summer 2021

So there ended up being like, quite a lot of short one cour shows this season which really was both like, a great thing but also not super amazing because it would have been so good to have more. Also. Spoilers. always. 

Finished: 

Genjitsu Shugi Yuusha no Oukoku Saikenki

This was a fun watch - this already has a S2 on the way too. 

Overall my feelings about this show are pretty straight forward, it's more of a practical, politically minded version of most isekais with the insane strategies of how exactly to deal with some crazy circumstances - but I think I like the more laid back, strategist, almost Machiavellian big brain action that's happening here.

All the characters are pretty much just tropes at this point, like, average looking Japanese man, blonde princess, blue haired water singer, the dark elf with fighting prowess, the tiny cute wolf imoto, fat guy who likes eating, the straight long hair smart guy - there's nothing really that different or special about the set up of this show, YET I FALL FOR THIS KINDA SHIT EVERY TIME. 

I did read ahead with the manga and honestly found it a bit difficult to parse with the more complex descriptions of military strategies and political moves, so i think the anime makes it slightly more easy to digest even though the pacing of the show goes a little whack in places especially when important things are happening, but I think it gets to the main gist of the point (and additional commentary is always available on Reddit). That said, not a fan of how they literally spend like less time on a major battle than on a little town outing where they tell the MC that polygamy is allowed in their world (this gripe is not quite as bad as the way I feel about the TsukiMichi situation, especially since its kinda a common trope for this type of show anyway). I mean, overall, I enjoyed this show. It was a real like, middle of the road, average isekai, but its good enough to just leap over the hurdle of like, watchable entertainment, and sometimes that's all you need. 

Tsuki ga Michibiku Isekai Douchuu

So this is one of those, isekais, which. Like, I really find it interesting the way that anime can sometimes feel like such a different portrayal of the same fundamental story - especially because you lose out on a lot of the inner monologue that shapes the character and their feelings. 

so like - bouncing back for a moment - this is about a dude from normal earth? i guess? who's parents ended up actually being isekai'd by the goddess of that world, and eventually hes taken back to the world that they came from. because he's like, atrociously ugly, the goddess of the world refuses to bless him and curses him to the edges of the world, but theres another god from his world who decides to bless him with his powers anyway and this story is just him like, making his way in this world as an OP dude. 

at this point im trying really hard not to get too deep into the details of the plot - especially because of me reading the WN, so let's try to keep it short since this is going ot be a pretty fucking long review. 

overall my feelings on the first season of the anime are pretty solid - from what i know of the content material it's a good adaptation. 

what is always interesting to me is that like, midway through isekai shows, they end up skewing into more serious worldbuilding issues, so in the WN they basically introduce 2 other heros that were selected by the goddess to go to the new world to defeat demons, and it basically starts up like, a tangentially related storyline that the MC isnt really even a part of for a big chunk of it. so that's coming in the next season (which is confirmed). 

For me this show was like, low key ruined when i read up to the part of the WN where the MC basically ends up fucking both tomoe and mio, since they're obsessed with him, i feel that in the anime that sense is toned down and sort of stripped back a little where he sort of seems more pure, but in the WN there comes to this whole scene where he ends up fucking them and having this huge internal monologue where he basically goes "anyway i dont love them but like, yeah i banged both of them till morning" which honestly was like, not great? it ended up sort of reinforcing this strange, male isekai trop of not needing to be physically attractive, or even really interested in the women that hes with but like, pussy is just being thrown in his face, and like, love that its obviously someones gratuitous fantasy but i really do not enjoy that whole aspect of the relationship dynamic there. 

i think this is just.. like. fine? at this point, i've invested so much of my life into isekais, and like it's just, watchable entertainment power fantasies and its good enough. 

