#firstnamesuper

The V~B editor-in-chief will burn this blog to the ground if I write another Twin Angel BREAK article, but a dubbed HIDIVE anime I finished this weekend has stuck my brain on a similar topic of niche adult-oriented companies making self-aggrandizing mainstream anime series with their own mascots and I felt like documenting the rabbit hole I went down here because it was too long for twitter. - qb 

In the vein of Komugi-chan R with Tatsunoko Pictures, or Twin Angel BREAK with Sammy Corporation, Super Sonico the Animation with Nitroplus is a labor-of-love commercial for Nitroplus’ music festival’s mascot. It’s a particularly weird move in Nitroplus’ case since they’re known for adult visual novels and Sonico is best known as a plastic figure for perverts, so a twelve episode anime series about a marine biology student with a giant rack and minor dyslexia who takes care of her five cats and visits her grandma, with about 5% the Horny Level of their usual output, is unlikely to be popular with anyone outside of their own marketing department. 

Whether it comes from a niche company having the bright idea to pivot to something they can put on mainstream TV, or if it was originally the 18+ show that everyone in the forum threads thought it would be and it was sterilized into something that could be put on mainstream TV, the result is bizarrely sincere. Super Sonico the Animation has fanservice, but most of the time is seriously trying to show you the fictional life of a college student majoring in marine biology doing odd jobs and playing guitar in her band and taking care of her five cats. It’s just that she also physically cannot take off her headphones and is legally named Super Sonico. There’s an entire episode where all she does is hike through the mountains in order to visit her relatives. 

Since Super Sonico the Animation appears to be grounded in our world, and the events contained are relatively mundane, there isn’t a lot of speculation we can make on the lore of the world itself. The cats that live in Super Sonico’s house (Porky, Tasty, Roasty, Fishcake, and Noodles) behave like normal cats, not even speaking Cat-Japanese, and even the zombie episode could semi-realistically happen. For all intents and purposes this series tries to sell the viewer on Super Sonico being a real person. However, trying to establish a corporate logo believably as a real person is plenty terrifying already. 

Take this photoshoot from the anime for example. The cross-promotional in-universe positioning of Hatsune Miku and Goodsmile puts Sonico as more real than these brands in the canon of the show, although she herself is a brand, and that car actually exists. If Nico (shortened nickname of Super Sonico) is a metaphor for the life of the Nitroplus’ music festival as a brand, does dressing her in the clothes of another brand turn her into a pale cg representation of the music-producing vocaloid? Are we viewing a shadow on the cave wall only made recognizable by her distinct headphones? If Sonico is living in a commercial, what is she supposed to be selling? Cat food, meat buns, the impressive amount of unique music videos that ended each episode, that one week where Sonico danced with spliced FMV footage of prefectural mascots? Was that subsidized by local governments? Is this a prequel to the story mode of Nitroplus Blasterz: Heroines Infinite Duel? Like the origins of Super Sonico the Animation, the answers to these questions are only known to Nitroplus’ marketing division and nobody else.