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‘I don’t know what she’s thinking!’

This line taken from a brief flashback of main character Ruko sums up my thoughts on Selector WIXOSS’ writer, Mari Okada. At the surface, she’s made a show about granting wishes through a children’s card game, and if I had to summarize the theme, it’s about reaching your goals through your own power. That said, if you were going to watch this show for tense, tactical, turn-based card play, look somewhere else. You’ll find none of that here.

No wait, the story does have a lot of tension thanks to its music track. While there aren’t many pieces, the music that’s ... there is distinct, ranging from loud and bombastic battle themes, to slower, incomprehensible messes of static that would be disturbing even without the story to accentuate it. It also has a solid grasp on the art of silence. From time to time, even the more ambient tracks are absent entirely and the show lets the story speak for itself; the scene in the second season—which I’ll call Spread—where Ruko, Yuzuki, and Hitoe are having a heart to heart in a restaurant is especially powerful for it.

Unfortunately, the show doesn’t always use its soundtrack to the best of its ability at some really crucial moments. While it’s fine in the battle scenes and the build-up leading up to them, some of the moments after the fact don’t work as the music is overplayed. Of course, this overplaying wouldn’t be noticeable if the suspension of disbelief were kept, but this is where the show starts to fall apart. And really, there’s deeper problems at work than mistimed music.

One of the major problems—at least with the first season, which I’ll call Infected—is Tama. She’s childlike, speaks in the third-person, suffixes nearly all of her dialog with ‘BATTLE!’, then turns around in her mood and priorities in one episode. While there is some attempt to show her changing, it’s already halfway through Infected. With a character like this who’s going to be lacking inner thoughts, showing the change gradually is crucial. While I would give her a pass because shocking events can change someone, it would really be a disservice to the characters who are handled correctly.

And despite my initial doubts, main lead Ruko is surprisingly one of those characters. At first, there’s really nothing to her and the story can meander because of it. But, this is intentional, as the way Infected picks up steam reflects the way Ruko slowly finds her purpose. And this happens twice. While her newer reason for playing WIXOSS—the titular card game—is typical ‘save the world’ fare, her first reason touches on something rather disturbing, that might have actually explained why she is the way she is at the start of Infected. Sadly, the story doesn’t elaborate on this. Still, ‘missed opportunity’ isn’t the same as ‘bad.’

But for Yuzuki, ‘missed opportunity’ is the same as ‘bad.’ See, she romantically loves her younger twin brother Kazuki. But, she’s afraid of what the stigma surrounding incest would do, if she were straightforward with her feelings. Thus she partakes in WIXOSS to make her love come true. Yuzuki herself, forbidden love angst aside, is personable, clearing the air with her friends when she needs to, and plays the voice of reason especially in the later parts of Infected and most of Spread. Even then, the story remembers she’s still a teenage girl, bringing in harmless banter with Ruko and Hitoe from time to time. Yuzuki is nothing if not believable.

As for Hitoe, she plays WIXOSS because she wishes for friends, but before her battles can really get going, she hits it off anyway with Ruko and Yuzuki. Unfortunately, she develops almost as fast as Tama, going from meek to strong (relatively) without much in-between; her angsting before her rapid rise in resolve doesn’t count. Shaky development aside, though, it’s that moment where she becomes stronger that really marks the birth of her fire-forged friendship in Infected, with Ruko and Yuzuki, that burns well into Spread. And it needs to, considering what the three friends learn about WIXOSS.

WIXOSS itself is a card game, but there are special cards called LRIGs—Tama being one of them—that can talk with girls. These girls are called Selectors, and they fight each other to become the Eternal Girl. The Eternal Girl gets her wish. However, if a Selector loses three times, she loses her right to the wish. But, there’s more to the Selector battles than meets the eye, and I’m not talking about the ill-defined game mechanics; the battles themselves aren’t meant to be taken literally. They’re simply vehicles to move the story.

Because more than a dark interpretation of the card game genre, Selector WIXOSS is a deconstruction of the power of wishes themselves. If you reached your goal without the normal work needed to get there, would you truly have achieved it? Can you set your mind free to do what you believe to be impossible? Through careful story development, the show asks these questions not with words but through its characters’ actions. It makes most of them—at least the main characters—compelling enough to warrant the musing, rather than their personalities bending to drive a question home.

Speaking of the main characters, while Ruko, Yuzuki, and Hitoe aren’t spectacular individually, together their fire-forged friendship creates a bond that I can only describe as authentic. They’ll banter about pointless things like ice cream, they’ll support each other through and through as Hitoe will attest, but they’re also willing to reign each other in when one of them gets ahead of themselves, as Ruko and Yuzuki learn. The later parts of Infected and most of Spread spend its time around this trio, and the story is all the better for it.

