Star Crossed Anime

I Parry Everything

Short Synopsis: Noor has wanted to be a hero since he was a child, but he was never good enough at anything to do so. After years of training he was only able to learn a single skill, parry. With only one path before him, he takes that skill to its absolute limits.

Mario: Well, even though the episode feels familiar, at least the main character is so earnest that it’s hard to hate him. The show spends an entire episode showing us his journey to become an adventurer, from when he’s a teenager until now. Throughout all his hardships, and displaying no talent at all, he still keeps going at it. I guess the punch line here is the same as that “BOFURI: I Don’t Want to Get Hurt, so I’ll Max Out My Defense” show – he maxes out his parrying skill, so much so that it actually becomes his primary weapon. The girl he saves is a princess so she will take him everywhere with her… I think the show will have all the familiar beats here, so if you still like the main character after this episode and don’t mind the tropes, you will have a good time here.
Potential: 10%

Lenlo: As Mario says, there’s nothing particularly new here in Parry. The MC has a highly specific OP skill in a fantasy world ruled by video game logic, saves the girl who then falls for him, pretty standard power fantasy stuff. But… Parry executes on it competently. It doesn’t rush into the OP bullshit from the first minute, the MC isn’t some Isekai chosen one who doesn’t put in any effort to obtain his skill, and in fact he’s kind of a decent person, helping everyone out and being your friendly neighborhood hero. There’s nothing particularly noteworthy about Parry, but I also can’t say I hated it. If you’re looking for a fun OP MC action fantasy series, you could do far far worse than Parry than season.
Potential: 20%

Bye Bye, Earth

Short Synopsis: Belle Lablac doesn’t really fit in as the only human being in a world full of anthropomorphic animals. No fangs, no fur, no scales, no claws. Lonely and eager to discover where she comes from, Belle journeys to find answers to the questions of her heart. Carrying nothing but her giant sword, the Runding, she faces a world of possibilities and pitfalls in hopes of discovering the truth.

Mario: Sometimes, you can feel the air of racism in an anime so thick that you could taste it, and that’s what the first half of this episode does for me. It’s a bit sad, really. For all of its efforts to differentiate itself from the normal isekai settings (there are a whole range of different races here), it just tries a bit too hard on isolating our main girl from this world. In fact, “trying too hard” is what I feel about the whole episode. There are some neat worldbuilding details about nomad and enola, but because the episode tries to cram so many details, it gets lost in the middle. Belle’s flashback, for example, clashes a bit with her current time with her teacher. As a result, it is hard to get emotionally invested in their farewell fight as we don’t spend enough time with them together. Still, the music is nice, and at least the show is trying. Still, I’m not sure if I’m gonna stick around for more.
Potential: 20%

Lenlo: The way I feel about Bye Bye, Earth can best be described as… Curious. I’m curious about this world, and why everyone in it are animals, and not sexy “fox/cat girl” animals, I mean actual insect humanoids/Minotaurs/Centaurs. I’m curious about why our lead is the only human, and what that means for her. I’m curious about this sword, a spell inscribed on the blade, and this curse she undertook to become a Nomad. I’m not sold on any of it yet, the action isn’t great and there’s some pretty basic fantasy racism going on. But there’s enough here that I want to give it a few episodes and see where it goes, plus Penkin’s music, while mixed a tad loud for my taste here, isn’t bad. Hopefully it does something with itself.
Potential: 50%

Atri: My Dear Moments

Short Synopsis: A one-legged man discovers a remarkably lifelike robot sleeping in the undersea ruins of his grandmother’s former home.

Wooper: In the seven years since I started writing for Star Crossed, our quarterly first impressions periods have ended on a stinker around half the time. So, which side of the decent-to-dud divide does our final premiere, Atri: My Dear Moments, fall on? Happily, I’d say it’s the former. The show boasts an interesting (if not original) setting featuring risen sea levels and dilapidated highways, and though its characters are clearly trope-driven, the composition of the cast gives off a mid-2000s charm that I can at least tolerate. The main character is sullen, but he’s got a good reason for it (more than one reason, really), and the cutesy android he discovers on the seafloor near the start of the episode will surely appeal to fans of little sister types. She’s granted a few bits of expressive character acting here, and the protagonist’s 3DCG submarine looks pretty good, too – and even when it didn’t, as in a shot of its extendable arms pinching at nothing in particular, the clumsiness put a smile on my face. My Dear Moments doesn’t have a strong narrative thrust behind it after one episode, but it’s raised a couple questions about its main character’s past and its setting that may bring people back for more. I won’t be among their number, but I can at least appreciate the show’s redeeming qualities – and its place as a decent finisher to the summer season.
Potential: 25%