Otome Game no Hametsu Flag shika Nai Akuyaku Reijou ni Tensei shiteshimatta... X

The second season of HameFura - I saw a few people not really enjoying this season as much as the first (there are markedly, much less fun shenanigans) but I feel like I would argue this is because the game? story? is sort of entering more of a serious portion. especially with the story. basically there are like two main arcs to this part, Katarina gets kidnapped, and then Keith gets kidnapped. So close together? yes. Bad story telling? Yeah. You shoudlnt be using one word in a sentence too many times, let alone the same fucking plot side by side, right after each other in a fuckin  story. BUT what do i know, im not the author. 

so yeah we basically get the introduction of a sort of mid point between the games of fortune lover 1 and 2, for some reason it isnt touched upon until the very end of this season (but theres a movie coming) and so what happens is that we're introduced to the brothers of alan/geordo --

 also brief intermission which is, the anime decided to call him geordo but the katakana for his name is ジオルド/Ji - o-ru-do? Apparently people have decided that his name is actually "gerald", but like, to MY understanding it should be like ジェラルド which would make it Je-ra-ru-do with the -e rather than the - o sound? Also because Gerald is a name that makes sense, unlike the Log Horizon レイネシア /lenessia/reinesia/ rayneshia/raynesia insanity (which i believe, completely born out of the fact that its not a fucking real name and also peppered with sounds that exist in Japanese which have plural sounds in English like the r/l and sh/s blends)  in comparison, Gerald/Geordo, pretty straight forward. Like maybe we're getting an extra o or something but it's not as bad. imo. anyway.

-- who are the crown princes of the country, the older brother and the second brother with their fiancees. basically there's all this smattering of dark magic being manipulated being the scenes, so during the time, one of the fiancees ends up kidnapping Katarina to get one of the princes to renounce his right to the throne, and was basically being charmed/magicked by this guy who works for another noble who wanted jeffrey to be king. in the end, it turns out jeffrey's finacee works undercover at the department of magic and disguses herself as a maid and has been keeping track of the situation all along and eventually they save katarina BUT NOT BEFORE SHE CHARMS SORA INTO FALLING IN LOVE WITH HER (sora being the guy with dark magic). At this point, i want to build upon on the previous point i made in Tsukimichi, which is, stories get a little more weird when you add a bit of internal monologue - especially when its ... quite .. frank? and honestly not super likeable. In the LN, basically we get a Sora POV where he basically has this whole chat with katarina, and then he starts getting real horny on main and is like, ive fucked a lot of women but this woman i wanna like, legit fuck, and then cue this real PWP moment where hes sucking a hickey into her neck and full intending on seducing her with the charming dong. the scene in the anime has basically none of the inner horny monologue, and he just sort of throws her down on the bed and she just starts to wonder, oh is this him casting magic on me - which kinda leaves the interpretation of his actions up to the viewer, whether or not this legit was some sort of darker intention in terms of charming her or shutting her up or his idea of charming her, rather than the canonical reason, which was he just really wanted to get off. 

so shes saved, and then there's a slight intermission episode with everyone's fantasies being displayed in a cursed doll house (keith genderbend, some of them just wanting to be animals, maria wanting to be hella fucking buff, lots of gratuitous katarina features), and that's the anime original bit which is.... good? anyway after this, keith gets kidnapped by some other black magic user (again, seriously) who was manipulating another noble who hated keith and the rest of the season is like, them finding him with magic and then katarina saving him this time, and then they graduate and move into the fortune lover 2 bits. also there's like some kissing, geordo keeps kissing katarina, and then keith swoops in at the end there too. also he flings her down on the bed and threatens her about being like, slutty for going into his room without a chaperone in her Pjs. 

im sure a lot of the problems in this season are fundamentally problems that originated from the sheer unoriginality of the actual plot line which isnt really the fault of the people who created the anime and animated it, it's the author's fault for being unimaginative. the pacing of the content i honestly think is pretty good for what they had to work with. depending on what you liked about the first season, you might either love or hate this. I personally didn't mind this, it's really not the most amazing addition to what we have this season but it's a solid second part to hamefura and thats really the most important part at this point - especially with the upcoming movie. 

