Migi & Dali Review – 86/100

Animated horror can be a pretty hard genre to nail. You know what you’re watching, so you’re expecting to be scared, and it being animated removes it from the real world, narrowing your options. Comedy can be similarly difficult. Due to how subjective it be, its common to fall back on slapstick, what with animations malleable bodies and stylized violence. But what if I were to tell you there was an anime that does both? A situational comedy that gets laughs not from banana peels or pies to the face, but absurd surreal situations? That successfully transitions to a full blown horror, complete with a murder mystery? Well that show is what I’m here to talk about today. Animated studio GEEKTOYS, directed by Mankyuu and originally created by the late Nami Sano who passed earlier this year, I give to you my favorite anime of Fall 2023: Migi & Dali.

Be warned, this review contains minor unmarked spoilers for Migi & Dali. It also contains major spoilers in some sections however these will be heavily marked to avoid accidents. Continue reading “Migi & Dali Review – 86/100”

Migi & Dali – 13 [Migi and Dali]

Welcome all, to the finale of Migi & Dali! We have a lot to talk about this week, as Migi & Dali may have just given us the best finale of the season. That’s not a joke or an exaggeration, I cannot understate how much I loved this episode. So without further ado, let’s dive into it!

As I said, I thought this episode was fantastic. In fact I would go so far as to call it the perfect ending. No matter how I look at it, I can’t think of something Migi & Dali could have done better. Maybe cut it out with the Mit-chan stuff? But even that was used for a humerous pen-pal joke with Mrs. Sonoyama, so I can let that pass. It covers basically everything I was looking for from an ending. Migi and Dali’s relationship with the Sonoyama’s, coming out to them and the community at large. Akiyama and Migi’s friendship, Maruta, Eiji. It’s all there! More than that, Migi & Dali handles it in a genuinely emotional way. I cried at multiple points in this episode. I never cry! I’m a soulless husk! But when Dali got that omelet I just… I couldn’t help it. I loved it.

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Migi & Dali – 12 [Upside-Down Woman]

Welcome all, to the penultimate episode of Migi & Dali! This is a rough one for me, where I liked most of it but I just can’t get a few niggling little details out of my head. Nothing too major, but still important enough to be worth talking about. So with that, lets dive into the episode!

So like I said, this episode was mixed for me. The core of it, the primary plot and events, all worked really well. Most everything involving the twins, Eiji, their relationship was good. How they came together as brothers, or Dali deciding his revenge against Reiko and Eiji would be to force him to live imperfectly rather than die a perfect death, that all worked. Considering those are all of the most important events of the episode, it would probably be safe to call this week a success. But… There are a few things I just can’t get out of my head. Details, the way certain scenes were executed that, despite being in an otherwise solid episode, bring the whole thing down for me. So before I gush about the rest of the good stuff, lets talk about those.

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Migi & Dali – 11

Welcome all, to another episode of Migi & Dali! This week we go full horror, completely abandoning any semblance of comedy to show just up screwed up this family is. And you know what? It’s pretty damn great. So without further ado, lets dive into it!

As I said, this episode dives head-first into horror, starting with Metry and Reiko’s backstory. It starts innocently enough, Metry worked for and idolized Reiko like a big sister, doing everything she could to make her proud. It was actually really sweet! However bit by bit everything started to go… wrong. Reiko is told she’s barren, unable to have children, so she convinces Metry to sleep with her husband in her place. To bear his children for her. Eventually the husband realizes what’s going and confesses he likes Metry more, to which it almost seems like Metry is doing it all on purpose to steal Reiko’s “perfect life”. Of course this is all from Reiko’s perspective, we can’t know how true all of this is, the woman is crazy. Classic unreliable narrator stuff. But we know one thing for certain: Metry did eventually get pregnant. But with triplets, not twins.

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Migi & Dali – 10 [Beavers vs Mother Ichijo]

Welcome all, to another episode of Migi & Dali! This week the twins return to town, gather a team, and begin their plan to take down the Ichijo family. Of course things don’t go smoothly, but when do they ever? So without further ado, lets dive in!

Starting off, lets pick up with what’s happened in town while the twins were away. Turns out, Reiko wasn’t just sitting on her ass content with driving them out of town. No, she instead frames them for the murder of Micchan the maid, turning the entire town against them and ripping away what little support they had. Of course not everyone believes this, I doubt the Sonoyamas do for instance. But it’s enough to make life even more difficult for them. So the question then becomes, who else can they turn too? Because they obviously can’t do this alone, they’ve tried for weeks and failed. Well the answer wasn’t all that surprisingly, but did feel earned: Akiyama, the weird bird boy. The one true friend Migi made here, two outcasts against the world. Well four once you count Dali and Maruyama. And with the team assembled? Then it gets weird.

