It’s September, and you know what that means! It’s Back to School time! … er, at least it’s time for going back to school in Anime land (though for the same year) and other media, where schools neither obnoxiously start in August nor have the looming threat of a pandemic modifying their opening plans. In any case, I’ll be looking at some shows with school settings and themes this month. But, it won’t just be any schools: rather, I’d like to take a look at schools for superpowers, fighting, or otherwise protagonist badassery. And while I have a wealth of options, I might as well start with the Walpurgis Academy of Machinart and the show it appears in, Unbreakable Machine-Doll.
Unbreakable Machine-Doll takes place in
a quasi-Victorian (I dare say essentially Steampunk) universe where
rather than humans using magic directly, they channel powers through
automatons that contain spell-circuits granting them both a semblance
of life and the ability to invoke supernatural effects. Machinart,
the skill by which “Puppeteers” do this, is a blend of magic and
science that has seen both military and civilian applications.
Raishin Akabane has traveled far to
attend the Walpurgis Academy of Machinart, possibly the most
prestigious place of learning on the topic, but he’s not there to
study. Instead, he’s enrolled for the chance to hunt down the man
who slaughtered his family, particularly his beloved little sister –
the number one student of the academy, Magnus. Helping him is his
automaton, Yaya, who has a shockingly human appearance, intellect,
and personality. Though his partner is the magnum opus of an
eccentric genius crafter, Raishin himself has trouble, initially
being ranked second-to-last in the whole school thanks to the short
amount of time he’s been training. This wouldn’t be a problem if he
didn’t need to get into a tournament open to the top hundred students
in order to properly face down against his foe. With his poor
assessment, the route remaining open to him is to beat someone who’s
properly invited in a duel, proving his supremacy.
His first mark for this is Charlotte
“Charl” Belew and her automaton, a dragon named Sigmund who has
more in common with Yaya than you might expect (both are “Ban
Dolls”, puppets that incorporate human parts and are not normally
permitted to be made. But Sigmund is very old and Yaya is foreign so
it seems that’s pretty much allowed to slide). Their fight is
interrupted and Sigmund damaged in the process, which causes Raishin
to call it off, unwilling to take a compromised win over what seems
to be a decent person. Instead, he ends up with a different offer to
get a tournament invite: find and defeat the serial killer known as
“Cannibal Candy” who’s been disappearing students and ripping the
hearts out of automatons.
What follows is a mix of mystery and
action as Raishin and Charl work together to stop Cannibal Candy,
only to ultimately discover that the real killer is the Discipline
Committee head who put Raishin up to the hunt, hoping to frame Charl
and have her killed for his crimes. His automaton (which performs
its ‘cannibalism’ since it can use the magics of those it consumes)
is destroyed, Charl’s name cleared, and wouldn’t you know it – in
defeating both the enigmatic Cannibal Candy and one of the top-ranked
students, Raishin has earned himself a ticket to the tournament.
The next arc starts by introducing us
to a new girl, Frey, who is trying to assassinate Raishin. Don’t
take that too hard, though: her attempts are adorably pathetic,
getting herself caught in the “traps” she sets and falling asleep
on his bed rather than making with any stabbing. In all honesty, she
doesn’t seem like she actually means Raishin any harm, and is going
through the motions because she feels somehow obligated. That may
have something to do with the sponsor for her and her standoffish
brother, Loki (who Raishin also gets to know and form something of a
rivalry with), being a shady automaton company called Divine Works.
Her Automaton, after all, seems more effective on that score, and
attacks Raishin at least once despite Frey ordering it not to.
Raishin gets some help from Yaya’s
maker to investigate Divine Works, discovering both there and after
that Frey and Loki (particularly Frey) are human experiments, with
implanted magic circuits to make them stronger. They do not,
however, particularly like their maker/master/parent figure at Divine
Works, who seems to be done with Frey and nearly has her killed
through her own automaton going berserk.
