Star Crossed Anime

Sasaki and Peeps

Short Synopsis: A Japanese salaryman discovers a magic bird and starts making inter-dimensional trade deals with an isekai world before getting caught up in a secret psychic organization.

I figured out why this premier felt so long. Turns out, it’s actually a double feature! That explains a lot. Getting into the actual show, is it weird that I liked the first half that was just a down in the dumps salaryman picking up a pet and rediscovering joy in his life more than all of the psychic espionage crap? Or him finally gaining confidence and striking out on his own a bit? This larger psychic plot just feels unnecessary, like Sasaki and Peeps is trying to do too much. Do we need a magical talking bird, an isekai world, magic powers, and an organization of psychics with an agenda? Why can’t we just have a chill show about a salaryman doing progressively sillier trade deals with an isekai kingdom? Or said salaryman just doing the psychic stuff? Why are we stacking them all on top of each other? As for how the show was visually, it was pretty weak. Sasaki has neither the expressive designs of Dungeon Meshi nor the flashy animation of something like a battle shounen. As such the only real draw is the story, and I think the show mucks that up by shoving too much into the series. Maybe it will figure that out before the end and drop the psychic stuff, who knows. I won’t be there to find out though.

Potential: 20%

The Demon Prince of Momochi House

Short Synopsis: A 16 year old girl moves into a house with a bunch of pretty boy spirits with distinct hair colors in a reverse harem rom-com.

Let’s see what we have here… Pretty boys with distinct hair colors each assigned to a different stereotypical personality? They are all sexy fox spirit yokai? And a 16 year old girl ends up, through complete happenstance, living with them alone in the woods? Oh, it’s also all presented in the blandest way possible with plenty of soft gradients and this weird diffused lighting. Yeah this sounds like a pass for me. It’s a pretty standard reverse harem setup with a yokai flavoring. The end makes it seem like there will be a tad more spiritual conflict than the usual reverse harem pretty boy show, but it wasn’t very good and really just came out of nowhere to have an excuse to make the leads kiss and kick off their “romance”. If a pretty boy show is what you’re looking for this might sate your needs this season. It doesn’t look like a particularly good take on the idea though.

Potential: 5%

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Short Synopsis: Three kids are isekai’d after school, one of them manifesting the extremely rare ability to… heal! Time to abuse it to its fullest!

When I first started watching Wrong Way, my expectations were rock bottom. It looked like if you took the cast of Kaguya-Sama, isekai’ed them to another world, and made Ishigami the MC. Pretty uninteresting stuff if I’m being honest. But as I watched… I kinda started to enjoy it? A little? The cast sort of had personality, making jokes and having interests outside of school and showing genuine concern for each other? Plus I liked the joke that everyone else in this kingdom is scared shitless by a healer. Like… Maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, but I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by Wrong Way. It will eventually become an OP MC power fantasy, they always do. But for now, this early on, while it’s establishing things and having fun with its premise before it goes standard “Slay the demon king”? I think I’ll stick with it. Just in case.

Potential: 35%

Pon no Michi

Short Synopsis: Local girl kicked out of her house takes over her grandfather’s mahjong parlor and turns it into a clubhouse for her and her friends. Oh and also they play Mahjong.

The best thing I can say about Pon no Michi is that the lead, Nashiko, is cute. And pretty damn expressive, all things considered. She has a lot of good faces. In fact most of the cast does, this is a pretty good set of cute girls, I’m calling dibs on the goth one. Anyways, at it’s core Pon no Michi is really just “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” Mahjong edition. You’ll learn the rules while hanging out with cute girls. It’s actually pretty lively in it’s presentation, with the girls making jokes, visual gags, references to series like Kaiji and Akagi, all sorts of stuff to liven it up. Outside the CGI hands and mahjong table, it looks pretty good. If you like Mahjong, or enjoy the CGDCT genre, I think this is actually a really solid choice. I probably won’t be keeping up with it personally, it’s not my thing, but I was honestly impressed by it.

Potential: 60%

Delicious in Dungeon

Short Synopsis: An adventuring party runs out of food and has to eat the local monsters to survive. And wouldn’t you know it? They come to enjoy it!

Let’s get something out of the way, Dungeon Meshi is not an adventuring show. It is a cooking show that happens to use fantasy adventure monsters. So much so that, if I’m being honest, it kind of bored me at times. Like it went all in on the cooking, in detail bordering on the obsessive. I’m talking cooking techniques, flavor profiles, specific parts of each creature and how they contribute to the overall dish, not to mention the actual ecology of the world itself. While cool, it makes for a detailed world, there were times I feel like I was reading a Wiki entry rather than watching a show. Still, it looks fine enough, the designs are quite nice, in particular I think Marcille looks great and is incredibly expressive. There’s not a lot in the way of animation yet, it’s more focused on detailed backgrounds and food, but that’s fine. Good art direction can make up for that. I’m down to give it a few more episodes to show off and be what it wants to be. So for now I’m going to stick with it and see where it goes. My hope is it dials up the adventuring and party interactions a tad and dials down the cooking just a little. Because while the cooking is great, I think it’s skewed a tad too much in that direction for me. Seriously, at what point does fantasy Gordon Ramsay show up and call Marcille an idiot sandwich?

