Yuri Is My Job!
Short Synopsis: A widely-admired high school freshman struggles to get her bearings while working at a yuri-themed cafe.
Mario: I think I get why Hime is such a perfect protagonist for this type of premise. In a yuri-themed cafe, the girls have to act like students of a fictional high school and improvise as if they are on stage. It works double-layered given that their stage persona is vastly different from their real personalities. And in Hime’s case, a triple-layer given that she has been “acting’ all her life. As a result, it’s amusing to see her play as a straight man at first, and then proceeds to change the plots to the dismay of those involved. Despite that, I cannot look past the forced method in which the show brings Hime to this cafe. It might be the manager’s intention all along (given how she fakes her injury), but there’s no way it could happen in real life. All in all, I believe Yuri is my Job has some potential to become something worthwhile here, but it’s best to watch it with tempered expectations.
Potential: 40%
Wooper: At long last, Japan has supplied us with a new feline-themed Amazon logo parody! Prior to 2023, onomatopoeia enthusiasts were stuck with Sonny Boy’s Nyamazon, but with the introduction of Nyanyazon, the meta has finally shifted. Thank you, Yuri is My Job, for bringing some much-needed diversity to this neglected corner of the anime landscape!
Potential: Nyaa/10
My One-Hit Kill Sister
Short Synopsis: Standard isekai setup, except lil bro summons OP sister who loves him lots.
Amun: My One-Hit Kill Sister looked better than expected on the first outing. I don’t hate the sister’s design as a blatant knockoff of Yoko from Gurren Lagen. However, the plot is where I start to lose interest. I guess the pretending to be powerful is interesting, but the whole character complex was overdone – even without the incest angle. It just makes the characters so flat…and honestly, it’s insultingly lazy writing. Look, one plot gimmick does not make an interesting show. Give us something to keep us hooked. And the answer is definitely not the horned rival from the after credits. All in all, this is a pass from me.
Potential: 0%
Lenlo: Interesting… an Isekai I didn’t immediately hate. Is this because of the OP toned female lead in place of a basic-bitch of an OP MC? Maybe. Could it be because the production actually seems kind of nice? Or maybe it’s the slightly less amount of ecchi fan-service bullshit that objectifies every female character in the show. It might even be that I connect to this MC’s desire to have a strong Onee-san beat people up for me. I’m not sure yet. What I do know is that I kind of had fun. I wish the female lead didn’t have an incestuous brother complex but look, I take what I can get. Whatever the case, I’m kind of down for this Ciaphas Cain style of lying bullshit. Could be fun, though probably not particularly good.
Potential: 10%
Opus.COLORs
Short Synopsis: An immersive field of digital art known as “perception art” was developed only a decade ago. Two childhood friends team up to create a masterpiece of said art.
Lenlo: I want to like COLORS. I do. The show is all about art, our perception of it and how it can change as technology improves. But compared to a work like Blue Period, I feel like COLORS is too wrapped up in the novelty of this AR technology and is missing the forest for the trees so to speak. By focusing so much on the technology, it loses focus on what the art actually means to the characters. The few works we see lack the deeply personal touch that we saw in Blue Period. Because of that, COLORS ends up feeling more like a shounen set piece with AR art then anything actually interesting, complete with class separation and different uniforms/class system. On top of that, I just can’t find myself to care about any of these characters. They are all so… stiff, they just don’t engage. Maybe it can pull something off, but I’m not that interested myself.
Potential: 5%
Mario: It’s kind of a novel idea for a show to promote a “new kind of art” and the way the university splits into two separate streams. The art is believable in the way that it connects to the technology advancement, it’s like 3D digital art where it’s not only the visual but all senses are stimulated. In addition, the school settings that divide between “grader” and “creator” allows some friction between the two classes. Sadly, that’s the only thing interesting about this first episode. The show either focuses on info-dumping about said art, or it is too occupied with one character doing everything he can just to get his friend to “notice” him. All the characters are plain and the setup for what to come is uninteresting. Too bad for such a nice premise.
Potential: 10%
I refuse to go anywhere near Yuri Is My Job because that show is way too cruel and mean-spirited towards its main character. I mean, poor Hime is literally blackmailed and browbeaten into working, where nobody bothers to explain how said job works for her in detail, and then have the gall to be shocked when she messes up while never once acknowledging that they’re the reason she messes up in the first place! It’s like dragging a homeless person off the streets and throwing them into a fancy dinner party, but refusing to put them in a tuxedo or teach them etiquette while getting mad at THEM for not knowing how to act!
There seems to be a certain number of anime with unlikeable character lately, like the Legendary hero is dead. Maybe it just me.
I think it’s a bad case of authors and writers hopping on that irony-poisoning bandwagon that Western writers are trying just recently to get away from, but not understanding how they operated for so long, which results in a lot of mean-spirited banter meant to tear characters down for the sake of laughs. That kind of “This is totally stupid and so am I!” self-aware metahumor needs to die.
Opus.Colors is proof that coasting by and expecting an immediate hit isn’t going to work. The people behind Starmyu really thought their fancy AR art thing that going to endear as much as yet another idol series revolving around musical theater, but they didn’t bother putting in more effort into justifying that.