The Fall 2014 Anime Preview Guide

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace

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Bamboo Dong

Rating: 4

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace marks Trigger's first foray into adapting pre-published source material, and despite the knee-jerk reactions that some might have to its harem-esque cast (if we're just accounting for numbers), the first episode, at least, is wonderful. Comedy is consistently one of the hardest genres to tackle, and this episode nails it, using expressive body language, perfect timing, and a solid grasp of absurdist humor to eke out sincere laughs.

Lead male protagonist Jurai is a chuunibyo who enjoys pretending that he has flame powers in his right arm. While his friends (and co-members of the school Literature Club) are telling him that real, supernatural powers would never actually occur, the astonishing happens, and everyone receives powers. Some of the powers are pretty awesome—the ability to create objects, the ability to manipulate time, the ability to bend the elements—but ironically, Jurai's power is the lamest of all. He can only conjure a measly, lukewarm, dark-colored flame. Despite the utter un-coolness of his power, he cherishes it nevertheless, whispering sweet nothings to his flame before he goes to bed, and when he wakes up.

From start to finish, this is a smartly executed episode. Trigger has so far demonstrated a great knack for visual flair and dynamic posing, and they use that strength to their advantage in this episode. When the characters reveal their powers for the first time, they show rather than tell (the telling does eventually come later), bringing viewers up to speed without resorting to heavy-handed scripting. And whether the characters are battling or reacting to new information, they let their bodies tell the story.

Take the first "check-up" fight scene, for example. Even though we don't really know the characters yet, we can tell just from the way they're standing what their personalities are like. You can see the bubbly eagerness in Hatoko's wide-eyed smile and forward-leaning posture, versus Chifuyu's calm, straight-backed confidence. And of course, the scene where Jurai's powers are stolen. With every shot of him bemoaning the loss of his beloved power, I laughed louder and louder.

I had my doubts going into this episode, but it will definitely go on my Watch Next Week list. The humor is spot-on, the character animation is well-directed, and I am very eager to see how the rest of the series turns out.

When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

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Hope Chapman

Rating: 4

If I've said it once, I've said it a thousand times: execution is everything. Good execution creates showstoppers out of Rage of Bahamut and bad execution destroys the potential in well-loved properties like World Trigger. It's hard for me to think of an anime with a more tired premise than that of When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace, (hereby referred to "Wizbabick" for my own amusement.) It's "Going-Home-Club-ish group of students that is all girls and one boy (or close to that) obtains supernatural powers, proceeds to just screw around with them and accomplish nothing of importance except strengthening their friendship and enjoying their high school days." It doesn't matter, though. This is the most natural, inviting, and joyful expression of the premise since its ancestral Haruhi Suzumiya, and may be well worth a look even for anime newbies in its pure approachability. It's an "otaku show" that I could see even the average nerd just waltzing into and enjoying. That's pretty great.

I think there are two major reasons Wizbabick works so well. First of all, the comic timing is excellent. This is all character-based humor, my very favorite kind. Not everyone is one-joke-each, but not everyone is a blank slate for a pot full of quips, either. People react to situations based on their distinct and gradually fleshed-out personalities, and the idea is that you blend different personalities together to achieve different tones and land different yuks. This comes across strongest in the montage that starts the episode: male lead Andou's failed attempts to prank his club members. It's a gleeful, smart sequence and it tells us a little something about all these potentially same-faced characters. (Studio Trigger's animation has some nice moments here, but the art definitely isn't anything to write home about.)

Once the gang discovers they have superpowers, the show's second great strength kicks in: its "wacky and fun nothing-doings" really are wacky and fun rather than being tired anime sitcom setups with supernatural elements slapped over the top of them. (Hello, Magimoji Rurumo.) These kids do what any kids with superpowers would do immediately: abuse them in really silly ways for their own amusement. (Hatoko in particular just seems so happy to be here for the "mild-mannered wallflower" type.) Most of the episode is taken up with the students hurling otherworldly phenomena at one another just because they can in a way that makes both themselves and the viewer happy. Their "superpower checkup" reminds me of a game I used to play as a kid that, like "the floor is lava," seems like part of some weird genetic child memory that someone should really do research on. It's a game of "one-upsies" that might start with "I choose mouse," then someone says "I choose cat," and five minutes later you're up to "I have fire tornadoes!" vs. "I have an army of ice robots!" Neil Gaiman's Sandman referred to it as "the oldest game," played by both children and gods, so seeing it realized in this show feels honest, and so does the resulting comedy. (They also play "the floor is lava" in this episode, except they play it literally: "The floor is magma, oops, I guess this is potentially deadly, my bad.")

