So I was unaware that this season is a split – guess this is the end until January! And wow, what a cliffhanger. These last two episodes have been absolutely brutal in terms of body count…the plot armor on our mains is even wearing a bit thin. Let’s take a look at these last two outings as we say goodbye until next year. Want to see what I rate this half? Check it out below!
Continue reading “DanMachi 4 – 10/11 (Juggernaut/Endless) [END]”
Short Synopsis: A man dies and is reincarnated as a sword in an RPG world, where he learns tons of sweet skills and is eventually wielded by a catgirl.
Wooper: Of all the fantasy anime to abuse the “RPG menu screens” trope, I think this one abuses it the hardest. There were around 25 shots here with no function except to list the abilities and levels of the show’s sentient sword protagonist, which typically required the use of the entire frame. Interestingly, though, this practice didn’t distract much from the flow of the episode, since its story revolved almost entirely around killing monsters and gaining their skills. There’s something satisfying about watching a sword fly through the air and run through enemies of its own volition, especially when the 3DCG used in its animation is so slick. The fun came to a screeching halt, though, during any scenes where his future wielder Fran appeared on screen. A catgirl, former slave, and now devoted follower of some guy who was reincarnated into her world just last week, Fran represents many of the things I dislike about modern fantasy series. It’s great that she’s free of bondage and ready to take fate into her own hands and all, but there’s no way a story this thin is equipped to make her anything more than a mascot. Even if her menu screens go berserk with experience points, she’ll be trapped in an anime that was never anything more than a telepathic sword simulator.
Potential: 10%
Amun: Oh come on now Wooper, this wasn’t that bad. One of my pet peeves on the new influx of slave isekais is how life-long slaves just behave perfectly normally without any trauma – Reincarnated as a Sword didn’t do that. Fran is clearly not reacting to the normal social/comedy cues, and I found myself appreciating that – it felt halfway realistic. Does it make for great dialogue throughout the rest of the show? Of course not, but this isn’t just your typical furry (or elf) maid slave that you’ll find in many other recent isekai. We’ll have to see if that’s a good thing or not. Some positives: the 3D animation was clean and as someone ambushed by the first episode of Goblin Slayer, I loved seeing the Goblin massacre. The story is very simple, but there’s a clear direction to it, so I’ll take what I can get. The biggest positive here is just the premise – a sentient sword off on an adventure is one I can’t recall having seen before. The downsides are pretty clear too. Without a doubt, as Wooper lamented, the wielder Fran is the weak link and will probably provide some quasi-service throughout. I don’t see this being anything other than a novelty show, but given isekai these days have to find some way to set themselves apart, I appreciate the effort. And the animation looks good (for now)!
Potential: 35%
Short Synopsis: A young tanuki draws inspiration from a local rakugo performance after finding it tough to trick humans in the big city.
Wooper: Rakugo anime sure have it tough in the wake of Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju. Even when they belong to a completely different genre, as Ushi no Shishou does, their performance scenes will no doubt be compared to the mesmerizing stories found in that modern classic. Cutting away from the rakugoka mid-act to an imagined version of their tale seems like kids’ stuff, but to be fair, children may be Shishou’s target audience; there’s a segment after the ED that breaks down the episode’s (already simple) rakugo story for viewers who had trouble following it, which seems a very kid-friendly thing to do. Main character Mameda is a child, too (of the tanuki variety), and not the grating prodigy type, which might have been refreshing had the show been able to capture a country kid’s amazement at the bustle of early 20th century Osaka. Unfortunately, I didn’t feel it was successful in that task – both the human city of Osaka and the series’ supernatural elements (tanuki transformations, Daikokutei’s flying ship) were depicted rather plainly. There was a lot of emphasis on Mameda’s admiration for her prankster father, which led to her own desire to trick humans, but even that was consigned to flashbacks, and not particularly good ones. That’s the trouble with Uchi no Shisou – even though there’s nothing glaringly wrong with it, there’s nothing glaringly right, either.
