Sono Bisque Doll wa Koi wo Suru

Short Synopsis: Sew-me ga Kirei.

Armitage: While it may look generic in the way most modern anime set in high school do, the plot concept at the center of Sono Bisque Doll is actually pretty novel: a story about a socially awkward boy using his one very specific skill to help a popular girl in following through with her one very specific hobby. It can be a nice exploration of the dynamics of the relationship between these two while also giving a peak into cosplay culture. But, all that potential gets overshadowed by the continuous and entirely needless pandering to horny teenagers. Which really should not be this show’s core audience. If it strips itself of all the out-of-place fanservice, it won’t lose an ounce of its story’s essence. Alas, so often this premiere felt like the writers thinking “Hey, this is how we sell our female lead! Make sure to add a close-up panty shot at the time when she’s opening her heart to the male lead. That’s obviously the perfect moment.” Of course, that’s only one of the many moments of dumb sexualization of Kitagawa and I don’t think this story is ever going to change this approach. But hey, it sure would be talked about by the end of the season. For better or worse.

Potential: 25%

Lenlo: I’m so torn on Bisque Doll. On one hand, it’s really pretty and I think it could make for an interesting exploration not only of a piece of Japan’s culture I’ve never seen before but of non-traditional masculinity in general. On the other hand… My god is it creepy. The way it lingers on the lead girl, who is admittedly very pretty, and the almost disturbing way the lead man looks at or thinks of the dolls are both off putting. I think Bisque Doll has a lot of potential. All the pieces for not only an interesting romance but a compelling drama are here. From good visuals to a fun and interesting dynamic between our lead couple, I’m curious! I want to watch more! It just feels so god damn voyeuristic. I’m going to keep watching this and just pray it stays lovably weird and doesn’t go full trashy creep.

Potential: 60%

Shikkakumon no Saikyou Kenja

Short Synopsis: A powerful sorcerer choses to be reborn as an even more powerful preteen boy so his anime can attract a larger audience.

Amun: The biggest question here is: does this count as an isekai? It has reincarnation to the same world, but a different time – although it isn’t from the modern world to a magical one. Hmmm. Anyways, this was a dense episode. My goodness. There was reasoning behind the reincarnation, meeting of the main harem, becoming the honor student/quasi-teacher, winning an inter-school tournament, defeating a major foe, and uncovering the main sinister plot. That was ONE episode. Guys, you have like 12 episodes – I’m pretty sure I’ve seen shows with less plot in a full season. That said…it wasn’t terrible. Sure, we’ve seen it all before, but I’m kind of interested in the demons taking over a school (eat your heart out Voldemort). Our MC is properly overpowered, but still has his shy side – I’m not saying this is anything original, but it’s at least a decent rendition of this trope. I’ll give Shikkakumon a few more to prove out where it’s going (at breakneck speed), but I’m expecting a B-tier adventure at best. Which I am perfectly okay with.

Potential: 50%

Wooper: Back when The Irregular at Magic High School aired in 2014, it drew a lot of criticism for bending over backwards in praise of its own protagonist. It wasn’t the first anime to employ such a stupid storytelling strategy, of course, but it was still novel enough (and popular enough) to make the show into a meme. Eight years later, the success of that meme means we get at least two anime per season that are similarly obsessed with their own heroes. Shikkakumon is one such series. It is so concerned with demonstrating the awesomeness of Matthias Hildesheimer (yes, that’s his real name) that he becomes secondary to the list of spells and insignias that he possesses. Enhance Physique, Sunder Steel, Crests of Creation and Rapid Firing – these things are more important to the series than anything about Matthias himself. Every other character in the show exists not as an individual but as a device to inflate his importance. His friends trust him within seconds of meeting him and benefit immensely from his guidance. He passes his magical entrance exams at the top of his class and is immediately recruited to teach all his less talented peers how a real mage does it. Those who oppose him doubt his strength at first, but turn out to be hopelessly outmatched by his abilities as a sorcerer. It’s the stuff of wet dreams for chuuni teens, but I’d sooner be reincarnated as a blind and deaf man than look at or listen to another episode of this show.

Potential: 0%

Akebi-chan no Sailor-fuku

Short Synopsis: Glorified sauna belt commercial.