Uramichi Oniisan

What a show. boy. I mean, as someone who works with kids, this is kinda a whole ass fucking mood. depressive symptoms but also loving the kids because theyre genuinely so pure even when they come with these horrible moments of soul crushing innocuous questions eg. are you married. when it aired it just hit different. there's also a slight insight into his more depressive tendencies and the reality of adult life (not great), but i think the show does a great job at establishing the feeling of the show before delving into some other deeper themes, about growth and life. 

honestly this is one of those shows i just dont really have that much to say because its just like, good. the pacing, the animation, the little jokes are just fantastic, and i'd honestly just recommend it. it might not be everyone's cup of tea, but i truly enjoyed this a lot. 

Heion Sedai no Idaten-tachi

okay this is like... i don't even know how to approach this show without just truly being awe of how original and fun this show is. I originally watched this as a release with the Mappa live event and I was honestly not expecting to be so interested in this show. 

the source material is honestly a strange thing, the webnovel by amahara (the author for interspecies reviewers) and manga by the artist who did Kobayashi dragon maid with no legitimate update since a few years ago (although the manga is still ongoing, while the webnovel was never updated) 

i mean honestly, this is just a case of truly original story telling, every twist and turn that was revealed in this show was truly unexpected and so innovative - its really hard to even say the synopsis is a good reflection of what actually happens in the show, because it doesnt. 

there are just so many good things about this show, firstly the gorgeous animation from mappa with its cool color themes and framing, and the action is fantastic. even though this isn't a comedy anime by any stretch, it has some funny moments, and some outrageous moments (every time miku's on screen), and the times it has a comedic moment its just wonderful, but the bits where seriousness comes in and plot starts to take charge, it has such good moments of tension. 

plot wise - i genuinely just dont really want to spoil this at all because it is jsut a show that works so much better when you see it all unfold, but the way this ends (at 11 episodes) is a real cliffhanger and due to the status of the source material (anime has gone beyond the manga and is sort of in 'original content territory'), i don't think we'll ever see a season 2 or a resolution to the current plot which is honestly, wild, considering what we ended on. i honestly will want to see this resolved at some point, although i dont know if we will see this at all, but uh, yeah i recommend checking this out. this has some of the most entertaining storytelling i've seen in a while, and it's really a breath of fresh air compared to a lot of the more prescriptive animes tropes and plots out there. i rec this one. 

Tokyo Revengers

I found this really difficult to watch to be honest - this is quite a popular manga but to be honest, the reason as to exactly why kinda evades me. tho gotta admit, character designs are fantastic. 

i mean this show is really, nothing of the things i like which i assume is probably why i dont like it - im not a big fan of time travel in general (never finished steins;gate, heresy) and if i was to choose a timetravel theme i'd probably prefer a circular loop (think of, shit that's already happened and its unchangeable), rather than the multiverse, altered reality that tokrev goes for. i mean there are a lot of marked inconsistencies with how the timetravel works (eg. the person whos the trigger can somehow remember the past but also has some idea of how the present has changed, theres one person whos a trigger, time passes while hes in the past but then it just so happens that he manages to at least try to save people). in addition to that, i really don't find any of the characters likeable and the plot feels somewhat incomprehensible (turns out, kiseki tetta is a simp, and is like a big bad, but the resolution of his arc also feels poorly done after all the contrived drama that keeps happening). i think if i was to pin point it, it feels like melodrama happens for the sake of drama and plot, and it has a somewhat bleak and pointless outlook (eg. re:zero) without any meaningful growth, yet takemitchy doesn't have the same type of entire life breakdown that subaru - things just happen to him, despite him being the MC, which is fine, i guess? but its just such a strangely... empty piece of work for me. 

i will say that the manga feels slightly better paced and a bit more nostalgic in its delivery - i think the author kind of bleeds through his own personal love for delinquents and his own past through this story, but somehow i feel like the actual plot itself is pretty secondary to him just creating a story for himself (imo). in that lens i can appreciate the show, but like, i really do not care for this and trying to watch this kinda felt like wading through molasses. i had a similar feeling when i initially tried to marathon SNK, in addition to the overlap of content/recap that takes up like 15 minutes lmao, so maybe this adds to my dislike of the story. overall, i dont really like this, unfortunately. 

