We are into the Fall season, here are my thoughts on the initial episodes of the new shows I had picked to check out.
Tying the Knot with an Amagami Sister
A struggling high school student ends up boarding in a shrine run by three miko sisters, all with distinct personalities. He has to juggle the insanity that they present in order to focus on his schooling but they continue to invade his life in unusual ways.
Two and a half minutes into it we got fan service, 14 year old, 17 year old and a 20 year old in sexy lingerie. Pilled up for the viewing pleasure.. I could have sworn this was based on a series by Seo Koji, but he's too busy with that Goddess Cafe thing. I digress. There is zero redeeming qualities to the tired and played out tropes in this show. Its so excessive it has to be a joke right? This has to be making fun of shitty shonen romance stories by mocking them? No...its really just repeating played out concepts for literally no purpose? Ugh, yeah pass but I also didn't have any hopes for this one, it was more an off hand inclusion to the list.
If you want to watch it, its available on Crunchyroll.
365 Days to the Wedding
Two employees at a travel agency are faced with the possibility of a forced transfer to the branch office in Anchorage Alaska. They concoct a plan to fake an engagement to each other to remove themselves from consideration. Now they just have to make it believable for the next year to avoid the transfer.
This was a much needed palette cleaner after the Amagami Sister garbage. This is a forced romance between two awkward office workers. Its pretty understood that as they have to spend more time together pretending to be in love they will fall in love for real. There is a solid chance that the woman in the situation, Honjoji, more than likely had feelings for the man, Ohara, leading her to approach him with the concept in the first place. This will be fun, even if it probably won't be earth shattering new. But it so far is really cute and low key. A nice adult romance between two very socially nervous people.
The series is being simulcast on Crunchyroll.
Dan Da Dan
A gyaru and an otaku end up becoming linked when they challenge each other into believing the unbelievable. The otaku becomes cursed due to the gyaru and the gyaru feels responsible and decides to stick with him until the curse is broken...but fate may be at work here for something different as these opposites are forced into extreme situations.
I'll admit...I was a bit hesitant with this one after the later previews came out and it focused more on Occult-kun's transformations and it appearing to be some battle anime, spurned on by libido. It hasn't not become that, but there is a lot of charm to the work, some of it has to be through Science Saru's magic. The first episode was fun, even if the extended moments of Momo mostly naked seemed a bit unnecessary in...the details lets say. But hey, I guess I'm just a prude. Anyways, the first episode was fun, sets up an interesting precedence but really made me anxious for the anime adaptation of The Summer Hikaru Died!
The series is being simulcast on Netflix and Crunchyroll.
Is It Wrong to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon - Season 5
We pick up after the dramatic events of the 4th season and Bell along with the rest of the Hestia Familia is safe, rested and powered up. Bells troubles start once more when one of the women who works at their favorite inn decides to move on her feelings for him, dragging Freya's Familia against our hapless hero.
Ah this is a bit of a welcomed return. I really didn't like season 4. Felling it slid the feel of the world building back to the beginning and took too long to tell what boiled down to one characters background. This first episode promises a change of pace back to something more in line with what was going on in season 2 were the God's are getting more actively involved in Bells life. Should be fun!
The series is being simulcast on HiDive.
Blue Box
High school kid with abnormally developed upper body has feels for older girl who is a star of the basketball team. He exhibits innocent but stalker like habits in order to be near her...in the hopes she pays attention to him. He finds out shes moving away and he does a not confession confession about how he feels she should pursue her lost dreams before she leaves. She then tells him only her fam is leaving and shes staying behind with a family friend. Skip to later that day and his mom is said family friend. So now hes living with the girl he likes and the two are going to do sport stuff together.
