Zenshu

 Zenshu (全修) is an original 12 episode isekai anime produced by MAPPA.  The series originally aired during the Winter of 2025.

     Hirose Natsuko is a celebrated young anime director who is struggling to complete the screenplay for his first movie, First Love.  AFter accidentally getting food poisoning she wakes up in  different world.  She quickly determines she is in the world of the anime that influenced her to become and animator, the derided fantasy A Tale of Perishing.  The world of A Tale of Perishing is that of near death.  The source of its light and growth, the soul futures, have been gradually extinguished by an alien menace known as the Void.  A band of legendary heroes, the Nine Soldiers, have done everything they can to protect them, but only 4 heroes remain.  They and everyone else have crammed into the last city, built around the final soul future.  Things are looking desperate because once the final soul future is destroyed the world will end as they know it.  The Nine Soldiers encounter the out of place Natsuko in the outskirts of town but consider her a nuisance and a trouble maker.  She does what she can to convince them other wise, but the leader, Luke Braveheart wants nothing to do with her.  Using her knowledge of the anime, she tries to warn them of danger only to be ignored even once the next attack happens.  As the battle rages and one of the other heroes begins to cast a spell, sacrificing himself to save the others, an item from the real world begins to urge Hatsuko to take action.

    The item is her peg bar and when she heeds its urging she goes through a fantastical magical girl transformation and finds herself sitting at a replica of her animators desk.  She formulates an idea in her head and with inhuman speed, sketches out a storyboard.  As soon as she is finished with it magic causes it to spring to life, a gigantic being with a powerful beam weapon that decimates the hoard of Voids, preventing the hero Unio from sacrificing himself.  After demonstrating her ability and usefulness she is accepted into the ranks of the Nine Soldiers.  Her prescient ability only goes so far though as the plot begins to change in reaction to her meddling.  The original anime ended in the despair and failure as Luke succumbed to the trauma of loosing everything he cares for.  Natsuko tries to intervene as much as she can to prevent this but as things move further away from what she knew this became harder to maintain.  Will she learn life lessons she was unable to learn in the real world as she struggles to protect this new world?

 

    Zenshu was a unknown given its an original piece that seemed to be part Shirobako and part every isekai out there.  What sold me with the preview was the beauty of the animation.  This is a fantastically animated series with a lot of care placed on making the characters distinct.  In the moments when Natsuko is remembering the anime version of A Tale of Perishing, the art style and quality changes to reflect a lower quality TV anime from years past.  The other characters themselves are done in different styles as well.  Luke looks like a classic fantasy character from the 80's.  Unio, a shapeshifting magical unicorn, looks like he would be more at home in Care Bears.  QJ, the strange statue-like being, is absolutely a reference to a famous figurine from the ancient Jomon era.  As the story played another thing that became apparent was how different the characters were being handled.  They didn't easily fit into traditional fantasy/isekai roles and had a great deal of interpersonal dynamics.  They were also multi faceted and realistic in their portrayals.

    But what about the story its self?  In the end it wasn't anything new or original.  We have seen this type of story countless times and there is no shame in that.  Whats special about Zenshu is how much love was put into it.  This is truly a love letter to anime with an emphasis on its history.  A lot of that is represented by Natsuko herself.  Eeach week she creates a new animated scene to help them in their battles, constantly changing style.  We see a nod to Gundam, Kinnikuman, bishonen harem, kaiju, etc.   While the story its self is well hashed the way it handles it is invigorating and special.  This is a really good anime and should be viewed by all manner of anime fans.  There is a little room with the way it ends for the possibility of a movie but I suspect it will never happen and feel leaving things as they are is the best way to preserve the shows future legacy.

The series was simulcast on Crunshyroll.

Blue Box seson 1

Blue Box (アオのハコ) is 25 episode romance based on the manga of the same name by Miura Kouji.  The first season ran from the Fall of 2024 until the Winter of 2025.