Potential: 50%

My Instant Death Ability is Overpowered

Short Synopsis: OP MC gets Isekai’d to another world with all the usual tropes and trappings. It’s terrible.

I don’t know how to explain everything wrong with this show other than to point at the title and tell you to read it again. Instant Death is the epitome of lazy, garden variety, every stereotype in the book Isekai garbage. Big boobed classmate shoving her breasts into the MC? OP MC that can annihilate anything just by looking at them? A poorly made magic system that looks like code and frames the entire thing as a video game despite ostensibly being a fantasy world? Scumbags who try to sexually assault the female MC the moment they appear on screen? There is absolutely nothing about this show that you couldn’t get from other, better series, and plenty of things you don’t actually want at all. I’ve read some people saying that it’s bad because the author wants it to be bad because he hates isekai and the anime industry? Well he succeeded, because this is terrible. Akogarete was creepy, but at least it was good at what it was trying to do. This is just bad. In every way. With no redeeming qualities.

Potential: Say no to OP MC Isekai Garbage kids.

Chained Soldier

Short Synopsis: In a world where only girls can get powers from magical peaches, a young man is granted the ability to enhance their powers.

Where Instant Death was bad to an almost comical degree, Chained Soldier is just a regular sort of bad. The CGI monsters are mediocre, the female MC is a bunch of fetishes bootstrapped together into something resembling a character, and the power system is designed specifically so the MC can have sloppy makeouts with the female MC. But you know what? Chained Soldier seems to know exactly what it is and revels in it. I can respect that, or I can after having watched Instant Death at least. Is it good? Is there any reason to watch it? Will anyone care about it after the season ends, or even halfway through the season? The answer to all of those is a resounding no. But it’s better than Instant Death. Which means I can at least see some people having a fun “It’s so bad it’s good” popcorn watch out of it.

Potential: 1%

Fluffy Paradise

Short Synopsis: Grown woman gets isekai’ed with the power to make non-human creatures love her. Also she’s like… 6. Disney Princess the anime.

The new season is here! And the first show we start off with is… An isekai. And a dull one at that. As far as isekai go this one is rather harmless. It’s a fluffy, cute, non-serious show about a girl petting magical creatures. Does it look good? No. Is it narratively compelling? No. Is there any reason to watch it beyond de-stressing while a little girl looks after some animals? Not really. Yes there’s an implied dragon fight at the end, but I bet 50$ that the next episode will start with that dragon falling in love with the little girl and turning into a goddamn house cat. If I’m being honest though, the older I get the more I come to see the appeal of this sort of show. Personally it’s not my thing. I think Fluffy Paradise is boring as sin. It’s just not how I like to relax. If you want to relax to an anime Disney Princess chilling with animals though, I won’t judge you.

Potential: 5%

Gushing Over Magical Girls

Short Synopsis: Middle schooler gets transformed into a Mahou Shoujo villain, proceeds to sexually assault all available magical girls.

Ignoring the blatant and disturbing fetishization of middle schoolers, with full nipple at that, Akogarete is nothing special. The production is average at best and mostly forgettable. The comedy is mediocre, though whether that’s due to the jokes being bad or this just not being my brand of humor is up for debate. Whatever the case, I can’t say I laughed at anything. That leaves the elephant in the room, the fetishization of middle schoolers. Akogarete is, in a word, disgusting. That makes it pretty standard an ecchi series, where the only reason to watch the show is to get a weekly dose of children being groped and sexually assaulted in a variety of ways while another kid watches and gets off to it. Unlike shows like Onimai however, which can at least attempt to claim some greater purpose like the trans experience, Akogarete is softcore porn and nothing. I cannot understate how much I hate this show. Do not watch it. I will judge you for this one.

Potential: We’re all going to jail for watching this.

Ishura

Short Synopsis: Local jackass Isekai MC with a sword fights giant monsters without caring about property damage. Local girl takes issue with this, decides to try and lead him to his death.

The good thing for Ishura is that after watching Akogarete the floor is so low, I could not possibly be disappointed or upset by it. From the looks of things though, Ishura doesn’t need it. Production wise it isn’t anything too special, at least not for the most part. The CGI robots look fine enough, nothing great, and the giant fuck-off lazer was pretty cool, especially with the choice of coloring. I’d say the two words that most embody Ishura right now are “Ambition” and “Gore”. It tries for things that the production team doesn’t seem sure it can do, like the whole “Climbing the robot” sequence. I can respect that, I think ambition goes a long way, even if it doesn’t always work. For Gore, well… Ishura is pretty brutal so far. I’m talking ripping off arms and legs, blood splatters, it’s a pretty gorey show! If that’s not your thing you’ll probably hate it as much as I do Akogarete, because it’s very much a “murder porn” first episode. If you can get past that though, it might be fun. I’d say the biggest thing holding it back right now is the OP MC who is less of a character and more of a wild animal only looking to fight strong things. If not for the Female MC, who plans on leading him from fight to fight hoping to find one that can kill him, there probably wouldn’t be much here. For now though? I’m curious to see where it goes, I’m down for generally villainous MCs, and while the production isn’t the best I want to see how far Ishura’s ambition will go. Will this be the highlight of its season, the most it can give us? Or will it push itself until the production falls apart? Or maybe it will even be that 1-in-a-million show that shoots its shot and somehow lands. I don’t know! But I’m intrigued enough to follow along. For now.

Potential: 50%