Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Original
Story Summary: The Fairy Queen summons a representative from each of the fairy clans to form a heroic team. Their task? To go to Earth and collect “attachments” from humans who are suffering. Fairies have rules of conduct that limit them from experiencing love (physical or emotional) with humans, yet their mission involves understanding the root causes of such things and reacting to them. Ranmaru, of the powerful Light Clan, poses as a quiet transfer student, but he almost immediately identifies a girl who’s being bullied out of jealousy. He rescues this young lady and uses the purity of her heart to put a stop to the tormenter. The Fairy Queen has received her first payment, but are her intentions truly on the up-and-up?
Impressions: Before I watched this episode, I happened to notice its relatively low rating on Crunchyroll (3.2, which is above average… but if anything has below an extremely inflated 4.5 you know the no-fun brigade has been out en masse at some point). Well, there are two very obvious reasons for that rating, the first being that this series is pretty much 100% aimed at people who are attracted to men. There is and has always been a small but noisy contingent of people out there who will gladly watch female characters get ogled and molested, but the second there’s a male nipple on the screen out come the declarations of “the feminists have ruined anime!” The other reason, though, is that this episode is just profoundly weird and extremely horny, and given its defiantly unapologetic visual motifs I can see how it would be genuinely off-putting to some viewers.
It would be difficult not to compare this series to Cute High Earth Defense Club Love!, which was another magical boy series that blew up for a hot minute some years ago. That series was more obviously meant as a parody, because its humor was constantly winking at the audience and never really felt as though it was taking its central conceits seriously. This episode feels dead serious, as it just asks the audience to accept what it’s providing and doesn’t try to reframe the action as some sort of jokey gender-swap comedy. While I’m ambivalent about some of the material thus far, I much prefer the framing of this episode; at least it feels as though I’m being treated as part of an audience worthy of being targeted, rather than any more insulting alternative.
While I get annoyed that every magical series for the past 10 years has gotten accused of cribbing from Madoka Magica, this episode does in fact seem to borrow from the aesthetics of the witches’ labyrinths from that series. The design of the bully character’s inner world is decked out in abstract and avant-garde imagery, giving it a creepy, warped feeling – fitting for the heart of someone who takes pleasure in nearly driving a romantic rival to suicide, I’d wager.
It’s taken me a while to decide how I feel about this episode, but I think I like it. It’s a little… overt for my tastes, but it’s an interesting take on magically-transforming characters that seems to be offering something new, and I can respect that.
Pros: One thing that’s interesting about this series is that the characters (for the most part) look completely different after they transform. I’m not sure what the thought process was on that, but I like that they’re not just the same-looking people in goofy outfits (well, aside from the green-haired guy, who just looks like he got dressed up to go clubbing). This Twitter thread shares that a decision was made in production to have different animation supervisors for each of the different character forms. It’s a pretty cool detail that speaks to the purposeful design work put into the series. This show feels like people put their all into making it (not that most anime isn’t made via sweat and suffering, but there’s always that X-factor that seems to exist where people are also invested in the content, too).
Cons: Whether this is really a con will depend on your temperament, but there’s a lot of very overtly sexual imagery, especially in the ED (like… literally naked dudes in rope bondage). It’s weird… my brain kind of turns off when I see fanservice involving women (unless it’s really grotesque) because over the years it’s become mostly annoying background static, but semi-nude men? In my anime? It’s like I don’t know what to do with myself since it’s such an irregularity.
I’m also not a huge fan of how this episode’s story was resolved, because the bully character just seemed to end up on the receiving end of what she was dishing out, and I found it a little cynical. I’d rather she learn to be better and to apologize, but that’s just me.
Content Warnings: Cyber bullying. Attempted suicide. Nudity. Sexual imagery.
Would I Watch More – …Yes? This is definitely going in the “maybe” pile. There are a lot of things I liked about it, and it’s over-the-top enough that I think it would be fun to watch with like-minded friends. I just think I have to sit with this a little while longer.