 

    Inomata Taiki is a first year high school student and student athlete on the badminton team.   His dedication to the sport leads him to practicing first thing in the morning.  He's not the only overly ambitious athlete as he normally shares the gym in the early hours of the morning with second year basketball star Kano Chinatsu.  Chinatsu is popular and well loved by everyone in school, highly sought after by many of the boys.  Taiki is another one of the admirers and struggles with his lack of confidence, relying on these early morning sessions to be in her presence all on his own.  Those fuzzy mornings are about to come to an end when he learns that her parents are moved abroad for work.  He doesn't keep; these feelings to himself however and confides in his closest friends, fellow badminton teammate Kasahara Kyo and childhood friend and star of the girls rhythm gymnastics team, Chono Hina.  Even though Hina says shes way out of his league he still tries to interact with her, wanting to know her better.  When he learns that she will be moving he expresses his sympathy for her.  Chinatsu is working hard so that the team can enter the inter-high tournament and try to win it.  Supersized, she tells him that she will be staying behind, living with her moms friend, so she can continue to focus on her goals.  His relief is soon shattered when he learns that friend is actually his own mother and the girl he has a massive crush on will be living with them.

    This is both a curse and a boon for him as it allows them to spend more time together, to learn about each other.  But he is nervous and uncertain how to act around her and what he should do regarding his own desires.  He is awkward wears his emotions on his sleeve but earnest in his endeavors.  In order to impress her and to push himself he declares his intention to become better so he too can shoot for inter-high for badminton.  Already driven to be better, he pushes his training and focus into high gear, all while suffering an internal battle over his feelings for the girl living in his house.  His work pays off and he shows rapid improvement and earns more respect from his team mates and seniors, but he is still far from his goal as the competition from rival schools belittles his efforts.  At the same time Hina struggles for her growing feelings for one of her oldest friends.  Spurned by the competition for his heart with Chinatsu, she eventually opens up to Taiki about her feelings and wants.  This revelation shakes their friendship and causes him more internal anguish as he tries to find his path forward.  Does he have that sort of feeling for his friend and does he even have any chance of success with his crush?

     I'll just put it out in front, I am quite negative about this story.   The set up and scenario is very much that found in Suzuka, a bad shonen romance in its own right that holds a special place as the series that opened me up fully to my love of the genre.  I really dislike the character design.  Their faces and eyes are unsettling and their body proportions are wrong most of the time.  The biggest problem however is the severe dislike of Taiki and the almost non-existent personality of Chinatsu.  Lets start with Chinatsu.  Her personality type is agreeable and non-committal.  For all of the input she has in the things around her she could just as well be a toaster.  Shes obedient, likeable, easy going, passive.  That passive part is the key thing, shes the gross yamato nadeshiko thing, where the perfect woman is obedient and quiet, existing in a state of subservience and vulnerability.  Its a shame because she is ripe for a lot of complexity.  She only exists in the frame of the story as the object that Taiki chases after.  She literally has zero opinion about anything around her and adds nothing to the story when it comes down to it.  Taiki himself is a bland and uninspired archetypal shonen main character.  He's the under dog whose raw determination carried him to success, no matter how many beatings he takes.  He's boring, absolutely uninteresting and useless as a character and a narrative center.

    The story literally commits suicide when it takes an episode to focus on the romance of two side characters that blows everything since and before out of the water.  In one 20 minute arc, where a lot of it is exposition and dialogue around the actual story, more conviction and personality is expressed than all of the other episodes combined. In the 13th episode, he goes to watch his senpai on the badminton team and ends up sitting with his girlfriend.  The girlfriend, a model and friend of Chinatsu, relays the story of how they became lovers after years as classmates.  I want to see this story told in full, there is so much more room that can be given to this fantastically lovely story and its wasted on this will they won't they indecision each episode.  I'll give Blue Box this though, its not full of fan service of terrible tropes about puberty and perversion.  Many of the side characters are well fleshed out and agreeable, offering genuine interest to the story.  But I just don't care about Taiki and would really like for Chinatsu to have a personality.  Its sad, you know the outcome.  There is no way it ends without them acknowledging mutual feelings, but I really don't care either!!

The first season was simulcast on Netflix and season 2 was announced to begin directly afterwards.  I will watch that one too...so stay tuned to see if my feelings change.

