Petals of Reincarnation – Episode 1

Content Warning: Blood, Gore, Self-Inflicted Injury (Cutting), Death

What’s it about?  High Schooler Touya Senji sees himself as average in light of his overachieving older brother. So when a strange, never present classmate named Haito Luo Buffet encounters him, Toya finds that there’s a world of super achievers that he might be able to join that even his elite brother couldn’t dream of…

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I have an MA in History with a certificate in Museum Studies which, technically, qualifies me to work within museum spaces. However, academia took its bite out of me and I’ve shifted to educating in more…informal classrooms versus a formal, dedicated academic space. In this case, my current classroom is the bookstore I work at. It’s the best space I have to help people contextualize the now, and honestly, it’s a task I really, truly love.

I chose to cover Petals of Reincarnation specifically because of my background—I really wanted to take it to task because I tacitly understand that this is going to be one of the most reviewed and talked about series this season (unless being on HiDive manages to take the wind out of its sails). It doesn’t matter how I personally feel: that’s just a fact because of the nature of a series like this launching this year. It’s going to be talked about, it’s going to get streamers and content creators making videos about it, so I figured I’d toss my hat into the ring with a very critical perspective about this premiere.

Episode 1 begins with a young man begging for power, for a claim on something more. With a blade in hand, he gives one definitive swipe, and the night sky is filled with petals of potential, sweetening the air with change.

Hard cut to Touya Senji’s everyday academic life—that is, until a young woman named Haito Luo Buffet comes back to class, introduces herself to Touya, and irrevocably changes his world as he suddenly gains access to a world filled with rippling red petals and power plays cast in blood.

What ensues is one young man’s dive into the world of Returners and Sinners, a system tucked in the underworld of Japan where a group known as the Forest of the Greats seeks to revolutionize the world through leveraging humanity’s past to fight for our future. Working alongside the Haito, who embodies Miyamoto Musashi, and a girl who has claimed the name of John V. Neumann, Touya must carve out his place and decide if his newly gained skills will be used for good or dedicated to utmost evil…

There is a part of me that is fascinated by this premiere. There’s a part of me that gets the fascination, understands the draw of “Hetalia, but much more genuinely dark”—Hetalia, but with a different flavor of cultural exceptionalism. I’ll even admit that I can understand the appeal of seeing real historical figures cast in a magical world where they embody modern day humans through the gift of historic power. I think that’s part of the appeal of the Fate series, at least as an outsider.

I’ll even admit that the split of the system of Returners, who are often “Greats” that utilize their historic skills for the betterment of society, is interesting. Who gets to be known as great? Victors and those who write history and decide what borders, what cultures, what peoples, have done well enough to be crowned King of the Mountain even when lives are inevitably lost. Still, I can understand the appeal because that’s the core of this anime: seeing who comes back and what role they play in this elite club where modern teens can shift the balance of historically horrific skills.

But as a former academic, as a researcher, as a student, I have to say that this series is incredibly fraught with which historical figures will shape its cast. Sure, the concept of the Branches of Reincarnation are cool, but also…why was it necessary to reincarnate Criminals, Murderers, and Dictators as “Sinners”? It goes beyond simply “edgy anime” in a time where there’s global facism and nationalist upheaval. In truth, it begs the question why this anime was made at this time, in this moment, when the world has been suffering under the weight of nations too proud to change (in this particular extreme) since COVID-19?

I get edgy and cool anime: I’m not immune to their draw and for a long time, before I became a reviewer, I prided myself on liking some of the grimmest anime out there. But I also think that underneath its cool and edgy veneer is an anime that’s going to posit a lot of questions due to who will inevitably be adapted in (no spoilers, just examining the current cast on ANN and the wikipedia) and like… Fucking Pol Pot is going to be a character next to Alan Smithee. 

You know, the fake pseudonym used by film directors versus THE DICTATOR WHO KILLED MILLIONS? It’s bonkers, but that’s putting it so mildly, so let me put it seriously: this is the consequence of colonizers getting carte blanche to write shit that they have, and I say that as a second-class citizen of the American Empire. I’m keenly aware that I’m just as susceptible to writing from this viewpoint. It’s just that I’ve not only studied horrors but seen them. Fantasizing about history requires responsibility, because it’s real and it’s living and it’s hurt people; and I’m okay with admitting that and embracing it in order to forge a better future. Petals of Reincarnation wants to have its cake and eat it, only the cake is a four-tiered premiere of cream cheese icing over shit when you dig down, and flashy animation and a banger of an ending theme can’t change my opinion here.

As an informal historian, I understand the allure of history and some of its darkest individuals. I understand the draw because I seek to understand the “how”: how someone could conduct such horrific acts, how nations rebranded during the mid-1900s from tyrants into cultural powerhouses, and ultimately how that affects the moment we globally live in. We stand on the stage of the world, witnessing of multiple horrific mass life loss events right now and while I’m not going to pretend that social media isn’t amplifying it all, I’m also not going to turn away from the fact that there’s a lot of horror happening right now in the world. I, myself, live in a city that is constantly being raided by ICE. I exist in a county where they want a second facility to store our community members for the White Christofacist sin of simply existing—and it’s not missed by me that the only reason more facilities can even exist is because fascist feel that there’s enough bodies to fill them.

Does it dim my optimism? No, but it does remind me to keep my scope realistic while I give out kindness and do my part to make this global moment a history we can collectively heal from. And it makes me take anime like this to task without any rose-tinted glasses.

In the end, Petals of Reincarnation isn’t a show with nuance: there’s not going to be an exploration of why, say, Hitler (once again pulling from already released info on ANN and Wikipedia) is cast in the body of a young girl that will inevitably be cast as a “Crazy Loli” by the internet. Whatever nuance will exist is left to the characters that best serve the plot and the envisioned humanity of the show through either being a flashy, wild villain perfect for consuming or demonstrating revisionist history. Either way, I’m not interested in this premiere and honestly, I think there’s better studies of history—and better edge series—that you should spend your finite minutes on earth consuming.