Here we are, technically one week into June, and I’m doing one last Magical Girl review to put something of a capstone on the month. The show in question is not a great classic, nor is it a landmark in the evolution of the genre. Rather, it is by its very existence a fascinating look at what has developed and how in terms of the Magical Girl genre. The show is, if the title was not a sufficient hint, Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka.
The basic pitch of Spec-Ops is that
years ago, monsters known as the Disas (which look like murderous
pastel plushies from hell for the most part) invaded Earth, and were
only able to be combatted by Magical Girls, soldiers empowered to do
just that by an alliance with a more benevolent spirit world. Of all
the Magical Girls that went into the final battle against the Disas,
only five survived. Now the world is recovering from its magical
war, though there are ways in which the tooth paste can’t be put back
into the tube, so to speak.
One of those five is the titular Asuka,
who now wants nothing more than a peaceful life, grappling as she
does with some pretty serious PTSD from her experiences in the war.
Neither the government nor circumstances are inclined to let her
vanish, however, and she’s soon pulled into a new battlefield,
defending her friends and helping teach humanity to fight back
against magical threats.
If this sounds like a dynamite delve
into new territory for the Magical Girl genre, I regret to inform you
that Spec-Ops Asuka is first and foremost an exploitation show.
What is Exploitation media? Broadly
put, an exploitation piece is something that reaches for the lowest
common denominator in order to be a success. Typically low on budget
and light on effort, Exploitation films (or in this case, shows) draw
in viewers by presenting something that’s immediately enticing even
if it doesn’t have any meat to it. In the case of Spec-Ops Asuka, I
refer to the show as “Exploitation” rather than any more specific
label because it reaches for not one, but two of the perennial
Exploitation picks – heavy gore and heavy fanservice. And, in a
rather troubling turn, the two are often blended here. If you don’t
want to see scenes of pretty, usually busty girls being gruesomely
tortured with brutal, realistic, gory damage at times, you need to
get out and find another show. Because Spec-Ops Asuka is ready to
serve up a whole lot of that.
Now, keep in mind that being an
Exploitation piece doesn’t automatically mean being bad, and some
incredible films are sometimes labeled as one variety or another of
Exploitation. However, in this particular case, it does mean that I
will be grading Spec-Ops Asuka on a Pass-Fail scale, rather than with
a letter grade. My reasoning is this: this is a show that by its
very nature is likely to utterly repulse a lot of potential viewers.
And, I contend, Spec-Ops Asuka is comfortable with that. So, if I
were to analyze it as what it is, against others of its kind, and
give it a high rating, that would be misleading because it wouldn’t
have the kind of appeal that’s typical of high scores. On the other
hand, if I fully accounted for the possibility of viewers being
turned away by the show’s very nature and gave it a terrible grade
just for that, it wouldn’t be entirely honest because it would ignore
anything the show might do right. Instead, Spec-Ops Asuka will Pass
if it can sustain interest and build something worthwhile and Fail if
the exploitation of fanservice and violence is all it’s capable of.
That said, let us dig in properly.
We start off with the cliché you’ve
seen in every action movie where the veteran ace initially refuses to
“come back” for whatever they’re needed for, only to be dragged
in anyway. In Asuka’s case, she never wants to take up fighting
again if she can avoid it, and even starts to attend normal school.
There, she makes friends with her classmates Nozomi and Sayako, who
will serve as the helpless waifs that the plot can put in danger in
order to motivate Asuka. Sure enough, they soon get caught in the
crossfire of some nasty terrorist activity, and only Asuka
transforming and taking up her knife again can save them from certain
death.
After that, we meet War Nurse (aka
Kurumi), one of the other Magical Girls who was a compatriot of Asuka
back in the day. She’s working with the authorities, and Asuka ends
up helping when she’s locked in combat with a Disas weapon (giant,
killer, bloody-fanged teddy bear).