Orb: On the Movements of the Earth

 Orb: On the Movements of the Earth (チ。―地球の運動について―,) is a 25 episode historical drama based on the manga of the same name by Uoto.  The series ran between the Fall of 2024 and the Winter of 2025. 

     The story takes place in the Kingdom of Poland in the 15th century, a time where the Catholic church controls most aspects of life.  An ex-mercenary named Nowak is employed by the local Bishop to hunt down heretic and bring them to justice, particularly a specific branch of heresy, heliocentrism.  The contemporary position of the place of Earth in the universe at this point is that it is the center of everything, with the glory of Heaven above and the torment of Hell below.  The wonders of Heavens circles the Earth, casting their mysterious splendor on humans who were not worthy in this life to experience them.  Questioning this and analyzing Gods majesty and wonder was punishable by death as an affront to his majesty and benevolence.  To do so would constitute the sin of pride in a person thinking they could judge that which is celestial.  Yet as Europe begins to expand its experiences to the wider world once again, knowledge and ideas largely lost to them begins to return.  With it the age of reason begins and those with the ability to access books and the time to do so begin to study the world around them in empirical ways.  The idea that the Heavens do not rotate around the Earth, that the Earth is just another celestial body and it, along with other objects, rotates around the Sun is counter to the Churches dogma.  Nowak is working to stamp out this poisonous thinking before it grows out of hand and threatens the order of their lives.

    One particular heretical case haunts him through his career, the case of a boy who had the entire world in front of him but defied logic and refused to refute his heretical thinking.  The boy, named Rafal, had become involved with a reformed heretic named Hubert and was helping the older man with continuing his heliocentrism research.  Huburt is arrested again and executed as a repeat offender with Rafal falling into Nowaks hands.  The man tries to convince the boy to recant but instead the boy chooses a symbolic death at his own hands instead of betraying his own convictions.  Ten years later, remnants of Rafal and his heresy once again appear before Nowak, this time threatening his own family.  Again he reacts in a manner befitting of his duty to the Church and God, but 25 years after that the specter of Heliocentrism and Rafal return, poised to destroy everything he has ever worked for in his life.  With all of the effort he has put into this solitary task, why has it persisted in the face of judgement?

     Historical drama's are not exactly common in the sphere of anime and manga, many of them are localized to Japanese history, for a number of reasons.  Orb is written by someone who has either a deep knowledge of Europe during the enlightened era or did a lot of quality research in preparation for writing the manga.  It is astonishing how cognizant this story was in relation to what things would have been like in Poland in the 1400's.  Keeping a wary eye on the accountable timeline while spinning a decades long tale of the pursuit of knowledge.  This is in stark contrast to the blunder in the Vinland Saga where Denmark is shown as being mountainous...which is pretty far from the reality of things.  The story its self is divided into 4 segments and while I presented Nowak as the main character, each section is not told from his narrative perspective.  Nowak is the constant character across all of the arcs.  The stories narrative perspective is of the heretics that cross his path.  Each arc, even after the span of years or decades, carries the burden of knowledge forward, even if the characters had no intention of taking the path they ended up on.  I can't express enough how finely crafted this story is and the way it seamlessly connects these disparate individuals.  In that path it showcases various aspects of life in this time frame, moving from aspiring philosopher to sell sword, to monk, to social outcast and revolutionary idealists.  However there is one sticking point in the time line of things.  There is a 'slight' problem with the timing of one event at the very end of the story...that I need to actually sit down and figure out if is real or perceived.  But this one error is the only bad mark in an otherwise amazing story.

