Every season, I would extensively cover around 3 to 6 shows. Everything else would then be relegated to… well, Everything Else. That catch-all column, however, eventually started to balloon, because I wanted to casually watch everything. What can I say? I might rag on the majority of these shows, but deep down, I still love anime. As a result, I created a few more categories in the summer. Romance Roundup for shows with an explicitly romantic slant, Villainess Villainy for (in theory) ambitious young ladies, Isekai Hate Watch because we just can’t get enough isekai, and of course, Shounen Saturday for shounens. More specifically, it’s an attempt to see if I could ever recapture that nostalgic feeling of waking up early on Saturday mornings and watching the dubbed version of Dragon Ball Z on KCAL-TV. Going into the fall, I feel like I need to invent a few more categories, ’cause… I dunno, it’s human nature. We love categorizing stuff! So in addition to the catch-all columns I already have above, I want to add the following:
Generic (Power) Fantasy Anime
Let’s face it… a whole bunch of shows would fall under Isekai Hate Watch, but they don’t because they’re not literally isekai. For example, I Became a Legend After My 10 Year-Long Last Stand is painfully run-of-the-mill. Likewise with The Villager of Level 999. Hell, I’d throw Clevatess in there too. I’m not really impressed with it either. So this is my attempt to separate these shows out from Everything Else.
Sports Slop Sunday
As you can tell, I kinda want to phone it in on the weekends. Of course, if there’s a banger show, then I’ll do my usual thing anyway. But otherwise, the weekend is reserved for shounen and sports dumbassery. I don’t watch sports anime, but I wanna give it a shot. I’m not remotely caught up on any of the upcoming fall sports anime, but I’m just going to hop right in. I mean, how bad can it go? Really badly? That’s fine. Not every experiment has to pan out.
So what am I going to blog extensively in the fall? And what will end up in one of the many categories above? Well, these are the shows I’m willing to try. Whether or not I’ll end up following them from start to finish, however, is another matter.
Definitely will cover
- The Ramparts of Ice
Yeah, so far, just one. The funny thing is, I don’t even like The Ramparts of Ice that much. I think it’s overly dramatic (almost like it’s the polar opposite of the mangaka’s other work), and just one peek at season two’s trailer is already making me cringe. We’re about to get caught up in a tangled web of misunderstandings because neither Koyuki nor Minato have the self-esteem to confess their feelings to each other. Oh yeah, he’ll probably end up dating another girl from the looks of it. Even worse, the B-plot between Miki and Giraffe Guy is full of drama as well! Yeah, that’s right, he’s still Giraffe Guy.
Why not relegate this to the Romance Roundup column? ‘Cause I need something to blog about, man! Look, if I can scrounge up three or four better shows, I’ll glady kick The Ramparts of Ice to the (Romance Roundup) curb. But until then, it’s penciled in for a dedicated column. But seriously, what else is there to cover? Will there be any hidden gems for me like Draw This, Then Die!?
Romance Roundup
Pretty self-explanatory: if it’s primarily a love story, it goes here.
- Firefly Wedding
- Even Though I’m a Super Timid Noble Girl, I Accepted the Bet From My Cunning Fiance
- Hello, I am a Witch and my Crush Wants me to Make a Love Potion!
- Please Excuse My Younger Brothers
- Blue Box
- Ranma 1/2 3rd Season
- The Salty Koharu Has a Soft Spot for Me
- From Far Away
- I’m Dating a Dark Summoner
- Even the Student Council Has Its Holes!
Firefly Wedding seems to continue the trend of anime women falling for problematic dudes. Maybe that’s unfair, but the trailer kinda makes me cringe. Not only that, Crunchyroll’s synopsis reveals that our heroine is dying? As you might have guessed, I have a disdain for overwrought drama.
Super Timid Noble Girl is tricky. It technically satisfies multiple categories. It’s an isekai, but our girl is also reborn as the villainess. But what I really look for in a villainess is ambition, and I’m not getting that from the trailer. I just see a love story more akin to An Observation Log of My Fiancée Who Calls Herself a Villainess, but our heroine isn’t quite an airhead like Bertia.