Potential: 10%
Lenlo: Wooper isn’t wrong in anything he said. I feel like Shishou’s target audience is children, and it was very simplistic in its rakugo and presentation there of. But while he seems to have been bored by it, I found it a tad endearing. A little Tanuki being more confused and befuddled by the modern world than the humans were her tricks was cute, and the fox girl’s monologue on the passing of time and the old ways being forgotten to history was more poignant than I was expecting. It’s still not great, these totaled about 8 minutes of engagement in a 23 minute long episode. But I’m also not usually the kind of person to go for cutesy stuff, so Shishou had an uphill battle to win me over regardless. So yeah, for someone just looking for a cute, fluffy show this season, I expect you could do a whole lot worse than Shishou.
Potential: 20%
Short Synopsis: A girl dies and is reincarnated in her favorite otome game, where she must avert her deathly fate by seducing the Demon Lord.
Wooper: I’ve only watched the first of Villainess’s two available episodes, but I doubt the second one will do much to improve my initial impression of the series. It’s the hundredth anime in recent years to use the resurrection gimmick, putting an analog earthling (like you, the viewer) in a digital setting (like you, the viewer, play on your video game system of choice). As such, it has the privilege of skipping storytelling basics like characterization and setting establishment, since its intended audience is already familiar with the sorts of games it’s aping. Only this show seems to have missed the memo that it could skip all that, because it still goes about it in its own clumsy way – namely, tons of internal monologuing from its main character Aileen. These scenes held zero appeal for me, and the spoken dialogue was hardly any better, being ripped from both the reverse harem anime and otome game playbooks. Visually, the show manages to make nearly every one of its scenes a dull disappointment, with lazy brightness effects used in chandelier-lit balls and moonlit exterior scenes alike, and unimaginative layouts that had my eyes glazing over. The only redeeming factor anywhere in this first episode is a talking crow named Almond (voiced by Tomokazu Sugita), whose love of Aileen’s cookies gives him the sort of charm that no other character here can muster. If I were to die and be reincarnated in this anime, the first thing I’d do would be to find Almond and tell him to fly far, far away from this borefest.
Potential: 1%, strictly out of appreciation for Almond
Lenlo: Zzzz… Zzzz… Zzzz… Snrk! What? Where am I? What time is it? Am I still watching shitty video game isekai? Only this one is coached in some kind of period-drama dating sim? Except even with that slightly unique premise it still falls back on fantasy demon lord bullshit? Anime why. You had a shot here to do something new. Just make a video-game isekai but instead of RPG bullshit do a dating sim, complete with all the videogame trappings of the genre. Have some fun with it! Joke about routes, riff on it a bit and have some fun! Instead it just gives me exactly what Wooper says above: A dull, boring, whatever of a series.
Potential: 0%
Welcome everyone, to the big finale of Yofukashi no Uta! Well… I say big finale, it’s barely even a finale. For all that Yofukashi has built up to it, it feels like barely anything has happened and I’m just sitting here wonder… is that it. Why? Well lets dive in and talk about it!
In case it wasn’t obvious, my reaction to this finale was very lukewarm. In a word, it was anticlimactic. And the best reason I can give for that is it feels like, with this finale, that Yofukashi has only just started. It took 13 episodes of meandering about to figure out where the show wanted to go. And right when it figures that out… it ends. Right when Ko has finally resolved that yes, he wants this relationship, its done. That’s fine, it needed to happen with how long the show took to get here. But personally? I was really hoping for some kind of confrontation to go with it. Something that would set up the future of the story, to make me excited to either go read it or for another season. Maybe Anko and Nazuna could’ve met, since both are already aware of each other. Something like that.
Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 13 [Call of the Night]”
Coming out on a wave of unprecedented hype before being lambasted as a disappointing release, Cyberpunk 2077 certainly has made its mark on the gaming industry. Having put in over a hundred hours into the game, I thought that story, characters, graphics and setting were really excellent but the stupid amount of bugs, missing or half-baked features and unfillfulled promises really marred my experience. It’s only now nearly two years after its initial release that the game is in a relatively stable state and substantial new content is finally on the cusp of dropping instead of trying to mend all the fractured pieces. Coinciding with the Edgerunner DLC release, CD Projekt Red and Studio Trigger have collaborated together to release an anime out on Netflix’s streaming platform. The result is that the animation staff and writers, who worked on shows like Kill la Kill and Promare, have managed to revitalize a product that many gamers had written off as another overhyped and broken project. I don’t like the Netflix model of dumping the entire show at the same time. While it is not beholden to the weekly broadcasting schedule of TV channel providers, I would have preferred to spaced out the hype just like how Riot’s Arcane was delivered in three episode chunks over a couple of weeks. Edgerunnners is genuinely good and it’s a shame that it doesn’t get the traditional buildup of publicity and makes the discussion around the show uneven. It does seem that the show is still gaining popularity as evident by the massive increase in player count for the two year old game.
Welcome to the (almost) halfway point of His and Her Circumstances! This week sees us transition into a new arc, both for the show and the lead relationship. There’s a shocking amount to talk about this week so lets jump right into it!
Starting off, I need to gush a bit about how good Circumstances looked this week. It was mostly back-loaded into the 2nd half of episode 11, sure. But that 2nd half was an absolute joy. The eye catches, the expressiveness, the sheer amount of personality packed into each and every scene. From Tsubasa being a gremlin to Aya and Tsubaki being absolute terrors. That entire scene in the restaurant as they keep feeding Tsubasa more and more and more spoons. I’ve seen that scene, with no context, for years! And I never knew where it was from until today. It’s incredible how quickly Circumstances can go from well directed but barely animated to some of the best and most expressive character work I’ve ever seen. Makes me really concerned for just how far this show falls, based on what people have told me about the 2nd half.
We are mere weeks away from the airing of Chainsaw Man and I thought I would take this time aside to have a little chat. I solemnly swear this post will have no spoilers and is just a means of helping newcomers get why this show is a big deal, what you could expect and how you shouldn’t walk into this expecting it to blow you away. I mean the series already has haters which even the most beloved of series have but I do understand how this series may not be for everyone and if you read the season preview you can likely tell who I have had fairly heated arguments with about it. So I have tried looking at opinions from those who were not quite as keen on the series to perhaps put forward reasons as to why this may not click with you. I have structured this post in a way where I will detail one positive and then one negative and by the end you can make your own judgments.
Wooper: Rare is the anime season that gets me interested in upwards of ten shows, but Fall 2022 seems to have managed it, even while packing itself full of shounen series. These aren’t your average battle manga adaptations, though – we’ve got the return of a former “Big 3” WSJ property, the third season of a fabulously-animated Bones show, and the TV premiere of what’s probably the hottest manga in the world at present. These shows are so big that I don’t even need to list their names (though you can find our thoughts on them down below), but there’s plenty more anime to enjoy starting this October, including continuations of megahits like Spy x Family, blog favorites like Golden Kamuy, and oddballs like Pop Team Epic. Fans of pop cultural institutions like Gundam and Urusei Yatsura can look forward to new series as well, for the first time in 6 and 40 years, respectively. I’m just scratching the surface here, but I can’t list every noteworthy new show in the intro when we’ve got the whole season preview to go! Let us know which of this fall’s many offerings you’re most excited for by voting in the poll below, and read on to see how we’re feeling about the last quarter of 2022.
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Studio: David Production
Director: Takahiro Kamei, Yasuhiro Kimura, Hideya Takahashi
Series composition: Yuuko Kakihara
Source: Manga
The Premise: A flirtatious high schooler tries to score with every woman he sees, except for the alien princess who lives with him.
