Summer 2022 Impressions: Call of the Night, Isekai Ojisan, Extreme Hearts

Call of the Night

Short Synopsis: A disaffected middle schooler resolves to become a vampire by falling in love with one.

Lenlo: Well I found the seasonal waifu y’all, and this time I can say she’s actually kinda hot. People just need to let Kotoyama design all of their characters, or at least the women, because the guy is damn good at it. Beyond Nazuna being a choice cut, the rest of the show doesn’t look half bad either. I’m a fan of the neon color palette of the city night, and the angular features of all of the characters. On top of that, it’s just well directed in general. Lots of interesting camera angles and well paced shots. This is probably, visually, one of the better shows of the season for me. As for the story, I honestly have no idea what’s going on. Not why the night is so off limits, nor the whole seemingly hikikomori deal with our MC, not even the vampire nature of our lead girl. None of it makes sense, we just kind of get thrown into the middle of it. For a first episode that’s amusing enough, the dialogue especially was entertaining. I just have no idea where it’s going to go from here or what it’s going to do. Is this going to become a classic battle series with vampires? Or play it straight as a full on romance between our leads? Or maybe something else entirely?! I don’t know. But I’m intrigued enough to find out.
Potential: 70%

Wooper: There have been (and will be) a lot of disappointments this season, but I allowed myself some hope for Call of the Night (Yofukashi no Uta) upon seeing its Noitamina intro. Plenty of duds have emerged from the programming block over the last decade, but it was something for my optimism-starved brain to latch onto – and wouldn’t you know it, the episode turned out pretty well! I think my favorite thing about it is the restless storyboarding, which pitches a curveball at least once a minute. Claustrophobic fisheye lens shots, ultra wide angles, pushing characters to the edge of the frame – if Yofukashi could use it to depict the protagonist’s perplexity, it did so with abandon. Why was he so perplexed? Oh, romantic troubles at school, having his shoes vomited on by a middle aged man, being dragged back to the house of a strange woman who ended up being a vampire – the usual middle school stuff. I didn’t think I’d like the relationship between the human and vampire leads as much as I did, but he’s strange enough and she’s human enough that I enjoyed their back and forth. She loves the taste of his blood, sure, but she also enjoys the company of a fellow nightcrawler, as evidenced by her willingness to fly him around the city at night – a great final sequence for one of the few successes of the summer thus far.
Potential: 60%

UNCLE FROM ANOTHER WORLD

Short Synopsis: An older man wakes up from a coma, having been a hero(-ish) in another world.

Lenlo: It absolutely pains me to say this but… Isekai Ojisan wasn’t that bad. In fact I dare say I kind of… enjoyed it. The entire premise of the show is riffing on Isekai and their protagonists. Mocking the way they advertise other worlds as being ideal fantasy lands, how deadbeat losers suddenly become suave chads after being hit by a bus, and all the tropes that come with it. Even directly calling out how Tsunderes weren’t an established trope in the 90s, or how the uncle came back probably even worse than he left. Combine that with some clever direction and an artstyle that I really like. I love the thicker, sketchier line work and stark difference in color palette between the fantasy world and our modern one, and you have what might be the best Isekai of the season. That’s a low bar I know, but I’ll take what I can get. I kind of wish the uncle didn’t have magic in our world and the main joke was that he actually imagined it all, but the youtube channel setup with his nephew works too. Isekai Ojisan probably won’t be able to keep this up for its entire season, it’s probably going to screw it up around halfway through and become the very thing it’s mocking. But for now? I actually had fun here.
Potential: 50%

Amun: Isekai Ojisan is a different take on the titular genre. I certainly respect the unique angle, even bringing magic improbably into this world. I just didn’t have that good of a time – I felt bad for everyone involved. From the misunderstood tsundere to the torn apart family – combined with the dreary palette and harsher character designs – Isekai Ojisan felt sad. A bit like squandered youth, I suppose – a world that’s passed the lead character by. Painful nostalgia, I guess. While the subject matter is certainly fair game for anime, I can’t help but feel a bit of a mismatch between the media and the message. I’m interested in seeing where the story takes us, but unlike Lenlo – I didn’t have any fun here.
Potential: 50%

Extreme Hearts

Short Synopsis: An aspiring singer-songwriter trains to participate in a sports-themed variety show… with EXTREME GEAR!

Wooper: This show has some of the most throwaway character designs I’ve seen in ages. They may have some competition for the worst of the year, but they’re almost certainly the worst of the summer. Seriously, can you detect any life within these eyes? Then again, maybe I shouldn’t be so harsh – I’ve got no reason to expect the characters to look conscious when they were drawn by people who don’t care about the story they’re animating. How could they? It’s an original show with a flimsy-ass premise, directed by Junji Nishimura, the Snoop Dogg of the anime world (I’ll leave it to the music fans reading this post to pick up on my meaning). A wannabe singer signs up for an extreme sports tournament in a desperate bid for relevance? And the extreme sports in question are just soccer and baseball with reality-breaking equipment? The only way this could get stupider is if the script were largely made up of people explaining their sappy backstories – which it is. Extreme Hearts did rouse me from my stupor when it introduced a quartet of robot practice partners during one of its training scenes, but that flash of interest was the only thing I felt during its time-warping 24 minutes.
Potential: 0%

Lenlo: So this is… wizard sports? Basically? But they aren’t wizards because they use technology, not magic, but the technology is so advanced that it’s basically indistinguishable from magic? And we are going to tackle every sport at once, because we can’t content ourselves with just one? And they are simultaneously idols? Or is that whole singing bit not going to come back around at some point? This is… fine… I guess? There’s just nothing about Extreme Hearts that I would call interesting. It’s competently animated, and its narrative is so by the books I half think it was written by committee. But that’s kind of the problem. Extreme Hearts feels like a show made to checkboxes, created to sell, rather than because of any one creator or author’s vision and passion. It’s easily one of the most forgettable things I’ve watched so far, despite being nowhere near the worst produced or worst story told. Hell, even as I’m writing this I struggle to think of anything the show did that’s different, beyond the magic sports equipment.
Potential: I can’t even remember what I watched /10