Hello, I am a Witch and my Crush Wants me to Make a Love Potion! probably has the right tone for a potentially decent series, but I’m not sold yet.
Ah, Blue Box, Blue Box, Blue Box… I just find Taiki super annoying. That’s simply what it boils down to. I can’t stand the kid. Normally when there’s a love triangle, you can’t help but feel bad for the loser. In Blue Box‘s case, I think both girls could do better. I watched a lot of trailers for this post. I didn’t even bother looking one up for Blue Box.
I caught up on the Ranma 1/2 remake while grinding out the Dawntrail relic. I think it’s kind of a dinosaur? It’s a relic from yesteryears, and as a result, I don’t find this sort of romance — the canon couple constantly squabbling with each other, the socially insensitive protagonist, the uber tsundere heroine opposite him, the slapstick violence, so on and so forth — particularly charming anymore. I’m not sure if I ever did. I’m told that the remake is rather faithful to the manga. I’m sure that must be wonderful for longtime fans, but it’s definitely not my cup of tea. I’m not looking forward to what looks like Ryoga trying even harder to win Akane’s heart in the upcoming season, especially because she still doesn’t know he’s the pig, right? Ugh.
From what I can tell, The Salty Koharu Has a Soft Spot for Me is probably harmless. I just don’t think it has enough meat on the bones to make a satisfying post week in and week out.
The girl in From Far Away is technically sent to another world, but it feels more like a love story than anything else, Isekai Hate Watch is reserved for dudes or dudettes who get massively overpowered and greedily scoops up all the babes. Yes, that’s right, even the dudettes gets a harem full of girls.
Very few anime will have the primary couple consummate their love, so I’m Dating a Dark Summoner does have that going for it. Unfortunately, it’s a short, which means it won’t have any depth.
Even the Student Council Has Its Holes! looks like your bog standard harem anime. Meh.
Villainess Villainy (or lack thereof)
Again, these shows aren’t just strictly limited to villainesses. You could also be a saint. Or maybe you’re just a strong, ambitious woman.
- A Tale of the Secret Saint
- The World’s Strongest Witch
- Romelia War Chronicles
- Nia Liston: The Merciless Maiden
- Red River
I’m curious to know why the heroine was betrayed by her brothers in A Tale of the Secret Saint, but that’s about it. Nothing else in the trailer screams must-watch.
Witches are kinda like villainesses, no? They’re powerful but misunderstood and thus persecuted. Still, after watching the trailer, I’m not really sure where The World’s Strongest Witch truly belongs. I just have it penciled in here for the time being.
Romelia War Chronicles has a familiar setup where the heroine is unceremoniously dumped by the prince. She might not be called a villainess specifically, but the show oozes what I’m looking for in a typical villainess show: ambition. I’m not going to get my hopes up, but maybe this is one of the few shows that can get its own dedicated post?
I would be a little more interested in Nia Liston if she wasn’t such a baby. She looks like she isn’t even ten summers old.
So why is Red River here? Well, it’s not technically an isekai. Yuri becomes the avatar of Ishtar to the ancient Hittites, so she’s kind of like a saint? At the moment, she isn’t terribly ambitious, but she should eventually rise to power and help Kail rule over the kingdom. God knows when that’ll happen, though. Girl gets herself kidnapped every other episode. She’s probably getting kidnapped right now!
Isekai Hate Watch
On the other hand, this is strictly for shows about assholes who have been isekai’d. Big emphasis on assholes.
- A Wild Last Boss Appeared! Season 2
- As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World Season 3
- Magical Explorer
- Reborn as a Space Mercenary: I Woke Up Piloting the Strongest Starship
- So What’s Wrong with Getting Reborn as a Goblin?
- The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System
- Full Clearing Another World under a Goddess with Zero Believers
I think A Wild Last Boss Appeared! has too much going on. Our hero(ine) is sucked into an actual video game where his sidekick is a former beta tester? But she might be a double or triple agent? And we also find out that the Goddess of Creation created a perpetual conflict between humans and demons, and was using the main character the whole time? All I’m saying is that I’m not excited for season two. But hey, it’s an isekai and I’m never excited for them!