Honestly I feel like I'm being unduly harsh to this series. But the semi-high quality animation pisses me off. A lot of really nice slice of life stories get shafted when it comes to the animation quality. Yet when we have a series that falls out of the pages of Shonen Jump it gets a big budget even if its less original of a story. But...the quality of the animation seems to be a bit of a charade. The characters themselves, especially their eyes is...soul less. Their legs are also very disproportionate compared to their upper bodies...and again the MC's torso and neck are super defined and thick...like way too much for someone who plays badminton. He looks like an Olympic swimmer!! Half way through i really started to think about how this compares to Suzuka and wrote that of since they don't live in proximity with each other, which was a vital aspect of that series....then the last 2 minutes dropped and I was like...yeah this is Suzuka for a new generation. I guess I will stick with it for a bit, but the length is not guaranteed. At least its not leaned into fan service as all...so far.
The series is being simulcast on Netflix.
How I Attended an all Guys Mixer
A college student is asked to attend a mixer by a girl in his class. He wrangles two of his friends into it easily enough but things take an unusual turn when they show up to see 3 handsome men waiting for them instead. One of the guys reveals to the bewildered men that they are the women they expected. They all work at a drag king bar and figured they wouldn't have the time to change so came as they are. The guys are a little unsettled by this but the women ham it up and convince them to party through out the town all night long, attracting more attention than the real men due to their dashing looks. How much of this was planned by the women to toy with the hapless men and does the woman who orchestrated the entire thing have feelings for her classmate?
This was a lot of fun and really easy going! It felt a lot like a grown up version of Ouran Host Club and I look forward to watching this show through out the season. There seems to be a fun romance plot thread in it but I suspect its largely going to be about the guys getting set up in situations by the women drag that make them uncomfortable.
The series is being simulcast on HiDive.
Ranma 1/2
The reboot of a classic anime, one of the cornerstones 90 fandom in America. The story of a boy whose zealous father leads him to being cursed to transform into a girl when splashed with cold water, only to revert to a boy with warm water. He finds himself at a strangers home forced to pick one of the strangers three daughters to be his future bride to carry on the martial arts school his father and the stranger belong to.
The first episode is a pretty faithful copy of the first episode of the origin season from 1989. The animation is a little different and there is more going on to enhance the series, especially when Ranma and his father get into a fight in the street and the color palette changes and the line work becomes reminiscent of a manga. It's going to be great to revisit this classic and to see what changes will take place given how the world has changed in the past 35 years
The series is being simulcast on Netflix.
Orb: On the Movements of the Earth
A crafty orphan in a alternate version of Europe in the 15th century has used his intellect and abilities to manipulate those around him to live a comfortable life. As he is about to enter university to study theology his guardian takes in a renounced heretic who forces the young boy to be an accomplice in his pursuit of forbidden knowledge...studying the heavenly bodies and their movements in the sky. The heretic tells the boy that the reality of the universe is not one where the Earth exists at its center.
This is one of the three shows we're reviewing for the Fall season of The Otaku Network Podcast. So far the intro episode was good. It set a dark and suspenseful tone. The main character is a pretty believable 12 year old who is cocky but easily influenced when someone else more crafty than he appears. It will be interesting to see how this story unfolds and what type of endgame it has in store for us.
The series is being simulcast on Netflix.
Tsuma, Shogakusei ni Naru
After losing his wife ten years ago, time has stopped for salary-man Keisuke. When a 10 year old girl comes to his house, proclaiming to be the reincarnation of his long lost wife, the world becomes a brighter place but the dramatic age different and genetically different person make things quite complicated and difficult to reconcile. But hes over the moon that she exists regardless of her age, he loved her for who she was.
This show is my pick for the Fall season of The Otaku Network Podcast and it delivered way more love and joy than I anticipated. One episode in and I am already hooked....this may be my favorite show of the season and we just got started.
The series is being simulcast on Crunchyroll.
Uzumaki
The long awaited adaptation of Junji It's highly regarded manga. A girl in a small sea side town begins to struggle with everything around her falling into madness and degeneracy due to a growing influence of spiral formations infecting the town.
