Guess who's back, Weebotaks!
Did you guess yet?
Wait, you really had to guess?
It's me, your resident boon Animeister!
I can't think of a more competent way to tie into today's theme, so here are three anime with silver haired, female leads. In some cases, the character gives some degree of zero shifudamns, and in other cases, the anime itself may cause the viewer to not give a shifudamn, either.
If you like my new, monetization-friendly curse word or the content below, hit the social media buttons at the bottom of the post, leave a comment, and beware of SPOILERS!
First on the No Shifudamn Express today, we have
Wandering Witch: The Journey Of Elaina. Elaina is a silver-haired witch. Who wanders. On a journey. There is more to the somewhat episodic story, such as the stoic mentor, the requisite "Notice Me!"
yuri sidekick, and an inspirational book of fairy tales (which are just supernatural historical events in the series' fantasy world). But each of the twelve episodes usually follows the same formula, with Elaina introducing her self-proclaimed beauty, power, and awesomeness for her own benefit before she flies into town and runs afoul of its supernatural anomaly (which she always recognizes from her history book). Sometimes she can do something about it (help a queen save her kingdom from a monster, thwart a doll-obsessed voodoo extortionist who steals hair,...) and sometimes she can't (save a village from a man-eating plant-woman), but silver hair don't care; Elaina always chalks it up as another experience to write down in her own book of historical fairy tales. Slowly, a question arises: is Elaina writing something new, or plagarizing her mentor, or--far stranger--plagarizing
herself? In typical, twelve-episode anime fahion, though, instead of a cool boss fight or some grand revelation about the nature of time, space, history, and psychology in this world, we get a comic relief "finale" where Elaina must team up with one-note character flaws of herself to defeat a version of herself from an alternate timeline who turned into a villain because she was too stupid and emo to use magic on her hair in the voodoo doll fetish town. After much time is wasted on lame jokes and a pointless magic fight, Elaina beats Elaina by using the power of friendship words, everyone contributes to Elaina's story collection, and Elaina ends up losing their book in a stereotypical bump-n-greet swap with a girl who looks exactly like her (silver hair don't care to give a second thought to this weirdness, though), and Voice-Over Elaina ends it all by saying that she and Amnesia (that's the girl Elaina runs into, apparently) will have a lot to talk about someday. What the shifudamn? Add
Elaina to the list of regrets that I have wasted hours of my life on.
As for
Sleepy Princess In the Demon Castle, I give many, many shifudamns because it is hilarious! In a world where evil things are visually appealing and everyone in charge is some degree of incompetent (you know, a
fantasy world), Aurora Goodereste, the titular sleepy princess because fairy tales and...sorry...just a moment...aand
there. I apologize; series writer Kagiji Kumanomata had a naming convention on his nose and I had to wipe it for him. So, yeah.
Sleepy Princess with sleep-related princess name gets kidnapped by demons for leverage and imprisoned
In the Demon Castle. Hijinks immediately ensue on an episodic basis when our...heroine?...steals a pair of scissors from a demon's arm and starts mutilating ghosts and teddybear demons with them
so she can make a pillow! Every episode follows a similar format, with--let's just call her our lead, shall we?--our sleep-obsessed lead going to singleminded, psychotically comedic lengths to improve her quarters and get the best sleep possible at the expense of her captors' safety and sanity.
Meanwhile, a requisite but intrepidly inept hero tries to come to her rescue by defeating high-ranking demons who are less than they seem and avoiding ominously named, incompetently designed death traps by the power of his overwhelming stupidity. Also, a petty power struggle plays out on the demon side of things, and Stockholm Syndrome might prove to be good for politics? As a simple, episodic comedy,
Sleepy Princess In the Demon Castle may not be what fans of story and character development are looking for, but there is plenty to say in defense of unflinching adherence to character motivation and a horror-cute design aesthetic in service of a solid comedic experience. It's nowhere near the level of something like
Chio's School Road in terms of brilliance, but if you've ever asked yourself what would have happened if Tim Burton directed
MacGruber, this series will not waste your time or put you to sleep, so give it a watch.