All I remember about As a Reincarnated Aristocrat, I’ll Use My Appraisal Skill to Rise in the World is that our hero’s power reduces everyone down to just numbers. It also has one of those annoying shota protagonists. They’re unbearable to listen to. Sadly, the MC is only slightly more grown up in season three. You can bet your ass I’m watching this at 4x speed.
Magical Explorer is about a dude who gets isekai’d into his favorite eroge, but that doesn’t really say much. There are some cheap, trashy eroge games out there. But there are also some trashy eroge games with super heavy themes. They’re more depression porn than, well, porn. Sadly, I think this is more the cheap kind.
You don’t usually get a space-themed isekai, so I guess Reborn as a Space Mercenary has that going for it. But we somehow still have space elves. Wait, Spock is basically just a space elf… damn…
The thing about the goblin isekai is that it’s not even all that out there as a concept. There was that show about the spider isekai, right? We then got an anime where the main character literally becomes a vending machine. By comparison, a goblin is pretty whatever. Plus, these shows always devolve into some sort of power levels nonsense: “An office worker is reincarnated as a goblin with unique skill, and his rise to becoming the strongest begins.” Ahhhh man, I’m yawning already. Just another power fantasy, huh?
The Exiled Heavy Knight Knows How to Game the System might have the slowest pace of any isekai anime in the past five years, which is probably why it has a second cour. We’ve barely gotten anywhere in the story!
Generic (Power) Fantasy Anime
Just stupid, generic fantasy. Not all fantasy belongs here, but the bad ones do.
- Magic Repo Man: Dumped by My Party, I’ll Cash In With a Cute Support Fairy to Become the Strongest!
- Demons’ Crest
- A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special Season 2
- The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World II
- The Laid-Off Cheat-Granting Mage Enjoys a Second Lease on Life
- Overgeared
- Dreamland
- Sasaki and Peeps Season 2
Magic Repo Man: Dumped by My Party, I’ll Cash In With a Cute Support Fairy to Become the Strongest! seems like one of those revenge stories. Hopefully, it won’t be mean-spirited.
Is it Devils’ Crest or Demons’ Crest? Meh, it doesn’t matter. This one isn’t pure fantasy. Rather, it’s a fantasy game that is somehow merging with the real world. At the end of the day, however, the characters still fight with melee weapons or sling magic spells, so fantasy it is. Also, the characters are all babies. Not literally babies, but you know what I mean. That makes it hard for me to enjoy the show already. But the most important factor of all is that the story is written by the SAO guy. Yup, this show is doomed.
I binged the first season of A Returner’s Magic Should Be Special. It was pretty generic, right down to the same ol’ nobles vs commoners conflict that you see in practically every anime that involves an academy. Still, maybe we’ll less of that in season two, since they’ll be delving into that so-called Shadow World. The nobles will have a hard time discriminating if they’re dying, right? Right…?
I remember binging the first season of The Iceblade Sorcerer Shall Rule the World a while back. Do I remember anything about the show? Hell no. I’m still gonna jump right into the second season without any prep.
We used to get like three our four “kicked out of the hero’s party” shows just a few seasons ago. They seem to have mostly dried up until now. The Laid-Off Cheat-Granting Mage seems to exude that energy except without the, y’know, crippling self-doubt. Shows of this ilk seem to breed some of the most insecure anime protagonists of all time.
Now, Sasaki and Peeps is a bit tricky to categorize, because it’s a bunch of different genres mashed into one. Why have I put it here? I’m just going with my gut after watching season one. I’m also sketched out by a middle-aged dude being surrounded by young girls.
Overgeared is definitely about a regular dude in the real world playing one of those “full-dive” MMOs. Clearly, he’s going to become powerful in the game, but how does that translate to the real world? How does getting hot babes in an MMO also land him hot babes in the real world? Well, I suppose it worked for Kirito…
Dreamland might be the most interesting show out of this sorry bunch, because it’s actually based on a French comic. It’s a manfra, if you will. This hardly guarantees that the show will be any good, but I’m curious to see how it balances both French and Japanese influences.