Lenlo: Remember when I called Bisque Doll creepy and voyeuristic but promising? Right, Akebi is just voyeuristic and it’s about 13 year olds. Visually I think it’s alright? I’m really not a fan of the character designs sadly, their faces just look like lumpy balls of clay someone stuck absurdly large eyes to. That lumpiness probably makes it easier to animate, and Akebi does have some good shots, but I find it really unappealing. Meanwhile the narrative is doing nothing for me. It’s another idol-ish show where young girls try to become Idols, glorifying an honestly pretty toxic industry. So yeah, this is a hard pass from me.

Potential: 0%

Armitage: While I agree with Lenlo that both this and Sono Bisque Doll are completely trite in their fanservice, I actually can’t pick what kind I hate more. Watching a 13-year-old putting on a skirt while her underpants are artistically not shown to the viewer or having a 15-year-old have her buttcheeks shown dead center of the screen. They are both equally unnecessary and brain-dead if you ask me. The difference is that Sono Bisque actually has a decent premise even though it is unable to fully back it up. Here we have a message for girls to lose weight till society deems them perfectly slim and desirable. Else they would amount to nothing. Truly poignant stuff.

Potential: 0%

Tokyo 24-ku

Short Synopsis: Three former classmates receive superhuman abilities after receiving a call from a supposedly dead friend.

Wooper: Tokyo 24-ku is one of just three original anime premiering this season, and of those three it’s the only one that’s not about sports (though its protagonist is a parkour enthusiast). I’m sure there will be people hoping for its success as a result, but after this freewheeling double-length premiere, it’s difficult to say whether their wishes will be granted. The show’s presentation is certainly original, with cuts to talking heads imposed on frozen backgrounds (see the screencap above) and in-universe objects like car doors and spray paint cans used for wipe transitions. The animation is one notch above average so far, but an action-heavy series like 24-ku is bound to encounter speedbumps, especially if the main character keeps jumping across rooftops as the season goes on. As for why he’s pulling out all these stunts, he and his two best bros are given a precognitive vision of a real-life trolley problem, along with the superpowers necessary to save the childhood friend who’s figuratively bound to the tracks. That’s only a small part of the show’s setup, though – the three boys’ post-high school ambitions are in focus as well, along with corrupt politicians and a hacking collective who will no doubt be at odds for the next 10 or so episodes. Think Durarara by way of Psycho Pass (or maybe it’s the other way around?). The show feels overstuffed, but it’s still energetic enough to get me on the hook for a second helping.

Potential: 50%

Mario: Whenever I see a double-length premiere, my immediate thought is to see whether or not it pays off: no one wants to sit through 45 minutes of nothing worthy. In that sense Tokyo 24-ku does just about enough to keep me wanting more. I appreciate how the show focuses on the characters first and foremost, detailing how they fall out and eventually get back together. That makes the first half slow and stoic but it helps lay the groundwork for the second half. The titular district has a lot of potential too, with the political unrest that is a mix between the current Hong Kong situation and Minority Report’s world. But while I don’t argue against its ambition, the execution still feels a bit clunky at times. The humor is not quite there, the three boys already have some girls fawning over them and the moral stance that it reaches at the end is… having it both ways, I suppose? I like the base ideas well enough to tune in for more, but at the same time I can see why others still ain’t buying it.

Potential: 50%

Slow Loop

Short Synopsis: A pair of soon-to-be stepsisters bond over fly fishing and cooking.

Mario: While Slow Loop reminds you of a certain show last year (read: Wooper’s comment below) and while it doesn’t steer away much from the genre’s well-worn formula, the first episode fares quite well to me. Its unhurried atmosphere is already a plus and it fits very well with its “fishing and cooking” subject matters. The two girls bounce off each other extremely naturally, but what Slow Loop does right in this first episode is how it takes a closer look at these girls’ familial issues. There are sequences where the girls talk to their new step-parents and it captures how their relationship begins to form. Then both the fishing part and the cooking part do their jobs well (maybe because I have a huge weakness for sashimi). It’s unlikely to be a breakout success like Yuru Camp was (though it does remind me of that show a bit), but it’s a perfect CGDCT show to enjoy while laid back (pun intended).

