So, while it’s something of an informal genre, I’ve talked a good deal about “Battle School” shows in the past. Typically, these are shows where the characters are in school (usually High School), but the curriculum includes some degree of combat. Most typically, these are Shonen action shows, and on the more prototypical end tend to have harem elements. The Battle School theme can at times be compared to Isekai, in that both have an oft-repeated archetypal form that’s not generally regarded as being of particularly high quality, having more of a mass appeal than a depth of meaningful storytelling.
In general, if given the choice between a bog-standard Isekai and a bog-standard Battle School, I’ll usually pick the Battle School, since even at their weakest they usually have a little more creativity, and the worst reprocessed examples I’ve seen haven’t been as bad (After all, Isekai gave us In Another World With My Smartphone). However, even then most battle schools do play it fast and loose with the logic of their settings. Chivalry of a Failed Knight was a fairly good show, all things considered, but it didn’t really explain much about its universe because, to be entirely fair, it didn’t need to. You might get a paper-thin excuse as to why the world has children wielding kickass powers to battle… whatever the hell it is they battle (that’s something that can vary from show to show) but it’s typically set dressing to give us the cool action scenes the show knows you want.
While Myriad Colors Phantom World has the basic trappings of the Battle School show down, its tone and themes are actually very different, which makes it something that, in my mind at least, is fairly interesting to explore in terms of its ideas, whether or not that makes it actually any more watchable.
The basic concept of Myriad Colors Phantom World is that a science experiment gone wrong caused the world to change in the recent past: humans began to perceive Phantoms, otherworldly beings which play by their own rules, like but not entirely like the spirits and fair folk of ancient myths. Children born after the event, meanwhile, started to awaken powers of their own, many of which allow them to fight and seal the Phantoms that would otherwise kind of run amok. Some of those kids are now around High School age, so they’re training to use their abilities in school.
In some ways it seems like the basic Battle School background. True – not all Phantoms are malicious and in need of sealing (in fact, one is even a major character) but that’s fully within the bounds of the thin sketches of other Battle School shows. Rather, the difference is on how many Phantoms aren’t actually fought in any traditional sense. Rather, more like shows that deal heavily in spirits and the supernatural like In/Specter or Mushi-shi, more Phantoms than not need to have what they’re “about” figured out, and sometimes appeased rather than beaten. This leads to a show that’s significantly less action-focused than the vast majority of Battle School efforts.
With that said, it’s high time to introduce our characters. The lead is Haruhiko, who has the ability to seal Phantoms in his sketchbook by drawing them. He’s joined by his Phantom friend/familiar, Ruru, a little fairy who is the spitting image of Murmur. At the outset, his partner in phantom-hunting is his senior and long-time friend Mai, who has the ability to circulate the five classical elements through her body in order to achieve superior punching ability. The two are a good match: Mai forcing unruly Phantoms into submission while Haruhiko seals them. However, they are still sort of the screwup squad, with the slow speed of Haruhiko’s sealing and the intensity of Mai’s combat technique adding up to the two of them tending to do enough collateral damage to wipe out the bonuses and bounties they gain dealing with Phantoms as their extracurricular.
Because of this, as the show begins Haruhiko attempts to recruit a new member to their group: Reina, a cute and shy new student who he sees has the power to literally consume phantoms, inhaling and devouring them. It probably doesn’t hurt that Haruhiko clearly finds her attractive.
Oddly enough for this, Myriad Colors Phantom World doesn’t really have a harem aspect at all. Haruhiko is only ever really interested in Reina, and that interest is significantly underplayed, as is any reciprocation she comes to feel. His relationship with Mai is purely one of friendship, with some sibling-like undertones. It would be possible to read in romantic feelings if you wanted to read that into Mai’s thoughts, but by in large it’s not really there and… I kind of appreciate that. As much as I am a total sucker for romance arcs, it’s nice to remember that not every close human relationship has to be one.
The first Phantom that the three of them are able to take on together is the sort that doesn’t need to get eaten or beaten, a crowd of animate telephone poles who are just trying to have a ‘fun’ exit to capstone their existence, resulting in the trio having to beat them in an electrically charged game of Limbo to convince them that it’s time to shuffle off.
From there, the team gets assigned to help a solo Phantom-hunting transfer student, Koito Minase, who has an extremely powerful ability to take on and seal phantoms with her voice alone and a gruff, standoffish, asocial personality. They look into an abandoned factory that belonged to the company whose accident caused the changes to the world and the appearance of Phantoms, picking up a plot device for later, and then are challenged with a UFO-like Phantom that seems to be something of a peeping tom. After some difficulties, Haruhiko displays his new ability, summoning things from his sketchbook, to call up a fierce hellhound. He gets an adorable puppy, but since this UFO is about the size of a frisbee, that manages to restrain it anyway. Minase is not impressed so she doesn’t ‘join the party’ right away, bu it’s clear she’ll be a recurring character.
Now, I do want to draw some attention to that plot device picked up in the abandoned factory, mostly because the show doesn’t. Yeah, this little hook for the biggest part of the plot does get mentioned from time to time, but just in the sense where you’re vaguely reminded that it exists and that more attention should be being paid to it. This is kind of a sloppy way for the show to say “Trust us, we have an arc, just bear with us while we get there”. There’s no real progress or buildup, we just get the thing in Episode 2 and then use it way later.
