Star Crossed Anime

Oshi No Ko

Short Synopsis: Doctor meets his favorite idol who is secretly pregnant, then gets killed, and is reborn as her kid like that day.

Amun: I, uh, yeah, this ain’t for me. One of my absolute non-starters for the “reincarnation” (I guess this isn’t technically an isekai?) is the restart from a baby and all the infant activities done with an adult mind. It’s a bit messed up (there’s a reason your memories wipe around 3). Getting to this behemoth of an episode, the animation is fine and the characters sure do sparkle. Unfortunately, the idol genre is a dish I very rarely enjoy, so it has to be something truly special to keep me interested (pretty much just “Zombie Land Saga”). Full disclosure: I only watched about 25 minutes to where there was some children feeding, but that’s about the length of a single episode, which is all I’m really willing to give this show. I just wonder what the target demographic here is: you need to enjoy reborn shows, but also shows about idols, but also shows about little kids. Seems a fairly small intersection – I guess “Spy x Family” for idol fans? Just a very strange premise. You get the stalker otaku, some murder, some intrigue, bunch of scummy entertainment people, whatever. “Oshi No Ko” just didn’t leave a good taste in my mouth, so I’m sure not coming back for seconds (or even finishing this first gigantic plate).

P.S. I’m no conspiracy theorist, but has anyone else noticed a bunch of anime getting greenlit that involve child-rearing and how great it is? I can only think of “Beelzebub” from back in the day – there couldn’t possibly be an agenda to try and help out the herbivore Japanese population, could there?
Potential: 0%

Mario: Now, this is unusual. Oshi no Ko’s first episode turned out to be a feature length affair, and after going through it, I don’t think it deserves its long, long runtime. Well, the exact phrase should be: it doesn’t deserve 80 minutes of my time since I would normally drop it after 20 minutes. The episode takes a critical look at the idol industry. It’s clearly established how our idol girl/mom Ai is “made of lies.” It also goes to great lengths to hit the point home that the idol industry is an unforgiving place where talent alone isn’t enough. Those are critical observations, sure, but the issue I have with the episode is that it’s also a wish-fulfillment fantasy about a fully-grown adult reincarnated as that idol’s son. That is why he gets a free pass to act in a film, and there are many other instances where I feel like I’m watching a scene from Boss Baby. The writing is blatant at times. There’s a scene where our main guy, still in his adult body, is confronted by an obsessive fan of Ai’s, and his very first reaction was to admit that she’s staying at the hospital where he works. I also don’t get why the show keeps his twin sister’s real identity a secret from him. They are together like… all the time. This review is running long so I’ll cut it short here – despite spending time with these characters the longest, I have very little interest to find out more about any of them or the true killer’s identity.
Potential: Not deserving of its length

A Galaxy Next Door

Short Synopsis: A desperate mangaka hires a proficient assistant who turns out to be a princess.

Wooper: You know how the old saying “write what you know” has resulted in a lot of novels about English professors contemplating adultery? Well, A Galaxy Next Door is cut from a similar cloth, only it took the adage less literally – it’s about an (unmarried) manga artist named Ichiro falling in love with his female assistant Shiori, but she’s also a princess, and also not human, and also her tail acts as a portal to another realm. The show gives her a convincingly human appearance in order to save all these reveals until the last few minutes, and in my opinion they constitute the only interesting part of the episode. Much of the rest of its runtime involved Ichiro fretting over the deadline for his next chapter, talking to his boring family, and passing pages to Shiori or telling her she’s allowed to take a break (she naturally refuses all such offers, this being a Japanese production). I know it’s hard to make a meticulous process like drawing manga seem entertaining, but Galaxy Next Door takes such a grounded approach that it doesn’t even attempt to tackle that issue. The show looks remarkably plain, as well – every single interior shot made me doubt Ichiro’s compositional skills, given the drab state of his building (did I mention he’s also a landlord?), and the character designs are some of the dullest of the season. It’s a shame that one of the few adult romances we’ve received in recent years had to end up this way, but at least last season’s Koori Zokusei Danshi fared a bit better on the production front.
Potential: 10%

