Concrete Revolutio: superhero fun the Japanese way



As you may have realised, I’ve become slightly more interested in anime then I used to be, going so far as to try and attempt to follow the new season in real time, rather than catching up with series as they finish. As you know Bob, each anime season roughly corresponds with the real season, so we’re currently starting the Fall 2015 season, one of the shows in which I wanted to check out being Concrete Revolutio: Superhuman Fantasy. Not that I knew anything about it before I sat down to watch it, other than what I’d read about in the various previews on anime blogs; hadn’t even seen the promo above. I went in with no expectations therefore.

Our heroine working as a waitress in a coffee bar

What got me to sit up and notice was the art design: gorgeous and unlike everything else being shown recently. just look at those bright colours, and the pop-art style big dots in the background. It has a bit of a sixties vibe to it, which it turns out is roughly when the series is supposed to be set. Again I only found this out later though, from that preview shown at the top. In the show itself there’s nothing that made think it was supposed to be set at some time other than “the present”, save for that art style. It reminded me of some of the later, post-war Loony Tunes cartoons: huge slabs of colour, modernist buildings/furniture and crazy angles.

Our heroine transformed into a magic girl

The plot, despite skipping around in time, was fairly simple. It stars when purple haired Kikko Hoshino, a waitress in a cocktail coffee bar is asked by pink haired Jirō Hitoyoshi to help him catch a Japanese scientist selling secrets to a foreign spy. Said spy instead hands over a state of the art astronomic device the scientist needed for his research, at which point Kikko interferes, steals the device and flees the bar by switching places with a mannequin in a nearby clothes store. There she transforms into a magic girl. Because that’s what she really is. the spy shows up and turns out to be an alien, transforms into a giant, at which point another giant shows up, looking very Jack Kirbyesque and with an Egyptian god motive and who turns out to be Grosse Augen, the hero of the people. As explained by the oh so convenient six year old superhero fan nearby.

Car turned mecha, magical girl, Kirbyesque Ultraman stand-in

It was then that I realised that this wasn’t a sci-fi thriller or magical girl show but rather a proper full blown superhero adventure, with a lot of continuity hinted at through frex the blase attitude of various bystanders to seeing yet another superhuman fight. As we find out about halfway through the episode, Jirō works for “the Institute of Supervision of Human Resources”, an organisation dedicated to helping superhumans. Not so much “who watches the watchmen” as who protects the protectors as they’re busy safeguarding humanity. Something that wouldn’t have been out of place in Kurt Busiek’s Astro City and indeed that’s what it kept reminding me off. A similar sort of world building by way of genre archetypes given a new spin.

happy magical cloud to the rescue

The art works the same way as in Astro City, which has the underrated talent of Brent Anderson to integrate dozens of disjunct character archetypes from seventy years of superhero comics history at its disposal. Here you can have a magical girl summon a red nosed cartoon cloud to block the attack by a giant alien monster on a Porsche turned mecha without any of it looking out of place and while staying true to their respective genre backgrounds.

As said, the plot so far has been mostly setup, hinting at future developments through its time hops: Something Dark is going to happen, and is somewhat confusing because it tries to do so much in one episode. As you might have guessed though this wasn’t the main draw for me anyway. Rather, I want to see more of the world of Concrete Revolutio, as well as of Kikko the magical girl, who is somewhat more interesting than Jirō. Hopefully this show can keep up the high quality of its first episode: so far it’s the biggest surprise of Fall 2015 for me.

Angel Beats! rewatch 04 – Day Game

Angel Beats logo

After episode three’s angst, episode four is welcome comedy relief. It’s also mixed up Angel Beats! established formula a lot, as for the first time we get a cold opening rather than the theme song, a flashback to an unknown character’s life, something that will become relevant later in the episode. This is followed by the audience for the new lead singer of Girl Dead Monster, the former lead singer Iwasawa of course having disappeared last time. That leads into a new version of the opening song, as performed by GiDeMo, with the new recruit, the band’s groupie Otonashi encountered last episode singing the lead part.

is this death metal

Unfortunately said groupie, Yui is a bit of an idiot and manages to strangle herself with her microphone cord at the end of her performance. Death metal indeed. A lively discussion about the merits of letting her be GiDeMo’s lead singer ensues, and what it would mean for the band’s skill at providing diversions. Which naturally leads into the unveiling of Yurippe’s latest plans, which are remarkably low key: the battlefront is to enter the baseball competition and win everything.