    The story is on the caliber of recognized timeless classics such as Monster but what about the animation?  The characters are not realistically detailed but they are realistically designed.  They are realistically portrayed Europeans with dress to match the period.  The only sticking point and oddity, especially present in the third arc is that some of the characters hair style choices are not exactly period accurate.  But that's a miner quibble.  The art at times can be a bit jarring when its 3d base becomes apparent, particularly in some of the characters walking animation but it doesn't negatively impact the anime over all.  There is no humor in this story, it is a dramatic tale of perseverance and defying authority.  There is not a lot of action as well, as the majority of the characters are intellectuals.  The few action scenes are brief and well done.  It may be due to that old adage of something being better when its done sparingly but the few scenes of sword play were amazing!  I can't stress enough how good this story is and how finely it was executed.  This should be considered a timeless classic and a model of perfection in the industry.  I fear however, that it will be lost to most people due to the nature of its story and the presentation.  Its hard to gather a lot of momentum around it when a large portion of the anime viewing populace wants something more flashy and stylized.  Orb is not that, it tells a very realistic and grounded story in a way you don't see very often.  Well worth the viewing.

 The anime was simulcast on Netflix.

A Look Back At TV Anime From 2015

I was well invested again in anime consumption at this point, coming off of the high of 2014.  There wasn't a lot of impactful titles premiering this year but there was a lot of good story telling.

Beautiful Bones

    One of two mystery series that came out this year, this one is more a mystery of the week Sherlock Holmes style story.

Charlotte

    From story telling brulatist Maeda Jun, this series evolves the story, its telling and what its doing to its characters at an incredible pace.  Don't like the feel of a particular arc, don't worry it will change in a few episodes.

Classroom Crisis

    A rote sci-fi school based series that a lot of people apparently never watched or even know about?  It wasn't bad but it wasn't good either.

Death Parade

    Perhaps the sleeper hit of the year.  An episodic examination of a souls worth in the form of a jazz lounge. Excellent series.

Disappearance of Yuki Nagato-chan

    An off shoot of the Haruhi universe by another other wanting to explore the normal world presented to Kyon in the amazing Disappearance of Haruhi movie.  This showed that the power of the Haruhi world is the subtle super natural force that is Haruhi.  I really disliked this series but should watch it again.

 

Heroic Legend of Arslan

    A second attempt to turn a sprawling epic novel series into and anime and still fails to tell its full story.  It was really nice to see this old classic get a new coat of paint and an expanded story however.

 

Homouto Umaru-chan

    Everyone dreams of a cute nerdy younger sister right?  Ok, maybe its just an otaku thing.  Umaru chan though hides her selfish behavior from the public and presents herself as the ideal teenager.  At home..shes lazy, spoiled and plain obnoxious.  Cute series largely due to the fantastic mix of chibi and reality.

 Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?

    A light novel adaptation with a name that suggests the level of fan service it provides...but includes fantastic world building and an escalating story across its currently 5 seasons.   I dislike harem and fantasy but have greatly enjoyed this title.  I would love to see a proper JRPG based on this world.

Mobile Suit Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans

    Perhaps the best Gundam series around?  It may have something to do with the fact its not part of the Universal Century and doesn't have to tie its self into Char or Amuro. 

Mr. Osomatsu

    The reboot of a ridiculous comedy series about a sextuplet of good for nothing brothers.  The first episode lambasted popular anime of the time so hard it got banned...also they didn't ask for permission.  Epic.

 My Love Story

    This innocent high school romance between a giant kind heart guerilla of a boy and a diminutive shy girl may be one of the most wholesome and lovable romancer anime ever produced.   

 One Punch Man

    The initial premise of Saitama being the unexpectedly most bas ass person on the plant was a lot of fun when it didn't take its self seriously and poked fun at the shonen battle tropes.  When it started to actually embrace those tropes and try to tell some sort of serious story it got boring. 

Re-Kan

     A run of the mill super natural comedy about a girl who can interact with the dead as part of her daily life.  It had some fun moments and some sweat moments but didn't leave a strong impression over all.  The definition of mid-tier.

Rin-ne

    The first Takahashi TV anime since Inuyasha that started out promising but then meander way too much for its own good.

Perfect Insider

     An 11 episode locked room mystery that takes its time exploring the crime and its culprits in a deliberate and well paced manner.  Actually a pretty good detective style story.

School Live

     In the zombie apocalypse 4 school girls use their wits to stay alive inside of their abandoned school.  The series does a lot of work trying to keep it as light and fun as possible but as their plight worsens reality becomes more grim.  Perhaps the best delivery of any series in the year.