Meikyuu Black Company

okay this was GOOD. like, the best isekai this season. basically a sort of tongue in cheek critique about capitalism and the horrible working conditions in black companies, but done through an isekai and throwing in some shit about sustainability as well? its kinda great. 

i really enjoyed how fun this was, our MC ninomiya was fantastically fun, and i really loved the seiyuus for the rest of the characters (shout out to shimono hiro!). the plot itself was really just fun, i love when stories are told in a really unorthodox, unpredictable way and with a MC who isnt really bound by the typical rules of 'being a good person' or a respectable kinda person, its really fun to see the shenanigans he comes up with while being scummy but also kinda doing the right thing (brainwashing scheme + tricking Belza's henchman on the 5th floor of the dungeon). while its a bit faster paced than the manga due to the time constraints, it's really great how they managed to fit everything from the manga (in terms of its original ending) into the anime, it gives it a really satisfactory end (as the manga is currently ended on a 'cliffhanger' about him being summoned into ANOTHER world, so the anime shuffled some stuff around and didn't adapt the last 5 pages of the manga so far) which i think was a really good move to kinda get this whole rise from the bottom to the top in just one cour. i think this was fantastically funny, well structured and paced, and just such a solidly enjoyable show - i'd def recommend it. 

Re-Main

another one by MAPPA - who are fucking killing it rn with these originals - even when they're not perfect, they're pretty darn good with good resolutions.

this definitely tried to tackle a bunch of issues within it being a 'sport anime' - despite it being about a sport, I feel like this was definitely a bit more of an unorthodox coming of age story. our MC minato basically wakes up with amensia and has forgotten the last few years of his life, and returns to his life kinda muddling through the fact that hes apparently a fantastic water polo player despite having been in a coma for a year - so the first half of the story is built around him forging these new bonds through his new self. in a burst of melodrama, due to chinu (a sort of, plot device wrapped in a cute girl), she triggers his memory, and then on the way home basically erases all remainders of his past self, who turns out to be a really horrible, unlikable egoist. then the last bits of the show are developing the original? older? him and sort of letting him grow before realizing that he does like the team and likes playing water polo. power of friendship!

i mean let's address the most pressing and kinda dominant issue here - and I do agree. a lot of people were complaining that the amnesia plot points were definitely a difficult one to tackle - especially when he had lost it to begin with, didn't really touch on resolving that, before jumping straight back. as a function of like, "plot", it is a pretty difficult thing to do well with nuance just because the whole 'amnesia' thing can be really tacky and tasteless. in this case, i don't think it was overdone but i do wish that they'd sort of returned it in a gradual way rather than the repeated head hitting - maybe they would have said the memories might slowly return and the triggering of the memory and the video would have been enough for his old personality to return and shocked/overwritten the previous one as well. obviously we're not neurological experts here, but i definitely feel that the whole amnesia thing was not dealt with in a great way since it functioned as a plot device. in a way, it kind of becomes a contrived scenario where you put in a scorned player into a shitty team and they learn to love it (someone pointed out that this was a bit similar to kageyama's character arc, which I loosely agree with), and so it really feels like a strange meander down the path of memory loss considering what happens with his two personalities. - first as a function of GETTING him into the team, and secondly to get his skills and tactics back in order to push themselves further as a team. 