War Nurse is… disturbed and
disturbing. Throughout this show, I give one bit of credit that
Asuka’s PTSD is handled with grace and care, like someone actually
paid attention in psychology class and learned what the survivor’s
guilt and lingering anxiety from an exceptionally savage conflict
hitting an unready mind might look like. It’s also not called out
overmuch or really abused; rather, there’s an understanding in a lot
of scenes that it’s hard for her to “get back in the saddle”, so
to speak, even if she ultimately does it.
War Nurse is a lot more of what you’d
expect from a show like Spec-Ops Asuka. Theoretically, she’s the way
she is because she’s coping badly with a different outlook on the
same experiences Asuka went through, but she’s not handled with any
of the grace or reality that Asuka was. Instead she’s twisted and
insane in exactly the ways that the writers think will have you
coming back for more: She’s Yandere for Asuka, her take on their
“friendship” marked with an abiding obsession that she doesn’t
let Asuka see and that includes a gleefully unhealthy interest in
humiliation and torture when she gets her hands on an acceptable
victim. The small mercy, I suppose, is that she is clearly
intentionally creepy, another facet of and a frequent server of the
show’s double-helping of Exploitation.
After what largely amounts to a random
encounter to pull in War Nurse, we deal with some of the B-teams
(including a cop and an American Magical Girl) getting clues about
blah, blah, something terrible is coming, and now we get to see some
weird old terrorists either tortured brutally or in one case,
squashed into a cube, which at least gets a few points for how
creatively horrific it is. Some terrorists, though, are neither
cubed nor captured, and kidnap the cop’s daughter… who happens to
be Asuka’s friend, Nozomi.
Not only would this probably have
pulled Asuka in to begin with, but the police department also wants
to let her die because they might get more money to deal with that
sweet martyr PR. Asuka’s government handler lets her know and sure
enough she and War Nurse are off to attempt to save the day, facing
down against some magic-empowered Russian mobsters and a criminal
Magical Girl with Disas minions. The show indulges its torture
fetish some, as well as its interest in bloody combat, but a late
arrival by the squad of normals being trained to take this kind of
nonsense on finishes saving the day, at least once War Nurse wipes
the memories of the otherwise utterly broken Nozomi so that she can
go on living. After this mess, Asuka finally agrees to join up
formally and help fight magical crime.
After that, we have a brief spacer
before launching into the finale arc. During the spacer we find more
horrifically magically killed folks, and a message left behind by the
malefactor: the motto held by the “Magical Five” who defeated the
Disas, which shouldn’t have much significance to a random criminal.
Of course, mask or no, the show isn’t particularly secretive about
the leader of the enemies being the original leader of that squad,
who supposedly died during the mission and passed the mantle of
leadership to Asuka. How did she survive? Why is she evil now?
What does she really want? None of that is ever addressed. We also
have Asuka sortie with her new squad, and fight a minor magical girl
working with the Russian mafia who we can see stripped and tortured
after she gets captured. That done, we move on to the plot that
takes up most of the rest of the show.
It actually starts with a completely
different set of characters: a crippled, abused girl named Chisato,
whose horrid guardians are killed by a minion of the villians, named
Giess, who I can best describe as a demonic Alphonse Elric:
monstrously hulking, soft-spoken, and in this case ruthless and
vicious. Giess tells Chisato about his own past, as a Somali child
soldier the villains saved and gave a new body. He offers her a
similar deal; she can have a home with the Babel Brigade (the
villains) and a new prosthetic leg if she’ll become a Magical Girl
and fight for them. Chisato accepts, and becomes the magical girl
Whiplash, led into a world of brutality by a need for belonging and a
thirst for revenge.
The material with Chisato is, oddly
enough, some of the best stuff in the show. Ultimately, she’s little
more than a minion, but a lot of time is given to her background and
psychology, painting her as a more complete person than pretty much
any other character aside from Asuka herself. In some ways, this is
a negative commentary on the other characters like War Nurse, Asuka’s
normal friends, and the other members of the Magical Five (who we do
meet in their entirety), but on the other side I do think that
Chisato could hold her own in an overall stronger cast.