Lenlo: I was pleasantly surprised by Atri. I wasn’t expecting much, initial impressions weren’t great since we open on an Onee-san type flashing her cleavage and thigh gap at us. But as the show went on it became more and more of a vibe. Sailing through the ocean, floating underneath the sea, an MC with good reasons to be moody for once. It felt like someone actually cared while making this, unlike a great many of the shows airing this season. I think whether or not you like this will come down entirely to whether or not the vibe is one you connect with. Personally, while I enjoyed it for this episode due to all the other seasonals I had to watch for these posts, I know it’s not something I could keep up with for an entire season. Still, if you’re looking for something that’s more about experiencing a world and the characters living in it, rather than a set narrative, I think this could work for you.
Potential: 35%

The Magical Girl and the Evil Lieutenant

Short Synopsis: An admitted war criminal and a part time worker face off…and fall in love.

Lenlo: On the surface, this seems like a pretty standard magical girl show. Transformation sequence was alright, effects are good enough, girl is sort of cute. The issue with standard magical girl shows though is that you always have to recon with the Precure series, because if you can’t do something better than them, or sufficiently different, there’s no reason to watch your show. That’s just the reality of Precure. So what does this one do to set itself apart? Well surprisingly, a rather cute romance. I’m always down for that Romeo and Juliet “Opposing Sides” formula, and Evil Lieutenant puts enough care into the small moments like eating cake together that it was rather cute. The big issue for me is that the lead girl is an emotionless doll with no personality beyond what you project onto her. She’s a blank slate to be loved and lusted after while appearing pitiful and incompetent in her daily life. Hell, her relationship with her mascot almost feels like she’s being pimped out. All for our male lead, the Evil Lieutenant, to “save” and “care” for her while hiding it from his bosses. If Evil Lieutenant can give the female lead an actual personality, and grow their relationship, it could be fun. But I don’t have faith in them to do that. I might give this another episode to see where it goes, but I’m not keeping my hopes up.
Potential: 10%

Amun: Eh, I think Lenlo’s being a little harsh here. Evil Lieutenant was a perfectly fine take on this emerging sub-genre of enemy lovers (I wouldn’t call it Romeo and Juliet, since the anime approach is much more of a slow burn and doesn’t usually end up with so many dead people). While the main girl is a bit of a blank canvas, she does show some spunk about her convictions of being a magical girl (her magical sidekick being a yakuza shakedown is pretty funny). I expect to see more of her personality develop as the show continues – if it doesn’t, then this ship is sunk.
Potential: 50%

Too Many Losing Heroines!

Short Synopsis: A high school loner befriends his female classmate after eavesdropping on her doomed romantic confession.

Lenlo: Heroines feels… Manufactured. Which is an odd complaint I know, all anime are, it’s a team effort to make. But watching Heroines, I never once felt any sort of… authenticity from it? It’s like everything was exaggerated, the melodrama, the comedy, the personalities, the situations. Everything feels fake and unnatural, synthetic, making it impossible for me to connect or click with anything that happens. A single 20 minute episode felt like an hour as I waited for anything interesting to happen. It’s a shame, because the show looks good. That’s A-1 Pictures for you. Clean lines, nice colors, good designs and such. But I feel like I’ve seen all of it before, nothing stands out as unique to this show. I guess what I’m saying is that Heroines feels like it should be a good show, like it should be on the same level as Shoushimin, but it lacks any sort of character or personality to make it interesting.
Potential: 5%

