Took me a while to do this, I've been busy both work and here but I've been chipping away at my anime reviews for the new series. Too long, did not care to read the words I have written for a forum, it was a pretty disappointing season.
Flower and Asura
The Premise
A shy and quiet teenager has a love of reciting stories and poems and immediately gets the attention of her new school’s broadcasting club. But for some reason, she is hesitant to share her gift. It turns out sometimes she gets lost in the moment, so much she can scare herself. However, for the head of the broadcasting club, that’s a feature rather than a bug.
It Gud?
Flower and Asura is going to have a recurring theme with a lot of the series I watched. They often fall into the realm of “not bad at all, but something is off.” In this case, the thing missing was… a hook. Not like a great big twist or a gimmick. But why am I going to be invested in this character or their journey. I like the subject, to focus on recitation. There are really interesting ways to visualize that and with the right voice actors, it could be gang busters. And even more interesting is there is promising a potential competition element to it.
I think the problem is there’s not a lot for me to sink my teeth into with the lead characters. They are pretty standard and not in a bad way, necessarily; there’s the somewhat nebbish-y lead with an amazing talent and the somewhat mischievous mentor-peer who sees the talent and leads them into a world where they need to work hard to make the most of it. Basically, everything Riichiro Inagaki does pretty much. The animation is nice and there’s a good structure.
I think the problem is the idea of the main character’s hesitance almost seems like an artificial impediment. It’s often these characters have a talent but for some reason don’t recognize it or are hesitant to use it. The only time we see the character “losing control” is when she is alone. It doesn’t really give is an idea if this has actually ostracized her or why it scares her. And so both characters are a bit like enigmas and not in an intriguing way. The episode ends with a room full of grumpy characters whom I am sure will all have their thing but by then I kind of checked out. A well-made show technically and could reveal greater strengths later on but I just wasn’t taken with it.
Honey Lemon Soda
The Premise
A shy girl is inspired to go to a new school and reinvent herself after meeting a handsome, aloof young man who advises her to join. But being assertive is harder than it looks.
It Gud?
I was actually psyched for this one. After back-to-back-to-back-to-back isekai and isekai-like previews that seemed cynical, the title alone promised “hey, classic shoujo energy”. I was thinking this would be something like Skip and Loafer (which, surprisingly, isn’t actually shoujo? It’s in a seinen magazine.). This felt like it was going to be a breath of fresh air.
And there is a lot to like. The animation and overall production are pretty strong. Everyone has the classic shoujo look yet each character looks unique (and one guy looks like he’s a minor Yugioh character or something). But the problem is, again, the characters. There is a potentially strong arc for the character; a bullied young girl who is inspired to become assertive (and based on the end credits, her former tormentors reform and become her friends, which could also be a good arc if treated right).
My big issue is the lead is basically constantly cajoled by the handsome by aloof love interesting who keeps demanding she ask for help and it’s another series that doesn’t handle the “bad boy with a heart of gold” love interest in shoujo well. I would rather the change come from within and from support but the support of him asking her to ask for help phonetically leaves a bad taste in my mouth. It’s a shame but it looks like I’ll be waiting another season to find a better shoujo series (also, Chihayafuru, PLEASE come back).
I Have a Crush at Work
The Premise
Two co-workers are secretly seeing each other.
It Gud?
I saw the trailer for this one and it felt like several other office romance anime except… it didn’t seem to have anything that differentiated itself from the others. In fact, it looked very watered down. Having seen it, this remains the case. The premise is that it is a secret affair and the series is full of them trying to lie and cover up that they are dating. And yet, it somehow feels less interesting than how that sounds.
It’s also weird to say “crush”. Because there is crushing. Crushing into each other because these two are fuckin’. Like, not even implied, they wake up next to each other. It seems weird to use the word crush. Cutting through all that bullshit and having them straight act like adults who are quasi-co-habitating seems like it might be nice change of pace but in fact, the show is so bland, it barely makes a dent.
Also, the two are still getting really blushy about stuff. I guess the genre that would be the closest would be slice of life because it’s not a comedy and the romance is fairly muted. But even in that sense, it’s not that engaging. This is a series that is somehow more dull than the nothing premise.
Medaka Kuroiwa is Impervious to My Charms
The Premise
The most popular girl in school finds the one person she can’t seem to charm. It drives her so nuts, she starts falling in love with the guy. But the guy isn’t aloof. He’s planning on being a monk and is trying to overcome earthly temptation.
It Gud?
No. It’s not as bad as it could be, but it does have some of the dumb horny you might expect. But really, this is a premise that could work. I mean, they made a pretty great series where it’s two people trying to convince the other one to confess love. Someone trying way too hard to impress someone else only to get taken in seems like it could work. Unfortunately, it never gets beyond this premise.
The first episode ends with the reveal of the male lead except I feel like the series was doing a bad job making it looking like the lead wasn’t fighting his feelings. It doesn’t make it a surprise. What it should be is that we can understand her confusion, if not her dedication to being loved by everyone. It should be something we read one way and then can see the other way after the fact. But it makes him blush pretty readily and it never feels like a nut to crack.
