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youareinacomawakeup · 1 year

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Hey, you should watch Kyo Kara Maoh, and here’s why:

I feel like, when I try to get people into Kyo Kara Maoh, all I ever say about it is “You know how there’s this thing in shounen anime where there’s always some rival character that makes you wonder if he’s kinda gay for the protagonist? Yeah, in this one, it’s canon, and blatant about it. It doesn’t make you wonder for a second. It’s just upfront about it and you can watch him being gay on main the whole time.”

But like, that’s not the only reason I like the anime. Far from it. It’s just what I think is most likely to draw a new fan in. But it really is just a solid story with or without that.

It’s an isekai--and I know, I know, isekai are a dime a dozen now, but at the time this came out the only thing I really had to compare it to was Chronicles of Narnia--about a guy who goes back and forth between our world and a fantasy world where magic exists.

And he’s your typical plucky shounen protagonist, energetic and kind and willing to make friends with absolutely anyone. You know the type. Not really covering any new ground there. But unlike One Piece or Naruto or, I don’t know, Black Clover, he has no interest in becoming the best of the best. He kind of just wants to go home and be a kid and play baseball.

But the thing is, he’s king of this world by divine right. He was chosen to become king before he was born and he’s just been left to incubate in our world until he was older. His whole family has always known this, though he doesn’t find out until he’s magically pulled into the world and it’s sprung on him right away. And he wants nothing to do with it at first. It’s not something he has to do, either. He’s given the option of turning down the position and going home.

But.

There’s been this cold war going on between magic-users (”Mazoku” or “Demons” though the use of “demon” is more of a reclaimed slur than anything literal) and non-magic-users (humans). The real bloodshed has been put on hold for a while, but there’s a real threat of that cold war turning hot at any second. There are laws against humans and Mazoku being in romantic relationships, their mixed children face severe prejudice both from the people and institutionally, for instance being shoved into ghettos and left to starve, and tensions are high. And the protagonist realizes quickly that these people have been living this way for so long that peace is not going to happen naturally. They need someone with fresh eyes who can see that peace is possible. And that someone needs to be in a position of power to do something about it.

So the protagonist accepts the job. Not because he wants to--he HATES it; there are so many scenes of him complaining about all the paperwork and the struggles of trying to learn the cultural norms and mores of surrounding nations so he doesn’t fuck something up in his position of power and accidentally start the war he’s trying to prevent just by unintentionally insulting another nation’s leader or something--but because he feels responsible. He has to do something to bring peace to this land because he might be the only person who has both the power and the good intentions to do so. Hell, the MacGuffin of the series is the protagonist trying to steal four magical nukes from other countries so he can seal them away where they can’t be used. (They’re just wooden boxes, nothing impressive about their appearance. Not romanticized at all. They’re as boring and dangerous as war.)

And that’s...basically the series. Kid gets sucked into a fantasy world and becomes a king because he actually has a political agenda to make the world a better place and he saves the world with the help of a found family of nobles who are fondly exasperated by his incessant pacifism because they don’t think it’s reasonable, until he gradually and sincerely starts to change their mind and they all reevaluate their own prejudices. (And the prejudice reevaluation is really subtle, too. They don’t have big awakening moments like, “Wow, I’m not racist against half-humans anymore!” They just...slowly get better and bit by bit see the world the way the protagonist does.)

Other little details you might want to know are:

The protagonist has a Yu-Gi-Oh-esque alter ego. (The anime is from the mid-2000s, after all.) The protagonist himself isn’t super skilled in magic, despite having the ability to use it, and it’s...left kind of vague, but it seems like the magic itself takes over his body from time to time. But it’s not as helpful as that trope usually makes it. His alter ego is basically a big self-destruct button. It’s just an eruption of power that leaves the protagonist unconscious nearly every time. The typical result is that he wakes up a day later with his head in the gay rival’s lap and the two of them in a cell because, guess what, passing out on a battlefield isn’t super convenient. The alter ego is treated a bit like training wheels the protagonist needs to grow out of, and it’s extremely cathartic when the final conflict of the series is solved without the alter ego. Not because the protagonist can use strong enough magic that he doesn’t need to lose control to get the same result, but because the solution is not to use magic at all. To put his money where his mouth is and show himself as the pacifist leader he spends the whole show trying to be.

The protagonist is the reincarnation of someone who died in the war, a woman who overexerted herself trying to heal the injured. Unlike the alter ego, the protagonist’s connection to this woman is treated as a strength rather than a weakness. She, like the protagonist, wanted peace, but unlike the protagonist, she wasn’t the king and lacked the power to achieve that peace. Her gentle and kind heart shines through in the protagonist’s nature and actions, and those around him who knew her, and who know that he is her next life, can’t help but see how little she’s changed from one life to the next. All the features the protagonist inherited from her, that were treated as feminine, are his biggest strengths. This shounen anime is so far from toxic masculinity and it’s beautiful.

To be entirely transparent, this is an older anime, and as such, there are some problematic tropes that were common around that period. For instance, “Hahah an adult is creeping on a teenager, that’s funnie.”

I’m not the biggest fan of that, either, don’t worry. I acknowledge this as a flaw in the show. But if Master Roshi and Shigure could get away with it while DBZ and Fruits Basket are still beloved series, I’m willing to roll my eyes and overlook Gunter and Cheri as well.

And another thing I feel I should be transparent about is that the first half of the first season A) Is devoted to fleshing out the characters and the world, and B) Doesn’t have the best animation quality. What that means is that you’re going to have to sit through some wonky drawings and not a whole lot of plot for the first twenty episodes or so. But there’s a point--I won’t get into spoilers, but the shift is VERY obvious--where the plot really kicks into gear halfway through the first season. The animation quality starts to skyrocket at around the same time, and the entirety of the second season is absolutely BEAUTIFUL.

Also one of the supporting characters is this beautifully tragic character who is slow to trust the protagonist because he’s half-human and he’s never had a reason to believe in a leader before. It’s treated not as a thing that character needs to get over, but as a completely reasonable doubt, and the protagonist understands that. He actually gives that character quite a bit of power--basically the keys to a very powerful weapon--and tells him, more or less, that if they ever need that weapon, it’s up to him to decide if they get to use it. Like the equivalent of giving a post-WW2 Japanese refugee the full power to veto the use of hydrogen bombs, and I love that. ...This character, who is very serious and very cool, is also a drag queen. This removes nothing from how cool he is. He’s still an utterly sincere character, because this show is cool as fuck.

Last thing: What I’m advertising here is the first two seasons of the show. It’s something like 80 episodes. That was where the anime proper ended and should have stayed ended, imo. I know some people like the third season, but the first two seasons tell a complete and extremely satisfying story whereas I find the third season (as well as the OVAs) has the vibe of a straight-to-video sequel to a great movie that tried its hardest to further a great story but only managed to invalidate all the original movie’s strongest moments by making them suddenly mean nothing in the face of new information. If you want my advice, stop where the story was originally designed to end and only watch the first two seasons. (I’m also saving you from having to look at the bad CGI skeletons. You don’t want to look at the bad CGI skeletons.)

Those first two seasons, though? Go. Go watch them. Watch them right now. They’re so fucking good. You won’t regret it, I promise.

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#kyo kara maoh #kyou kara maoh #kyou kara maou #there are so many spellings of this damn show #kyo kara maou #kkm #anime rec #it's gay go watch it #but also watch it for the reasons beyond it just being gay

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