Amun: By the way, in case anyone else got confused, this is NOT the anime about the kids with insomnia and the observatory. I also did not realize this was a reverse-isekai either. This premise is weird – but I do appreciate how wonderful it is to find a competent assistant. I also liked how straightforward the characters are here….and then things got a little bit weird. Overall, the visual quality does feel a bit low, but I didn’t hate the characters or the settings. Just kind of a very complicated setup off the bat – there could have been some slow playing all the various parts (landlord manga artist has to raise his two little kids and gets an assistant who is a star princess with a spiky tail who is a fan of his….hey, at least they didn’t use that as the title of the show). I might watch a few more, but since the little kids look like the primary supporting cast (and the inevitable other neighbors in the building), this doesn’t look like it’ll hold my interest for an entire season.
Potential: 40%

Ousama Ranking:
The Treasure Chest of Courage

Short Synopsis: Bojji and Kage get up to all kinds of hijinks…set in the middle of the first season?

Mario: This season is a batch of side-stories from Ousama Ranking, which also means that it’s more of Ousama Ranking without an actual arc. If you are already a fan of these characters (I am), or want to see more worldbuilding (I do), then this season should be a treat!! Well, that’s only partly right. If this first episode is any indication, it will tell heart-warming tales about our Bojji and Kage that should please the audience, but at the same time, it already feels repetitive. That feeling is not from the set-up (which is different enough), but more from its educational message. “Being kind” and compassionate is obviously a theme here, and it’s an important attribute for Bojji to be a great King in the future. I adore Ousama’s Ranking world and characters for sure, but I hope the season provides enough reasons for me to care beyond that.
Potential: 40%

Amun: The rarest of sequels – the mid-quel! I can only think of “Steins;Gate” as an example of this off the top of my head, although there are tons of spinoffs that tell the same story with different characters. And it was good! (well, the OP song was very not good, but the video was fine). This looks to be basically all the filler episodes that weren’t present in the first season – that’s fine with me, since we already know the larger plot. I don’t actually mind that, since it doesn’t interfere with the larger stories and can be all fun no stakes – “Reincarnated As a Slime” did that recently, and I thought it was great. Animation remains top notch, characters are still good, and we won’t have any of the weird Miranjo stuff to deal with (I hope). This may not win any awards, but I’ll watch this.
Potential: 75%

Why Raeliana Ended Up at the Duke’s Mansion

Short Synopsis: A girl dies and is conveniently reincarnated into the world of a novel she’s already read.

Mario: This series is yet another isekai where the isekai-ing itself doesn’t make much sense. Yes, Raeliana retains her knowledge from her past life to change her fate – in a concept similar to Hamefura, only 100% more serious, but the show glosses over the whole concept by her narrating: “… and I was reborn as a character in a novel.” It might sound like a good idea on paper to speed up the established tropes to get to the main points, but right at the start I wasn’t totally convinced on what the show tries to sell me. Raeliana, on the other hand, is an interesting female lead to follow. As she already knows how she would die, she tries her best, to the point of manipulation, to escape that route. That leads to somewhat intriguing conflict, but at the cost of other characters. It is amusing to see how the plot goes from there, now that she narrowly escapes her fated death but might get herself tangled up in a bigger scheme. But at the same time, the other characters are painfully plain at the moment given the fact that Raeliana already “knows” about their personalities, their past and their motives. How it balances that out will determine the success of the show, but for those of you who are already under Raeliana’s spell, there’s a lot to look forward to.
Potential: 30%

Wooper: Sometimes the best way to explain that a TV show is poorly written is to provide a scene by scene summary of a single episode, since every aspect of its script is a misstep of some kind. That’s the approach I want to take with this series, but then I’d end up writing a novel – though on the plus side, I’m sure it would be more entertaining than the novel within which Raeliana now lives. Suffice to say, this series is drowning in expository narration, with multiple scenes grinding to a halt so the title character can explain the political situation of her country, or some piece of court intrigue about which a competent author would write an actual story, rather than inserting a “the story so far” segment into their very first episode. For most anime fans this axe-blunt style isn’t a dealbreaker – I’m just an old crank, so if you enjoyed this premiere, please pay me no mind. I do want to draw your attention to one particularly humorous moment, though, where Raeliana mentally protests her fiance’s clinginess by thinking, “I even read a book for this!” Here she’s referring to “How to Break Up with Your Boyfriend,” a tome whose wisdom fails to produce a clean end to her engagement, leaving her hitched to a man she hates – and the worst part of the whole situation is that she had to read a boring old book, with words and everything. Oh, the humanity!
Potential: Not for me

Dead Mount Death Play

Short Synopsis: After being defeated in his own world, a necromancer known as the Corpse God flees to Earth and takes the form of a young boy.

