First impressions: Anime Footloose tries to do it all, and a man can’t act until his wife gets fridged

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When I first read the synopsis for Ghost Concert – missing songs, I thought we were getting some sort of anime Footloose:

In 2045, when singing is forbidden, a high school girl hears the ghostly voice that possesses her and grants great power.

You can still have music. You just have to let AI create a song for you. You’re not allowed to sing or compose music yourself. So when the episode kicked off with an idol concert, I figured I could go for the low-hanging fruit: if you’re going to lambast generative AI, please try and come up with something a little more substantive than idol slop. But no, Ghost Concert isn’t that simple. In fact, Ghost Concert seemingly wants to be everything and anything all at once.

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NEEDY GIRL OVERDOSE Ep. 1: A bad trip

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Even though I’ve owned the game for over a year now, I still haven’t started it. I haven’t even booted it up. After watching this opening episode, maybe I should. But going in blind for now is okay, I think, because the anime seems to be its own thing. Well, not exactly. It obviously has callbacks to the game — callbacks I can neither recognize nor appreciate — but I think I can still enjoy the adaptation without some of the context. And boy is the opening episode an information overload — an overdose, even. Blink and you’ll miss out. Is there a story? Not in the traditional sense. Instead, we bounce around like the terminally bored, clicking through various sites, looking and hoping for something to catch our attention.

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Daemons of the Shadow Realm Ep. 1: It takes a village to fool a kid

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I wouldn’t be too interested in this show if it was just a bunch of people from the past doing battles against demons. What can I say? A part of me simply can’t immerse myself in a story if I have to also imagine living in the olden days before the existence of modern conveniences. You might think I’m referring to stuff like smartphones and the internet — and sure, living without them would suck — but I’m talking more like refrigeration and a proper ass plumbing system. That’s why the thought of being isekai’d into a fantasy universe has no appeal to me. Yeah, yeah, I now get to cast magic… but I also gotta take a dump in an outhouse. Thanks but no thanks. Plus, could you imagine eating nothing but salt-cured foods all the time? But that’s what you gotta do before the advent of refrigeration. People also wouldn’t know about germs and bacteria, so they’d stick their grubby, lil’ mitts on everything. Ugh. No thanks. Keep the past away from me.

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