Speaking of princesses and demons,
Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon...is also a series I will talk about. This legacy sequel to
Inuyasha starts out interestingly enough, as a story of twin sisters separated by time and space and reunited by fate, but also starts out by lying to its audience and being self-derivative. The original series, titled
Inuyasha, was about a half-demon named
Inyuasha and his adventures and developing relationship with a time-traveler named Kagome as they defend the past from demonic threats and seek to reassemble a MacGuffin called the Sacred (or
Shikon, depending on the episode, language, broadcast region, etc.) Jewel. The original ending was a disappointing, "The Journey Continues...!" cliffhanger (my first experience of "read the
manga" tactics, though I didn't yet understand what
manga was), and I never got around to watching
The Final Act when fans of the anime finally got their way, but I was excited nonetheless when I found out that
Yashahime would be a thing. I really wanted to like it, and there are parts of it where I do like
Yashahime. I just felt like I spent too much time in "
DBZ timeskip recovery" (eg: Who are these new characters? Who are they related to? Which of the aged-up returning characters correspond to the old designs I remember?) But the real question that bugged me, and getting back to the point about lying to the audience, was: Where is Yashahime? I mean,
Inuyasha was about Inuyasha, so a follow-up titled
Yashahime: Princess Half-Demon has to be about a half-demon princess named Yashahime, right? And because it has
Yasha in the title, Yashahime must be the daughter of Inuyasha, right?
As it turns out,
Yashahime is just Japanese for "half-demon princess," turning the title into one of those "ATM Machine PIN Number" phrases. Also, there are actually
three Yashahime, one of whom is a
quarter-demon. Also, also, Moroha, the half-demon who is actually a half-half-demon (and Inuyasha's daughter with Kagome)
is a supporting character!
In an Inuyasha
sequel! The honor of main character is instead shared by the silver-haired Towa--I had to tie this into the theme somehow--and dark-haired Setsuna, the twins mentioned previously, who are the daughters of Inuyasha's brother, Sesshomaru. I had to Google this, but their mother is Rin, the human girl from the original series who traveled with Sesshomaru. She has aged up considerably since then, and is here trapped in the Tree of Ages, serving as both a messenger to action and the gatekeeper of time travel in
Yashahime, effectively reuniting her daughters, who were separated by a forest fire as children. Replacing (and in most instances, outright copying) the Sacred Jewel Shards of the original as "demonic power-enhancing MacGuffins" are the seven Rainbow Pearls, which our two leads and their done-dirty comic relief sidekick each happen to possess, turning them all into episodic demon magnets. Between fruitless bounty hunts at Moroha's expense (because you can't pay off crippling gambling debt if your collection of severed demon heads keeps disappearing--believe me, I've tried), Towa and Setsuna reconnect as siblings (Towa was sucked into the future and raised by Kagome's family, and Setsuna had her soul and memories taken by a supernatural butterfly because if
Bleach has taught me nothing else, it's that Japanese folklore butterflies always have something to do with souls), Towa finds adversarial romance with an ageless pirate, and their escapades draw the attention of feudal Japan's most powerful demons. The lore is dense with this one, so if you like a good story, watch
Yashahime, but go back and watch
Inuyasha, first. Just be prepared for an annoying mix of PG-13 curse words, patronizing line delivery, and writing that seems to be directed at children with focus and memory problems, as in any given episode of
Yashahime, you will be reminded that there are half-demon twins and Rainbow Pearls at least six times on average. The final battle of the season is a mess, too, with our trio facing off against Kirinmaru, Sesshomaru's ancient rival, in a swordfight beam struggle where Moroha saves the day after instantly ass-pulling mastery of her demonic makeup powers (which were granted by a Rainbow Pearl that she no longer has by this point) offscreen. Also, Setsuna dies and Kirinmaru just gives up and leaves because
shonen pride and villain stupidity. I like the
Yashaverse, as I am calling it now for the first time ever, so I'll most likely watch a second season of this, but so much about it made me want to not care. I guess that's why I wrote so much about it?
That's all for this edition of the Anime Spotlight, so if you haven't yet, leave a like and comment now that you are closer to the bottom of this post, and I may finally follow up on a promise or two by next AniMonday. Also, Loki debuts on Disney+ next month, so you have the return of Streaming Saturday to look forward to.
As always, here's the list of links if you want to check out these series for yourself:
And here's my list of anime that I'm watching and/or plan to review in the future, which I am including mostly for my own benefit, but it also gives you all something to speculate on with regard to which promise(s) I will keep first:
* Tower Of God, God Of High School, and Noblesse
(Anime-BAW, WebToon/Crunchyroll Originals)
* Saga Of Tanya the Evil, Overlord, Konosuba, Re:ZERO, Rising Of the Shield Hero
(Isekai "Quartet" Spotlight)
* DanMachi/Is It Wrong To Try To Pick Up Girls In A Dungeon? franchise (Anime Spotlight)
* Single-entry (maybe) Anime Spotlight reviews:
- Jujutsu Kaisen
- Black Clover
- Mushoku Tensei: Jobless Reincarnation
- What If A Kid From the Last Dungeon Boonies Moved to A Starter Town?
- Fire Force
- Attack On Titan
- So I'm A Spider, So What?
- Dr. Stone
- Kaguya-Sama: Love Is War
AniMeister,
Out!
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