I think a good part of why Chisato’s
portrayal is so oddly competent is that it plays to the strengths (or
interests, if you feel like “strengths” is giving too much
credit) of the show. That is to say, she’s a pretty girl who’s often
in horrific pain (both maimed by a car accident that killed her
mother and abused by her alcoholic father) and the victim of the
brutal underbelly of the world driven by dark emotions.
But if it was just dark for the sake of being dark, neither Chisato’s portrayal, nor Spec-Ops Asuka, would work. When I reviewed Elfen Lied I mentioned how the world and people in that show were just too miserable and hateful for the universe portrayed to even feel real. Spec-Ops Asuka doesn’t have the same problem. The people who do a lot of the brutalizing are explicitly people of exceptional circumstances: Hardened criminals, ideological terrorists, and government agents incentivized to get the job done first and do anything cleanly or pleasantly a distant second if ever. Chisato’s story is pretty much the only one about normal people being awful, and they’re awful in a way that’s all too relatable. You’ve probably seen someone like Chisato’s father (a physically and sexually abusive alcoholic) or the teens who hit her and her mom (and got off light) on the nightly news, so there’s a clear understanding that they’re a kind of terrible that can exist in the world as we understand it, and that they’re not necessarily representative of general population, unlike the children in Elfen Lied.
There’s also a purpose to subjecting
Chisato to all this darkness: she becomes a terrorist villain
herself. So there’s a question that the show tries to resolve, which
is just how a fairly normal girl could become a Magical Girl fighting
for the Babel Brigade. Because we see how she was brutalized and
marginalized, we understand the power of what’s being offered to her.
So, when Giess offers her a final test (or perhaps reward), killing
the people responsible for her crippling and life-destroying accident
and she butchers them, it doesn’t feel like it’s pointless insanity.
We know how much that incident meant to her, and can possibly even
empathize with her desire for bloody vengeance. And coming out of
it, we know she’s now taken human lives, so we don’t doubt that
she’ll do it again for her new cause.
Sometimes, a show or even a sequence
will go for something “Edgy”. And all too often, it falls flat
on its face doing so. Spec-Ops Asuka falls flat on its face several
times with the War Nurse torture scenes and people getting crushed
into cubes feeling more weirdly parodical than the dead serious
they’re probably supposed to be, along with several other little
touches of edge. But Chisato’s arc is not one of those times, so
credit where it’s due.
The conflict that brings Asuka and
Chisato together is a trade summit between Earth and the Spirit
World. Asuka, War Nurse, their squad, and other members of the
Magical Five are tasked with defending the conference, while Giess,
Chisato, and their disposable Disas minions are on the assault.
Meanwhile, Asuka’s friends, enjoying a vacation in the nearby city,
are caught in the crossfire of the Babel Brigade’s diversionary force
and have to do their best to survive without Asuka.
What follows is mostly a three-episode
action sequence Giess and Chisato bust through layer after layer of
defenses, seemingly endless waves of Disas monsters assail the town,
and our heroes fight for their lives.
The focus of the defense changes from
the conference (which hadn’t started when the shots are fired) to a
Spirit World VIP, and finally to the real objective, the mysterious
magical weapon said VIP was bringing. The Babel Brigade manages to
make off with the latter, though Giess is cut down by Asuka and, as
he lays dying, tells a defeated Chisato to live on, revealing that
the Babel Brigade arranged the accident that started her fall in
order to get her massive potential on their side. Apparently Giess
is more loyal to her than to his bosses when he’s got nothing left to
lose? I’m kind of torn on that reveal because it cheapens Chisato’s
suffering, but also establishes better the range and reach of the
Babel Brigade’s machinations.