Potential: 40%

Wooper: Slow Loop is bound to draw comparisons to Houkago Teibou Nisshi, the other ‘cute girls go fishing’ series from a couple years back, so it’ll be casting upstream from the get-go. The short version of this already short paragraph is that if you haven’t seen either, go with HTN, but the long version is that Slow Loop’s writing, art direction, and character designs are lacking even in isolation. The script dives into main character Hiyori’s inner thoughts far too often: “This girl is an odd one, isn’t she?” “I don’t usually talk this much with people I’ve just met, do I?” “My dad died three years ago, didn’t he?” The result feels less like the thoughts of an introverted character and more like an authorial preference for thought balloons. Visually, nothing about this episode stood out apart from the CG fishing rods (to the show’s credit, they blended in quite nicely). Any show set by the ocean should be prepared to capture its beauty, tranquility, or vastness, but Slow Loop doesn’t seem intent on evoking anything of the sort. And I apologize for trotting out a Serious Anime Fan line here, but these high schoolers look like they’re ten or eleven years old. If the show held any sort of promise I’d give it a pass like I have for dozens of other series, but it doesn’t, so I won’t.

Potential: 10%

Dolls’ Frontline

Short Synopsis: Teenage Super-soldiers fight WW3 in skirts and blindfolds.

Armitage: See, I fully believe that 2022 is going to be a pretty good year for anime. It’s just starting off on the wrong note. Series like this aren’t offensively bad, they’re just aggressively mediocre. They don’t know if they want to commit to the fanservice or to the mindless action. They have their characters talk in tech jargon to make them come off as smart while having them undress right at the camera in the opening song which itself sounds like something that would play in a cheap pub in 2051. You know how series like this go by this point. Bland characters will be put into artificial conflicts that you wouldn’t care for. It can be mildly amusing if you are really out of stuff to watch and even YouTube is down and you’ve watched your share of cat videos for the day but otherwise just why would you bother? This show features a dual machine-gun wielding lady in a maid outfit but don’t let yourself think that it’ll come anywhere close to being a poor man’s Black Lagoon. It’s most probably just going to end up as a rich man’s Coppelion.

Potential: 10%

Amun: Ah, I’m a little more positive on this than Armi, but not by much. The good: I thought the representation of battle was a good attempt. There are plenty of shows that would have done pure power of friendship, but there was a semblance of strategy and “fog of war” here. There were a couple shots that featured excellent trigger discipline – points for that. I think anime as a whole has evolved in the depiction of battle with chaos, loss, etc – “86”, for its many other flaws, also did a pretty good job there. The bad: this is super-soldier cosplay with tricked-out, nonsensical custom weapons. I mean, the character names are all firearm models, but as far as I can tell, they don’t match the guns being used. Like…none of them were named AR-10 and I’m pretty sure there was at least one of those there. I didn’t see an M16, but it’s kind of hard to tell with all the various modifications.

I liked the shout-outs to the Russian and German WW2 guns (and the random AK-47 out of nowhere), but this seems second-rate gun otaku pandering to me. Boring choices too – they’re all pretty much mid-range assault rifles; let’s see some variation (close quarters, longer range, pistols, etc). Plus, one of my big pet peeves is firing with a silencer for absolutely no reason whatsoever. You’re not being subtle, you don’t have to worry about blowing out your electronic eardrums in the confined space – take it off so you don’t burn it up for when you actually need it (plus you’re diminishing your force for no reason). Anyways. I would say this show is more aiming to be a more war-time “Ghost in the Shell” (sorry Armi, I don’t really get the “Coppelion” comp?), but I doubt it’ll be anything special (you can already feel the “becoming a human” dilemma starting up). I actually like the OP though – some “Guilty Crown” vibes for me.

Potential: 30%

Leadale no Daichi nite

Short Synopsis: Bedridden gamer becomes her in-game character 200 years in the future after a hospital fails to install back-up power for her life support (but provided her with a full VR gaming rig?).

