You’ve seen the story before: All of a sudden, some high school students gain fabulous secret powers, giving them radically more agency. Really, this can be anything, from mechas to magical girls. It doesn’t matter – the point is that you have this setup where people who at least know each other and possibly are somewhat close are thrust into a new and more wonderful adventure.
What if they weren’t?
Thrust into an adventure, that is. What if a bunch of teenagers gained supernatural abilities but no world-threatening evil or really anything else to do with those abilities actually appeared, and the group had to just go about their lives, now with powers? As you might have guessed, you’d get When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace.
Before I go any farther, I’ll address what long-time readers are probably considering an elephant in the room given how often I call it out, but this is technically a Trigger anime. I say technically because, unlike most Trigger shows that are original concepts (allowing the studio’s hand to really shine through), When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace is adapted from a light novel. While they certainly picked one that’s at least a little bit on the same wavelength as the stuff they do for themselves, this does mean that the studio still can’t take all the credit or blame for the content, since they didn’t create the characters or scenarios in play. For this reason, I’ll probably not be saying anything more about them for the rest of this review.
In any case, the story starts about as I led off the review: with the Literature Club receiving some supernatural powers. Tomoyo Kanzaki, a fun tsundere with some hidden chuuni tendencies, gains the power to control time; speeding it up, slowing it down, or even stopping it entirely. Sweet cinnamon roll type Hatoko Kushikawa gains mastery of the elements controlling water, earth, fire, air, and light for good measure. Stern and serious Sayumi Takanashi gains the power to restore anything to its ‘original’ state, which has very vague limits but clearly has massive potential applications. Chifuyu Himeki, a quiet grade-schooler who’s friends of the club and was there that day gains the power to create and destroy matter, manipulate it at the subatomic level, and open portals at will, even to pocket dimensions of her own creation. And lastly Jurai Andou, irrepressible chuuni and main character (if you couldn’t guess from him being the only boy in the group) gains the power to conjure black flames. That don’t burn anything. In fact, one might say that his power is entirely useless. This isn’t the typical “oh the MC is weak” bluff either, Andou’s ability, which he thinks is the coolest thing and names “Dark and Dark”, remains entirely useless for basically the whole show, and that playing next to these girls with god-tier powers. But, because this isn’t an action show where problems need to be solved with quick application of mighty powers, this is actually fine. Andou’s chuuni behavior and, essentially, genre savvy nature are more valuable than adding another power god to a cast full of powerful gods.
We get a fairly long time skip right after the first scene, moving to six months after the powers first appeared, by which point the literature club is essentially adjusted to their abilities and in which time nothing else has happened. At this point, they do encounter a little more supernatural nonsense, when Andou’s chuuni rants make a classmate named Mirei Kudou believe they’ve discovered her power. It’s the ability to steal other powers, though, and since she first uses it on Andou after challenging the Literature club, she gets defeated and forced to give it back fairly easily in a physical altercation. After that, Andou, feeling some sympathy for her since she seemed more like an eccentric goof than anything else, leaves her a note with the name he came up with for her power, but since he’s such a Chuuni and wrote the whole thing in an insane way, Mirei takes it to be a love letter, accepts, and starts acting as an affectionate girlfriend until Andou (under the jealous gaze of the literature club) clears up the misunderstanding.
First arc done, this seems like as good a time as any to get to the point: this show is, more than anything, a school romantic comedy, and given its overall structure that means it’s also a Harem show. Because of that, I feel like it makes sense to talk about things going forward, which will mostly concern the girls of the literature club, in terms of that fact.
All four of the girls in the club are built as ‘contenders’ more or less. Chifuyu’s precocious crush is mercifully not given equal weight and when they do try to get mileage out of it the scenes can get a bit uncomfortable. Seriously, I don’t know why this is so much worse than Sakura Kinomoto’s crush on Yukito, but it is. Aside from that, though? The scenario is actually pretty well done. The three high school girls have very distinctive personalities and each has a different kind of chemistry with Andou than the others do, any one of which you could take to be the more romantic of the lot. We know them as people, we see the unique ways in which they relate to the lead, and we do have an understanding of both what each of the girls might see in Andou and where they might experience some friction. All too often when you get a harem the girls can start to blend outside their own arcs; some handle this better than others, but When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace passes that hurdle with flying colors, to the point where it can make otherwise good shows with well-developed harem casts look less competent by comparison. Objectively it’s a small element, but it is a critical one and it’s done amazingly well here.