Wizbabick is just plain funny, rivaling Kokkuri-san for comedy of the season, except that this show is almost certainly going somewhere larger fast (before our heroes inevitably address the plot by dismissing it.) Give it a shot if you like simple, nerdy fun with no caveats.

When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

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Rebecca Silverman

Rating: 4 (out of 5)

Andou may be the most obnoxious kid in the literature club, but he is also living the fantasy geek dream. He has a tendency to try and fool the other members of his club – four girls, of course – into believing that Evil has possessed his right arm when they come into the clubroom. While he can fool sweet Hatoko every single time, Tomoyo is getting pretty sick of it...until one day he actually does summon some sort of power from his right hand. Flash to six months later, and we find that all of the members of the club have developed some truly awesome superpowers: Hatoko can manipulate any element, Tomoyo can mess with time, Chifuyu can create anything, and Sayumi can restore anything to its original state. And Andou? Well, he can summon lukewarm black fire that does nothing. But hey, it beats the arthritis that comes with my right arm!

What's so much fun about this show is that it takes itself with a great sense of humor. Yes, Andou is annoying, but the way that his friends accept that about him makes it much more okay than it might otherwise have been. He's clearly the most excited about having powers, and he even greets his every morning when he wakes up, because of course he's given it a name. (Dark and Dark. Naming isn't his strong suit.) It may not be as amazing as Tomoyo's Closed Clock or Hatoko's Over Element, but by gosh, it's his and he loves it. The unbridled enthusiasm that the club members all show for their powers is believable and kind of endearing as well, making them feel very human. It helps that no one really fits a specific stereotype, at least thus far, which helps to prevent that stale, based on a light novel feeling. (Which it is, if you couldn't tell from the title.)

Before the end of the episode we are introduced to a character I personally think of as Upside Down Man, a mysterious stranger who may or may not have given the gang their powers and is now monitoring them by hanging totally inconspicuously upside down in a tree, laughing to himself. I'm hoping that someone notices him doing this, and I would not be surprised if that gag is forthcoming. In some ways this reminds me of a goofier Kokoro Connect, or perhaps a cross between that and D-Frag. In any event, it is a tremendous amount of fun and kept me laughing throughout. It isn't highbrow anything, but as the kid who routinely walked into closets looking for Narnia and kept hoping one day she'd develop her Powers, When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace is both silly wish-fulfillment and just a rollicking good time.

When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace is available streaming on Crunchyroll.

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Nick Creamer

Rating: 3

When it was announced that Studio Trigger were doing a light novel adaptation, I was somewhat skeptical. The premise didn't seem inherently exciting - a club full of students who randomly happen to have godlike superpowers, but don't actually lead exciting lives. Was the original light novel actually that great? How would the studio responsible for Kill la Kill and Little Witch Academia scorch their signature on the material?

The answer seems to be “very, very lightly.” When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace (jeez, that title's a mouthful) is a fantastical school club comedy directly in the lineage of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, and it sticks pretty closely to that formula. Andou, the lone male character and resident chuunibyou, has a completely worthless power - a dark flame he can conjure that apparently “isn't even hot. It's just lukewarm.” In contrast, his clubmates Tomoyo, Hatoko, Chifuyu, and Sayumi can respectively control time, wield the elements, produce matter, and restore objects to prior states. So basically, all their powers are completely broken, and the comedy here comes from the absurdity of the contrast between their very normal lives and personalities and their absurd powers. And the show is pretty funny! The characters are generic but lively, the show is earnest in its love of silly superpowers, and the gags actually make use of both the character relationships and the premise itself.

But none of that would really separate this show from the upper tier of generic comedy adaptations. Is there anything Trigger specifically brings to this formula?

Eh, a little. Kill la Kill's earnest love of theatrical battle announcements carry over, as do some of its visual tics - a big title card announcing a superpower here, a set of vertical speed-lines evoking emotional turmoil there. Outside of that, this show's (not repeating that title!) main aesthetic strength is the strong depiction of the characters’ various superpowers. From elemental manipulation to time-stopping, all the various powers here have a weight to their visual execution that helps sell the central discrepancy between its blase characters and fantastical elements. The show isn't remarkable so far, but it's engaging and solidly executed. Whether “we're normal kids who just happen to have crazy superpowers” is enough premise to actually support an entire series, we'll have to wait and see.

When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace is available streaming at Crunchyroll.

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Theron Martin

Rating: 3.5 (of 5)

Review: Think you've seen every possible iteration of the “teenagers gain super-powers in order to fight off some dastardly threat” plot device? What about a case where there does not appear to actually be a threat of any kind, where they just seem to randomly get powers one day and have no idea what to make of why they have them or even any foe to use them against?

