Lostorage Incited WIXOSS Overview:
Well if you’ve watched the Selector Infected WIXOSS then you already know the basics here even as Lostorage puts a new spin on the game. WIXOSS is a popular card game only some people are chosen to become Selectors which means for them the game has some very real consequences.
And as always, if you’ve watched any of the WIXOSS brand anime then you more or less know you are in for some misery and pain with cute girls playing a deadly card game.
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Lostorage Incited WIXOSS Review:
Firstly, I’m going to say that while this anime is technically a sequel it really doesn’t require you to have watched the previous seasons to know what is going on and that is because the game has changed anyway and we’re dealing with a whole new group of players who don’t have any experience with WIXOSS either so they’ll tell us what we need to know as we go
. There are a few throw backs to the previous seasons and characters so people with familiarity will probably get a bit more out of some scenes than others, but it is not inaccessible to new comers. I think that is a very good thing because I enjoyed this a lot more than the previous seasons.
That said, if you continue on with this franchise it becomes more and more necessary to really know every facet of the WIXOSS universe because they’ll be bringing back more and more characters from previous entires.
Given the basic premise is about people being chosen to become Selectors and forced to play a game with high stakes (in this case loss of memories) but a promise of a wish being granted if they succeed is all pretty standard the show doesn’t spend a lot of time trying to justify its essential death game.
Instead it focusses more on how the game disrupts the lives of those caught up in it and this makes it infinitely more interesting than if it spent episodes trying to explain the how and why of the game. Though, it would be nice if they gave the viewer a little bit more information about the game given there are times when it really feels like the players are pulling wins out of nowhere because we don’t understand the rules sufficiently to know if what they did was actually plausible.
As I said though, it is more how the wins and losses impact upon the lives of those playing so maybe WIXOSS made the right choice all along.
Lostorage Incited WIXOSS continues the tradition of having a name that looks like it should mean something but ends up really just being three words mashed together and also continues the tradition of inflicting maximum emotional pain upon its characters.
I could be wrong but I think this series actually had more happy endings than Selector Infected given there was only really one character I liked who did not ‘survive’ the games and I felt really, really bad for him.
The show follows Chinatsu and Suzuko who were friends once upon a time but now they’ve grown up and Suzuko has been away for awhile but has finally returned only to find that Chinatsu is very different these days. By ‘chance’ both of these girls become Selectors and essentially Chinatsu is working to erase Suzuko while Suzuko wants to try to save Chinatsu (even if Chinatsu is disinclined to being saved).
Others inevitably get caught up in this conflict and we see how Chinatsu and Suzuko interact with other Selectors. Essentially Chinatsu becomes poison and almost everyone who interacts with her ends up regretting it whereas Suzuko may at first bring conflict but ultimately encounters with her lead to a reasonably positive outcome (at least comparatively).
What the show does well is really look at how people deal with things when they are really desperate. The impossible situation the characters are in when they have to find someone to battle before an arbitrary time limit comes to an end, the devastation of losing a memory when they lose a battle, and the possibility of losing everything if they lose all of their coins push these characters to their limits.
Throw in the Bookmaker who first offers hope by promising to organise them a match so that they don’t hit the time limit, and then crushes that hope by deliberately pitting weaker players against strong in order to destroy them, and you have some really desperate characters who are clinging to anything to stay afloat.
This is not a perfect show. The game is poorly explained, some of the victories are really plot convenience (as are some of the losses), characters portray ideas rather than real characterisation at times, and the dialogue is hard to take seriously particularly mid-battle, but the show fundamentally works.
It is dark but not depressing, it makes you question what you would do in the various situations characters find themselves in, and it makes you feel a sense of loss or triumph at the appropriate moments.
Of course there is the inevitable follow-up season with the equally confusing name of Lostorage Conflated WIXOSS but ultimately you kind of get to a semi-resolution at the end of these episodes so you could choose to stop there if you wanted.
Anyway, if you didn’t watch Lostorage Incited WIXOSS during the Autumn 2016 Season I would recommend this one to check out. It isn’t going to blow you away but it is a pretty enjoyable watch.
Images from: Lostorage Incited WIXOSS. Dir. K Sakurabi. J.C.Staff. 2016
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Karandi James
As a huge fan of this franchise I wasn’t disappointed with this sequel. I didn’t find it as strong as the original series, but it was still an outstanding show and a worthy follow up.
I personally find the franchise to be a fascinating character study and an excellent deconstruction of card games with its focus on emotional trauma and psychological breakdowns.
It’s definitely not for everyone, especially because of the whole rules fiasco, but it’s one of my favourite franchises and I’m glad to see it get more positive speak and promotion. Most viewers tend to just brush it off as bland or skip it entirely.
I am also concerned about that next season announcement though. I feel there’s very little else left to tell here, with this cast, so it’ll be interesting (and a little scary) to see what they might do next.
Glad you had a good time overall. Really enjoyed this write up 🙂
Yeah, that sequel announcement is worrying because I’ll almost definitely watch it but unless they have a really good plan there’s very little chance it will be able to continue with things as they are. Here’s hoping they thought it through.
If it were still being written by Mari Okada (like the original series) I’d be less skeptical about a second season.
But without her at the helm, I have no idea what to expect.
I guess we’ll see.
I have been vaguely interested in Selector Infected WIXOSS for a while and same for this. I’m not sure how well this will work for me with subpar characterization but I guess I’ll find out. A death game with a wish aspect is a premise I really like but after Mirai Nikki, I’m a little wary. Do you think this is better or worse than that?
Definitely better than Mirai Nikki because this is not going for sensationalism and only one (or two) of the characters are completely crazy which means most of the time the motivations of the characters make sense in this.
Mirai Nikki is in the “so bad it’s good camp” for me. VS the Wixoss franchise which had moments like that but was overall more quality. If I had to point to a week portion of the series it would be the last bit of season 2 but Lostorage made up for it in spades.
We did consider this one last autumn, along with a bunch of shows that we never actually got around to after we started focusing on Yuri and Izetta. From what little I was able to read about it, the game did seem pretty confusing. For a show centered around that I felt like I needed to be able to understand it better.
Also, at the risk of sounding like I have no idea what I’m talking about, the mechanics of this show sound a bit like Magical Girl Raising Project in what you said about the characters being pushed into desperate situations. That show, I’ve read, tries to build some drama around the game but fails to make the stakes feel really dire. How would you say WIXOSS compares?
I didn’t get far into Magical Girl Raising Project but I kind of felt from the first episodes that the show went for shock with the deaths because it lacked anything else really to hold your interest early on (I know from reading reviews from others that some ideas are expanded later but early on the characters are dull and the story is pretty much nothing). WIXOSS has interesting characters (I won’t say good, but they are interesting) and one of its strengths is that the focus is always on the impact on the characters rather than the game or the purpose of that so if you watch it and if you care about the main two characters early on, you should find something to enjoy. However, if you are unconcerned about their plight, than there really isn’t much else to differentiate WIXOSS from any other game/death match kind of show except a lack of gore because death in this instance is the loss of memories or being taken over rather than actually physically dying.
The big problem with Wixoss (the game not the show) is that it is SUPER complicated. I know Karandi says they don’t explain the game much/well, but the reason for that is because the actual rules are pretty contradictory and complicated as is.
If you feel like trying to read through this: https://www.reddit.com/r/wixoss/wiki/rules
/most/ of the rules are explained here. Lostorage introduces some new game mechanics but the core principal is the same. Any way, I would really enjoyed the series despite its flaws.