raraisin-kun
January 12, 2019
Mixed Feelings
The things Marchen Madchen actually got wonderfully right I swear this is a review but I first have to start off with a bit of background of this anime since I believe people are a bit too harsh in their mocking of this show. While 2018 brought us some terribly animated anime such as the likes of My Sister My Writer and Master of Ragnorok, Marchen Madchen became known as the biggest disaster of the year and is likely set to become the next metaphorical warning pillar of how badly things can go during anime production since the Beserk remakes. The show's suffering is fairly well-documentedthanks to no small effort by the likes of anime news sites and industry reporters like SakugaBlog who have written a great piece on Madchen Marchen and the larger allusion to some of the unsustainable practices of the anime industry. I highly recommend a read through it so you can gain a better understanding of the inner workings of our much-beloved industry.
https://blog.sakugabooru.com/2018/03/24/marchen-madchen-a-production-postmortem/
In summery, Marchen Madchen was an unfortunate victim of a well-known snowball-effect in animation production where small problems - that are notably intrinsic to the framework of the production line - build up and start causing massive scheduling issues which all but broke the already delicate and hard-pressed machine. These production problems are often experienced with most anime series but Marchen Madchen seemed to be hit especially hard. Production was so bad that the studio was forced to take the infamous two-week break between episodes 8 and 9 under the pretense of "fixing animation" but they were, in fact, running around panicked and blind trying to find a production assistant for episode 9. The time and budget were all but ruined even before that break but episode 9 surely put the last nail in the coffin and the originally one-cour plan was scraped and the series was forced to end its television run at only 10 episodes. Everyone who knows about Marchen Madchen knows whats wrong with it. Just have a quick read through most of the reviews on this site and the problems are all but apparent - terrible animation, generic and bland story, forgettable cast, confusing tone, pacing issues, the lot. So I'm going to do something different and talk about the things that Marchen Madchen actually does WELL at.
To start off the review, I just want to confirm that I genuinely like Madchen Madchen. I went in with very little expectations with only the knowledge of the incredibly low MAL score and that the animation was a disaster but the show managed to charm me in a way that I haven't felt in a long time and it compelled me to write this review. The show tells the story through the eyes of our main character - Kagimura Hazuki - a shy girl with little self-confidence. Upon following a mysterious stranger, she stumbles into a world of magic where she finds herself in a magic school where girls use the power of Origins - classical stories that grant the wielder powers in an allegorical fashion related to the story. She finds that she has become the wielder of one of the strongest Origins- the tale of Cinderella and sets forth on her adventure. Yeah yeah I know this synopsis is one you've probably read a million times by now but I feel this anime has just the right amount of heart put into it by its creators that Hazuki is often criticized as a bit of a wussy character by most people but I believe she is so much more. Her character has a level of genre savviness that allows her to not only create a level of comedic self-awareness but also as a force to drive the themes of the show. Case in point episode 6. The episode prior had Hazuki go through a phase of self-doubt and Hazuki arrives to save her friends from trouble and unlocks her hidden power that is so spectacular it wins them the fight. This sequence of events is incredibly cliché and predictable but for me the scenes worked incredibly well. In a single speech Hazuki managed to become one of the most badass characters of all time as she managed to perfectly cap off the build-up of the shows themes up until that point.
The show's thematic and symbolic elements rose far above the mediocre writing and world-building. We are told time and time again that the Origin's the girls possess are given preferential treatment over the girls themselves and much of the conflict in this show focuses on the fate the girls struggle to fight against. What Hazuki did in epsode 6 perfectly ripped into the high and mighty traditional view of abusing the Origin's at the cost of the girls who wield them. Not only that but she also tore into the way stories are told and how people cling too desperately to an untenable tradition in her criticism of the fairy tale of Cinderella - her Origin and a story she herself adored. This was a powerful and immensely satisfying moment that had genuinely great build-up. Add to that the great performance by Hazuki's voice actor, Kusunoki Tomori, and this scene almost singlehandedly saved the previous bland 5 episodes. Hazuki is easily the best character of the show and a strong character in general even if she is somewhat generic. Small sub stories such as the friend of the Academy’s principle leaving her Origin behind and the struggle for Shizuka to hold on to and protect her mother's legacy all contributed to a powerful narrative theme. Even if the show's production was falling apart I get the feeling that the writers and planners were desperate to at least get this one theme through to the audience and I think they did a damn fine job. They never created a heavy-handed and overly-direct manner in which to carry out their message which they really could have done under the excuse of the shot pacing.
