Cyberteam in Akihabara: in conclusion
Dec. 21st, 2011 01:07 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
the_sun_is_upI finished Cyberteam in Akihabara and bawwwww the ending made me cry. Towards the end, I started watching more than skimming, and this here is a pretty solid Magical Girl series. It's certainly recommendable just on the basis that does several things differently from the average Magical Girl show:
1. The overall look is more sci-fi than magical. The Magical Girls' outfits are sleek powered-armor/mecha looking things instead of the usual pink frilly dresses, and the fighting styles reflect this, relying on violent hand-to-hand combat, energy shields, laser cannons, etc. There's no calling your attacks, no merch-y bling, and minimal power-ups — compared to a lot of modern MG series, Cyberteam is rather stripped down.
2. The set-up of the Magical Girl premise is unusual. For most of the show, the girls don't transform; instead, their cutesy mascots are the ones who transform into powered-armor-wearing adult women who look like older dopplegangers of the girls. Whenever the villains attack, the girls have their mascots transform and the mascots protect them. However, later in the series, two of the girls figure out how to merge with their mascots and become powered-armor-wearing magic warriors themselves.
3. A lot of MG shows get darker towards the finale, but Cyberteam does this moreso than most I've seen, switching into dark/srs/angsty about halfway through its 26 episode run, but without swan-diving into total carnage like Puella Magi Madoka Magica did. Towards the end, I'd almost characterize it as "Evangelion lite," what with the cabal of dudes conspiring to turn the world into their idea of a utopia, philosophizing about whether or not humanity deserves to live, and the girls being thrown into a conflict much bigger than them and discovering that the people who gave them their powers didn't have the most benevolent of motives. Which brings me to...
4. Cyberteam was made 3 years after Neon Genesis Evangelion came out, and it shows. One of the monsters employed by the villains looks like the Third Angel, there's a fair bit of Biblical theme-naming and symbolism (which somehow bugged me less here, maybe because there was no annoying fandom expecting me to be impressed by it), some dudes naval-gazing about the nature of humanity and name-dropping the Garden of Eden and Sodom and Gomorrah, and of course the aforementioned ancient conspiracy/plotting cabal/plans for an alleged utopia/continuing the evolution of humankind by way of sciency intervention/yada yada. And probably some other things I've forgotten, but the point is, throughout the second half of the series, I kept getting the distinct impression that the writers were taking cues from Eva. However since Cyberteam also maintains a lot of the thematic staples of MG shows like the power of love, the power of friendship, melting the frozen heart of the Dark Magical Girl with hugs and kisses, etc, it makes for an interesting mix.
One thing still puzzles me though: I can't for the life of me figure out who the target demographic of this show was. The art style is quite moe-looking, but this predates the moe craze by several years, and the main girls don't strike me as having personalities tailored to fit moe tastes — if anything, they're kind of obnoxious. The violent content and mecha-ish style doesn't necessarily indicate a male target audience, since Rayearth had already explored that territory several years prior. However what really makes me wonder is the fanservice. There's a lot of it. The trio of female villains all have large prominently-displayed boobs, and as for the transformation sequences... well just look at them. They're by far the most fanservicey Magical Girl henshins of the 90s, if we're just looking at broadcast TV. Hell, even if you include OVAs, Cyberteam would still rank in the top four. All that combined with the violence, mecha warfare, dark themes, and moe-ish art style kind of makes me scratch my head over who this was aimed at.
(Actually my "most fanservicey on broadcast TV" claim has one possible exception — Chibiusa's transformation into Black Lady is another contender, and interestingly enough it's very similar to the Cyberteam henshins in content, style, and focus. However that was a one-time thing, not a consistent staple of the show.)
1. The overall look is more sci-fi than magical. The Magical Girls' outfits are sleek powered-armor/mecha looking things instead of the usual pink frilly dresses, and the fighting styles reflect this, relying on violent hand-to-hand combat, energy shields, laser cannons, etc. There's no calling your attacks, no merch-y bling, and minimal power-ups — compared to a lot of modern MG series, Cyberteam is rather stripped down.
2. The set-up of the Magical Girl premise is unusual. For most of the show, the girls don't transform; instead, their cutesy mascots are the ones who transform into powered-armor-wearing adult women who look like older dopplegangers of the girls. Whenever the villains attack, the girls have their mascots transform and the mascots protect them. However, later in the series, two of the girls figure out how to merge with their mascots and become powered-armor-wearing magic warriors themselves.
3. A lot of MG shows get darker towards the finale, but Cyberteam does this moreso than most I've seen, switching into dark/srs/angsty about halfway through its 26 episode run, but without swan-diving into total carnage like Puella Magi Madoka Magica did. Towards the end, I'd almost characterize it as "Evangelion lite," what with the cabal of dudes conspiring to turn the world into their idea of a utopia, philosophizing about whether or not humanity deserves to live, and the girls being thrown into a conflict much bigger than them and discovering that the people who gave them their powers didn't have the most benevolent of motives. Which brings me to...
4. Cyberteam was made 3 years after Neon Genesis Evangelion came out, and it shows. One of the monsters employed by the villains looks like the Third Angel, there's a fair bit of Biblical theme-naming and symbolism (which somehow bugged me less here, maybe because there was no annoying fandom expecting me to be impressed by it), some dudes naval-gazing about the nature of humanity and name-dropping the Garden of Eden and Sodom and Gomorrah, and of course the aforementioned ancient conspiracy/plotting cabal/plans for an alleged utopia/continuing the evolution of humankind by way of sciency intervention/yada yada. And probably some other things I've forgotten, but the point is, throughout the second half of the series, I kept getting the distinct impression that the writers were taking cues from Eva. However since Cyberteam also maintains a lot of the thematic staples of MG shows like the power of love, the power of friendship, melting the frozen heart of the Dark Magical Girl with hugs and kisses, etc, it makes for an interesting mix.
One thing still puzzles me though: I can't for the life of me figure out who the target demographic of this show was. The art style is quite moe-looking, but this predates the moe craze by several years, and the main girls don't strike me as having personalities tailored to fit moe tastes — if anything, they're kind of obnoxious. The violent content and mecha-ish style doesn't necessarily indicate a male target audience, since Rayearth had already explored that territory several years prior. However what really makes me wonder is the fanservice. There's a lot of it. The trio of female villains all have large prominently-displayed boobs, and as for the transformation sequences... well just look at them. They're by far the most fanservicey Magical Girl henshins of the 90s, if we're just looking at broadcast TV. Hell, even if you include OVAs, Cyberteam would still rank in the top four. All that combined with the violence, mecha warfare, dark themes, and moe-ish art style kind of makes me scratch my head over who this was aimed at.
(Actually my "most fanservicey on broadcast TV" claim has one possible exception — Chibiusa's transformation into Black Lady is another contender, and interestingly enough it's very similar to the Cyberteam henshins in content, style, and focus. However that was a one-time thing, not a consistent staple of the show.)