Shounen Saturday
Boys will be boys type energy.
- Black Clover
- Psyren
- Tokyo Revengers
- Tougen Anki
- Dragon Ball Super Beerus
They call it Black Clover season two, but the first season was 170 fucking episodes. Yeah, you heard that right. And I have about… two weeks to tear ass through 120 more? Haha, I’m not going to make it. Whatever, we’ll see how things shake out by the time the first episode of the second season drops.
I’m seeing hype for Psyren without actually checking out why there’s hype. I know almost nothing about the show other than that it might have romance. But it’s a shounen, so I dunno… you can never get your hopes up with shounen romances. I thought Dandadan would be different, but the manga ended up dragging that bullshit out anyway. It got to the point where I pretty much stopped following the manga completely. I just stopped caring once the series pulled the weak-ass amnesia trope. But Psyren is not Dandadan, so I’ll try to go into it with a clean slate. Hell, maybe it’ll be good enough to get its own post. I’m dying for a standout show.
As much as I enjoy the Yakuza franchise, I have never bought into the idea that a true yakuza — the platonic ideal of a yakuza — is some noble, chivalrous individual worthy of great respect. Nor do I think that the best organizations are all about brotherhood, loyalty, and self-sacrifice for one another. All I see are a bunch of angry men who could sorely use a generous dose of mental help. I rolled my eyes whenever Ichiban waxed poetic over his father Arakawa or Chairman Hoshino. I’m sorry, but these men were murderers. They had to kill their way to the top of the food chain. Even the non-killers like Kiryu had to shake people down for money when he was still officially in the Tojo Clan . Thank god he met those kids at Sunflower Orphanage, because they truly redeemed him. I don’t think I could’ve done all those Yakuza games if he was still a card-carrying member in each of them. These people are not heroes.
I play the games anyway, because I love the humor of the side stories, and the gameplay is mostly stellar. The last two games are probably the funniest JRPGs to ever exist. Also, Yakuza 0 had a banger love story, and I will always condemn Majima for not stepping away from the yakuza to be with his true love. What a fool. Anyway, my point is, the franchise has never sold me on the general conceit of the games — that the yakuza can be noble. That same issue carries over to Tokyo Revengers, but the real problem is that it’s not a game. There are no wacky side stories to distract. It’s just Takemichi trying to do his damndest to protect the lives of angry, destructive young boys. Yeah, boys. Watching kids give each other serious brain injury over honor and loyalty is so fucking stupid to me. Look, I don’t think the show is bad. I think it’s pretty decently executed for a shounen. But I’m unmoved by all the brotherhood, loyalty, yadda yadda yadda crap — all the same nonsense that I got from Yakuza. And now, it’s apparently Mikey’s turn to make a colossal mess of things.
Tougen Anki has probably the worst female character designs of any anime I’ve ever seen. Not just shounen anime, but any anime. They literally do not even resemble humans. They’re animate blow-up dolls. Also, I couldn’t find a trailer for season two. I know people strangely care about this show, so where is it?
Dragon Ball is Dragon Ball. It needs no introduction. Like I said, I watched it a lot as a kid. But by the time they got around to localizing the rest of the Frieza arc, I had hilarious grown out of the show. Watching the trailer for latest addition to the series, I feel nothing.
Sports Slop Sunday
Boys will be boys, but on the sports field!
- Ace of the Diamond act II -Second Season-
- Aoashi Season 2
- The Prince of Tennis II U-17 WORLD CUP: Final Member Selection Match
Well, the MLB might have a lockout next season, so I guess I better start warming up to anime baseball. Also in tennis, a domestic abuser started winning majors this year, so I’m kinda not super enthused to keep watching the sport these days.
Everything else…?
So here’s the thing: for a lot of shows, I really have no clue if they’ll be good enough to cover extensively until I watch them. For instance, I had absolutely zero expectations for Draw This, Then Die! going into the summer season, and yet, I found myself pleasantly surprised by the show. I was mostly confident I wouldn’t cover Jaadugar: A Witch’s Life in Mongol, but it just ended up being too good to ignore. So hey, one of these shows might actually be a gem. Not The Apothecary Diaries, though. Absolutely not.