Despite normally being quite at odds
(and, in fact, their relationship remains amusingly vitriolic),
Raishin and Loki team up to take on the boss of Divine Works,
managing to shatter his automaton with the power of teamwork right
before the cavalry arrives to arrest him for human experimentation,
bringing the second arc to a close.
The third and final arc of the anime
is… a little bit harder. I’ll say this now but watching it there
are enough impersonations, look-alikes, illusions, and layers of
blackmail that it’s hard to tell who is who and why they’re doing
what they’re doing some of the time. The main hooks are that a girl
who looks like Charl (revealed to be her younger sister, Henriette)
is attempting suicide, only to be saved from the self-destruction she
seeks by Raishin and Yaya. Meanwhile, Charl seems to have gone
rogue, using Sigmund to attempt an assassination of the school’s
headmaster, destroying the clock tower in the process.
Again, to describe what happens in a
more straightforward manner, Raishin and Henriette are stuck working
together, eventually with some help from Loki, Frey, and even Magnus,
to escape being dropped into caverns beneath the school by Charl’s
second attack. Meanwhile, we learn that Charl’s blackmailer, with
Henriette as the leverage, seems to be doing what they’re going out
of some familial revenge for Cannibal Candy, in an intense web of
noble family politics that either not enough time or way too much
time is spent on. Raishin “kidnaps” Henriette to draw out the
conspiracy, and learns that she blames herself for Charl’s situation
both now in specific (which is why she was trying to kill herself)
and in general (blaming herself for the event that saw Charl’s family
lose its prestige and station).
The ruse is successful, and the arc
reaches its climax with a series of conflicts involving stopping
Charl from going through with assassination and taking on her
blackmailer’s automaton, a butler guy who declares himself to be a
“Machine-Doll”, a legendary type of Automaton that can act
without a puppeteer. Yaya, Raishin, Sigmund, and Charl are able to
defeat him but not take him out, and he flees with the blackmailer,
who was apparently someone other than the person we thought she was
the whole time. Charl is forgiven (her family’s already-frozen
assets being tapped to repair the damage she did) and Raishin’s
conflict with Magnus, who is actually his elder brother, still looms
on the horizon. It seems that all involved have their own secrets
and ulterior motives. But for any of that you’ll have to go to to
the Light Novel series which is…
… For crying out loud. To paraphrase
Loki for a moment, I’m a patient and tolerant person, but there are
three things I can’t stand: people who oppose me, people who order me
around, and an unfinished storyline with promise based on a source
that seems doomed to get no localization.
Now, all of that is the technical plot
of Unbreakable Machine-Doll, but you might notice it feels a little
light for twelve episodes. That’s because it’s not the whole show.
If I had to praise Unbreakable Machine-Doll for one thing, it would
be balance. This is, technically, an Ecchi/Harem sort of show. Each
arc introduces a new girl (aside from Yaya) and maintains the older
ones, who fall roughly into recognizable archetypes (Yandere Yaya,
Tsundere Charl, Deredere Frey, and… Henriette is just the little
sister I guess) and are shown off fairly often as they compete for
the affection of the lead. But like a good, rather than lazy, Harem
show, each girl also gets a lot of development.
Yaya does spend a lot of time being a
comedic Yandere, and when she is she nails the comedy sweet spot
where she’s clearly obsessive to the point of derangement but despite
being repeatedly said to pose a threat to Raishin never feels like
she’s actually a danger to him or her rivals. But all the same,
there are some good scenes with her that serve to develop her
character and her desired relationship with her master. As much as
she tries to undress him in private (or even not-so-private) I do
remember that her conversation with Sigmund about the matter was at
least a little compelling. Charlotte is absolutely a Tsundere, who
can’t admit her feelings, but she does a lot of heavy plot-lifting in
both the first and third arcs and has plentiful issues of her own to
contend with that aren’t just mooning over a boy she met fairly
recently. Frey, as the Deredere type, spends the most time acting
the romantic contender part, but even then she has a persona beyond
her archetype and can get a few laughs from her delivery. All in
all, the Ecchi and Harem elements are there at a level that’s
absolutely an appeal, but they don’t take over the show or drag down
the action and drama.
