Chizuko is spending the week with her Grandpa. Mom is busy with work stuff, so it’s off to small-town life near the Sea of Japan for the glum middle schooler. She’s a polite kid though, not wanting Grandpa to feel bad when he too needs to jet off, leaving her on her lonesome at the mall. Sigh. Life is pretty dull no matter where you are, after all, so it doesn’t really matter. But as the mopey pre-teen nears home that evening, something fantastical happens: a cosmic battle between good and evil plays out right there in front of her! Magical girl Berry Blossom arrives just in time to…well, the bridge etc gets destroyed, so she doesn’t quite save the day…but maybe she prevents further damage? It’s not clear. Anyhow, Chizuko has found her purpose in life and it is to be a magical girl’s biggest fangirl. Grandpa’s fine with facilitating her dreams and agrees she can move in with him. Let the obsessing begin! But wait, why does she keep bumping into the evil mastermind Kuroma every time she ventures out? Why is he so keen to recruit her for his evil organization (and get hit by Berry Blossom)?! And why is he suddenly eating dinner at Grandpa’s house?!?! Chizuko must stay strong in the face of the temptation to take him up on an easy way to get noticed by her oshi (and see her suffering in battle). Can she resist the lure of evil???
We get a double-episode premiere with this one, folks, and twice the time still leaves me with just as many questions about the nature of this mahou shoujo series as I had at the end of episode one. That is, how near the knuckle is this one going to get? There are clear hints that Kuroma is a masochist and Chizuko, a sadist, and that Berry is the focus of their, um, proclivities. But at the same time, the character designs, costuming, and transformation sequence do not pander at all to fanservice—surprisingly so, compared with the norms of the genre—so maybe those hints won’t come to much? It’s happened before that series start out a little ”edgy” in that way and then mellow out pretty quickly into something wholesome. (Dangers of the Heart; ‘Tis Time for Torture, Princess…) And certainly, the dynamic between Chizuko and Kuroma, which dominates by the second episode, is more like annoyed/annoying siblings with some pretty humorous quips from Chizuko—although Kuroma is an adult… In some ways, then, this series is laying bare some of the problematic undercurrents that have plagued mahou shoujo as a genre for decades, but it’s unclear whether it’s doing so to critique or embrace them. I’ll admit, I don’t know what to think. On the plus side, Chizuko in otaku mode is entertainingly expressive and I appreciate how oblivious and perfunctory she is when focussed on her fandom. Kuroma is not terribly engaging, and Berry is almost absent, though we get a hint that she struggles with fear. The animation is pretty run-of-the-mill, and the eye designs, rather distracting, but the OP has a few good moments, and the quality improves in the second episode. This is a first outing by new studio Voil, and all in all, it’s an odd one. I’ll probably give it one more episode to clarify how major a thread those undertones are going to be and give Berry a chance to become an actual character, but if it’s still as wooly as it is now after that third episode, I’m out.
Acro Trip is streaming on Crunchyroll.
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Hmm, the character eye designs are a little, um. . . unique. I was thinking of skipping this one because it seemed a lot like other fangirl anime that were a bit too fanservicey for me, but after reading your post I think I might give this one a try.
The eyes are certainly distinctive! 😅 Yeah, the fanservice element is strong in subtext, but not so much in imagery, if you see what I mean. It could go either way!