This Week in Anime

A Magical, Musical Anime Column

Chris
Happy to see you back, Steve! I hope you had fun in Japan. I'm looking forward to creating more magical music with you as TWIA enters the busy holiday months.

We do our best work here when we work in concert, after all.

I'll probably provide backing tracks as the DJ. Somebody's got to man the air horn.

Yes, after an aside mention of the Pretty Rhythm series last week, we were reminded of the broader genre of magical idol anime. And with the currently airing SI-VIS: The Sound of Heroes occupying a similar space, that makes for a fair reason to sing our hearts out about it for an evening.

Also, because we are us and the bosses know we'll take any excuse we get to bring up Symphogear.

Honoka can bend the patterns of both weather and traffic to her will for the sake of music.

Love Live itself even crossed the line into true magic before, with Yohane the Parhelion, which reimagined the Sunshine crew as being able to make actual magic, as in a fantasy setting, happen through song.

It feels like a natural progression for anime to take. Diagetic songs in musicals are, as you said, already a kind of magic. Might as well turn that dial up to eleven by getting actual superpowers involved.

Musical numbers are inherently audacious, and that applies to ones that don't cap off with a girl in power armor suplexing a space shuttle.

It is worth clarifying that this is the approach of Symphogear, as taken by its stewards, Akifumi Kaneko and Noriyasu Agematsu. Even when the musical numbers aren't being deployed in fight scenes and are instead just accompanying "normal" idol performances, they're the most outlandish, impossibly futuristic musical show arrangements possibly conceived. You see something like this, and it's like "Well, of course these performers also transform and fight monsters regularly."

Just as it is with us and Symphogear, Lynzee is down for any topic that lets us sneak in a mention of Dance With Devils.

It also allows us to work in at least a little more mention of boys in this space, since many of these kinds of magical musical tours tend to focus on girls, typically. In their case, the "magical" element is more of playing up the supernatural spin, but this, too, highlights variety.

Bringing up Utena allusions only serves to remind me that Revue Starlight also fits the bill for magical musical idol shows. Still, I'll spare going to that one again lest I just start repeating the refrain of our musicals column from earlier this year.

Regardless, having just barely sampled Dance With Devils myself on recommendation for this column, I'll have to make time to come back to it myself, given how much this sort of Elements-Garden-fueled musical absurdity is exactly my shit.

It's one of the reasons I tend to keep an eye out for this genre, in how much I'm still chasing the dragon of experiencing something with the glorious absurdity of Symphogear again.

I was on Preview Guide duty for SI-VIS, and while the others were kinda lukewarm to the premiere, I was pumping my fists over how much it reminded me of Symphogear. From the proper-noun-laden terminology to the dynamic singing-while-fighting setup—in this case, the concerts are the combat scenes.

It even bites Symphogear's mentor-figure sacrifice and smash-cut to credits scroll in the premiere. It was terrifically exciting for me to see at the start and...I don't know that it's quite lived up to those hopes I built up for it by association.

Kyoya more closely resembles the Hibiki from SSSS.Gridman, and hardly seems like the type to be possessed of "the gentlest fist in the world."

Although in terms of parallels, it shares some similarities with Siren, like Tsubasa's slobby tendencies.

I should stress that SI-VIS is fine so far! The direct integration of idol performances with the combat has allowed it to delve deeper into the musical creation process than Symphogear ever did. I appreciate that we can have a magical idol show where the music requires hard work to happen, rather than being created by magic itself. Plus, it's neat to have a co-ed idol group. But that just means there's been a bit more downtime focus rather than the ongoing hype I came to associate with Symphogear. Which is probably unfair; even Symphogear took a minute to get there. The best musical performances know how to rise and build with their sound.

Our readers are learning how these sorts of shows regularly fill our taste recommendations, and honestly, I'm surprised that I hadn't really noticed it before now, either.

I'll probably also keep up with SI-VIS, same as you, and same as you did with Maebashi Witches. And the latter's a fair comparison anyway, since there is a pretty solid amount of crossover with magical idols and magical girls. Kinda obvious when I spell it out like that.

Like I mentioned last week, the Pretty Rhythm series has been chugging along for like a solid decade on the premise of "What if idols were Pretty Cures?"

Well, for one thing, a refrain of "Buy all our playsets and toys!" that might even give Toei's televised products pause.

The one I checked out was Kiratto Pri☆chan, the most recent series in the franchise that Crunchyroll has streaming, and the main thing about this series is that it's non-combative. Unlike all the other genre examples we've looked at thus far, the idols of Pretty Rhythm use magic to transform and put on their performances, and...that's it. The magic is the means to the music, rather than a method of kicking ass.

It's neat how it presents a different kind of fantasy for the target demographic. Even if, in Kiratto Pri☆chan's case, the performing power of the idols is measured by the oh-so-modern method of likes given to a livestream. It swings just a bit cynical for me, alongside the expected naked commercialization.

It is funny that the 800-pound frilly gorilla in the room seemingly only now decided to try to directly compete with Pretty Rhythm's aesthetics, in You and Idol Precure♪.

I mean, we've had Cures who were idols before, but the specter of Glitter Force means I still can't officially load up episodes of Doki Doki Pretty Cure and showcase Cure Sword. So the gay cat idols will have to do.

Look, one of the Cures on the team before them was a dog; this is all about maintaining consistency.

Alongside the aforementioned butt-kicking, Idol Precure explores the ideas of performers, the effects they have on their audience, and how the power of music facilitates that. So it is utilizing the setup for more than just cribbing aesthetics.

Now, I have it on good authority (Rebecca) that a more recent Pretty Rhythm entry, Waccha PriMagi, does even better at exploring idol themes than You and Idol Precure♪. Still, I can't personally speak to that one since I haven't properly sampled it myself. The struggle of just dipping my toes into long-running franchises, but I'll admit this one does look neat enough. More properly magical and fantastical than the morbid YouTube portals of Kiratto Pri☆chan.

And now we finally come to the other reason we thought to visit this topic: I had also been hearing a lot about the Princession Orchestra show and would really like to check it out.

Fairly full-circle too, given that one of the reasons for my interest was that Princession Orchestra was originally the brainchild of Symphogear's Kaneko and Agematsu. See, we told you it always comes back to Elements Garden.

Even Nana Mizuki is here!

How do these shows always have our number so hard? But seriously, if you watch the clips, or caught the premiere when it was still up, I can't overstate how clearly Princession Orchestra comes off as "Symphogear...for kids!"

I don't mean that reductively or as a bad thing, either. As we've covered thus far, communicating this kind of magical musical fantasy is great for the target audience, and seeing it executed with the level of cool factor I've gushed about in Symphogear is impressive. And annoying that I can't point people somewhere to easily stream it.

Then again, I guess that too is a lot like Symphogear in its heyday. At least Princession Orchestra fans probably aren't having to wait two months for subs.

Oh man, it's even directly stated to be a follow-up series to Symphogear, this one has my attention.

I feel like we've been waiting forever for movement on that announced follow-up, but I can't let that get me down. I was surprised to have this conversation crystallize for me not just how much this specific genre sings to me, but how many solid options there are for it out there.

Also, how much we're willing to do free promotion for them just out of enthusiasm. You heard us, go watch Dance With Devils, and Maebashi Witches! And I want someone streaming Princession Orchestra with non-AI subtitles on my desk by morning! This is the busy season I was talking about!