DanDaDan is an anime series that has a rough start. If someone were to drop it after the first episode, I’d completely understand. As the series goes on it tells a story with a tremendous mix of action, humor, and charm, but I’d also say that some of those rougher risque elements never quite go away.
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My Dress-Up Darling was a show I enjoyed immensely and one I ended up watching multiple times, including for the Anime Explorations Podcast. I appreciated how the show got into the work of creating cosplay costumes. However, it felt like there was something missing, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on what. Watching the first season of 2.5 Dimensional Seduction made me realize what those things were, because this show filled those gaps remarkably well.
Read moreSo far, for the Fall 2024 season, I’ve only dropped one show so far – and that was How I Attended an All-Guy’s Mixer. The short version for that is this – I was interested in the show as a sort of gender-fluid BL-lite series. Not quite full on BL, but a series that could play with the tropes in interesting ways. However, the second episode felt a lot like it was relying a lot on “No Homo” jokes – to enough of a point that I basically went “Nah” – and I decided to drop it and pick up a proper BL anime later. So, How I Attended an All-Guy’s Mixer does not get a recommend from me.
The Elusive Samurai is an anime series based on a manga from the creator of Assassination Classroom. That series was one that skewered the Japanese educational system through the context of a Shonen Fight manga – so I was interested to see how The Elusive Samurai handles Japanese history.
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This weekend I’m quickly bop through a bit of a trio of romantic comedies from the Summer Season, which might not necessarily bear a full-length review, but are worth at least a bit of conversation. Specifically – I’m reviewing the second season of Cafe Terrace and Its’ Goddesses, Pseudo Harem, and Days With My Stepsister.
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I have heard very good things for quite some time about mangaka Inio Asano’s work – and I’ve also heard it’s tremendously bleak to the point of absolute nihilism, so for a while, I’ve been hesitant to read his stuff. When I learned his manga Dead Dead Demon’s DeDeDeDe Destruction (henceforth DeDeDeDe) was getting an anime adaptation and that it was one of his more… approachable works, I figured I would give the show a watch. The resulting show is interesting and messy – messy in some intentional ways, and some ways that may not be (and if those other ways are intentional it doesn’t reflect well on him).
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Spy X Family has joined One Piece and My Hero Academia in the annals of (at the time of release) currently running Shonen Jump (or Jump+) anime adaptations that have gotten non-canonical (or mostly non-canonical in the case of MHA) anime film tie-ins. In this case, we have Spy X Family: Code White, which sends the Forger family on a weekend vacation to the mountains, leading to some Bond-Film-level shenanigans.
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It’s been a minute since we’d gotten a particularly good urban fantasy mystery anime series. When Mysterious Disappearances came up on the seasonal Anime List, it looked interesting, and I added it to my watchlist. I was not disappointed with what I got.
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After having read the manga Crows a while back, I got a new appreciation of the Juvenile Delinquent manga, so when a Juvenile Delinquent anime, Wind Breaker, showed up in the Spring 2024 anime list, I figured I should give it a try. It didn’t have the same degree of character depth as Crows, but I still found it to be an enjoyable show.
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Laid Back Camp has, consistently, been a chill (you might even say “Laid Back”) anime series about informing the viewer about going camping, while also providing some chill vibes to accompany it, and it has generally succeeded. Season 2 stepped some things up by having some arcs include potential complications you can run into while camping – and the film covered some of the wrinkles you can run into if you decide to make a campground. Season 3 continues with the chill vibes, while also getting into “What might you have to deal with when traveling to your campground?”
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Urusei Yatsura’s 3rd season is the one that wraps up the series – putting most of the cast into varying degrees of relationships, while also finding – in an indirect way – a way for Ataru to express his feelings to Lum without either shedding their stubborn exteriors.
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Often with an anime series, you get the caveat of “Oh, it has a weak start, but it really sticks the landing in the conclusion” or the warning of “Oh, it has a good start, but really fumbles the landing”. Studio Apartment, Good Lighting, Angel Included has the weird instance of being a series with a weak start, a weak end, but a really strong middle portion of the series. The series, which I’m going to just call Studio Apartment for the sake of brevity – starts out as a pretty standard magical girlfriend series, and ends as a magical girlfriend harem series – but there’s a moment in the middle, where the series really finds its feet as the supporting cast builds up – and where it has some interesting humor to go with it.
Read moreWe discuss the start of the Spring Anime season, along with some of the failings of Gundam SEED, before moving into Ippon Again.
I watched Synduality: Noir in a previous season, enjoyed it, and was looking forward to the second season. The second half of the series does do a good job of changing up the dynamic, exploring a few more of the world’s mysteries, and bringing the series to something of a satisfactory conclusion.
There will be spoilers below the cut.
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Metallic Rouge is Studio Bones celebrating its 10th anniversary by going back to its routes with an original anime series, with an action show about a pair of ambiguously lesbian characters going on a journey – in this case a science fiction trip through various planets in the solar system, in the process uncovering several mysteries about the world. The problem is that the series, at 12 episodes, doesn’t quite have the time to really do justice to all the themes that they want to cover.
Spoilers below the cut.
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Solo Leveling was one of the web novel titles that I remember seeing promoted heavily by Yen Press. It was one of the first of these Web Novel turned Light Novel titles that got an audiobook release in the US, and generally it had a fair amount of buzz behind it. So, when an anime adaptation came up on the Seasonal charts, I decided it was time to find out what all the buzz was about.
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I don’t know what I expected coming into this show. On one hand, I got drawn in by the Real Robots Meets Super Robot take on the show, combined with the involvement Masami Obari. Obari as a director is someone who I almost became more familiar with through his involvement on the Fatal Fury anime series, animating the Brave franchise, along with creating the Angel Blade franchise – putting him at the confluence of strongly choreographed action, spectacularly done super robots, and a lot of… actively heterosexual fanservice. So, I was a little surprised to see just how incredibly queer – and particularly gay, Bravern is.
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Frieren: Beyond Journey’s End was the anime series in the Winter season that was most able to make me ugly cry. It starts off with some heavy reflections on grief and mourning and every few episodes it manages to slip in another shot in the feels. That said, this isn’t a depressing show – instead, it’s a bittersweet reflection on the fact that we and the people we know will eventually grow old and die, so we should value our time with them while we can. It then proceeds to do all of this interspersed with some tremendous fight scenes.
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So, we’ve hit the end of the Winter Anime season, so I’m going to take a short break from the Let’s Play to get through some of the anime series I finished this season – starting with the fanservice anime I went for this time – Chained Soldier.
Read moreWe discuss the current anime we’ve watched, along with the recent passing of Akira Toriyama, before getting into our March Rom-Com, with My Love Story With Yamada-Kun at Lv.999
Our Dating Story: The Inexperienced Me and the Experienced You almost feels like the polar opposite of Girlfriend, Girlfriend. While Girlfriend, Girlfriend is aggressively polyamorous with some hints at bisexuality, Our Dating Story is very monogamous and heterosexual. The other series is very horny, much more horny than the first season, while Our Dating Story is fairly chaste (while being aware of sex).
Read moreIt’s time to look back on the year that was, with 8 picks for my top Anime (along with 2 honorable mentions, which I guess means it’s 10) of 2023.
The core refrain of the first season of Girlfriend, Girlfriend was “They are such horny idiots.” – That refrain remained true in the second season of the series, with the addition of another Horny Idiot to the series.
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