Spring 2025 Check-In – Weeks 8-9

Wooper: Now that the calendar has rolled around to June, I’m starting to think about our next season preview, but with a different perspective than usual. I often view new batches of anime as welcome distractions from the disappointments of the previous crop – but even though some of these spring shows aren’t meeting my lofty expectations, I still regard the season as a good one. Even as I look into what will air this summer, I find myself pinning fewer hopes on future shows and more on the current ones to come to satisfactory conclusions. That said, I wasn’t totally enthused with everything I watched over the last two weeks, as you’ll discover should you read on!

Kowloon Generic Romance – 8-9

In each of these two episodes, there was a “what we know so far” segment worked into the script, designed to help audiences keep straight all the workings of the illusory Kowloon Walled City. Episode 8’s segment took the form of a chat room conversation between Yaomay and Yulong, while episode 9’s was presented as an intelligence report from Yulong’s assistant to Miyuki’s father. The only new piece of information in either scene was Yaomay’s realization that it’s been midsummer for the entire six months she’s been living in Kowloon – other than that, these were just recaps. In my view, some (if not all) of this time should have been spent on Reiko and Kudo’s relationship, as they felt more detached from the story than ever despite their relationship taking its biggest step forward. The reveal at the end of episode 8 that they’d slept together landed with a thud rather than a bang, and was immediately overshadowed by a freeze frame of Reiko’s phone, which displayed a date from two months in the past. I’m not saying the show should have gone in a more sexually charged direction, but the gap between their previous conversation and the shot of them in bed the next morning left something to be desired. This week’s episode gave their pairing a bit more support, contrasting Kudo’s memory of Kujirai B’s trademark French toast with Reiko’s ignorance of the recipe, which resulted in a rift growing between them. I’m tempted to describe that plotline as too little too late, though, given the pace at which the show’s humanity is being overtaken by its Zirconian mystery.

Lazarus – 8-9

Lazarus’s explorations of its secret agents’ backstories have underwhelmed me so far, and that includes episode 8’s reveal about Chris faking her own death to escape Russia’s intelligence program. It’s a far more interesting history than the show gave to either Doug or Eleina, and the piano motif assigned to Chris and her former lover Inga is quintessential Watanabe, but the characters seem to be pretty low on this series’ list of priorities, and that lack of care reduces the impact carried by their pasts. But the episode featured some ultra-smooth action cuts between Chris and Sergei (another of her former countrymen), plus the dramatic destruction of the oil rig where she was being held captive, so my lack of emotional investment wasn’t a major issue. Even flashier was a black ops scene during the back half of episode 9, where an assassin called Souryuu used knives on wires to methodically murder upwards of a dozen men. The narrative basis for this scene was dubious, as I doubt there’s any arm of the American military (on the books or not) that would sacrifice its own members’ lives to measure the prowess of a contract killer. The storyboarding and animation during Souryuu’s slaughter, however, were so incredible that I didn’t care. Everything to do with Skinner (who now claims he’ll be the first to die from Hapna) and the political feasibility of Lazarus’s central task force was dull by comparison, but this is one show whose flaws I’ll gladly accept in exchange for more of its best moments.

Apocalypse Hotel – 8-9

When Apocalypse Hotel stranded its protagonist in orbit at the end of its seventh episode, I didn’t expect that it would take 20 in-universe years to restore her to her rightful place on Earth. Nor did I expect that it would be a further 50 after her return before she regained consciousness, and least of all that her torso would have been soldered to a miniature tank in the meantime. Time skips and absurd humor are hardly new where this show is concerned, but I had thought it would lean a little more dramatic in attempting to rescue Yachiyo from space. Instead, it trended further into absurdity than ever before, as Yachiyo donned a delinquent look for an outsized mecha battle with Ponko toward the end of episode 8. Even allowing for Hotel’s fondness for genre parody (see also the tokusatsu battle in episode 6), this was a bit much for me, but it was grounded by its heroine’s frustration with the changes Ponko had made to the hotel while she was in orbit. Along with those controversial changes, though, came a spike in the number of extraterrestrial guests staying at the Gingarou, which paid off beautifully when they all attended Ponko’s wedding in episode 9. This was arguably the best installment yet, and certainly the most emotional, as her nuptials coincided with her grandmother’s passing, allowing the show to simultaneously explore themes of love, loss, and the passage of time. The result was a celebration of both Mujina’s life and Ponko’s, the latter of which never would have come about without her dear old grandma.

Shin Samurai-den Yaiba – 8-9

My initial infatuation with Samurai-den Yaiba is a thing of the past, it seems, but at least these two episodes got us back on track after a shaky start to the show’s time travel mini-arc. Resolving the risk of a temporal rewrite just halfway through episode 8 was a good choice, as the threat was unserious from the start. The downside of that choice was the abrupt disappearance of Keicho-era Musashi, as both Yaiba and the defeated Kojiro’s soul were sucked through a wormhole just seconds after the swordsman’s victory, but he did get a post-credits farewell scene that admirably played off his lustful nature. Once Yaiba reappeared in the present, the show went into zigzag animation mode, as his battle against the reanimated Kojiro was dominated by electricity effects due to Yaiba’s use of the Raijin Orb. Neither that duel nor anything from the follow-up reached the visual bar set by the series’ earlier outings, but I did appreciate episode 9’s back-to-basics approach. The show’s silliness returned in a string of the falsely-reformed Kojiro’s attempts to steal the Raijinken, which were thwarted in progressively more frivolous ways, and Yaiba’s friends having a food-related laugh at his expense prevented him from getting too big-headed after his recent victories. Also, I much preferred Yaiba’s mastery of an original technique amidst a beautiful bamboo forest to episode 8’s orb-powered blowout on an unremarkable-looking island. Hopefully the background art stays eye-catching during the upcoming raid on Onimaru’s castle.

Mobile Suit Gundam GQuuuuuuX – 8-9

Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve gone full Rebuild of Evangelion. Nyaan’s character was brought closely in line with Shinji’s in episode 8, being the third candidate (Third Child) to pilot a mysterious mech with which she shares a psychic connection – a mech that bears more than a passing resemblance to Eva’s Unit-01. Even the scenes where Xavier chauffeured her around Grenada while explaining their situation reminded me of similar moments between Misato and Shinji in Evangelion’s first episode. What makes this recent GQX material more Rebuild than TV, though, is everything to do with Lalah Sune in episode 9. After meeting Machu on Earth, Lalah says she’s had countless dreams of Char’s death (at Amuro’s hands, to boot), which she can never prevent no matter how many times she experiences it. The way she talks about these dreams suggests she’s catching glimpses of alternate timelines, but the show had already hinted at those with the existence of the Kira-Kira. What’s brand new, though, is the discovery of another Lalah inside the Rose of Sharon, a submerged mech that was never manufactured in this universe. So now we’ve got multiple versions of the same person in a single timeline, multiple characters who’ve vanished into thin air, and multiple mech-pilot connections that can’t be explained by mere Newtype intuition. I wonder how Yoshiyuki Tomino feels about the Eva-fication of his real robot franchise?