Tag Archives: Anime

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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Kaguya-sama: Love Is War -Stairway to Adulthood-: An incomplete picture

This is a really odd special. I enjoyed it, but in a bittersweet sort of way. We open with an adult Kaguya reminiscing through her photo albums; this is essentially our framing device. But as the memories unfold, you can’t help but notice the massive gaps in the story — gaps that would’ve been filled if the powers that be hadn’t oddly abandoned the thought of adapting the rest of the manga. For example, take our first little vignette. Chika wants to tease Kaguya by pretending that she and Miyuki have started dating. Little does she know, however, that Kaguya and Miyuki have already been dating for a while now. Ho ho ho, imagine Chika’s face when she really finds out about them! But when does Chika and the rest of the gang find out? I wanna see her reaction, don’t you? But we can’t. This feels like a story that should’ve been told, but for obvious reasons, it has been left on the cutting room floor. Is the show not profitable anymore? Do we really have to call it quits on adapting every manga series just because it has finished? Like what are we doing if we’re intentionally passing up on quality just because it no longer makes money?

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