This Week in Anime

Is Magatsu Wahrheit Zuerst Worth Watching?

Steve
Ja, Freund.

Uh, bitte? I think? And now that I've exhausted what little German I know, let's talk about some good ol' fashioned fantasy war anime. Like your grandpa used to watch on those sweet cathode rays. Yes, we have functioning cars and soldiers with swords here. Best of all worlds.

Honestly if I didn't know from the promotional material that this was based on a mobile game—presumably one with a gacha mechanic because nobody makes mobile games without those anymore—I would never have guessed. And I like that! Feels like a throwback to simpler times, and that definitely warmed me towards it more quickly than it might have otherwise.

Well I don't think we can blame MWZ for that one. I will, however, blame it for trying to have two protagonists when one is so superior to the other, it's kind of baffling how boring the other one is.

Literally the inciting incident of the story is that this dude tries to do a tiny good deed but instead loads a box filled with military contraband into the other dude's truck. That's it. Fast-forward a bit, and now best delivery boy Innumael is on the lam with a fringe resistance group and loving it.

And by loving it I mean he's hating every moment of it.

He's wimpy and whiny and I love him to bits. At least 75% of the pleasure I get out of MWZ stems from watching his face contort into all manner of grimaces.

It's just classically good storytelling. A reluctant fish-out-of-water straight-laced laborer gradually warms up to the call to rebellion while complaining all along the way. He's flawed, but so much more compelling a focal point than Leo, whose story so far is "generic anime boy learns how to war crime under the tutelage of a serial killer commander."
Actually, I made that sound a lot more interesting than it's been.

Yeah I mean it'd be one thing if Helman weren't cartoonishly evil from the get-go, or if Leo did anything besides stand next to other characters who actually do things, but this just ain't it. It also doesn't help that his motivation hinges on his backstory with Zaitz, who had maybe ten lines of dialogue before Innu stabbed his guts out.

That's the real lesson of MWZ: never try to be helpful, because you just might get your brother killed and kick off a magic mutant monster war.

Not exactly a message I'm stoked to apply one-to-one to real world politics, but in abstract, it's salient enough. The ruling class, via the government, controls and confiscates power while common folk are left high and dry to fend for themselves.

I do also appreciate the cavalier cognitive dissonance of the military being completely aware of the injustice, but just not giving a shit.

Come onnnnnnn, guys. You can't just keep building secret research facilities across the country so politicians can use fantasy radon to do crimes against humanity.

I'm of two minds, because I do appreciate the ambition of trying weave these different stories together. I also like that MWZ avoids huge lore dumps in favor of building intrigue around things like coldfire, light sickness, mysterious tubes, and so on. But it's also a bit too esoteric for its own good at the beginning, and like you said, it's hard to find a reason to care about any of this. Like, for instance, I had no idea what Elfriede was doing about anything until episode 4.

Or all the exciting stuff about whose funds are being funneled where and what that means for the Diet and zzzzzzzzz. This is why each episode of MWZ feels like it's about five minutes too long.

See, I'm so deep in the Fate muck now that this doesn't even phase me. At least these words mostly resemble existing terms/names and aren't things like "spiritron" or "Daybit Sem Void" or "Scandinavia Peperoncino."

For real tho, her middle name is Grundle.

Admittedly, I questioned the logic of a rebel group risking their collective asses to rescue a complete stranger, but it quickly becomes clear that Headkeeper as a whole is just Like That.

Good point. But it's true, I instantly warmed up to Arnolt once he pulled out a katana in order to investigate a shadowy figure on the road.

Episode 3 as whole is a weird outlier compared to the rest, but it's also probably the tightest-written. And it features some of the strongest Innu faces.

Nick, are you suggesting that a little girl being transformed into a horrific monster as a result of government-sponsored research is perhaps ground already trodden upon by past dark fantasy anime/manga series?

Oh yeah, in my mind, the iffy gun politics are almost fully eclipsed by the almost surely iffier gender politics to come out of MWZ. I mean, I could be wrong! I'd love to be wrong! But each monster is a mutant woman with a pronounced and distended stomach, and the reasons behind that are all but certain to be On One.

Boy I do not feel great about literally any part of Helman's backstory!!

Funny, it's basically the nightmare version of Moriarty the Patriot my cynicism dreamt up before the show actually aired. Thankfully, that turned out not to be the case, and instead it lives here, where it can be safely sequestered away.

Got 'em!

Oh noooo in your warped quest for revenge you accidentally became a tool of the oppressors. No stoooop.

Tsuda always pulls his weight when it comes to voicing smarmy bastards, but he deserves extra accolades for everything he's carrying here. I wanna talk about a good character now, so here's Irma.

She just wants to smuggle guns and fold origami, and that's the kind of salt-of-the-earth aspiration I can respect.

That's fair! Things devolve into chaos almost comically quickly, and as always, Innumael takes the words out of my mouth.

And if I had to guess, this is probably where the "real" plot starts kicking in. Whether that's a good or bad thing, who's to say? But I'm a little interested in seeing how things develop, I'll admit. I didn't think that'd be the case before I started the show.

I might bump that up to a 6.5/10 imo, but otherwise I totally agree! I think there's an important place for 6-7/10 shows in the anime ecosystem. Sometimes you just want something competent enough to hold your interest but not exceptional enough to feel the need to invest in. In that regard, I enjoyed my time with MWZ, and I hope it manages to uphold that baseline of acceptability. At the very least, it better keep dunking on Innumael.