Mario: Welcome to my domain! I always have a soft spot for LN adaptations about a narcissistic loner who can’t help but attract young girls along the way. Heck, my all-time favorites are Monogatari Series and (to a lesser degree) OreGairu. Even second tier shows like How to Raise a Boring Girlfriend or Bunny Senpai are still great joys to watch, and “Too Many Losing Heroines” could be a worthy addition to this second tier list (with an added bonus for having a know-it-all imouto). First, our down-to-earth MC’s snarky remarks work best when they parody the romance tropes of other light novels. His reaction to a girl who’s just been rejected is, “Please pay me the money back.” It helps that the girl in question here is very expressive and vocal in her struggles. Adding to that, the visuals look great in this episode, and the script offers some sort of sincerity at the end. With many other losing heroines to come (two more have been hinted already), hopefully this show can balance the humor and romance without becoming the very thing that it pokes fun at.
Potential: 50%

Why Does Nobody Remember Me in This World?

Short Synopsis: A soldier is transported to an alternate reality where humans lost a cataclysmic war against various supernatural races.

Wooper: Were I to take this anime’s title as a genuine question about itself, my answer would be, “Because your first episode was so forgettable.” I could tell within seconds of starting this premiere that I’d need to take a ton of screencaps to remember anything about it, so my desktop is currently littered with JPEGs, which I’ve pieced together to determine just what this show is all about. I won’t bore you with the details, though, especially since there are way, way too many of them; if I remember anything about the experience of watching this episode, it’s the swift mental checkout I performed upon realizing how much lore-dumping I was about to witness. Obviously, series like this one, which drone on and on about ancient prophets and supernatural heroes and shining swords and heavenly gifts, are largely written and directed by hacks. But I do wonder if closer communication between those two sides of an anime’s production wouldn’t result in a more watchable sort of hackery. Several times during this premiere, you see something happen (for example, a training dummy’s holographic overlay disappearing), then there’s a line confirming that it happened (“Mythical beast dragon type hologram deactivated”). If only the people working on these C-tier shows cared to cooperate, some of their issues could be solved, from little redundancies like that one to bigger, dirtier habits (like stuffing your characters’ mouths with backstory right upfront instead of building their personalities).
Potential: 0%

Lenlo: Tolkien would be proud of the amount of lore dumping this show did. It wasn’t good lore dumping, as it was neither interesting nor novel, but there was a lot of it! Now if only there was anything else. Actual characters, a decent fight, maybe a plot beyond our Kirito knockoff doing “cool” shit. Cool is in quotes because it was, in fact, not actually cool. Anyways, Wooper goes into a lot more detail and I don’t care enough to repeat everything he says, so just know he’s right. There are better shows this season.
Potential: 0%

Na Nare Hana Nare

Short Synopsis: Cute girls doing cheerleading, and all the drama behind it.

Mario: There are so many strikes against Na Nare Hana Nare that I am surprised that it still holds up so well by the end of this premiere. It’s about… cheerleading of all things. Its 3DCG performance scene is competent but distracting – it features one character who jumps across roofs and street lights like a ninja, and another character whose name is Anna Aveiro Nakamura dos Santos Moreira Cuccittini (no, I’m not making that up). But somehow, it gets off on a strong foot. I reckon its biggest strength so far is that the cast has well-defined personalities – with distinct traits and flaws – and we can see plenty of room for conflicts to come. Take our main girl Kanata for instance. She must have felt responsible for her friend Megumi’s injury. The show is in no hurry to explore these personal dramas though, instead letting the eccentric ones (and there are plenty in this episode) pull the string of the plot so far. It’s to no surprise that the director / series composer is the same one that did last year’s BanG Dream It’s MyGO. And the background art, with their many shades of purple, look stunning as well. When our girl Kanata takes flight at the end of the episode, the show does too.
Potential: 50%

Lenlo: To be honest I’m surprised Japan even knows what Cheerleading is, nonetheless participates in and hosts contests for it. It just feels so quintessentially American, maybe that’s why they have it at all. Anyways, as a show Nare Hana is fine? The CGI routines aren’t terrible, and the continued inclusion of their injured friend as she recovers to rejoin the team was sweet. Really the biggest mark against it is that I just don’t care about Cheerleading. It lacks that same competitive edge something like Volleyball has, and the girls themselves seem more concerned with their friendship and hanging out together than actually winning anything. If you’re looking for a wholesome Cute Girls Doing Cute Things show but in cheerleading outfits, I imagine this will be right up your alley. Personally though, I can’t say I care much.
Potential: 5%

Mayonaka Punch

Short Synopsis: A desperate streamer makes a pact with a vampire who wants to suck her blood.