Then we get to the side characters, who are anywhere from well-written like Fumio to completely stupid like Akira. Now, Akira is a great villain in Infected because she reflects pettiness and shallowness so well, it’s when Spread tries to make her character deeper that it ends up sinking her. There’s also the hyperactive Chiyori, whose quieter side needed to show up more to make her development believable. Introduced late in Infected is Mayu, whose development in Spread is last-minute despite her importance and screentime. And then Ulith, who replaces Iona as one of the forces to fear during Spread.

Iona herself is a single-minded side character in Infected, but develops as she joins the main cast during Spread. Her purpose in battling can be summed up as self-satisfaction, but she slowly finds another reason to fight. As she spends time with Ruko and her friends, her mentality is steadily less selfish, her person more approachable, and her strength even greater (literally and figuratively). And she defrosts at nothing but a believable pace, going from temptress to motivator to redeemed over the course of Spread. If Tama is a major reason Infected is held back, then Iona is a major reason Spread is that much better. She’s by far Selector WIXOSS’ best character.

In addition, Iona also introduces a new conflict of sorts for Ruko. While Tama during Infected reflects how strong Ruko can be when things are going her way, Iona during Spread mirrors how Ruko learns to cope when things are not in her favor. It’s a much needed dimension to a character who was otherwise too strong to consistently create tension around. Another problem is how the story struggles for shock value subtlety. At times the foreshadowing toward certain events is barely noticeable until after the fact (the opening scene in Infected), and at others it’s literally a character saying nothing will go wrong (and then something does).

This is what I mean when I say I don’t know what the series’ writer, Mari Okada, is thinking. The drastic quality differences between the characters make it obvious when Okada puts a lot of care into the work, and when she’s merely moving the story. Some parts of Spread are hard to care for as they focus heavily on Ruko and Tama’s friendship, and the latter lacks development. The foreshadowing itself is also too obvious at many points. Now, a sense of inevitability can work, but the overall cast would have to be at least solid to make the obvious event a truly dreadful experience. But solid the cast is not.

Not helping matters are the visuals. Not just how drab the coloring is despite the colorful LRIG designs, but from the visual direction itself. While I’m not expecting the most stunning choreography during turn-based battles, I do expect to see some creativity with the effects. Unfortunately, for all the cards the Selectors have, most of them amount to beams and barriers only distinguished by color. And no, the visuals themselves don’t have to be drab to match the story’s mood; look at how vibrant Death Note and Texhnolyze are despite the limited color palette.

Despite my rather negative tone, though, the visuals aren’t bad. They’re just severely lacking. And if nothing else, the new character design for Tama during Spread at one point, combined with Misaki Kuno’s voice work, serves to make for a legitimately terrifying character. And speaking of voicework, special mention also goes to Ayane Sakura (Yuzuki) and Asami Seto (Iona), as they display a lot of range within the voice of the same character. Chinatsu Akasaki also really shines as Akira, seamlessly shifting voices to very disturbing effect.

It’s just a shame Selector WIXOSS isn’t as seamless as Akasaki’s voice work. Heading into this show I expected character exploration and a dark atmosphere. What I didn’t expect were dropped story threads and undeveloped or rushed characters, leaving the story’s mood to feel forced at points. It certainly made for a unique experience, but that’s not necessarily a good thing. Still, it mostly plays its cards correctly despite the mess caused by the shuffle, and that’s all I can ever wish for.

I recently had the pleasure of rewatching Sasami-san@Ganbaranai, and I think my view on this show is now more balanced than it used to be. I loved every episode save for the last three, and wanted to see if I would feel the same way again. Was Sasami-san@Ganbaranai as good as I thought it was? Read on to find out.

Now, I noticed this the first time I watched it, and it’s worth pointing out: the show isn’t deep. Though the story uses a lot of lore from Japanese mythos, it’s just a backdrop and reason for everything that happens in the show. Maybe it takes ... a few liberties with its source, and maybe it’ll annoy Japanese mythos junkies, but that would be missing the show’s true focus: a simple story about Sasami the shut-in as she’s watched by the three Yagami sisters—Tsurugi, Kagami, and Tama—to stop her God-like power from making mass chaos in the world. With entertaining results.

Cities will turn to chocolate, video games will come to life, clones will run loose, vengeful spirits will arise, and that’s only the problems Sasami makes, and not the chaos caused by the people protecting her and the people who want to use her.

But no matter how insane the story gets, it never break its own rules. If a weapon is described as being defensive, the way it shatters another weapon is very clever. If God-like power is useless against one character but strong against three others, it’s because that one character has anti-God abilities. If a character’s power is inconsistent, it’s from a lack of experience using it. Save for one line of dialog, the consistency in the setting’s in-universe rules is perfect; quite a feat considering how easily an insane show like this can break them.