Lenlo: New year, new season. New year, new season. And the first show of the new year is… Not objectively terrible. I’ll take it! As far as Isekai go, Leadale isn’t the worst. It’s still pretty basic, it’s still a power fantasy and it still uses a lot of the MMO trappings you’ve seen from Log Horizon and SAO. On top of that, Leadale also looks… kinda bad. Its animation is almost nonexistent, the CGI is jank and it shifts between this chibi art style and your more standard A-1 Pictures knockoff style a lot. But you know what? It doesn’t take itself seriously, this isn’t your super edgy whatever the fuck Isekai. It’s just a feel good, don’t think, watch the previously hospital bound girl finally get to experience life kind of show. And sometimes that’s all a person needs. Not me, I won’t be watching it, but I wouldn’t blame someone else for doing so.

Potential: 30%

Amun: I am that someone else! This show is right up my alley, despite some of the mentioned quality concerns. There are a few shortcuts here and there, but the characters are charming enough, the world looks decent, and the MMORPG aspect isn’t overbearing. I’d say this fits into the “big sister-little sister” genre (think Slime Taoshite 300-nen or Kuma Kuma Kuma Bear), but with less cuteness and more adventure. This show has plenty to work with – already we have the time-skip mystery (are there only NPCs here?), the little sister route, then the surprise adult children. There are bones of an interesting story here instead of just the normal “spoil cute little sister” troupes. Color me interested. The first episode also showed some interest in action sequences, but I’m not holding my breath on that front. Where Leadale might derail is if it tries to be too many things and turns out half-baked. Even still, I see some good potential here, so I’m onboard this Make-A-Wish Isekai Adventure!

Potential: 75%

Hakozume: Kouban Joshi no Gyakushuu

Short Synopsis: Two police-women go through their daily routine.

Mario: My first show of 2022 is a mixed bag at best. In Hakozume, I admire a fair share of its elements: the fact that the leads are female police officers, the fact that it’s a comedy and most of all the fact that it’s cheeky enough to poke fun at itself. The recurring gag of almost everyone hating them certainly brings a smile to my face. The other jokes, however, are a big hit or miss. Many of the comedic bits just fall flat; the visuals are subpar and the characters are alright but nothing outstanding. Worse, despite poking at itself it still has this idealistic view of its profession and occasionally I feel it tries so hard to sell me on how good and fun being a cop can be. And fun it sure isn’t.

Potential: 30% or Copaganda.

Lenlo: Let us welcome this season’s entry into the “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” genre! This show’s subject? The subjugation of the poo- I mean police work! To be frank this show comes off as a fluff piece for Japanese police, almost like an advertisement. “Catch criminals, work with cute girls, get to carry a gun!” To be fair, it does poke some fun at many of the stereotypes and kinds of jobs police do. Stuff like working with kids, mascots, etc. So there is potential for it to be decent. It just comes down to which direction Hakozume chooses to go. Will it take a serious look at what it means to police people? Or will it just be a cute girl advertisement for the job? Only time will tell.

Potential: 30%?

Orient

Short Synopsis: Two idiots decide to fight their alien overlords.

Amun: This show is not what I’m looking for. First of all – scythes. The only show where a main character wields a scythe and isn’t terrible is Soul Eater…and we’re not going to talk about the last half. I just don’t have a good track record with scythes (Angel of Death, I’m looking at you). Back to the point, Orient starts with a slideshow, which always concerns me. From there, we get the power of friendship plot armor and a protag who legitimately forgot he gave his weapon away before declaring his independence day. Oh yeah, and there was a crystal motorcycle Deus Ex Machina…dead serious. The first bit of animation was decent, but the second half was rough – at least wait until the second episode to fall apart! The monsters being cats with scary octopus mouths was pretty funny, but that’s about all the good I’ve got for this show. This is a pass from me.

Potential: 1%

Lenlo: I know that I’m only 3 shows in but visually this show is the most interesting so far… is what I would say if it didn’t completely abandon the traditional ink style in the first minute. And for what? A boring, bog standard, low detail visual style where they can’t even bother to animate a mouth moving in a wide shot? God you have no idea how much of a disappointment that was. Yes, I realize I haven’t touched on the story at all, and there’s a reason for that. It’s just as dull as you would imagine. Monsters rule the world, our lead doesn’t like that and must rebel against society to fight against them. The twist? He uses a weird pickaxe. There really isn’t much going on here, it’s exactly what you think. If you want a show about fighting monsters with absurdly large weapons on motorcycles then sure, have some fun. Personally I think there are better action series out there – even AoT, which I’m known to dislike.

Potential: 10%