I also don’t think these teens are very interesting. Kaguya had a wit and managed to convince us to love it’s dumb, cynical teens but both leads are, at this stage, and I just don’t have trust it is going to evolve very far. The gags it does have are mostly “I’ll try to make you horny oops I got horny” and there isn’t much beyond that. Kaguya made it a push and pull game where the audience gets what the characters don’t and uses that to toy with comedic tension but this series never moves past idea one.
Medalist
The Premise
An awkward, shy young girl starts taking figure skating at age 11. Seems innocuous but to be a real figure skater, most start at a very young age. But she isn’t dissuaded, especially when she gets an ex-professional figure skater coach who feel he hit his peak early for similar reasons.
It Gud?
This felt like it is showing Honey Lemon Soda to show how to create a female protagonist who struggles to be assertive and needs help. In this case, I feel like her worries feel palpable and her victory simply to ask to play sports is hard one. I think the show is smart about how some of the unkindness in her life looks. There’s no big obvious bullying from other kids. And I think the mother is someone who means well with sensible concerns for her daughter but also is putting out these awful little microaggressions on her daughter, saying stuff akin to “see what they can do now? You can’t do that.”)
I’m not going to say I like mom at all here but I think it is much smarter about who this person is, even though most of the show won’t be able her, probably. Instead, it is about a child with genuine talent but a genuine disadvantage and someone who has been in her shoes. I can see a real connection between these characters, a supportive one that isn’t like Honey Lemon Soda’s awful tsundere BF but instead a mentor who can sympathize.
I love sports series when they work and am always disappointed with a sport I’m not familiar with isn’t represented in a way that grabs me. This one isn’t heavily detailed (yet) but it gets what I want; a lead taking baby steps into a bigger world. It can be hard to work with a protagonist who also needs to motivate the story yet is full of trepidation but I think this one can pull it off. I’m hopeful here.
Momentary Lily
The Premise
A strange apocalypse have left cities empty except for 5 super-powered girls and various giant monsters. They meet another girl who is shy and has been making meals out of non-perishables. Also, she herself might be the most powerful of them all.
It Gud?
Hahaha…. Aw fuck. Oh, Gohands, never change. Frankly, though, this was a disappointment after the Girl Doesn’t Where Glasses or whatever it was called. Oh, that show was bland comedy but it had some completely batshit directorial choices that help cement that I will ALWAYS watch a GoHands episode premiere and never an entire GoHands series. Like, GoHands is not good but in a way that is uniquely their own. It doesn’t feel like they are trying to be a knock off. All their suck feels sincere.
I will say that Momentary Lily is following a trend and is actually a stealth Delicious in Dungeon-like but instead of cooking monsters it dedicates a lot of time to creating meals out of non-perishables after the apocalypse. And that’s not a bad idea for a series but what even lesser “characters get into food” shows like Campfire Cooking in Another World get right is to draw the food to look surprisingly mouthwatering even if the rest of the animation looks completely mid. But this just looks like generically drawn food for the most part.
The other problem is, aside from the weirdly crunchy-looking flowing hair, is it is a cast of archetypes. The gamer girl, the sullen leader, the happy-go-lucky lead, the shy new girl and a pair of tits. They try to play this archetype as the “big sister” but her tits shake a lot in ways that seem… unnatural. Like, I would buy it if it turned out they were parasites or something but mostly the camera lingers as one boob jiggles, stops, then the other boob does, as if it were part of a Newton’s cradle. I don’t care about these people and find them all exhausting as they run around blastin’ or just keep reminding us of their specific deals.
OKITSURA: Fell in Love with an Okinawan Girl, but I Just Wish I Know What She's Saying
The Premise
A kid from away moves to Okinawa and his new bestie (and love interest) is barely comprehensible to him because she mostly speaks in the native language (or dialect or a mix? I’m not certain, to be honest). He gets a lot of help from her best friend but she has a crush on him. Meanwhile, the boy struggles with comical misunderstandings.
It Gud?
When a series has a long-ass title, I hunker down for pain. But really, this one… wasn’t bad. It just didn’t pop. It seems like it is pretty limited in premise based on the title but I actually think even though I wasn’t really into this one, I think there’s a solid foundation. Mostly, it’s a gentle comedy about cultural difference and though the language barrier is an element, it’s also about wacky social misunderstandings and eccentricities. Like everyone wanting to show off local cuisine so even people the next town over are love bombing him with piles of the same snack. It’s cute enough.
Interestingly, I think the character dynamics are solid but not exciting. It’s interesting that the character who gets the most play is the title girl’s best friend who is in love with the main character. I feel the show accidentally presents her more as the same character and while the Okinawan gremlin is cute enough, she feels closer to a wacky best friend rather than someone the main character has a crush on. I feel like them together feels more like “good friends” cute rather than “romance” cute.