Wooper: Urusei Yatsura is a massive deal in Japan, being the first and most enduring series by legendary mangaka Rumiko Takahashi, with an anime adaptation by national treasure Mamoru Oshii. It’s also the progenitor of a zillion romcom tropes, not least of which is the Magical Girlfriend, embodied here by the tiger bikini-clad Lum. Though most western anime viewers will probably recognize her iconic design, this 46 episode reboot will be their proper introduction to Lum and the rest of series’ expansive cast. Should we count ourselves fortunate that Urusei Yatsura is being remade at all, let alone by this particular team? That remains to be seen, but personally, I’m not feeling terribly optimistic – this is the arm of David Pro that worked on 2.43 Seiin Volley-bu, one of our least favorite anime of last year, plus the pose-heavy JoJo Part 5, the rigidity of which is completely opposed to Urusei Yatsura’s ideal look and feel. The 1980s show is characterized by total freedom of movement, with male lead Ataru’s contortions and Lum’s flight patterns being unbound by the demands of a typical anime production. That sort of flexibility is critical to selling the series’ crazy developments: spaceships crash landing on Earth every third episode, hot babes of various mythological races appearing in Ataru’s neighborhood, alien technology interfering with the characters’ lives on a weekly basis. Some viewers will find these ideas dated no matter how they’re presented, but there are surely just as many who will accept them if they’re given a proper visual foundation. We’ll have to wait until October 13th for our first look at how sturdy that foundation will be.
Studio: Bones
Director: Masahiro Mukai with Kenji Nagasaki as Chief Director
Series composition: Yousuke Kuroda
Source: Manga
The Premise: Season 6 of My Hero Academia. You know the premise by now. Superheroes and villains meet for a climactic penultimate battle.
Lenlo: Let’s be honest here, you know what MHA is, so let’s cut straight to brass tacks. Content wise, this season is just one big battle arc. On the plus side, cool battles! On the down side, I no longer have confidence in bones and Kenji Nagasaki to give those battles the attention and production they deserve. Oh sure, we will get the occasional Nakamura cut or something, and those will be great. But outside of those I’m just going to find myself looking back at Horikoshi’s art and wishing it could have gotten better. Combine that with a general decline of the narrative content as he starts to lean more and more into basic shounen trappings, no idea why maybe weekly serialization is getting to him, and I just don’t have much energy to be excited for this season. I’ll watch it for sure. But I don’t yet know if I’ll enjoy it.
Welcome all, to the penultimate week of Yofukashi no Uta! Remember how I said last week was an important week because Yofukashi had split itself in two directions? Well this week is Yofukashi’s answer, and it’s a damn good one if you ask me. So let’s jump right into it!
Like I said, my immediate reaction is that this was a really good episode for Yofukashi. Up until now, I was concerned about what kind of finale Yofukashi would have. Would it lean more into the relationship and be a romance, or pivot to a more serious vampire narrative? Both are solid choices, but sticking in the middle would accomplish neither. It had to pick a side, and this week Yofukashi did just that: It picked vampires. Not only that though, it worked hard to fully transition us from a goofy romance into that choice. Now sure, it did so in a roundabout fashion. The way it initiated this transition with the sudden introduction of Anko was rather awkward. But this week took everything she introduced and then focused on it as much as it could. No goofy romance, no jokes to break up the tension. Just dedicated thematic exploration.
Continue reading “Yofukashi no Uta – 12 [My Mom’s Out Tonight]”
Welcome back everyone, to another week of His and Her Circumstances! This week covers some of the fallout from the teacher incident, as well as takes a look how the rest of the school is reacting to their relationship. A lot happens, so lets dive right into it!
First I want to give credit where its due, Circumstances looked good this week. Not just in it’s usual way of expressive but still models, though that was also true. I more mean that it moved really well this week. The 2nd half of episode 10 especially, with Miyazawa running around the school, looked fantastic. Circumstances has spent it’s entire runtime establishing this highly expressive and loose visual style, the way it says “fuck models” and just does what it wants. So when it starts doing that in even wilder ways, with Miyazawa turning into an Oni, her face going purple and growing fangs or the myriad of other ways she changes, it doesn’t feel out of place at all. Instead it just comes off like a special treat. A part of me wishes the rest of the show looked like this to, but I’ll take what I can get.
I’ve been pretty positive on this season of DanMachi, but these two episodes weren’t my favorites. Basically, I don’t like the horror flashbacks (or flash forwards?) at the start of each episode. Let’s take a look!
Continue reading “DanMachi 4 – 08/09 [Mirabilis (Chaos)/Lambton (Ill Omen)]”