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Migi & Dali – 9 [Kill Kill Kill Kill Kill]

Welcome all, to an eventful week of Migi & Dali! So… so very much happened, it’s kind of insane. If you ask me it’s easily the best episode of the show yet, keeping just enough weirdness to be charming to boot. So without further ado, lets dive into it!

Starting off, god that was a wild episode. Where do I even begin… How about Reiko, let’s pick up with her. While checking in with Eiji
as Sali to find out why he saved “Hitori”, Migi ends up revealing himself and setting Reiko on Dali and the Sonoyamas. Why? To protect her secrets of course. It’s unclear which she cares about more, protecting Eiji from having murdered Metry or her own inability to have children. Which, tangent, I called by the way. I guessed back during the weird baby stuff that Eiji and Karen weren’t actually her kids. She’s been stealing the children of others to raise as her own. All the clues were there and it makes this reveal feel rather good. Getting back on topic though, at the end of the day what matters is that she’s willing to kill for these secrets.

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Migi & Dali – 8 [Two ≠ One]

Welcome all, to another episode of Migi & Dali! This week the twins split, one becoming two, each walking their own path. How will they manage without each other? Can they figure out who they are independent of their twin? And what about the murder of their mother? There’s a lot to talk about this week, so lets dive in!

This episode is all about Migi splitting from Dali entirely, the opening scene ending with Migi literally and figuratively shoving him into the darkness, consumed by revenge, while he walks out towards his newfound freedom. As silly and weird as Migi & Dali can be, that doesn’t stop it from having some fantastic visual metaphors. The way Migi & Dali portrayed his desire for freedom, how he took control of his life riding off into the rain with Shunpei dressed as the birds he loves so much, was great. For the first time he doesn’t have to be “Hitori” around someone, he can simply be “Migi”. And he looks so happy doing it. The fact this ascension ends with Dali’s fall, with the two who are one becoming two once more, was icing on the cake.

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Migi & Dali – 7

Welcome all, to another week of Migi & Dali! This week Eiji’s past is investigated, a betrayal is discovered and Best Girl makes a surprising return. For those who have kept up with the series, you can probably figure out where this is going. So without further ado, lets dive in!

At the core of the episode we have Dali and his goal of getting information from Eiji. How is he going to do it? Become his friend? Sneak around his house again? Interrogate his friends? Seduce… him? That’s right, Dali’s plan is to bring back Sali and go full teasing-dom on Eiji to seduce him into spilling the beans. I get it, if I was ignorant of the truth I’d fall for Sali to, Dali makes a sexy dark haired femme fatale. And it’s not like Dali will won’t go to far of course, all he needs is to get him alone to try some hypnosis tricks on. This is nice, it feels like Migi & Dali is coming back to the kind of weird I enjoy, the stuff that isn’t fetishy but still situationally funny. And it’s the situation, the consequences of Sali’s return, that makes the episode fun.

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Migi & Dali – 6

Welcome all, to another episode of Migi & Dali! Last week was a weird one and this week even more so. Still even with that the episode had some stuff going for it, enough that I’m looking forward to next week. So without further ado, lets dive into the episode!

Starting off, Jesus Christ is this show weird. It’s always been weird, but these past 2 weeks have been especially weird. And not in a good way. This week Migi & Dali doubles down on the weird baby stuff to an unsettling degree. In a way I get it. It’s very good at showing us just how screwed up this family is, as well as how important this room is to our protagonists. But Migi & Dali’s presentation of it feels… Kind of icky? Do we need Migi to go all in on it, to want to become the “perfect toddler”, to gleefully suck milk from a bottle or fake falling on his ass because a “toddler” doesn’t know how to walk? It’s all just very uncomfortable for me. As much as I enjoy the actual mystery part of the show, I’m glad this arc is over.

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Migi & Dali – 5

Welcome all, to what is easily the weirdest episode of Migi & Dali yet. Is that a good thing? Who knows! A lot happened this week, from finding the room they grew up in to being taken hostage. We have plenty to talk about so lets dive right into it.

Starting off, what in gods name did I just watch? Migi & Dali has always been a weird show, that’s part of why I love it. But this one was extra weird. Almost to weird in a few ways. I could take feeding Migi dog food, trapping him in a secret room, and general homicidal tendencies. But the whole baby thing? Being dressed up in a diaper and put in a crib, fed milk from a bottle, all the while trapped in a room with no way out? Or pulling down Migi’s pants to fondle and examine his ass while the family watches? Those were uncomfortably weird, and almost to much for me. And yet… When considered as parts of a whole, when I think back on the growing feeling of dread throughout the episode as we learned more about the Ichijo household, it sort of works.

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