Wakakozake

    This short slice of life series that focuses exclusively on one young office worker and her love for eating delicious food and drinking delicious spirits was fantastic.  The original manga has spawned a number of life action seasons as well.  Just nice and relaxing. 

A Look Back At TV Anime From 2005

 The end of 2005 saw the birth of my youngest child and a lot of time spent being a parent...a lot of the series' I churned through at that point were either long running shows like Naruto or older programs from the late 90's.  A good portion of the shows that premiered this year I didn't get to until years later.  One did have a significant impact on my anime fandom.  Suzuka was how I started down my path of obsessing over romance anime.  A lot of the titles from this year though never interested me so a lot have been left to history, forgotten by many.

Gag Manga Biyori

    A strange and off putting collection of shorts ripped from the manga of the same name.  Not for the casual Western anime fan.  The series is getting its 5th season this year as a celebration for the 25th anniversary of its source material.  This is one a personal favorite of mine! 

Honey and Clover

    A really well done story about growing up and finding yourself as you navigate through the first years of adult hood.  A fantastic and sprawling light romance that is well worth checking out for a change of pace from the plethora of repetitive high school romances.

Noein

    This interesting time travel/parallel worlds story will keep a lot of people away with its off putting and strange design.  Beyond the less than appealing character design it tells an engaging and unique story that's worth the time.

Pani Poni Dash

    Coming on the cusp of Kyoto Animation becoming the lord of quirky cute comedies.  Pani Poni Dash, done by Shaft, ushers in an era of moe insanity as every convention of storytelling is thrown out with the bathwater.

Strawberry 100%

    How much plot can be spun around underwear?  Too much in this light ecchi series disguised as a romantic comedy.

Strawberry Marshmallow

    In the heyday of the 4 cute girls style of iyashikei, Strawberry Marshmallow delivers a fun and meandering story of idiotic grade school friends.

Suzuka

    Siejo Koe's first anime adaptation, the king of sexy time shonen romance, delivered a series that greatly impacted my tastes in anime moving forward.  This is the series that flipped the switch into romance being my favorite genre.  It hasn't aged well but I still think it does the story better than its shoddy close, Blue Box does.

 

A Look Back At TV Anime From 1995

 The year 1995 was a consequential year for TV anime, a year that will change it's story from that time onward.  I was just getting deep into watching anime, renting as much as possible from local video stores, as the medium was beginning to grow.  But...two key shows completely shifted the landscape.

Chibi Maruko-chan (2nd series)

    This reboot of the long running slice of life manga still airs to this day.  It is one of the most watched anime on a weekly basis and is ingrained in pop culture to a deep extent.  It has aired consistently Sunday evenings, only seeing a pause during the height of the pandemic.  As of the beginning of 2025, there have been over 1400 episodes aired.  It is somewhat available on Crunchyroll and should be worth checking out, if for nothing more than academic curiosity if the show isn't your style.

 

Mobile Suit Gundam Wing

    Wing is responsible for the vart majority of Western Gundam fans and has a lot of love in Japan as well.  Between the original pirated copy and the mass exposure through Toonami, the series has made mecha fans of a lot of people.  Side note, I never liked this series or story.

Neon Genesis Evangelion

    You know it, everyone knows it.  A series that still spawns controversy and discussion.  A media franchise that has dominated for the past 30 years.  Its opening theme song, Cruel Angel Thesis, is the most requested karaoke song in Japan.  What is more important with Eva is what it did for the industry.  Due to pressures about the story being inappropriate for its time slot, it was forced to finish its run airing in the middle of the night.  This did nothing to tarnish its popularity and anime production companies took a series look at releasing more shows in the middle of the night, where broadcast restrictions are far more relaxed.  I wrote a whole thing about that here!

Slayers

    A classic fantasy comedy for Western and Japanese fans alike.  A hugely successful series adapted from a light novel series.  As with Gundam Wing...I remain an outlier in my deep seeded hatred for this series.

Tenchi Universe

    A different narrative direction on the original OAV Tenchi Series, this is one of the original harem romance anime and has spawned a lot of other productions since.  A big series for my generation of anime fans, but has fallen into obscurity into the 21st century.