Is Subaru wor—I mean Is Houkago no Pleiades Worth Watching?

Product placement and subtlety get along like Tibetan Maque in a Spain shop or however than goes. Personally, therefore, I feel that if, for example, Gainax made a deal with the Subaru to make a magical girl anime where the main character is literally named Subaru, the girls fly on broom like 'drive shafts' complete with Subaru hood ornaments, grilles, and engine noises, and the title of the anime is either Wish Upon the Subaru or Afterschool Subaru—at least I can say they're being upfront about it.

Subaru is a young girl whom, after stumbling into an extra-dimensional club room and subsequently, an extra dimensional botanical garden, becomes part of an effort to gather engine fragments to restore a space octopus' ship while foiling a mysterious young boy from the same fragments for some unknown reason. So in all honesty not only did massive amounts of product placement fail to hinder my experience—it enhanced it.

Houkago no Pleiades feels less like a car ad that Gainax wrote a script around and more like an idea that Gainax tailored to fit a car ad. See if there was one thing that surprised me coming out of this it was that this show was good. The characters fit into familiar archetypes without feeling like cut and paste jobs, they aren't defined by singular character traits and development occurs internally rather than as a result of an external force. As a result any character development feels natural, not forced down our throats. No characters change fundamentally, but important internal conflicts are resolved as the plot progresses. 

While the blend of CG and 2-D artwork can be jarring (especially earlier on, where there are a lot more closeups of characters in their CG form), in general the animation looks stellar and plays well with the over-the-top style Gainax is going for. Make no mistake, while the plot may seem simple on paper (and to an extent is in practice) the anime really builds to a satisfying climax. I don't wish to say more because to over-hype leads to insurmountable expectations, which always ruins a series for me. 

The other thing I found refreshing about the series was a lack of fight scenes. There is action, but it's kind of more like watching that one game with the flying balls from Harry Potter (except a hundred times larger in scale) than a traditional fight scene. It's more like a series of races; where the opponent takes the form of the aforementioned mysterious boy and some natural obstacle. It allows the anime to succeed at keeping a lighthearted tone throughout the series without ever breaking immersion. 

Lastly the characters are all well acted, despite having little to no star power present. The soundtrack, while not having that one track, managed to keep me engaged, and after listening to it a bit more I'd be lying if I said it wasn't damn good. 

So is Houkago no Pleiades worth watching? Yeah I'd say so. If you've made it all the way through this, I doubt you can be as pleasantly surprised as I was, but I do think that it does enough to separate it from the crowd and make for one hell of a ride—pun intended. 

Thanks for reading, favorite, share, I'll be you best friend, g'night.

The Problem I have with Daybreak Illusion (or is Daybreak Illusion worth watching)

The problem I have with Daybreak Illusion (or its infinity harder to remember title—il sole penetra le illusioni) is that the best thing I can say about it is simultaneously the worst thing I can say about it: it's okay. There's no iceberg ready to drag it to its watery grave, but then there's nothing to elevate it to be a titanic title in the first place.

Daybreak Illusion starts out by introducing us to our main character Akari, whom works as a tarot card fortune teller. Not wishing to spoil, Akari is thrust into a battle between the forces of the Tarot Card association and the Daemonia; the former being a magical girl organization and the latter being a group of humans-turned demons through trickery and deceit. From there she is paired up with an ice-wielding stoic, a genki-girl magical girl whom wields money as a weapon and kenomimi who can manipulate plants.

While the premise is standard at best and generic at worst, effort it put into trying to create a world that isn't as black and white as it seems on paper. The unfortunate part is that it fails. The problem is that there is no moral dilemma where the anime wants you to think there is. Regardless of the situations that drove humans into becoming Daemonia, they have no control of their actions anymore and are, in effect, the same as rabid dogs.

The characters likewise feel so very samey. We have the stoic girl who has a dark past and eventually opens up the main character. We have the kenomimi whose sole character trait is that she loves the main character and is jealous, but won't speak up about it. Then there's the genki girl—an archetype I still haven't gotten tired of. Finally Akari, who is a mary-sue, but not so much that she's fun. Tatsuya Shiba, for me, was a fun Mary Sue because there was nothing that even came close to being a credible threat to him. The anime was less creating situations where he was in real trouble but would prevail through sheer deus ex machina, and more creating situations to convince us as the audience that he was in danger when he was nothing of the sort.

Akari: saves all her friends, earns their undying respect, gains massive inexplicable power-ups, is unconditionally loved by everyone but one or two, and has boundless generosity. She feels like one of those blank slates that the audience can project themselves onto, but the dark nature of the show really prevents me from doing that.

The plot is alright. It's fairly straightforward and the twists are either weak or predictable. Half of the series is spent doing monster of the week, mini character arcs. The rest I won't spoil for those interested, but suffice it to say it's nothing new.

The two things the show does well are the soundtrack, courtesy of Tatsuya Kato (Mirai Nikki, Free!, Shokugeki no Soma) and the animation.  The soundtrack does well to provide a dramatic flair to the fights and the animation has a surprising amount of frames and color. The problem is that neither of the two these are so good that I could recommend watching it for them alone. Kato's soundtrack here is great, but it's been better and the animation, while stylized, isn't near the quality of other grade A studios. 

Is Daybreak Illusion worth watching? I don't know. It depends on how okay you are with watching archetypes you've seen before perform similar roles. Like I said it does nothing wrong, but it doesn't do much right either. 

Thanks for reading, sorry for the delay last week. For some reason I had a serious case of writer's block when it came to this particular anime, but with any luck I'll be back on track next week.