Not that those machinations really
matter. Less one secret magic weapon the day is pretty much saved,
and the last episode is nothing but post-script, or a teaser for the
story continuing in the Manga. Asuka and her friends get to cool
down some, Chisato and the Russian Mob magical girl have been
converted to join the party (implied to be in large part courtesy of
War Nurse breaking their minds behind the scenes). The other Magical
Five survivors might be more screwed in the head than we thought. A
proper investigation of the Babel Brigade begins, while its leader is
in no hurry because she’d like to see the Magical Girls get stronger
before squashing them. Sadly we don’t get to see that bite her in
the ass like it always does, because the show’s over. It could have
been over an episode earlier and we would have lost nothing of value.
So, in the end, how does Magical Girl
Spec-Ops Asuka hold up?
Though somewhat conflicted, I do think
I award it a Pass on the Pass-Fail scale. It’s by no means a good
show; the exploitation is over the top and uncomfortable and most of
the show is spent in combat or torture. But there is enough meat –
just enough – to hold it together. Asuka is a good character with
a good arc, and we even get to see some good downtime scenes from
her. The combat, for the most part, is an interestingly realistic
take; The Magic and Powers are still as high flying as ever, but the
military tactics are fairly legitimate. Most of the time media won’t
bother with cover, burst fire, and so on but Spec-Ops actually does,
which gives it a somewhat different feel, I believe in a good way.
And Chisato is a surprisingly well-handled bit of edginess with both
pathos and humanity. I didn’t exactly like it the whole way through,
but I don’t think it was a legitimately terrible show, so it squeaks
by.
Aside from that ranking, though, I did
say at the start that the very existence of Magical Girl Spec-Ops
Asuka was interesting. Here’s what I contend regarding that: Magical
Girl Spec-Ops Asuka represents the potential of an evolution of the
themes introduced and popularized by Madoka into new territory.
While the execution in Spec-Ops is lacking, preventing it from being
‘the next thing’ in any sense, there are cores of good ideas here
that would represent a possible route forward for one branch of the
Magical Girl tree. I’d like to see a show deal seriously with the
psychology not of children in the moment, but young adults or adults
who had to go through the harrowing experience that the darker side
of the Magical Girl genre has become. I welcome the fact that the
Magical Girls in Spec-Ops, in addition to monsters and the like, have
to deal with thugs and organized crime. It made me think that I’d
like to actually see a take on the Magical Girl genre that’s
something like the take of Watchmen (or even its child-friendly
imitator, The Incredibles) on western Super Heroes. Magical Girl
Spec-Ops Asuka isn’t it, but it is proof of concept.
The other kind of fascinating point is that Spec-Ops exists in the same genre canon as Cardcaptor Sakura. From its origins, the Magical Girl genre has grown a broad tree that accommodates a lot of angles and versions, even within what would be, essentially, the core of the genre. I mentioned in my Madoka review that there had been darker, adult-oriented Magical Girl shows long before, but now there’s an unbroken thread that connects the lighter and darker interpretations.
You can question, sometimes, what
counts as a Magical Girl show. For instance, is Little Witch
Academia a Magical Girl show? Is RWBY a Magical Girl show,
especially when it’s American-made? But there’s no question that
Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka is, it takes enough cues from the heart
of the genre and follows in the footsteps of important predecessors.
It’s far from the only sort of Magical Girl show out there; Pretty
Cure, a classical-style Magical Girl franchise that dates way back,
is still going strong. Cardcaptor Sakura released a new season,
Clear Card, in 2018. And there are other offerings besides that are
just as cute and bright on the inside as they appear to be on the
outside.
And, really, I’m happy to see it. The
Magical Girl genre is one with a lot of great promise, possessing a
long tradition of both fantastic wonder and emotional drama, so I
welcome the fact that, in its current state, it has the range to
cover a variety of tones and demographics. Even if I don’t love
Spec-Ops Asuka, it doesn’t entirely fail to live up to that legacy
and potential, seeing as its strongest parts are when it follows the
psychology and troubles of its lead character and how magic has for
better or worse affected her life. And I’m looking forward to what
else the Magical Girl genre can bring in the future.