Lenlo: There’s a surprising amount of YouTube/Media focused anime this season. Where others seem to be about the video/media creation process however, Mayonaka Punch focuses more on the drama inherent in running a channel and how audience reaction can affect a performer. Honestly, it’s not a terrible idea. Before the horny vampire bullshit, Mayonaka was surprisingly compelling. The fallout of a YouTuber group, the anxiety from reading comments, the fear about her future. I was interested, I wanted to see how she would overcome it, how she would reinvent herself, and what kicked off their fight to begin with! Instead it shifted to a bunch of shitty jokes around a house of worthless vampires, one a loli the other a horny mess. Maybe you can find some fun there, anytime Mayonaka focuses on its actual protagonist it isn’t bad. But the vampires are unnecessary and just ruin the whole thing.
Potential: 5%

Mario: There’s something to be said about our current obsession with stardom and hate posts. Many real-life up-and-coming stars, especially in Korea and Japan, have committed suicide due to the pressure of so-called “social disapproval” from the internet. Mayonaka Punch works best when the main character Masaki experiences that same rejection, both from the people she doesn’t know and the ones who used to be her best friends. The way she’s obsessed with hit counts and every online comment and her anxiety over her ex-bandmates’ interview are dark and raw in a good way. Ditto the sober moment later in the episode where Masaki attempts to repeat the group’s first viral hit by visiting an abandoned hospital just to find that she’s completely alone. It’s just too bad that the show also thinks it’s a good idea to frame these moments as a comedy instead of drama (the interview sessions, for example). In addition, the “vampire” part sucks up all of that message, and the vampire girl sadly only functions as a character who has the hots for our female lead, in more ways than one. As a result it is hard to stay invested in these characters and their relationship thus far. Also, vampires cannot be captured by a camera lens, now can they? Get your facts checked.
Potential: 10%

Koi wa Futago de Warikirenai

Short Synopsis: Twin girls angst over their feelings for the same guy.

Wooper: Summer 2024 really is the season of taboos, huh? First we had a guy falling in love with a robot, then the setup for a stepsibling romance, and now we’ve got a love triangle with identical sisters involved. The plot of Love Is Indivisible by Twins (the show’s strained English title) surely syncs up with the fantasies of a lot of young men out there: two girls with slightly different personalities and interests, both equally beautiful, and both equally in love with you. How will the main character ever choose between them?! In case you’re interested in the answer to that question, there are a few unfortunate hiccups in Koi wa Futago’s presentation that you’ll have to deal with as you watch, the biggest of which is the show’s brightness. The majority of characters and backgrounds in this premiere had an uncomfortable softness to them, as though the lighting were constantly overpowering them. This effect wasn’t reserved only for childhood flashbacks, either, though they comprised around half of the episode. Then there’s the dull character designs and subpar animation – I don’t expect every TV anime to excel in both of these categories, but you typically need either the first (so your series looks good in stills) or the second (so it looks good in motion), and Futago has neither. Writing the two halves of the episode from the different twins’ POVs didn’t convince me of the male lead’s crushworthiness, either, so I have no desire to give them another shot at it.
Potential: 0%

Lenlo: Let’s call this what it is, another wish-fulfillment romance with a nothingburger MC for weebs to project themselves onto while twins fall for him without him putting any actual effort into it. I can only assume as the series goes on we will get more embarrassing situations, some twin fan service, maybe even some drama as they both compete for the same boy, standard low-brow romance stuff. Personally though I won’t be around to see it, because there are just better, more genuine romances airing this season.
Potential: 0%

Isekai Shikkaku

Short Synopsis: Osamu Dazai tries to commit double suicide but ends up in an isekai instead!