Lenlo: I will admit, I am a bit curious about Dead Mount Death Play. I thought it was just going to be a standard isekai at first, and in parts it still is. An OP MC transported to another world. But the two things that make it stand out to me are that it’s the villain and that it’s bringing them to our world. Now both of these have been done before, neither are new. But they are both something I tend to enjoy at least a little bit. Combine that with a respectable production, nothing super impressive but definitely better then most of the shlock I’ve had to watch for these impressions. I’ve no idea if Dead Mount will actually end up being interesting, or if it will be edgy shlock, I can see it going either way. And while I would lean towards it just being edgy, as that’s the easiest thing for it to do, I’m going to give it another episode or two and see where it can go.
Potential: 20%

Wooper: You know an anime is in a dire spot when you can only think to praise it for avoiding the absolute worst tendencies of its genre. Backhanded compliments like, “At least this episode isn’t shitting itself with menu screens,” and, “The protagonist might not have a harem for once,” went through my mind as I watched Dead Mount Death Play. I certainly can’t dish out any unqualified praise for this episode, since its action sequences bit off way more than they could chew, and its dubstep/metal soundtrack was surely the result of an aging producer’s midlife crisis. The overreliance on digital effects, such as those used for spellcasting circles and scribbly-looking spirits, couldn’t stop this premiere from looking (and feeling) interminably gray. If this anime were a person, it would have multiple swords mounted on the walls of its living room, wear a cape to the grocery store, and use the word “epic” in conversation at least thirty times per day. The fact that this is one of the better isekai of the season and I still hate it makes me hope that it’s also one of the last ones I ever have to watch. I know that’s a highly biased thing to say, but I’m beyond caring about objectivity at this point.
Potential: 0%

THE MARGINAL SERVICE

Short Synopsis: People dressed as construction workers take down bad NOT “aliens”.

Wooper: The Marginal Service’s appeal lies in just how seriously it takes its dumbass premise, despite cribbing nearly every part of it from American police movies. It starts by ripping off a string of “rebel cop” tropes and applying them to its protagonist, Brian Nightraider (yes, you read that name correctly). He stumbles onto a case that’s way above his pay grade, gets fired for his loose cannon tendencies, refuses to turn in his gun, drinks straight from a bottle of liquor at his former partner’s graveside – the whole nine yards. Then he’s recruited by a secret government organization, where he switches roles and becomes the upstart rookie, partnered with a no-nonsense veteran who clearly resents his new position. Then we go full Men in Black and kill an alien with specialized weapons while keeping the general public in the dark – though in one of the series’ rare differences from its “inspirations,” the Marginal Service agents wear construction uniforms rather than suits (a clear upgrade, if you ask me). All this shameless retreading of decades-old plot beats coaxed a couple smiles from me, but then came the character intro cards at the end, including one for “Peck Desmont,” an angry-looking squirrel who appeared nowhere else in the episode. This caused me to laugh way harder than I had at any moment from the 16 other shows I previewed this season – that’s got to count for something, right?
Potential: 20% for my boy Peck Desmont

Amun: You know, I was willing to give some benefit of the doubt here to this rogue-cop-recruited-by-secret-government-agency show until the construction power rangers showed up. Like, what?! Everything else was pretty by the numbers (except the partner’s death, honestly – that surprised me) and then….might morphin construction time (I guess without the giant robot). I’m honestly kind of stuck on how weird the costumes are, but looking at the other merits of the episode….meh. This lacks the conflict between worlds that made a similar show “Cop Craft” at least interesting. “Marginal Service” instead opts to assemble a misfit ensemble of…anime foreigner stereotypes? To fight “borderlanders” (well, aliens). Huh. UH HUH. I guess the white devil is out of vogue, so we’ve got the black muscle man and the British playboy plus a token slut (those are the actual characters here, don’t judge me). I just sense a bit of message telegraphing with some mediocre plot and production randomly sprinkled with wack construction outfits that make no sense. This is a N-O-P-E from me.
Potential: No thanks.