From there we briefly meet Hajime, Tomoyo’s chuuni older brother, before launching into Chifuyu’s main arc. As I mentioned before it can be a bit uncomfortable, but it still at least tries to have some actual good emotional play as it’s mostly about her fighting with her grade school friend and wanting to quit grade school and skip ahead so she can be with her friends. Jurai manages to help lead her to making up with her friend and appreciating the circle she has the way she has it, and we move right along to starting building up Tomoyo.
I’m going to come right out and say it, I think Tomoyo is far and away best girl in this thing. The show’s presentation is balanced, and I can totally understand if you watch it and come away liking one of the other girls better, but for me she’s the clear lead because, even while she tries to not admit it, she does understand and empathize with Andou how he is, and the way they connect seems like the best foundation. It’s a matter of personal taste, but this is my review and I’m going to let a more subjective take in on it.
Anyway, her development starts when Andou finds out the embarrassing (to her) fact that she’s trying to become a novelist. He supports her wholeheartedly, and with less theatrics than usual (not no theatrics, just less) and encourages her to follow her dream. She does, and even gets past the first round for an award, causing Andou to take her out to celebrate. However, Hatoko sees them ‘on a date’ and starts to get jealous.
This development is interrupted somewhat to get a little more on the club’s last member, Sayumi. After working late on a birthday present from the rest of the club to Andou (a custom video game), she gets a cold and Andou makes a house call to make sure his friend is alright, learning while there that she once had Student Council ambitions. After a flashback to an incident when the powers first appeared (where Sayumi desired to remove them, but found her power was not sufficient for that) he fears that she’s been unfairly stuck with the literature club, only to be assured that she prefers being with her friends over pursuing anything like that, with some implication to the audience that part of her present comfort may be from carrying a torch for Andou.
We then follow up with the Andou-Tomoyo-Hatoko love triangle out of the Harem group. Hatoko is invited over to Andou’s place and makes dinner for the family, but Andou himself ends up quite late since he was talking with Tomoyo about her writing and helping her. Andou refuses to tell Hatoko what he was staying late with Tomoyo about (since, you know, she’s still kind of embarrassed by her pursuit and it’s not his to give up) and Hatoko… explodes.
It sounds random and arbitrary in the short form like this, but trust me, her meltdown here is both well-set-up and well-done. First of all, a lot of effort went into showing just how much this evening was going to mean for her, only to have her care and attention basically be blown off, and while Andou responds the way he does for good reason, it’s emblematic of his chuuni responses in general (telling her she wouldn’t understand in an attempt to dismiss the topic), and Hatoko takes it as such. Her rant is not about jealousy over Tomoyo, but rather about the downsides of Andou’s chuuni and the rift it creates between them.
Because, remember, Hatoko is basically normal. She’s not a chuuni, she’s not into fantasy, and she never has been. She doesn’t get it, and when she wants to get closer to the sweet, kind boy that Andou is underneath the theatrical act, the fact that there’s that enforced distance hurts her, and keeps on hurting her. Especially, as is the crux of the rant, being told that she doesn’t or wouldn’t understand. Because, no, she doesn’t understand. She doesn’t understand why things like ‘dark’ and ‘bloody’ are cool. People get hurt, wouldn’t it be better to have a kinder world? She doesn’t understand why ‘evil’ is good when it’s tautologically not, when real evil is cruel. And she doesn’t understand why Andou insists on saying things twisted and sideways rather than just speaking to her honestly, and letting her into his life. And that has clearly been driving her insane until, her, she hits her breaking point and pours it all out. And after all that, she flees, crying and ashamed.
While out, Hatoko runs into another chuuni, who talks with her for a little bit about the whole thing and lifts her spirits by telling her that it’s okay if she doesn’t understand, as long as she’s trying to connect that’s what matters. Well, that’s nice.
Then he uses a power to knock her out and kidnaps her. Well, then.
