Shinmai Renkinjutsushi no Tenpo Keiei
Short Synopsis: An orphan girl graduates from an alchemists’ academy and prepares to open her own business.
Amun: I mean…yeah. I like the Working!! knock-offs, especially with the mix-in of fantastic and alchemy, but there just isn’t that much to say here. Like, our protag is uninteresting in HER OWN SHOW. That’s a very bad sign – at least make her magnetic to other in-world characters. I feel for her tough upbringing and determination and all…but these kinds of people don’t make interesting stories in reality, let alone in an oversaturated genre. There are nice touches here and there (and the most interesting character is clearly the dashing master). It’s just there’s not that much to write home about here, except that a girl with fanatical effort managed to attract a high level teacher whose strict training made her meet expectations. Then that master sent her off to the countryside to learn something other than books. Yeah, seems super boring on paper…but I’ll probably watch at least half of it – it’s at least cute and calming.
Potential: 25%
Wooper: Why do so many fantasy anime feature schools as the jumping-off points for their main characters? Sure, it’s a familiar concept for teenage audiences (especially in academics-obsessed Japan), but if your work is set in a universe separate from ours, you can go about building it any way you want. Knowledge can be shared within families, passed down from masters to apprentices, or acquired through self-study or trial and error. You can even write stories that don’t require your protagonist to have encyclopedic levels of information rattling around in their heads! That concept is lost on Shinmai Renkinjutsushi, which thought it important to demonstrate its hero Sarasa’s vast alchemical knowledge in this premiere. I don’t know about you all, but I was so proud to see how quickly she recognized cepharantha bulbs, perenalcone sap, filipendula, dryas, woostail, lyratam fruit, apifilliam roots, and armelina fruits during her practical exam. But seriously, this episode was unappealing and tiresome, despite featuring a few cute visual gags (Sarasa’s nose swelling with pride, then snapping off and falling out of frame, for example). It’s yet another medicine-adjacent fantasy show, the bar for which has gotten so low that “there’s no reincarnation element” is supposed to be a selling point. This is an anime for people who are frightened by unpredictability.
Potential: 0%
Futoku no Guild
Short Synopsis: A monster hunter saves several girls from being assaulted by fantasy creatures (but not before the camera captures them at the most exploitative angles possible).
Amun: Oh, I didn’t actually know what this was about. There is legit nothing good here – it’s a playthrough of a Ero RPG. Like, you could go watch one of those Twitch plays (well, I guess not Twitch) of something and it would be more interesting. I regret everything.
Potential: Nah
Lenlo: Aaaaaass and titties, ass ass and titties, aaaass and titties. That’s right, this is your seasonal uncensored, explicit, it might as well be outright porn, ecchi of the season. Is there anything of value or substance here? Does anyone have any personality besides their breast size and fetish category? The answer to those, and similar questions, is no. Like I’m not going to sugar coat it, this show is the seasonal incel wish fulfillment where the MC is a perfect blank slate and the girls exist purely to be sex objects. Even Shield Hero tried harder than this to hide its incel wish fulfillment. I can’t even recommend this show on the basis of just enjoying porn, because at that point you are better off looking up actual porn.
Potential: ⊙⊙/100
Akiba Maid Sensou
Short Synopsis: Two new hires at a maid cafe are tasked with delivering a message to a rival business, but one of them is far more equipped for the job than the other.
Wooper: There’s more to Akiba Maid Sensou than meets the eye, thanks to a theatrical final scene that’s likely to generate a lot of buzz in the coming days (or perhaps it already did, depending on when this post gets published). I’ll refrain from spoiling precisely what occurs in those last few minutes, even though most viewers will be able to sense where the story is headed after the opening flashback, which depicts a maid-on-maid assassination 14 years before the main plot begins. That final sequence is so wild that it will naturally dominate all discussion of this episode, but having seen it, I’m no more likely to watch this show next week than I was before. In fact, the odds of me coming back are lower now than if Akiba Maid had been a dark comedy about a starry-eyed employee getting their soul crushed by a minimum wage job. The show leans in that direction once or twice, but it’s all couched in the knowledge that the girls’ job isn’t what it seems, which detracts from what could have been a decent satirical angle. There is a cute panda at the series’ workplace, though (which is called the Oinky Doink cafe, if you can believe it), so that’s something.