Amun: Honestly, this premiere was everything that I had hoped for. The touchy subject of suicide (integral to our lead character) was kept somber and light hearted at the same time (I actually burst out lauging at Truck-kun being used seriously). The gloominess of the “adventurer” surrounded by a standard fantasy troupe just hits all the right notes for me. Sure, he assembles a somewhat unlikely harem to go find his lost suicide partner. Sure, he has a silly poison effect that is overpowered. I don’t care, Dazai’s gloominess has won me over, and I’m stoked to spend the rest of the season moping through this!
Potential: 75%

Lenlo: I was… legitimately impressed with Shikkaku. I was fully expecting a mediocre “Using author names as window dressing” show like Bungou Stray Dogs. Instead I get an actually funny, gallows-humor filled Isekai dialogue that I actually want to pay attention to and a lead whose problems aren’t magically solved just by getting hit by a truck and isekai’ed into another world. Yeah it still has a lot of the standard trappings like stats, harems and OP magic powers, and yeah those remain the weakest part of the show. But between the Annette’s slow disillusionment with Isekai Heroes and Dazai’s unreal ability to give every line he speaks the weight of a suicidal man’s last words, which I suppose they are, even those tropes got a few chuckles. Even the truck gag got me, coming out of nowhere mid-suicide attempt. And as Amun says, it’s not like the suicide is played entirely for laughs. It’s somehow able to switch between a legitimate attempt and a joke at will. And it’s pretty damn effective! If Shikkaku could just drop the normal ecchi bullshit that occasionally crops up it could be fantastic. As is I’ll settle for gallows humor I so rarely get and an amusing lead who is absolutely done with everything. And if it happens to go somewhere, to keep my interest across the entire season, then more power to it.
Potential: 55%

Sakuna: Of Rice and Ruin

Short Synopsis: An intergenerationally wealthy harvest goddess is banished to the human realm after failing to protect her parents’ stockpile of rice.

Wooper: After one episode, the clearest thing Sakuna has going for it is its pretty background art, which mostly depicts floating, interconnected palaces comprising the show’s lofty realm. Many of these shots are set against powder blue skies with wispy clouds, or the pinkish-purple hues of twilight, making them highly memorable – which they’ll need to be, because based on the events of this premiere, we’re about to leave the lofty realm behind. Sakuna’s punishment for allowing a quintet of hungry humans to enter this godly domain and ransack her rice reserves is banishment to a demon-infested island, where her parents disappeared untold generations ago. It’s a nice setup for a coming of age story, as she’ll now be forced to rely on her own survival abilities to get by, rather than her parents’ reputation, but she’ll have the opportunity to search for them at the same time. Still, it’s hard to definitively call this one of the season’s better offerings, since it’s apparently going to spend the vast majority of its time in the human realm, and it hasn’t even set foot there yet. I don’t mind that temporary uncertainty, nor are the kid-friendly character designs an issue for me (as I imagine they are for Very Serious anime fans). I also like the Shinto vibes and the traditional Japanese soundtrack. It’s just that Sakuna doesn’t have a ton of momentum behind it going into episode 2, so it remains to be seen whether it’ll be worth a season-long commitment.
Potential: 50%

Lenlo: I wasn’t very impressed by Sakuna sadly. The childlike, chibi size designs were really unappealing to me, especially when contrasted with the kid-friendly but still adult proportioned human characters in the same scenes. Sure the backgrounds are nice, the Shinto stylings are appealing like Wooper says, and it’s decently animated. But that’s really all it has going for it. I can’t say I care for our lead nor their mission to cleanse a demon-filled island. The idea itself is fine, but the presentation of it feels so… safe? Toothless? There’s nothing to it, no bite, no hook. And that makes this a pass for me.
Potential: 5%

Elf-san wa Yaserarenai

Short Synopsis: A massage therapist deals with fat elves trying, and failing, to lose weight.

Lenlo: You know, this season did feel a little lacking in the ecchi fetish department. Yeah we had the Russian Girl show, the Cosplay show, and the regular isekai bullshit. But this is the first one I’ve watched that really has absolutely nothing going for it outside of its fetish. And what a fetish it is. I can understand big tits, I can understand lolis (to an extent), elves, orcs, yandere, all of it makes sense on some level. But god damn I was not prepared for such an unapologetic fat fetish. I’m talking full gut. What’s more, Yaserarenai is that rare ecchi that somehow got permission to go completely uncensored. That’s right, no steam or convenient camera angles, it’s just full on giant nipples and fat stomachs shoved in your face. I’d be impressed if I wasn’t kind of disgusted.
Potential: 2Fat4Me