The next episode is mostly concerned with following Hajime, who it turns out is an ability user, the leader of a team of ability users, and actually doing things like the typical urban fantasy plot the main show has avoided, doing supernatural battle with other ability-wielders across the city. The nature of the scenario is also revealed – the powers are the product of the “Fairy war”, which is basically fairy reality TV, meaning that those killed in the conflict are just restored without their powers or memories of the supernatural, since it’s all in good fun. Hajime is playing to win, though. We catch up with the main characters (most of which are fruitlessly looking for Hatoko), and it turns out that Hatoko’s kidnapping was actually a goof by Hajime’s group, who wanted to borrow Sayumi’s healing power so their own could be put back together. Hajime gives them an earful, especially since he’s keeping his sister’s group out of it, but before he can return the still out-of-it Hatoko, Sayumi uses her power, with the others present, to restore the Literature Club to its original state: all members present and in good health. Not remembering she was even in the illusion of trouble, Hatoko makes up with Andou after Tomoyo clears up the matter.
After this, we’re briefly let in on Andou’s “Dark and Dark” power being pushed to evolve. We’re not shown what it does right now, but we do know that all the other girls absolutely forbid Andou from using the upgraded form, whatever it is. Oh well, enough of that, it’s time for a pool episode!
With fanservice time here at last, it’s also a free-for-all for Andou: Hatoko and Tomoyo each know the other is a rival in that regard (as Hatoko correctly intuited Tomoyo’s feelings and confronted her about it) while Sayumi is being ‘helped’ by an agent provocateur from their class who just wants to see this whole mess get even more tangled by giving the girl in the back a leg up. Chifuyu is part of this too and the less I think about that, the better. The entire summer, because of this, turns into a comedy of errors with Andou going on a date with each girl, and each date being at least somewhat botched by the girl tripping over herself. Chifuyu at the pool by her friend trying to make her hate Andou (and failing miserably), Sayumi at the pool by her trolling wing-man, Hatoko on a shared family vacation as she follows a glamour magazine’s advice and overdoes it, and finally the most successful of the lot: Tomoyo, at the summer festival, who doesn’t make any aggressive plays but comes to terms with her feelings.
And that, believe it or not, brings to the final episode – which like the first one tries, briefly, to throw a little plot our way in order to go out on a high note. Mirei comes back, controlled by an outside competitor, and battles the Literature Club, stealing powers from both Chifuyu and Hatoko. The Possessed Mirei is then faced by Andou, who activates his second level of Dark and Dark and goads her into taking it and doing the same. And, with that, we’re informed of what exactly that was: the flames actually burn now, and can’t be extinguished. Ever. Even by the person using the ability. On whose arm the flames are burning. The agony of the experience, which Andou had enough acting chops to keep a straight face through, is extreme enough to force the entity possessing Mirei to depart in order to escape it, and once Mirei is herself again she’s able to return the stolen powers, letting Chifuyu conjure guillotines to sever the afflicted arms and portals to drop the still burning limbs into pocket dimensions where they’ll be sealed for all times. At that point, Sayumi can heal the damage, but it’s abundantly clear why none of the girls wanted Andou to have to suffer that ever again.
That crisis resolved, everyone is still love rivals but everyone is also still going to carry on with their everyday lives, and that is the end of the show.
I’ll be honest, my first time through this show I waffled a lot on whether it was more clever for its subversion of the traditional urban fantasy tropes, or lazy and braindead for how utterly straight it plays the harem rom-com tropes. In the end, I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s clever for how well it plays the straightforward harem rom-com tropes. The show’s great strength really is in how Hatoko, Sayumi, and especially Tomoyo relate to Andou – not, for good or for ill, in the spectacular circumstance in which these characters find themselves. In fact, the degree to which the concept isn’t used could be considered a flaw: you could take the actual powers and battles out of this show, making it more like Love, Chuunibyou, and Other Delusions, and it would still retain the vast majority of its appeal, if not all of it. It’s good, but it doesn’t play the overlap of supernatural powers and ordinary life as well as, say, The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya.
For those reasons, the grade I have for When Supernatural Battles Became Commonplace is a B-. It’s a fine show, but it doesn’t quite live up to what you want out of it. I’d still recommend it, but not for the reasons I think it would ‘want’ to be recommended.