That is intriguing concept behind this promising new series from Trigger, the studio that brought us Kill la Kill. Based on a light novel series, it tells the story of five perfectly ordinary-seeming members of the Literature club who are one day lamenting the lone male member's outbursts of chunibyou behavior and claims about having super-powers when, to everyone's shock including his, he actually does release a super-power, creating a burst that apparently gave everyone else in the room powers, too. Six months later the quintet has settled into a routine of monthly power checks (really just a convenient way to show the audience what everyone can do) and occasionally using their powers to keep each other from getting out of hand since they have no other clear target to use them on or reason to use them for. That seems strange, since their powers are mostly formidable; gullible, pale-haired Hatoko is an elementalist, little Chifuyu has astonishing power of creation, red-head Tomoyo has time-manipulation ability, and big, athletic Sayumi has the ability to restore anything to its original state. And the chunibyou Andou, who has given dramatic names to everyone else's power? The only visible aspect of his ability is creation of a dark flame in one hand, and the girls tease him mercilessly about his power being useless or hard to demonstrate, but it is implied to be some kind of reality-manipulation ability connected to what he most whole-heartedly believes. It certainly doesn't much benefit the one other person they encounter who has powers: the Student Council President, with her power-stealing ability. But a Mysterious Figure does seem to know about all of this and thus may be up to something, which is the club's first real clue that there actually is a bigger picture after all.

Despite the male/female ratio, this does not show any signs of being a harem series; in fact, the girls merely tolerate Andou (and only barely so much of the time) rather than show any interest in him. Instead it plays more like a straight ensemble, with Andou perhaps marginally in the lead because he gets the most enthusiastic about having powers, to the point of naming everyone's abilities. The camera does tend to emphasize Sayumi's ample figure in some shots but otherwise the first episode is free of overt fan service displays. No, the content here has enough room to explore that it does not need to stop to being trashy, and it doesn't. While most of the personalities shown so far are anime-typical, they are all smooth-flowing and blend together well, and even the sixth one with powers, who seems like she will be a regular cast member even if she doesn't join the group, fit just not: not over-the-top or a caricature of any kind.

In other words, the writing here is smart (or at least smarter than the norm). Its one warning sign is that it might be a bit too self-aware, but even that is played lightly. The production merits, while not stellar, are not half-bad, either. Exactly where this might go next is hard to tell, as this was more an establishment episode than anything, but it should be fun finding out.

When Supernatural Battles Become Commonplace is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

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Zac Bertschy

Rating: 4.5

Andou's chuunibyou attitude is really grating on the rest of the Literature Club. He's gotta be the center of attention, and he's convinced he'll develop superpowers, which sounds ridiculous until one day he suddenly does. Cut to 6 months later and, as it happens, the rest of the Literature Club has also developed superpowers, and has taken to having fun mock battles with eachother during extracurricular hours. No-nonsense Tomoyo can control time, gentle Hatoko controls the elements, monotone child Chifuyu has the power of creation and the standoffish Sayumi can restore anything to its original condition. We don't learn what Andou's power is until Kudou shows up, a girl who's been spying on the club all this time and has a superpower of her own: the ability to steal powers. She challenges the club to a fight, and it turns out Andou's only ability is to create a lukewarm black fire that doesn't do much of anything at all, but the "fight" reveals some new information: someone out there knows about these superpowers and it's a matter of time until the other shoe drops.

A lot of folks, myself included, were really skeptical when Studio Trigger (responsible for Kill la Kill) announced that their next TV project would be an adaptation of a light novel about junior high kids with magic powers, but it's nice to be proven wrong: When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace is entertaining, well-paced, nicely animated for the most part and, above all, it's funny. The characters are established quickly and there isn't a whole lot of worldbuilding; we're cutting right to the premise at its most basic, and the show moves along quickly and keeps you engaged from start to finish as a result. The star of the show is, in fact, the writing; it's chiefly written as an ensemble comedy with fantasy elements, and while some of the jokes fall flat, most of the time it works thanks to sharp, precise character writing (Andou's relationship with his worthless dark fire made me laugh out loud). None of the Literature Club girls seem like one-dimensional single-joke characters; there's a lot of space in here for solid comedy that feels like it grows organically out of the interactions between the cast without leaning really hard on "funny" single personality quirks. Further, shows like this one frequently suffer from "as you know, I am your brother" clunky exposition that always takes me right out of the story, but it's blissfully absent here and the show is much more entertaining as a result. The production values falter a little sometimes, but this is typical Trigger work; fluid when it needs to be and the shortcuts are at least executed with some style. They don't waste any time getting into material that allows them to cut away from the relatively dull setting of a middle school club room, and it's pretty obvious right up front why a place like Trigger would be drawn to this material. I really enjoyed this first episode and laughed a whole lot; looking forward to more.

When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace is available streaming at Crunchyroll.