Potential: 5%
Lenlo: You know, I wasn’t sure what to expect going into Akiba Maid Wars. I thought… Are these customer wars? Fighting for market share with silly gimmicks, skimpy outfits and cute girls? And then it opened with a street assassination and I suddenly had no idea what I was in for. Are these actual maid-cafe street gangs? Apparently so cause bitches be dying. To be honest, I had a shocking amount of fun with this. Its stupid, but it feels like Akib knows its stupid. It leaned all in on the Akihabara maid cafe culture with its light-stick weapons and dance routine street fight. As someone who has worked in a maid cafe for 3 years at convention, I appreciated that. I don’t expect Akiba to have much depth to it. It’s going to be weekly maid-themed fight scenes to maid music probably. But that’s more than I expected going into it, and I figure I can have some fun with that. Plus its all about gallows humor, my favorite kind of humor.
Potential: 30%
I really think that Akiba Maid War would have something honest and relevant to say if it was capable of commenting on the time period this show takes place in. 1999 after all was when Japan was still reeling from the effects of the Lost Decade on top of the aftermath of the 1997 Asian recession. It must’ve been a very pessimistic time where people legitimately feared that crime and lawlessness would overtake Japanese society due to how their economy was still in its decline, and disenchantment was building among the public.
There would at least be something regarding this period of economic anxiety that would’ve bolstered the criminal organizations who run these conspicuous businesses including the maid cafes in this series. Hell, it could even resonate with older audiences who saw that not much has improved in their society there even 23 years later, especially since their economy is taking a battering right now. Instead, it seems like we’re getting CyGames’ attempt to make lightning strike twice by trying to copy Zombieland Saga, despite misunderstanding why that series even took off in the first place. PA Works is on thin ice.
And ffs, that idol song during that one scene wasn’t even period accurate!
Oh for sure, nothing about it is period accurate AT ALL. Had it tried to be, had it tried what you say, maybe it could be something more. It could definitely have been more interesting. But I’m still going to have some stupid popcorn fun with those maid song battles. Assuming that wasn’t a one-off thing at least.
Thank you for this insightful comment.
The whole first scene with the gun murder felt absolutely jarring, particularly considering the recent murder of Shinzo Abe. Coincidence? Maybe. But the behavior of the criminal, perfectly scripted, in a natural way that only tv propaganda ready to sell you new cultural shift could ever pull…. I don’t know man. Any kind of depiction of terror attack grounded in hyper-realism, gripping you by the heart strings is always such red flag to me, but this here was almost perfect. I don’t know what to think of this scene. Just…
Anyway
I didn’t notice the similarity with Zombieland Saga at all, but its so obvious! I remember intro of the 1st Zombieland Saga episode with the truck – I immediately went: lets speed up this boring introdu – ok this shock-porn is reeeelly retar – oh the music is… oooooh I get it, this totally works. Then I played the intro 5 times before moving on with the episode.
Fast forward to this. It’s the same thing: lets speed up this boring introdu – ok this shock-porn is reeeeally retar – ded. There was no twist to my reaction and at the end I was dumbfounded. This is not comedy, its edgy, its serious, but self-aware enough to wrap it up in ‘hilarity’ to sell it as comedy so people swallow. ‘I know its bad comedy but I KNOW its bad comedy so it’s actually good comedy’ – kind of thing. And the edgy part – sights… Im gonna rant again, but – I have to – the senseless violence and shock – it’s a continuation of what videogames have become, just more and more and even more senseless violence, for the Comfortably Numb, hungry for modicum of stimulation.
People may argue that it’s just stupid anime. No. There are always messages and values in everything created, from intentional of the author to even hidden collective of society.
People may argue I’m just being a snowflake. No. The preoccupation with (senseless) violence is, in the truest sense of the word, demonic. It has real, discernible effect. Trauma (you just cant look away from it can you?) goes hand in hand with mind control (shattering the mind) and such. Deep stuff. Lot’s of people are waking up to this.
I’m running away from that, and it keeps chasing me. Nowadays its in anime and even VNs (Fullmetal Daemon Muramasa would be my last offender).
Again, I’m not an – I love stuff like the horrific Saya no Uta, or genocidal brain eating BETA in Muv Luv or Major sperging about loving war or 88mm in Hellsing. And I absolutely love Im Dal Young’s psycho-bitches duking it out in Freezing (manhwa, not anime) – it is not the violence part I have an issue with, its the senseless part and its huge difference.
And I’m not having a meltdown or be so deeep and I dont think I’m making a difference (maybe a little). I simply try to understand (by writing) what this all means.
And I believe that deep down people feel the truth and meaning, even if society inverts and warps it, even if they often suppress it in their heart. That they are not blind, but merely live in darkness. That they only laugh at unfunny jokes in shy awkwardness. That they still like good things. And that they do take heartwarming zombies over senseless maids.