- The Apothecary Diaries Season 3
- #I’m Looking for a Zombie
- DARK MACHINE THE ANIMATION
- FX Fighter Kurumi-chan
- TANK CHAIR
- The Detective Is Already Dead Season 2
- The Vermilion Mask
- VERTEX FORCE
- A Certain Item of Dark Side
- Mission: Yozakura Family S2
- Magical Girl Raising Project Restart
- Horror Collector
- Suikoden: The Anime
- Now That I Can Control Reality with a Mouse Cursor, I’m Gonna Click Away on the Girls!
- Uncle’s Obsession with Cute Things
- Tetsuryo! Meet with Tetsudou Musume
- Beast King War God Dandivine
- The Seven Knights of the Marronnier Kingdom
It’s simple, really: I have a major bias against any sort of Chinese inner court drama. The thought of young girls being groomed to be fucked by an emperor makes me retch. As a result, I refuse to give The Apothecary Diaries a dedicated post. But I’ll still watch the show and give my thoughts on it. Besides, everyone else is creaming their pants over just the trailer alone. Surely, you don’t need me to pretend to do the same.
#I’m Looking for a Zombie bills itself as a slice-of-life zombie apocalypse. The heroine is looking for certain zombie (her dad?), and she’s surrounded by a bunch of girls and one token guy. I can’t see this being my jam, but you never know… I guess I’m curious how they’re managing to survive in a broken world. Maybe they’re sitting on a giant stash of canned foods.
I’ll be shocked if DARK MACHINE THE ANIMATION ends up being more than just dumb action.
FX Fighter Kurumi-chan is a show about the stock market…? Welp, r/wallstreetbets can finally indulge its weeb fantasies. Obviously, I have a 401k, but I don’t own a single individual stock. In fact, I prefer it when companies don’t try to lure you in with weak-ass RSUs. I greatly prefer cash bonuses over that or equity. Nothing sucks more than being given 50k in RSUs, but by the time you can sell them, the stock has lost like… 60% of its original value. Fuck that and fuck the stock market. I don’t have a clue what the DOW or S&P 500 is at right now, and I don’t care.
TANK CHAIR appears to feature a Jason Voorhees lookalike, but he’s confined to a wheelchair. And oh yeah, he has to do battle with other killers in some dystopian ass looking setting, because he’s an assassin. Or rather, his younger sister is the assassin, but he gets to do all the dirty work… as a paraplegic. Sure, whatever, bro.
I recently binged the first season of The Detective Is Already Dead. Immediately from the start, I was iffy about our detective duo going up against superhumans. But the show completely lost me when the bad guy was a plant thing from outer space. I’m not really down for that kind of story. There’s also the fact that Kimihiko is surrounded by girls. Major male characters are either evil or dead. Hell, there’s even a minor subplot where Siesta is jealous of a little girl. Granted, she probably already knew that Alice was Hel’s alter ego (or the other way around?) by that point, but whatever.
The point is, I don’t find the show particularly engaging, nor am I excited for future developments. The whole remembrance thing with Siesta being dead might have been interesting, but the show barely leans on it. Plus, in a world full of superhumans and a plant alien, I just feel like Siesta’s coming back. She’s not going to stay dead, which would be a cop-out in my eyes. Wouldn’t I want the lovebirds to be reunited? In theory, yes. But Kimihiko frustrates me with his noncommittal attitude. You wouldn’t think this was a guy who had spent three years with a girl he dearly cherished. After all that time, he should’ve confessed already. But this is based on a light novel, and I pretty much don’t take those seriously anyway.
The Vermilion Mask has a simple enough premise: a mask made the main character kill his master and friends, so now he’s on a mission to get rid of all masks. Well, all of the masks his master made. Not, y’know, any of cheap shit you can get from Spirit Halloween. Anyway, I’m not feeling it. I doubt there’s a banger story tucked away somewhere in this anime. Just people doing battle.