I think in the end, the main problem is the characters certainly feel more functional than more failed rom-coms/slice-of-life comedies but they also don’t particularly “pop” to me. If someone sat me in front of the show to watch the whole thing, I wouldn’t be mad but after a while, I’d probably be checking my phone a little more as we get the millionth “this is how people do things in Okinawa” joke. If anything, I liked the social education more than the intended fun of the series.
Sorairo Utility
The Premise
A gamer girl decides to get into a new extracurricular to get the most out of youth and lands on golf.
It Gud?
It’s been a good couple years for golf shows. Of course, Birdie Wing is the big one but I’ve also enjoyed the Shounen dumbness of Rising Impact and whatever Tonbo! does that makes it work for me far better than it should. So I was hopeful going into this one. I’m not even a golf fan. It’s kind of one of the more evil sports simply because of how much real estate the game eats up. But for some reason, golf in anime is on a hot streak for me.
So this one is definitely one of the weaker ones. The animation is completely fine. The problem is the main character is of a certain type that I am getting very tired of; the generic gamer. Look, anime and gaming is very tightly connected but somehow it feels like anime wants to portray gamers as insufferable nerds (correct so far) who feel the need to namedrop gaming terms to constantly remind us they are gamers. It feels very artificial and in place of actual character.
I was still willing to give this one a chance but my friend vetoed and I didn’t feel strongly enough to disagree. If anything, it’s just freeing to really limit what I’m seeing to the strongest stuff. And this character just isn’t winning. The character’s desire to make the most of her time in school is a thing I can relate to but in terms of how it actually plays out, it feels like we are just trying to lead this character to golf by plot rather than it feeling organic. It might improve but man… stop talking about buffs and level ups and shit, girl.
Zenshu
The Premise
An overworked animator die on the job and finds herself in her favourite series. When one of the characters is about to die, she unleashes the power to animate elements of the world and change everything.
It Gud?
I’m someone who complains about the absolute glut of isekai media but Zenshu was something I was pulling for. The animation looked fierce and rather than being put into a video game world, they are put into an anime. That sounds more interesting to me. The character is in a show he likes that is known for having tragedy but she can change it. There can be a lot of meta fun in that.
And I will say, overall, the first episode was good. But I think I just didn’t keep with it for a couple of reasons. One is the characters are a little hollow to me. That could be fun if that was a satirical point but it reminds me of something that drives me nuts in media about media. It seems like… the show within the show isn’t very good. They talk about a mythos but it’s pretty generic where I’d rather the series try to create an interesting or high quality for the series-within-the-series to convince me why the lead fell in love (or maybe the character acknowledging “this formative thing for me doesn’t hold up subjectively but I still love it, flaws and all”).
But this is a YMMV show; when the big moment happens, not only is the moment really pretty looking, the monster that appears is really cool. The animator creates a beast that has story board aesthetics complete with annotation and correction and it’s a really neat moment that almost completely made it for me. But in the end, I feel like as good as the idea is, I just wasn’t as into this journey. Maybe the characters get more fleshed out beyond finding the main character really powerful and fawn-worthy and has something to say about nostalgia/animation/fiction but as it is, it was JUST not quite there for me to hop aboard.
Sakamoto Days
The Premise
The world’s greatest underworld assassin met a girl, got married and has an amazing case of dadbod. Runing his own convenience store and helping out the community, he has his own new code of not-killing (though he thinks about it a lot) while employing a former psychic hitman.
It Gud?
OK, so this one is good… but not as much as I want. The animation is serviceable but not that strong and the jokes tend to be good but not great. This was a series I was highly looking forward to. Yes, the premise seems like a mishmash of other really popular series, kind of like Spy X Family meets Way of the Househusband, but it doesn’t quite pop as well. I don’t know if it’s just a bad translation of the manga or if the manga is just OK.
Keep in mind, I still recommend it but with series of similar ilk that I quite like, my expectations were high. It instantly seemed like it would be the stand-out new series. But watching it, I was enjoying myself but having that tingling in the back of my head that just wished it was better. Now it’s possible I’ll be more charmed as it starts building up it’s cast more-and-more or maybe I simply need to recalibrate my expectations to get onto it’s wavelength. But in terms of what it is, I was expecting a 9 out of 10 and got a 7. No shame in being a 7, some 7s really stick with me (see Tonbo, my new favourite 7) but after a letdown season apart from continuing series, this was a bummer.
I also don’t really like that it thinks “then he got fat” is much funnier than it is. Keep in mind, I like the way he looks and think when he shakes or nods his head adds fun (though not funny) physicality to him but it seems weird that it’s sees itself as the funniest element. Keep in mind, when the show gets going, it doesn’t go as hard as I feared, but that was definitely the foot it was putting forward hard. Still, despite this, it seems fine and I could see my like of the series creeping upward over time.
) or the reordering of events in the og show was a lot more mixed up than I thought. It's been a hot min since I read any of the manga.