The reason for this is that, from here, the series is mostly episodic. Again, more like a “Weird supernatural cases” show than a Battle School show, Myriad Colors Phantom World is concerned, largely, with experiencing a new thing every episode. One episode is focused on a pair of humanoid phantoms that challenge people to fights, and the inconsistencies of memory: after an initial loss, Mai synchronizes her memories with Haruhiko so that he can use her martial arts training and help her, letting him realize that she bullied those phantoms when they were children whereas Mai remembers being a good girl and friends with them. Another episode has Reina spirited away by a magic school bus where a group of rabbit-like phantoms try to give her the caring family she always wanted as opposed to the strict parents she has in real life (leading to her somewhat reconciling with her real parents at the end of the episode, and getting their permission to engage in Phantom hunting despite the fact they weren’t the kind of people to support their daughter being different.)
From there, we introduce the token youngster of the lot, named Kurumi, whose powers manifest through her teddy bear, most particularly the ability to turn it into a giant magic teddy bear warrior. We meet her properly in an episode where a Phantom is attacking school pets, which turns out to be a sore spot for Minase, whose powers first awakened defending her school pets from a predatory phantom, possibly this very one. Apparently, this ended up setting her apart from other people, resulting in the unhappy, friendless powerhouse of a young lady we know properly. The next episode is focused more fully on Kurumi as Haruhiko ends up dragged into a phantom world formed from her dreams and memories, populated primarily by teddy bear people squabbling over their own fantasy plot, with Kurumi as the captive princess. She’s able to overcome some of her fears and personal issues with Haruhiko’s help, and ultimately joins the phantom hunting club.
From there, we get another set of episodes that really don’t rely much on what came before or tie in to what comes after. The group has to rescue a cat from an abandoned haunted mansion, finding that the Phantom responsible for the haunting is a lonely cat spirit, which sees the building cleaned and reopened as a cat cafe for students. A bad monkey Phantom turns the school grounds into a hot springs for its enjoyment, and is ultimately convinced to go away by giving it a fake wedding (With Haruhiko, much against his will, taking the “bride” role and nearly – perhaps by a lack of continuity – avoiding getting spirited away). A drama club phantom makes a play of her design very real in order to win a competition, but isn’t malicious and fought or sealed: instead, everybody just sort of goes along with working out her business even after realizing her nature. Ruru (remember her? She doesn’t contribute a whole lot because, apparently, she’s an anime-original character rather than one from the light novels this is based on) becomes human for an episode to get the obligatory summer festival tropes out of the way.
We get an episode with a little more meat when Haruhiko is de-aged by a phantom occurrence (no actual Phantom is seen responsible, and his own powers are implicated, albeit with doubt to be had) and Mai ends up taking care of amnesiac grade school Haruhiko as even more of a big sister figure than usual. Though the episode seems like kind of fluff and there is the usual contained structure, with Haruhiko turning back to his adult form (not remembering his child time as the child Haruhiko didn’t remember his adult life) we do get a good deal of insight into who he is as a person and what his hangups might be, most particularly in the form of an essay he wrote when he was actually in gradeschool about a day spent with his family… which was entirely a lie, as he didn’t have normal happy family days with his parents the way he sort of did when Mai was taking care of him. By his teen state he’s put most of those problems behind him, misremembering things the way Mai misremembered her relationship with the humanoid phantoms and behavior as a child, but it’s something that’s still kind of a nagging sadness. It’s especially pointed, though, as the final act begins with the apparent return of Haruhiko’s long-absent mother.
Her return coincides with the advent of a potent, ability-stealing Phantom called Enigma. The group forced Enigma into retreat once, but didn’t ‘get’ it, only for it to turn out that the supposed reappearance of Haruhiko’s mother was, in fact, Enigma in his mother’s form. She steals his ability, which results in some nasty backlash on Ruru as well.
After this, we finally get that plot device used. It turns out that it’s a collection of data gathered on Phantoms, and a project to weaponize them. This lets know both what Enigma’s game is (she’s an artificial Phantom who hates humans because of the experiments conducted on her, and who then breached containment) and that there’s something recorded about Haruhiko and Ruru. That something comes to fruition in round three against Enigma, where it’s revealed that Ruru is actually a fragment of Haruhiko’s self – the childish, playful side of his persona that he repressed. Because of this, she contains an extra copy of Haruhiko’s powers that he’s able to draw on to beat Enigma, especially since her copy is static while Haruhiko is able to push his limits. Enigma is beaten, and at the end realizes that maybe not all humans are bad and that she liked playing mom. Everyone else who had their powers drained gets them back, Ruru and Haruhiko go back to their normal, and all is well that ends well. Yeah, the setup with the mysterious thing in the earliest episodes was, in fact, just for this. And, with that resolved, the show goes ahead and stops. It’s told enough story.
On the whole, Myriad Colors Phantom World inhabits a sort of uncomfortable in-betweeen. It’s not quite as creative in its exploration as Mushi-shi, It’s kind of watered down in its strangeness, ideas, and even romance from Bakemonogatari, and it doesn’t have the racing action or tension of a traditional Battle School/Harem affair.
All the same, it’s a comfortable show. The characters are kind of nice, even if they’re nothing special. The scenarios aren’t as wrought or dramatic as other shows with supernatural “cases”, but they do have decent emotion and some creative scenarios. The episode with Reina’s false parents and the episode with the lonely cat spirit, in particular, were quite nice. It’s not a show that has much meat to it, but at the same time it’s not exactly junk food or Slice of Nothing; there is some wonder, some real drama, and so on. I think the strongest part is how the characters relate to one another, and the fact that the show doesn’t really lean on tired harem cliches that can be comforting, but can also get in the way.
In the end, I rate the show at a B-. It’s fair to middling and while I don’t have too much reason to recommend it, I do find that I think of it somewhat fondly. It’s worth checking out, at least if you’re looking for a show that’s not going to get you too worked up.