Shelf Life

Battle Girls Gone Wild

Last week, I watched the first half of Shangri-La, and while I was intrigued by some of the aspects of the show—the concept of a carbon index market, the idea of mankind slowly making the move to an artificial Utopia to escape an increasingly toxic nature, a social uprising—I felt mostly bewildered at how cluttered and aimless the series felt. There were lots of cool things to like about the show, but I wasn't sure how they fit together, and I wasn't entirely thrilled about having to follow so many seemingly unconnected strings. Now that I've consumed the second half of the series, I can't say that I'm left with a much better feeling.

First, there are things that I do appreciate. I appreciate that the whole web of mysteries surrounding the magic daggers was resolved, and that we did find out how all the kids (little princess girl allergic to the sun, boomerang girl, soldier boy (and on the side, hacker girl)) relate to one another. The final revelation at the end, especially of the “true” identities of Kuniko and Mikuni, was a cool one, if only for the “Wow!” factor. What I don't appreciate is that towards the end, it increasingly felt like the story was just frantically waving its hands, trying to distract from the fact that it was slowly derailing.

I love “magic” as much as the next person, but when a show gets to the point where it has to rely on voodoo and hoopla to resolve its story lines, it feels like it's grasping at straws. I was okay with three kids having sacred daggers. That was a promise that somehow their lives were interwoven. I was okay with Mikuni being able to telekinetically crush liars. The moment I lost it was when we learn that Atlas, this paragon of clean living and symbol of socioeconomic inequality, is basically this magic pillar that somehow involves buffering the energy of the Earth, and stabilizing some hand-wavey-supernatural thing, and has a creepy magical girl in the middle… who was then cloned, and then… took over kids' bodies, in order to… something? The entire thing is laid out over the course of a couple episodes, but I feel like it's done in such a rush, and done so haphazardly, that it just feels like random story bits shoved into the cracks of a crumbling series. The whole creepy magical child thing is baffling, and while it makes the “Wow!” revelation at the end of the series more “shocking,” I didn't feel like it had a proper origin story or explanation.

It became very apparent to me that Shangri-La has two very distinct faces. There's the more political/socioeconomic face that appeals to fans like me, in which we're wowed by all the scenes involving the carbon market, or citizen uprising; then there's the magical face, where girls writhe in pools of mystery fluid, surrounded by staring eyeballs, and do something with the magical energy faultlines of the Earth. It's not really fair to make the bulk of the series about the former, then seal the deal with the latter, because it feels like a cheap way to create drama and plot twists. Ultimately, I was not a fan. I liked Kuniko a whole lot, and I liked her buddies a whole lot, but that's kind of where my enjoyment of the series ended. If the entire show was just the adventures and exploits of Kuniko and her people, I think it would've made for a much more enjoyable series.[TOP]

While I wasn't in love with the first season of Baka and Test, I did think the premise of the show was cute… if a little outrageous. Basically, all the characters go to a school where they participate in Summoner Wars. This is where they can summon avatars to fight for them, but the strength of the avatars is directly correlated with their test scores in a particular subject. It's kind of a hilarious and fun concept. So, if you're really great at math, then your avatar for the “math” fight is going to be really strong. At this school, though, all the smart kids get an automatic advantage—they're sorted into the best classrooms with the best equipment. Kids in Class A have nice plushy classrooms with laptops and nice furniture, while the kids in Class F (our heroes, naturally) don't have any equipment at all. The only way to get better supplies is to win these wars.

So, this brings us to the OVA Collection. It's half awesome, half not. The first episode is the requisite school festival episode. Our protagonists want to make as much money as possible, so that they can buy supplies for their classroom. In a sense, putting the filler episode in the OVA is brilliant, because this frees up room in the TV series to focus on more story-oriented things. Let's be real here—there's only so much you can accomplish in a two-episode OVA, so it's best to not be too ambitious. With this Baka and Test OVA, the focus is mostly on laughs. We see our favorite characters doing wacky things, and we see the ol' tried-and-true crossdresser gags that seem to be a staple in all anime comedies everywhere.

The second episode, though, brings us back to the familiar Summoner Wars. I'm not so sure that in a two-episode OVA, there's enough time for this. What made the series so entertaining is that these skirmishes are spread out over the course of several episodes. It gives time for the show to set up the students' strategies, such as who has to study for what, who's fighting whom, and surprise attacks. It's also the prime environment for comedy, because there's ample time to set up jokes and gags. By cramming a multi-round summoning war into one episode, not only does it jam too many things into a short runtime, but it also rushes the jokes. Considering Baka and Test is a comedy, it seems silly to skimp on the humor.

As far as OVA additions go, I had a reasonably good time with the Baka and Test OVA collection, but I think I'd rather watch individual episodes of the series before I watched this again. I appreciate that they relegated the filler festival episode to this side story, but I think they were too ambitious in trying to squeeze in one last summoner war. For fans of the series, I think this is worth watching once, but I wouldn't go out of my way to track it down.[TOP]