Sasaki and Peeps
Short Synopsis: A Japanese salaryman discovers a magic bird and starts making inter-dimensional trade deals with an isekai world before getting caught up in a secret psychic organization.
I figured out why this premier felt so long. Turns out, it’s actually a double feature! That explains a lot. Getting into the actual show, is it weird that I liked the first half that was just a down in the dumps salaryman picking up a pet and rediscovering joy in his life more than all of the psychic espionage crap? Or him finally gaining confidence and striking out on his own a bit? This larger psychic plot just feels unnecessary, like Sasaki and Peeps is trying to do too much. Do we need a magical talking bird, an isekai world, magic powers, and an organization of psychics with an agenda? Why can’t we just have a chill show about a salaryman doing progressively sillier trade deals with an isekai kingdom? Or said salaryman just doing the psychic stuff? Why are we stacking them all on top of each other? As for how the show was visually, it was pretty weak. Sasaki has neither the expressive designs of Dungeon Meshi nor the flashy animation of something like a battle shounen. As such the only real draw is the story, and I think the show mucks that up by shoving too much into the series. Maybe it will figure that out before the end and drop the psychic stuff, who knows. I won’t be there to find out though.
Potential: 20%
The Demon Prince of Momochi House
Short Synopsis: A 16 year old girl moves into a house with a bunch of pretty boy spirits with distinct hair colors in a reverse harem rom-com.
Let’s see what we have here… Pretty boys with distinct hair colors each assigned to a different stereotypical personality? They are all sexy fox spirit yokai? And a 16 year old girl ends up, through complete happenstance, living with them alone in the woods? Oh, it’s also all presented in the blandest way possible with plenty of soft gradients and this weird diffused lighting. Yeah this sounds like a pass for me. It’s a pretty standard reverse harem setup with a yokai flavoring. The end makes it seem like there will be a tad more spiritual conflict than the usual reverse harem pretty boy show, but it wasn’t very good and really just came out of nowhere to have an excuse to make the leads kiss and kick off their “romance”. If a pretty boy show is what you’re looking for this might sate your needs this season. It doesn’t look like a particularly good take on the idea though.
Potential: 5%
The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic
Short Synopsis: Three kids are isekai’d after school, one of them manifesting the extremely rare ability to… heal! Time to abuse it to its fullest!
When I first started watching Wrong Way, my expectations were rock bottom. It looked like if you took the cast of Kaguya-Sama, isekai’ed them to another world, and made Ishigami the MC. Pretty uninteresting stuff if I’m being honest. But as I watched… I kinda started to enjoy it? A little? The cast sort of had personality, making jokes and having interests outside of school and showing genuine concern for each other? Plus I liked the joke that everyone else in this kingdom is scared shitless by a healer. Like… Maybe it’s because my expectations were so low, but I was genuinely pleasantly surprised by Wrong Way. It will eventually become an OP MC power fantasy, they always do. But for now, this early on, while it’s establishing things and having fun with its premise before it goes standard “Slay the demon king”? I think I’ll stick with it. Just in case.
Potential: 35%
Pon no Michi
Short Synopsis: Local girl kicked out of her house takes over her grandfather’s mahjong parlor and turns it into a clubhouse for her and her friends. Oh and also they play Mahjong.
The best thing I can say about Pon no Michi is that the lead, Nashiko, is cute. And pretty damn expressive, all things considered. She has a lot of good faces. In fact most of the cast does, this is a pretty good set of cute girls, I’m calling dibs on the goth one. Anyways, at it’s core Pon no Michi is really just “Cute Girls Doing Cute Things” Mahjong edition. You’ll learn the rules while hanging out with cute girls. It’s actually pretty lively in it’s presentation, with the girls making jokes, visual gags, references to series like Kaiji and Akagi, all sorts of stuff to liven it up. Outside the CGI hands and mahjong table, it looks pretty good. If you like Mahjong, or enjoy the CGDCT genre, I think this is actually a really solid choice. I probably won’t be keeping up with it personally, it’s not my thing, but I was honestly impressed by it.
Potential: 60%