After the first serious arc concluded, the show took a bit of a breather with our characters facing the Russian team. I had Vietnam-esque flashbacks to just how poorly something like this was handled in a similar show that featured cute girls in a knock-out tournament- Girls und Panzer (in fact, that show also went through production hell almost on the same level as this one but that's a story for another time). I want to be the first to say that episodes 7 and 8 were genuinely funny comedic episodes and that the Russian team were a hilarious gang that gave me a good chuckle more often than not. The level of comedy in this mini-arc is not particularly great nor is it that original but it is well-executed. The situations that were created were clearly thought up by competent writers. In one scene, in a comedic attempt to sabotage the main character's team, the leader of the Russian team sends an e-mail to Hazuki asking her to arrive at a fake meeting in the basement where they can lock her up. How does she get out? Easy. Just use her phone to call her friends thanks to the available Wi-Fi that was used to send the e-mail in the first place and was completely overlooked by the Russian team. I know explaining jokes is in poor taste if there's no context but these types of situations gave rise to a charming, short, easy-to-watch breather arc before we were treated to the disastrous episode 9. Heck, I even found the more serious tone regarding the tainted Origin of one Tatiana from the Russian team to be a pretty good addition. It was short and sweet with a likeable character and that's all you need sometimes. How fortunate we were in getting this arc in the first place since apparently the original light novel (which is clearly much better written) downsized this arc and its comedic parts in place of more serious plot points.
Of course, I had to take incredible amounts of liberty in ignoring the implications of the plot points that made me like the anime so much. These would be things related to world building (which is terrible), the rules of the magic system (which were poorly explained), the horrendous pacing (packing an amount of material that could easily fit into 2 cours into just one), the sloppy presentation of the main conflict in the show, and the character writing (which, apart from maybe the main pair of Hazuki and Shizuka and the whole Russian team, were pretty lackluster and bland). Honestly, there's a lot wrong with the show. Even if everything went perfectly fine in the animation production I doubt I would give it more than a 6/10 since everything is mostly bland and simple. But I like this show. I don't exactly know why. Perhaps its a blend of personal reasons and managing to notice legitimate praise-worthy aspects to the show when everyone else pushed it aside. Marchen Madchen is a show that just managed to hit the right notes with me and I think that sits well for me.
So what lies ahead for Marchen Madchen?
Episodes 11 and 12 were cast into a dark limbo after the series was canned off TV and they face an uncertain and anxious future. The most likely thing that will happen to them, as agreed by most people, is that they will be released as direct-to-DVD and bluray sets for anyone still willing to watch the show. That's if there's anyone on the staff who's still willing to make it, of course... Youtube has some videos with comparisons between the TV and Bluray version of some of its most infamously awful scenes and the improvement in quality is so apparent it's almost like watching two completely different anime. This improvement is certainly most welcome. Marchen Madchen was the last hurrah of the light novel author Tomohiro Matsu before he tragically passed away in 2016. This anime and the controversy surrounding it may probably be the biggest insult to a deceased person. Despite this, at least I found his message that he left behind in this anime.
EDIT: After another series of delays to air the episodes during December 2018, they're now trying again for during or after April 2019 "due to circumstances"...yeeeeaaaaahhhh this doesn't smell good...
UPDATE (APRIL 2019): They're finally releasing the final 2 episodes. Hope the animators, directors, writers, and producers have worked things out...
UPDATE (NOVEMBER 2019): Finally got around to watching the final 2 episodes. It didn't fall outside of my expectations. It was extremely messy, rushed, and convoluted especially since I forgot a lot of the plot threads that were brought up in the series. Also, I have no idea how the mothers of the MCs were related to each other. Weird twists happen a lot too. Animation and direction-wise ep. 11 is really underwhelming. I can see that they hardly had much time to go through with polishing the show despite the long gap. It just looks pretty ugly at times. Episode 12 actually has some nice moments of animation and cinematography which was definitely fresh for this show. Doesn't fix everything, of course, and it's a shame seeing that this is how the series could have been but it's nice that they finally stuck it in the end. Overall, despite how messy everything was (like, really, who the fuck is Arthur? I want the real female Arthur Pendragon *looks longingly at Saber in the distance*) I still like this show. It stuck with it's themes which I personally resonate with me and it still had genuinely good, albeit transient, moments of comedy I enjoyed and chuckled at. Nothing ostensibly bad here and a much welcomed and deserved final rest to one of the most troubled productions in recent memory.
Thanks for reading!
