Category Archives: Anime

Journal with Witch Ep. 1: Passing the buck

Makio learns that her older sister recently passed away in an accident. An older woman (her mom?) quickly tells Makio to take in Asa, her bereaved niece. Makio tries to protest, because her apartment is hardly fit for a child. Hell, I wouldn’t say it’s fit for a grown adult either. It’s a complete pigsty. Sure, Makio might be reserved and introverted, but I assure you we’re not all like that. A good lot of us can keep our domiciles relatively clean. But Makio can’t, and this is one of the many reasons why caring for Asa would be terribly inconvenient. But you know what else is even more inconvenient? Losing your parents. So tough shit, right? At the end of the day, someone has to step up and do what’s best for the child. I’m equally bemused and saddened by the old lady’s casual hypocrisy. “Have a heart for goodness’s sake,” she says. Excuse me? What about you, ma’am? Where’s your heart? You’re passing the child off to someone else in front of the child. How do you think that makes her feel? In fact, look at all these people who have gathered for the funeral. Where are their hearts? I thought we all agreed that it takes a village to raise a child!

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First Impressions: Wash It All Away

This episode — perhaps this entire series — is like a portal to a long, forgotten past. It’s full of things I’ve only seen or heard about but have never done — like using a cleaning service! Yep, that’s right, I’ve never had to dry clean my clothes. Oh sure, I own a suit. Two, in fact. But by the time I became a professional working adult, barely any employer around me actually requires their employees to wear one. I’ve worn my suits a grand total of… three times? And one of those times was for a jacket-required, high-end restaurant. The suits don’t even fit me anymore, because I’ve lost weight since I last wore them. So going into this show, I had no clue that a cleaning service would actually examine each garment you hand them one-by-one in front of the customer. I certainly had no clue that they would stare so pensively at the clothes, too. I’ve never even considered going to a cleaning service just for a tomato sauce stain. My washing machine seems to handle that just fine.

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First impressions: Hana-Kimi a.k.a. the American stalker

Transferring to a school out of country is already crazy enough. Transferring just to meet your idol is insane behavior. A high jumper, too. Not even your standard idol, but just a really, really good athlete in what most would consider to be a niche sport. Look, no insult to any high jumper out there, but you’re obviously not competing with, say, baseball or soccer. When’s the last time I even watched an anime about high jumpers? Suzuka? Christ, that was two decades ago. Point is, I would have my kid committed to a mental facility if they suggested something as batshit crazy as crossing the largest ocean on the planet just to get closer to a boy. But that’s exactly what our protagonist Mizuki does, and her bestie is just so blase about it.

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Sentenced to Be a Hero Ep. 1: So far, a solid remix of an all-too-familiar formula

Not only is this show getting a same-day dub on release, we open with an action-packed, hour-long episode. This means it’s good, right? Well, I dunno. Let’s not get too ahead of ourselves. The first episode is better than what I expected going in, but the show still doesn’t really excite me. Not yet. Not until we see whether or not these characters have any depth to them. ‘Cause right now, they’re still just concepts — concepts that have been remixed, but concepts nonetheless. What do I mean by this? Well, we have all the familiar terminology, i.e. “heroes,” “goddesses”, “demon lords,” etc. But their usage is slightly different.

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