Speaking of the action and drama,
that’s usually good too. Each arc at least ends with a big puppeteer
fight, and may contain more, and they’re all pretty engaging. Even
if you don’t always know what the spells Raishin shouts for do, the
movement and choreography is solid, and the show does a great job
about putting him and Yaya on the ropes constantly without it feeling
either cheap or like a foregone conclusion that they’re going to pull
out. On the emotional side, all the rivalries and blackmail running
through the show help build strong investment in the outcome of the
conflict. You know what people want (most of the time. As I said
arc 3 can be a little more sketchy) and why they need to or shouldn’t
be allowed to get it. When Raishin fights, it’s not always because
it’s his own life or death on the line, but there’s always an
important reason.
The characters are also strong other than in their harem roles. Charl and Henriette are compelling in different ways, Frey’s a cutie you don’t want to see come to harm, Loki’s an arrogant catchphrase-spewer who makes a good foil for Raishin… even lesser characters like Sigmund, the various staff of the academy, and Yaya’s maker do leave positive impressions. That’s a lot more than I can say for a lot of other shows that try to blend Harem and Ecchi with Action and Drama – things like Omamori Himari or Strike the Blood, to lesser or greater degrees, where the characters have character take a back seat to the romance. They exist fairly well-blended in Unbreakable Machine-Doll.
There’s also the mystery aspects. Each
arc has a complex web of who is manipulating who and why, and two out
of three isn’t bad for it landing well. Some of the turns you can
easily see coming, while others might be genuinely surprising to some
viewers, which puts it in a good place for a show that’s not really a
mystery, but has this significant mystery element.
And then there are the speculative
fiction elements. Unbreakable Machine-Doll is a punk fantasy with a
complicated and different magic system that viewers have to get used
to and navigate, but in my opinion at least it handles the magical
topics with grace. I couldn’t tell you exactly how a Ban Doll is
better, and it seems to vary from Doll to Doll, but I can tell you
why they’re better and why other people in the setting don’t like
that. I couldn’t lecture on the bond between Puppeteer and
Automaton, but I’ve seen enough of it that I feel like I understand
how it works or doesn’t work and what the perks and limitations can
be. There’s not a lot of clunky exposition, and yet it still gets
the ideas across. This also does address more of Yaya’s character.
As a Ban Doll who, despite being an automaton, has this mostly human
body (Somewhere, as my title for the review suggests, between a
cyborg and a form of undead creature like a Frankenstein’s Monster),
Yaya is burdened with human-like thoughts and feelings, but at the
same time she has a master without whom she’s incomplete. Even if
this does give rise to a Yandere personality that’s largely just
played for laughs and the occasional bout of fanservice, there’s a
decent pathos to what she is that’s touched on and leveraged, but not
thrown in our faces.
To an extent, I find I consider Unbreakable Machine-Doll to be something of a hidden gem. For what it is, this “battle school” scenario that’s often a “comfort food” or even “junk food” of anime, it’s remarkably well put together to be compelling and appealing on almost every level. But it is still something of a rough final production. The third arc, as I’ve mentioned, sometimes has some trouble with its storytelling, and when that’s an entire third of the show, it loses some points. Further, there are a number of things that are set up or established, but because this only covers three entries in a sixteen-entry (unless I’m very mistaken) series that was fairly inevitable. It’s not self-contained, and there’s a degree to which I feel like I watched a twelve episode trailer, in how its put together (a problem shared with, say, Gleipnir). On the other hand, there’s still plenty of meat here.
In the end, while Unbreakable
Machine-Doll is a great blend, I feel like it doesn’t quite reach for
excellence. It still sees itself as comfort food for the
anime-watcher, something that gives you a little of everything you
like, and even if it does have a high quality bar in that regard, I
feel like it earns a B+ with little interest in pushing onward to A.
It’s certainly a good show, and one that I hope more people watch to
prove that there’s an interest in the property in the West, which it
absolutely does deserve, but it’s here to entertain you rather than
make you think or feel deeply.