The first season of Vinland Saga, which I watched when it was streaming on Amazon Prime, was a very fast-paced and dark period action series with some serious political undertones to it. The second season, which aired in the Spring 2023 season, maintains the dark tone, but with a shift in the focus of the story. There will be spoilers in this review.
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This past weekend, the Hollywood theater did a film festival of OVAs, featuring Neo-Tokyo, Baoh: The Visitor, Dragon’s Heaven, and Project A-Ko. As I haven’t seen the first three, I’ll give my thoughts on those (and I’ll be doing a podcast episode on A-Ko later for the Anime Explorations Podcast).
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This month we’re beginning the Summer of Jojo with JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Season 1: Phantom Blood/Battle Tendency.
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This month we’re doing a quick rundown of some of the shows airing in the Spring 2023 season, before we discuss Bocchi! The Rock – a music comedy series about dealing with social anxiety.
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I’m not entirely sure if Spy Classroom knows what it wants to be. On the one hand, it’s an anime series about a bunch of (cute) teen girl spies going on missions in an alternate-history Europe – in this case, one inspired by Europe in between the World Wars, and before the rise of Fascism. On the other hand, so much of this series is just comedic hijinks, which makes it miss the gravity of something like Princess Principal.
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I’m a fan of Naoki Urasawa, and one of his manga that got him on peoples’ radar (and the anime adaptation that came with it) was Yawara! A Fashionable Judo Girl. That series was a more conventional sports anime – closer to something like Hajime No Ippo/Fighting Spirit. This year, we got what I believe is our first dedicated girls Judo anime in quite some time – Ippon! Again – a series which follows in the wake of the Cute Girls Doing Cute Things sport anime series of the past (like Pride of Orange), so I was interested to see how this new show bears out.
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We’re in the Endgame now – or rather My Hero Academia is.
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The second season of In/Spectre is less dominated by a single mystery for the entire story, and is instead broken up into a series of smaller mysteries – generally not one-and-done cases, as they usually take a few episodes to resolve. However, it does mean that if the Steel Lady Nanase mystery seemed to drag for you in the show’s first season, this might be more your speed.
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Continuing with the theme of revivals of classic anime franchises, the Winter 2023 season saw the return of Trigun, with Trigun: Stampede, from Studio Orange (best known for Land of the Lustrous), doing what is effectively a half-reboot/half-prequel to the original series, with Trigun Stampede.
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These past few years have been a time of resurgence for various classic anime & manga franchises – not only with the long-running new adaptation of JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure, but also with an adaptation of Ushio & Tora, and a sequel to Inuyasha, it only seemed appropriate that someone returned to the manga that put Rumiko Takahashi on the map in Japan – Urusei Yatsura.
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This month we’re discussing My Dress-Up Darling – a romantic comedy anime (with some fanservice) all about cosplay, followed up by a discussion about this year’s Crunchyroll Anime Awards and the r/Anime Awards.
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Crunchyroll has held their 2023 Anime Awards Ceremony – the first one that was in person since the pandemic and the first ever in Japan, and I have some thoughts on the presentation.
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In honor of White Day, it’s time for some silliness with a bunch of horny idiots.
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This month, Tora, David, and I kick off the inaugural installment of Fate-uary with a discussion of our background with the franchise, and a look at Today’s Menu for the Emiya Family.
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This month, David, Tora and I are taking a look at the first season & film of Thunderbolt Fantasy for Lunar New Year.
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On the one hand, Lupin Zero is a show that doesn’t “need” to exist. We’ve had several TV specials and the series A Woman Called Fujiko Mine has covered some of this in the past. Lupin Zero tries to put their own spin on it by making Jigen & Lupin either late-Middle Schoolers or early High Schoolers, in a series set contemporaneously with when the manga started running.
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Mobile Suit Gundam: Witch from Mercury is an excellent example of how to handle shifting the tone of a series incredibly well. The show opens with a prologue episode set several years before the main body of the series, establishing what the Gundams are, and what the Gundam (or GUND-ARM) technology that powers them is based on – before setting up why the Gundams are rare and restricted, and how the main character’s Gundam, in particular, is going to be special in the series to come.
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A little bit late, I have a rundown of 8 of my favorite shows from 2022, with two per season.
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Chainsaw Man is a manga series that I’d have to admit that I held off on reading because I’d read some of the early art and thought it was edgelord crap. However, I kept hearing that no, it’s actually that good. So, when the anime adaptation aired, I decided that this was what I needed to take the plunge and give it a shot. It turns out it’s actually that good. There will be some spoilers for the first season.
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Season 1 of Spy X Family aired as a split cour show – that is, we got 12 episodes, then a break, then the other 12 episodes of this “Season” – so it’s time to get into how the back half of the show turned out.
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The first season of Uzaki-Chan wants to hang out was a fun, if kind of standard, sitcom RomCom anime which played into the whole concept of “male character being lightly bullied by a younger female character” which also showed up in “Teasing Master Takagi-San” and in “Don’t Toy With Me, Miss Nagatoro!” – only this time moving the concept up to college. Unsurprisingly, the anime adaptation got a second season – officially titled “Uzaki-Chan Wants To Hang Out W” (but using the lower-case Greek omega, because it looks like an anime character’s mouth getting mischievous). There will be some spoilers.
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Akiba Maid War was a series I came into this season out of curiosity, and which immediately demonstrated it was something that was absolutely my jam. There will be some spoilers in this review
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When I put Do It Yourself on my watchlist for this month, I was expecting a more generally explanatory anime series – something along the lines of Diary of our Days at the Breakwater something comedic, and explanatory about the subject matter in question (handicrafts in this case) – and chill but not necessarily a “healing” or “Iyashikei” anime. I was pleasantly surprised to find that this was also one of the warmest and most life-affirming anime of the season.
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Shinobi No Ittoki is probably the most mediocre of the anime series that I’ve watched this season. It’s not bad, it’s kind of “mid”
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