Fairy Tale Media Fix: My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked.

 

Fairy Tale Media Fix

Hey, everybody! It's been a while!

I know I don't post on the ol' Fairy Tale Fandom blog all that much anymore. Largely because my hyperfixation on folk and fairy tales has kind of ebbed.

But still, I keep it around for times like this. For when something in the fairy tale field takes me by surprise.

Imagine this situation: A young girl named Miya Nakamura who grew up in poverty loses her mother to illness. Finding out that she was the illegitimate daughter of a rich man, she seeks out the man's family in order that she may appeal to them to take her in, perhaps as a servant. The start of a typical, if slightly modified, “Cinderella” story, right? One can just imagine her rich (and suspiciously absent) father's wife and daughters treating her horribly, can't one?

Well you're wrong. Very wrong. Dead wrong. Horribly dead wrong.

Because while the stepmother and stepsister figures are loud, dramatic and strangely aggressive, like you'd expect the antagonists in a “Cinderella” story to be, they're not actually mean. In fact they're aggressively nice. To the point of doting on young Miya.

Clearly this is all done in the name of comedy. The gap between the stepfamily's aggressive demeanor and their actual words and actions being the source of comedy.

You're probably wondering how there's actually any show when the main source of conflict in a “Cinderella” story isn't there? Well remember what we said Miya's actual background is? Unlike most Cinderellas, Miya wasn't a daughter of privelege reduced to servitude by the actions of her stepmother. Instead, she grew up in the slums. She also seems to have some degree of insecurity and anxiety surrounding people who were above her former station. So, Miya is a “fish out of water” trying to fit in to a world she's not used to and is always half-expecting the fancy people who she now lives with to turn on her, which makes it funny when they inevitably don't.

So, while many altered takes on fairy tales flip things so that the villain is actually the hero and the hero is actually a villain, ultimately there is no villain in this series. At least not yet. It's only Miya's anxieties and expectations that are a problem. I know it's a surprsingly wide field, but I think it's safe to say most people haven't seen a fairy tale “fractured” quite like this.

This series, known in English as My Stepmother and Stepsisters Aren't Wicked started as a manga by Otsuji, running in the Comic Pool section of the Pixiv Comic website. And now it's become an anime, with five episodes available to watch as of this writing. The creators of the series seem to be well aware of what fairy tale they're playing with too. Episode four has a direct reference to the glass slipper.

I'm having a lot of fun with this series. I kind of hope the season culminates in a Fairy Godmother showing up to help Miya and her having to repeatedly insist that she's fine.

So, where can you see this anime? It's actually posted, free to watch on YouTube on the It's Anime channel. I've actually seen more and more Japanese media posted for free on YouTube, but that's a discussion for another time.

Give the show a try. I think it's a lot of fun.