I loved the direction they went in keeping the art black a white, like they animated the pages of the manga. Looking back into the archives of this blog I never got around to doing a complete review of the manga, just a quick note when I started reading it. I do remember the lace of the manga being as haphazard and hectic as the anime, where it is difficult to get a feel for the passage of time. Everything just seems rushed. Another thing the anime highlights is how difficult it is to be truly creepy in the medium. Some aspects are more absurdly comical than actually frightening. Manga and anime have always had a hard time presenting themselves are frightening. Text only stories have the ability to infect the reader and manipulate their imagination. Live action has the ability to make things look more real than real. Manga and anime was just drawings...it's very difficult to make that horrific. And the amount of time and detail it takes is never going to be financially viable in anime.
The series is being simulcast on Max.
Magilumiere Co, Ltd.
A fresh graduate finds herself struggling with job interviews. She does everything she thinks will help her get hired by thuroughly researching each company before hand, but its all for naught as she remains unemployed. An interview at a finance company is abruptly interrupted when a monsterous being crashes through the ceiling. The company has been careless in their policies to keep the beasts, known as kaii, at bay and are now being attacked by one. The only choice they have is to a magical girl company to have them come out and dispatch the menace before it causes too much havoc. They end up calling a small and low budget company called Magilumiere and they lone magical girl comes immediately. When the magical girl realizes that the threat is greater than she can handle alone she tries to recruit one of the by-standards for assistance. The girl struggling to find employment offers to assist and proves to be a valuable asset.
Its hard to tell what type of story this one is going to settle into. Its a magical girl story with dramatic action sequences and plenty of magic babble being spewed around. It also appears to be a workplace dramedy? Hard to say. Aspects of it remind me of Read or Die and Soul Eater. I am on the fence with this one but we will see what a few more episodes deliver as its just barely scratched the surface of the story.
The series is being simulcast on Prime.
Tower of God Season 2 part 2
We move the story into the Workshop challenge and many ofd the people from Bam's past are going to be intersecting with him as it progresses. Only Kuhn suspects that he still lives. When season two was announced, I suspected would get at least as far as the conclusion of this arc and something tells me we that is still the case. Its hard to say how long it will be until we get more of the manhwa animated. It feels like there has been a good amount of dissatisfaction with season two, between a change in animation studio and a significantly different and confusing story compared to the first season. I do hope they keep going in the near future as there is a lot of cool story that still needs to be told but I can't read the future so we will just have to wait.
The series is simulcasting on Crunchyroll.
A Terrified Teacher at Ghoul School
Abe Haruaki has always wanted to be a teacher. A year earlier he began a job at a high school only to quite is less and half an hour later after relentless bullying by some students. He has been offered the chance to teach again bu a family friend. He finds himself on a friendly and isolated island, and is introduced to his class. However, his situation appears even more dire as the school only teaches yokai from around Japan and hes its sole human staff member. He has to overcome bis fear of the abnormal teenagers around him as well as develop the tiniest amount of self esteem if hes going to be able to succeed.
Take Sayonara Zetsubo-seinsei, make the teacher a coward instead of suicidal and turn the kids into yokai and you might be close? its no where near as stylistically bold as that fantastic satirical comedy but there might be some potential with this one to at least be entertaining. I will give it a few episodes to generate more interest out of me. I admit im not very versed in the lore of a lot of traditional and modern yokai and that may hurt the enjoyment of this series. But we will see...
This is being simulcast on Crunchyroll.
Bananya Around the World
The third season of the fun and lovable short anime series doesn't start for a few more days. But I know its going to stick around in my watch list. The episodes are super short, its low stakes and ive watched the first two seasons as they aired!
This series will be simulcast on Crunchyroll.
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The Fall season is quite a bit leaner for my watch list compared to the Summer season. Which is fine, I need some space to catch up with my ever growing back log of anime. Hell, I just noticed Crunchyroll added Minky Momo.
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