VERTEX FORCE has a brother-sister duo commanding the power of robots to do battle. They are joined by other cute girls. I guess this is technically a mecha anime? I dunno, though. If you’re not inside the mecha, does it count? After all, one of the more interesting aspects of mecha anime is the merging of machine and human. In Eva, the pilots essentially return to the womb. You can see the LCL as a stand-in for amniotic fluid. Patlabor 2 argues, however, that fighting in a mecha is a form of proxy warfare. We try to hide our complicity behind the various screens and monitors that serve to abstract or reduce the actual fighting to mere representations. The robots in VERTEX FORCE are different. You don’t really become one with the machine.
A Certain Item of Dark Side is a spinoff of the A Certain Magical Index series, which I’ve never watched. Through cultural osmosis, I’ve seen the characters from A Certain Magical Index, and they don’t seem appealing, so I’ve never bothered. So will I give the spinoff a shot? Meh. At one point in the trailer, a girl whips missiles out from her miniskirt, and I gotta admit I rolled my eyes pretty hard. I don’t think this is my sort of thing.
I’m not really seeing a winner, folks. I’m really having a hard time finding a hidden gem.
At some point, magical girl anime became really dour and depressing. Can we simply lay all of the blame on Madoka? Or was there a precursor to that beloved series? Either way, it sound like Magical Girl Raising Project Restart will be full of magical girls killing each other, and I don’t think I’m down for that.
At the moment, I cannot find a trailer for Horror Collector, and the synopsis on MyAnimeList is too vague. No clue what to think of it.
The first two Suikoden games recently got the remaster treatment, so I went through both games and platinum’d them. They’re pretty fun, but I’m a bit chuffed by one thing: people always laud these games for having a giant cast, but did Chrono Cross get dinged for a similar thing? I guess I find the double standard a little weird. Anyway, Suikoden: The Anime is based on Suikoden II, and I’m curious to see how they’ll do the Luca Blight fight in anime form. Also, is this adaptation limited to a single season? I wonder if you can really tell a proper war story in just twelve or thirteen episodes.
looks like a goofy cop buddy anime.
In Now That I Can Control Reality with a Mouse Cursor, I’m Gonna Click Away on the Girls!, the protagonist can use an invisible mouse cursor to fuck with his classmates. Basically, it looks and sounds like nonconsensual trash.
Tetsuryo! Meet with Tetsudou Musume appears to be one of those CGDCT shows except with trains. Y’all remember Rail Wars!? I think that’s the only other train-focused anime I’ve watched. Somehow, I don’t think Tetsuryo! Meet with Tetsudou Musume will have much in common with Rail Wars!
I don’t think a show is automatically good just because it features a middle-aged protagonist, so I don’t have high hopes for Uncle’s Obsession with Cute Things. The trailer doesn’t even feature a single side character. I don’t see how one dude cooing over cute things is going to carry a show for twelve episodes. I need interesting character interactions, too.
So Beast King War God Dandivine is a legit mecha anime, yeah? The tone feels a bit too juvenile for my tastes, though.
The Seven Knights of the Marronnier Kingdom is technically fantasy (or, at the very least, medieval), but it also looks like it’s just about seven bros being dudes. I can’t lump it in with the rest of the generic power fantasy anime.
Seriously, I’m not seeing a damn thing I’m dying to cover. Watching a show is easy. I have no problems doing that, then vomiting out a paragraph or two. But I want to dive deep into an anime and immerse myself into its world and characters. I’m not seeing a viable candidate in all of the above. Even The Ramparts of Ice, I’m apprehensive about.
Y’know, Science SARU has done pretty well recently. Both Jaadugar: A Witch’s Life in Mongol and The Ghost in the Shell were fantastic, top tier anime. Even Sanda was somewhat thought-provoking even if the finale let me down. Sadly, it doesn’t look like the studio has anything in the works except for Dandadan. I’m sure they have other productions in the pipeline, but if it’s unannounced, then it won’t be coming out any time soon. Honestly, I’d rather have another polished gem than the continuation of Okarun and Momo’s glacial romance. Yeah, the manga killed the enthusiasm for me. I shouldn’t have bothered checking it out, but I digress. If you’ve somehow made it this far, gimme your thoughts or recommendations. Y’know, the twelve of you still reading this blog for some reason.