i mean personally speaking, i enjoyed the first half of the season a lot more (again, as usual), where we have this cute, really cheerful and smiley version of Minato and his sweetness at working towards building a team with all his friends and bonding - the second version of minato kinda enters halfway through and needs a real attitude shake up. in the end, he ends up growing and maturing and starting to change as a person. it almost feels like a sort of, body swap situation? like in Your Name where due to the changes and actions of the other person in their body, they start changing as a result as well. it also feels like a character death in a way - the MC who brings us into the show and narrates us basically leaves us to drown halfway through the show, and we get a sullen, moody asshole. it's really not my favorite part of the show. 

what about the things i do like? well i love the characters for one - even though they dont get a ton of time to shine because this is far more minato centric, i like that theres a relationship between Minato family, and that extends to the rest of the team, especially with the really heart warming moments between Jojima and his dad (which honestly made me feel so happy), and even those tiny little snapshots of their family members coming in to cheer for them becomes a really lovely touch (as families are more or less pretty absent in most sport animes). if there was more time, i could see all of them really being fleshed out, but even the small moments we got from there were truly enough to solidify each of their personalities (which is more than KNB has achieved in more than triple the time). like, i love that you really knew the character motivations, and their desires and goals, and how their personalities blossom from it. I really loved all of the little comedic touches from the Happy? Minato and his cute narrations. i honestly ended up having a little teary moment at the last episode with the way it resolved itself. 

like, was this perfect? no, but was it endearing and sweet in the ways that matters? yes. there are some really lovely points that sets this anime out from the rest of the run of the mill sport anime and almost has a seinen-y flavor, I'm really glad how they decided to resolve this into a really sweet ending - although we didn't get everything we wanted, there were so many moments that felt fulfilling narrative wise (Ushi scoring, Babayaro finally getting his hands up block, Amiami getting recognized by his brother, Eitaro finally playing with Minato, Jojima getting to talk to his dad, and finally, Minato growing as a person and resolving things with his mom), that despite all the little pitfalls and red herrings (like the other teams turning out to not really be much of a threat), it ties everything else up in a way that you can finish the last episode and walk away feeling content. 

i'd really love to see a second season but i truly doubt it will happen so i'm really satisfied with how they decided to end this. (id rather have a satisfying ending with one season than get a cliffhanger which just tries to swing for another season, it feels more like resolution and closure especially when it comes to critiquing the story itself as a complete media piece rather than an extension of a larger universe like american comics). so all in all, i really liked this. a great addition to the MAPPA line up - and one i'd recommend checking out. 

Cheat Kusushi no Slow Life: Isekai ni Tsukurou Drugstore

This was cute - although I had a few gripes about this in terms of the way they structured the story. It works really well when you consider it as more of a slice of life show that just happens to be called 'isekai' rather than actually considering it an 'isekai' because the way they reshuffled the events in the story basically does not touch on the actual backstory of the 'isekai' process lmao for some bizarre reason. dont know why they did that - especially the way they did the second last episode setting up a backstory reveal and elect to ignore before jumping back in. it's like an attempt at a cliffhanger for more views but it makes the base fundamental plotline of the story pretty much irrelevant and secondary to the more slow life/isekai stuff. i wasn't a huge fan of the characters unfortunately. 

ive briefly touched on the structure of slowlife isekais before (probably not in writing form yet) but this is a great example of one, just a sort of relacing slow life thing with like vague underlying touches of romance/ecchi but only in very indistinct forms, but that all aside, its a super chill show. i wasn't like, super impressed with this as i think it definitely could have been better if they'd just framed the bare amount of plot a bit better, but otherwise its a decent show. good for relaxing. 

Dropped: 

Vanitas no Carte

To be honest I actually got quite far into this, like up to episode 5 but I had a quite look at the source material and was honestly a little disappointed. The author - who also wrote Pandora Hearts - actually had a lot of queercoded moments in the manga which seemed to completely be removed in the anime adaptation - and honestly, I'm not about that life.