There’s a catch of course: any of the Battlefront’s teams that doesn’t win against the NPC teams will get “punishment worse than death”. Which leaves Otonashi in the lurch, as he teamed up with Hideki Hinata, who promised to get all the best members on the team, but instead had to make do with the Front’s collection of idiots, including Yui, who drives Hinata nuts and to frequent physical punishment for her obnoxious behaviour. And really, who hasn’t want to do something like this to a slightly too cutesy cat girl every now and then?

play ball

But of course things can’t quite stay this light hearted and in the actual baseball game it’s revealed it was Hinata who had the flashback, remembering how his failure to catch a ball during a final cost his school team the chance to compete in the nationals. If he and his team now win the game, does this means he’ll disappear? Not quite, as it turns out and this remains a humour episode, setting up plot developments but not resolving them, with some more of the Battlefront members getting a bit of screen time. Funny, but slightly out of place in a series with only thirteen episodes, though I appreciate that it isn’t all angst, all the time.

Angel Beats! rewatch 03 – My Song

Angel Beats logo

At first it looks like this episode will continue where the last had left off, with the Afterlife Battlefront planning another operation in their war against Tenshi. Yurippe plans to break into Tenshi’s domain to crack the computer system she uses and gather information on the enemy. There’s one problem however, as the Battlefront had tried once before to break into her domain and failed, mainly because, as Yurippe describes it, “we’re all idiots”.

Defeating the resident idiot by reciting pi

Hence the recruitment of genius glasses wearing hacker Takeyama, “call me Christ”, to function as the brains of the operation, something resident idiot Noda immediately wants to test by challenging him to a duel. To everybody’s surprise, Takeyama defeats him easily — by reciting pi, quickly showing that Yurippe’s faith in him to lead this operation isn’t misguided. As with the first episode’s operation, the Battlefront’s band, Girl Dead monster, will provide a diversion luring Tenshi away, this time giving an official if unsanctioned concert. To lure the NPCs to the concert, GirlDeMo’s greatest fan girl plasters posters all over the gymnasium, but which are later removed by Tenshi. When several students object to this, she gives us a first insight into her personality, as she complains to herself that “now she’s the bad guy”.

Iwasawa

It’s an important bit of foreshadowing, but the focus this episode is firmly on Iwasawa, the lead singer and guitarist of Girl Dead Monster. She’s the first person we see when the episode opens, demoing her latest song, a ballad, to the Battlefront, a song that will come back in the climax. Like Yurippe did last time, she tells the story of her life to Otonashi, of how she grew up in a dysfunctional family, how listening to and making music saved her, of how she died of brain damage sustained when she was hit by a beer bottle thrown by her father, how she was frustrated in not being able to sing a song that would reach others.



But now, in the most emotional scene in the series so far, she does manage. When the school security interrupts the Girl Dead Monster concert, their leader threatens to destroy the old guitar that had saved her back when she was alive, that she used to busk with, she erupts, takes it away from him and launches into “My Song”, the ballad from the first scene. Pouring her heart and soul into it, she comes to peace with her past life and vanishes. It’s a brilliant, emotional scene, and another example of how well the music is handled in this series.

Girl Dead Monster live

It had been established in the first episode that you’d only vanish if you went along with the flow and engaged in school; this is the first indication that this isn’t quite the entire truth, that there’s more going on. Judging by Iwasawa’s and Yurippe’s backstories, the people in the Afterlife Battlefront have reasons to be angry at God, which is the real reason for why they fight. But now Iwasawa at least has found her peace, while the research the Battlefront uncovered shows that the truth behind Tenshi isn’t quite what it first looked like either. With this episode, Angel Beats! kicks things up a notch.