summary: The world of Lingalind is encircled by an all-knowing, all powerful wall. The wall provides treasures to the people inside by sending rakuho, capsules that fall from the sky. The two main factions within Lingalind fight to obtain the rakuho, because often encased inside are Bind Warpers, silver rings that allow their bearers to manifest gigantic armor called Briheights, modeled after the wielder’s strongest conviction. One day a rakuho drops to Earth near a backwater village. The villagers, hoping to find food inside, are dismayed to discover that the capsule contains only a naked man – one spouting nonsense about having come from beyond the wall, at that. When this goofball manifests a Briheight and defends the village from destruction, however, suddenly he doesn’t seem so bad. But in all his flamboyance, he’s drawn a lot of attention to himself.

Impressions: I’ve watched many a premiere so far this season, yet I don’t think I’ve seen one yet that’s quite so gleefully silly as Back Arrow. Its title is a pun on the Japanese phrase “Baka Yarou,” which I would roughly translate to “dumbass.” It implies something stupid but probably not sinister, which I think describes the main character well. He’s a man of simple thoughts and emotions, singlemindedness, and poor self-preservation skills who somehow manages to do the right thing without actually having a full understanding of what that is. He also boldly spouts impossibilities, because he’s not interested in accepting “facts” at face-value. While everyone tells him he can’t have come from beyond Lingalind’s impenetrable wall, he simply knows that he has. In a time when manipulative male protagonists are more frequent that I would like, a simple-minded man with a clear purpose is a welcome reprieve.

There are aspects of this premiere that remind me of several other anime series that I’ve liked lately – the costuming feels a little bit like Appare-Ranman!, while Back Arrow (the character) feels like he’s channeling that fiery Promare masculinity (not surprising, since the two share a writer). I think that’s what I find appealing to me about this episode – it feels as though it’s drawing its inspiration from all the right places and isn’t taking itself too seriously.

Pros: The setting is very interesting. I think many strong, diverse stories have been told through the experiences of characters in isolated societies – Haibane Renmei, Attack on Titan, Deca-Dence, and many others. It sets up a lot of interesting questions, such as the reasoning behind the isolation and how the secrets are kept from the populace. If I’ve got the read on this show that I suspect I do, the mysteries surrounding the World Wall and how the characters uncover them could be pretty interesting.

I think the concept and execution behind the Briheights is cool, and offers an opportunity to feature all kinds of fun designs and interesting powers. I can’t help but think about what my strongest conviction might be and how that would look in action – likely not nearly as cool as Back Arrow’s sleek silver-blue mystery mech.

Cons: I didn’t pick up on much that was outright bothersome in this episode (quite a surprise to me!), but I will say that it dumps a lot of new jargon on the viewer in a very short amount of time. It’s not quite at the level of The Twelve Kingdoms, but it’s still a little difficult to get a handle on right away.

Content Warnings: Back Arrow spends pretty much the entire episode after his introduction in the nude. Physical violence (without gore). Hunting animals for food.

Would I Watch More? – Yes, this seems like a lot of fun.

Scar on the Praeter

Streaming: Funimation

Episodes: 13

Source: Original

Story Summary: The Akatsuki Special Ward of Tokyo is a lawless area where criminal activity takes place almost unabated. For the poor and displaced folks who live there, their daily lives are spent scrambling to get by and avoid the violence. Kai and his adoptive brother do what they can to survive, but when the mafia starts sending folks into town, Kai finds himself fighting alongside Eiji, Akatsuki Ward’s resident “hero.” Eiji is one of several “Scard” – individuals with tattoos that imbue them with special abilities. When Kai is hurt defending Eiji from a gunshot wound, Eiji heals him the only way he can – by transferring Cerberus, his tattoo, to Kai. Now Kai bears the power – and the burden – of being Scard.

Impressions: So, I’m admittedly sometimes less than fully attentive when I’m watching anime, which normally necessitates a second watch to catch up on details that I’ve missed in order to give the episode a fair shake. When I was done watching this episode I felt like I didn’t really understand who any of the characters were or what they were doing. Upon further examination and reflection, I’m fairly certain that this wasn’t my fault; this episode truly is just extremely short on “whys” and “hows” because it spends most of the time trying to look cool.

I’m sure many of you are familiar with Studio GoHands, which applies a particular aesthetic to its anime series. If you’re not familiar with them yet, it’s difficult to describe them in a simple way other than to say they love their color gradients, weird CG environments, and dizzying action that doesn’t always make much sense on the screen (one of their previous series, the infamous Handshakers, literally gave me motion sickness). This episode is very on-brand with its gratuitous backgrounds in motion, and style-over-substance construction, but one thing I can say is that I didn’t feel nauseated this time, so kudos. But I still have little sense of the plot other than that there are factions fighting over something, and the folks doing the fighting have cool powers. Other than that, this seems to mostly be about hot guys smoking together while smooth jazz plays in the background, and occasionally there’s shooting for some reason.

Pros: As I mentioned above, the constant motion seems to be dialed back this time, which is a thankful reprieve. I can safely say that this episode was more pleasant to watch than EX-ARM!

Cons: Whatever the plot is, it’s paper-thin. This is a very gratuitous example of the style-over-substance method of storytelling, and while that’s not always a bad choice to make, in this case I feel like I’m missing out on even the most minor reason to care about what’s happening.

The relationship between Eiji and Kai is a model example of queerbaiting, right down to having one of the characters die tragically before anything actually happens between them, but spending the minutes leading up to the death showing them in vaguely subtextual situations.

A lot of the backgrounds look like they belong in PS2-era video games. When they’re static it’s not a terrible look, but whenever they move there’s a mis-match between the background and character movement that looks as though they don’t belong together.

Content Warnings: Violence, including copious gun violence with injuries and blood. Character death.

Would I Watch More? – I’m leaning toward no but I’m kind of curious as to whether the show will ever make any sense, so I might check back in at some point.