This is the second of two Impressions posts today, so scroll down for the first!
30-sai made Doutei da to Mahou Tsukai ni Nareru Rashii
Short Synopsis: 30 year old virgin gains telepathy powers, discovers local chad in his office has the hots for him.
Oh the jokes I could make about this show… But for the sake of at least trying to be fair, I’ll refrain. 30-sai looks like a pretty straightforward BL. At the very least it isn’t trying to hide it or queerbait its audience by only implying it and never committing, it’s pretty upfront about the characters feelings from the first minute. For many I figure that alone will make it worth a watch, that community gets strung along a lot. What makes it even better for them though is that 30-sai is actually kind of… wholesome about it all? Like the magic telepathy power seems stupid at first but it’s really only there as a vehicle for the romance, letting the series skip past all the bullshit romance communication tropes of “I’m not sure” and “That comment could easily be misconstrued”. As someone that hates those, I’m thankful! And that’s basically my feelings on the show in a nutshell: I’m thankful that 30-sai is an upfront, no nonsense or weird fetishization, whole BL romance. I won’t watch it, because I’m not interested in BL. But I know that my friend who loves the stuff adores the show. So between that and how I actually finished the episode, I feel pretty comfortable recommending this to fans of the genre.
Also gaining wizard powers from being a virgin for 30 years is just funny, what in god’s name were they thinking with that title.
Potential: 50%
Sengoku Youko
Short Synopsis (Anilist): The world is divided into two factions: humans and monsters called katawara. Despite being a katawara, Tama loves humans and vows to protect them from evil, even if it means fighting her own kind. Her brother Jinka, however, hates humans, despite mostly being one. The siblings are joined by a cowardly swordsman named Shinsuke, who wants to learn how to become strong.
I don’t understand Sengoku Youko’s production. Most of the time it looks washed out, with weird gradients for hair or like someone took an airbrush to all of the colors. Then it randomly gets so much more vibrant, like the bright colors of magic in the action scenes, or that one scene at the river where the girls shirt went from a milky-burnt orange to a much more colorful vibrant shade. What I’m getting at is that Sengoku Youko’s production annoys me, as does its narrative. It really wants to be this fun naive action series with a quirky cast and jokes, stuff like the demon being the helmet the bandit was wearing, but most of it just comes off as annoying caricatures and bad jokes. I can’t think of a reason to watch this over going back to the early 2000’s InuYasha. That did this same sort of stuff but with a far more compelling cast and plot hook. What I’m getting at is that this is all a long winded way of saying Sengoku Youko bored me by the half-way point, and it didn’t get any better by the end. I want to be done writing these first impressions. Help me lord.
Potential: 5%
The Witch and the Beast
Short Synopsis: A mage and a beast hunt the witch who cursed them, seeking to undo it and get revenge.
It’s a little sad how weak Majo to Yajuu’s action is. Everything else feels good, the leads have good chemistry, the world isn’t a stereotypical isekai-style fantasy, it even flipped how I thought the title would go by making the female lead the Beast and the male lead the Witch/Mage. That was nice! I was engaged for most of the episode, the male lead especially pulled me in with his dialogue and VA’s delivery. It’s just the action is… Well between “pew pew” lasers, impactless punches and pretty bland magic (outside the crows, those were cool), it doesn’t look great. This isn’t the worst thing in the world, the action is probably the least important part of the show. But it is a damn shame that despite seemingly having everything else going for it, Majo to Yajuu tripped at the last hurdle. Still, I’ll keep up with it.
Potential: 60%
Re: gaining wizard powers from being a virgin for 30 years, this is actually a pretty old meme, I assume not very well-known in the Anglophone world, but a fairly known one in Japan. It’s usually used as a sort of sarcastic/self-depreciating way (kind of like how post-orgasmic state is often called “kenja no jikan”, “sage’s time”, yes, the Peter Grill show’s title is a reference to that), like riffing on the “magical” state of virginity where virgin women get to summon unicorns and whatnot.
Anyway, I’ve read a few volumes of the source manga of this show, and… I like BL and all but this is one of those romances I find terribly boring and by-the-numbers regardless of the gender of the couple. But it’s is very harmless and pure and vanilla and so I guess fairly accessible for mainstream audiences. (It doesn’t help that the mangaka has another manga that I’d die to see adapted into an anime, alas, it’s probably never going to happen because it’s technically not BL but also looks like it could be BL, so it would disappoint/alienate way too many people, leaving it with only a small potential audience.)