The story’s progress is solid in the first nine episodes thanks to its decent characters. Sasami doesn’t have much in the way of personality, but her story of responsibility VS freedom is handled well. The reasons for her being a shut-in make sense when thinking about her back story, though it can be hard to catch from the show’s insanity. On the other hand, her bad friend-making skills make sense since she’s a shut-in, though her friendship with Kagami and a later character is rushed.

Kagami herself starts as the show’s resident quiet girl, but soon shows a lot of emotion, smiling and snarking and showing embarrassment this way and that. Unfortunately, the rushed friendship with Sasami can make Kagami hard to take seriously, especially in the show’s last three episodes where Kagami’s back story is explained a bit more, but that back story never comes to play in full force. On the other hand, what she deals with in her spotlight episode is a sign of the story’s growing seriousness.

But the story’s serious side starts with Tsurugi. She starts as the pervert but becomes the protector, the mentor of sorts to Sasami, and the Yagami Sister’s de-facto leader. She doesn’t have much in the way of development, but her role in the story doesn’t need it. It just needs personality. And it’s a personality that’s believably serious when it shows itself for the first time in an early episode, considering who Tsurugi is. Starting with her serious side, the show moves nicely from light-hearted to serious in the first several episodes, even as the show’s insanity rises.

That said, the last sister, Tama, causes two bad scenes in the show. The first scene being after the show gets really serious, where she starts talking about her bond with Tsurugi, Kagami, and Sasami, except none of what she says makes any sense at all, because the show never shows the crucial part of what she’s talking about. The second scene is in the climax of the first several episodes, where a chance to develop her character meaningfully is wasted for humor. Otherwise, she’s little more than a childlike plot device.

Despite that, the show moves well in the first nine episodes, shaky character development aside, though after the first several episodes there are two things about the story that make no sense; no, the show doesn’t break its own in-universe rules, but it involves Sasami, Tsurugi, and a new character.

The first problem is the new character, and no, this isn’t the one Sasami befriends. Anyway, this new character has a big role in the story, a believable relationship with Sasami, and quite a bit of personality. This is all well and good, but her behavior after the first several episodes is such a big change from what she was before, it’s jarring; Tsurugi hints to the reason for this, but that’s all it is. A hint.

The second problem is the kind of hot potato game Sasami, Tsurugi, and the new character have. At one point it looks like one character will carry it, then it looks like another character will carry it until the other character is ready to take it, then it turns out it’s this character who carries it. Confused yet? So am I. But these two story problems are nothing compared to the mess of the last three episodes, and no, the show still doesn’t break its own rules and it never does.

The problem with the last three episodes is it makes no sense, even for a show as insane as this. To explain, it’s a world domination plot by a new character—the one who Sasami befriends—and her reason for this plot makes no sense. Second, this character knows the second story problem, so it makes even less sense for her to bring in Sasami and the Yagami Sisters. The last three episodes are a mess, but at least the insanity continues to rise with the music and visuals to carry it.

The music would be better if I counted the opening song, Alteration, but I’m not. The in-show music isn’t anything that can stand on its own, but it does deserve credit for its variety. It uses—or at least, sounds like it uses—the flute, piano, fast techno, epic orchestra, guitar, game show, elevator, blues, suspense chords, jazz, uplifting; it throws everything at the show. And while it doesn’t have a unique identity, the chaotic music lends itself to the show’s insanity, though not at as well as the visuals.

The character designs are brightly colored and their faces are expressive, especially with Tsurugi and Kagami. The abstract backgrounds, such as Sasami’s room, stand out because of how scarce they are compared to the normal backgrounds. Strangely enough, most of the show’s chaos happens in the normal backgrounds, making the well-animated chaos stand out even more. The music and visuals carry the insanity, which I know is a word I’ve used a thousand times here, but there’s something crucial about it I need to mention.

While the show’s insanity is one of its main strengths, it can also be one of its flaws. To explain, it can be hard to look past the show’s chaos to find any substance, and the substance is a good if flawed story, but that might not be enough for some people. To put it another way, watching this show makes people choose between two options: finding a good if flawed story, or letting themselves be whisked away by the show’s insanity.

Of those two options, I first watched this show with the second choice. I remember being wowed by all of the chaos, and called the story and character development unlike nothing I’ve ever seen. But as I might have pointed out, rewatching it made me see it wasn’t as good as I thought it was. That said, I will say with all my heart that I still personally LOVE Sasami-san@Ganbaranai, but this show is definitely a few motivations short of being @the top.