Anime

There are various reasons why this project of catalogueing my anime watching this year ends the way it does here, but the biggest contributing factor must be my day job. We had a bit of a death march at the end of the year as we struggled to bring a project live, but even before that it swallowed up a lot of my time and energy. Which meant I barely was able to focus on watching anime, let alone reviewing anything. so instead I’ll just make a list of everything else I watched after the Spring season here. For some anime I may write proper posts later; if so I’ll link to them here as well. Ultimately this is of course purely for my own self indulgence, so why struggle eh?

Holiday viewing

Most years I go on suimmer holiday with my parents and younger brother; this time we went to Bergerac, home town of a certain Cyrano you might’ve heard of. It was a bit of a disaster to be honest. I travelled there by train and the delays started at Amsterdam, which means I missed my connection in Paris even after crossing through town on the back of an (likely illegal) motor scooter taxi. Then my brother had to go back home because of a medical emergency with my parents bringing him back by car, which meant me being on my own for two days in the middle of the first week. Combine that with temperatures that easily reached forty degrees celsius each afternoon and it was a recipe for disaster. Afternoons therefore were mostly spent indoors, in air conditioned coolness, watching anime and Netflix series.

• Tensei shitara Slime Datta Ken 2nd Season Part 2: second part of the second season has more politics and more fights agains the Demon Lords behind the events of the first part. On the whole, the second season wasn’t as good or interesting as the first. It all blurred a bit together for me.
• Sweat Punch: five short movies created by Studio 4°C that experiment and play around with various animation techniques. Interesting and occassionally even brilliant. If you’re interested in animation for animation sake, this is for you.
• BanG Dream! Garupa Pico: Fever!: short gag comedies starring the BanG Dream! characters. Available on the official BanG Dream! Youtube channel.
• Komi-san wa, Komyushou Desu. (Season 1 & 2): I love the manga but the anime was a bit of a disappointment at first, mainly due to the bad subtitling choices. Not so much the translation itself, but the decisions in what to translate in a series that at times depends a lot on written text rather than spoken dialogue. Komi-san being too shy to speak much and who instead relies on writing her questions and such in a notebook. Once I got over that however
• Gekijouban Seitokai Yakuindomo: most comedy anime series that get a movie take the opportunity to tell a proper story. Not Seitokai Yakuindomo. This is just like an extra long regular episode, which means it’s full of the usual quick fire sex jokes and if you like that sort of thing, it’s incredibly funny.
• Gekijouban Bang Dream! Poppin’ Dream!: a sequel to the third season of BanG Dream! in which Popping Party and several other bands get to travel overseas for a concert. Comfort viewing for me.

Summer 2022

Not as good as the Spring season; I planned to watch 13 series and ended up finishing twelve. There were two outstanding shows, Lycoris Recoil and Yofukashi no Uta. The rest was decent but not spectacular.

• Tensei Kenja no Isekai Life: Daini no Shokugyou o Ete, Sekai Saikyou ni Narimashita: salary man working for a black company dies of overwork, reincarnates in the usual fantasy world and quickly gets really overpowered, fights evil. The source of this was slightly more tongue in cheek than the anime. Decent enough if you like Isekai series.
• Lycoris Recoil: a special elite of school girls keep the peace in Japan by murdering everybody who is a threat to it. Come for the edgy concept, stay for the slowly developing love story between Takina and Chisato. Loved this more for its quiet moments and the cast than for its plot and action scenes, good as the latter were. In my top ten of 2022 anime.
• Soredemo Ayumu wa Yosetekuru: the protagonist is in love with his undersized senpai, but refuses to confess until he can beat her in shogi. She suspects this and tries to trick him into confessing prematurely, only for it to backfire on her. A nice little romcom.
• Kumichou Musume to Sewagakari: violent yakuza dude is tasked with body guarding / baby sitting his boss’ young daughter. Hijinks ensue. The yakuza in this are not very gangster like, but this was a bittersweet sort of comedy about growing up, grief and becoming a family.
• Isekai Yakkyoku: after losing his sister to a rare disease, our hero has spent his life dedicated to pharmacy to prevent this from happening to other people. Naturally he dies of overwork and reincarnates in a sort of 18th century level fantasy world marked with the signs of the god of medicine after his host body was hit by lightning. Now he has a chance to revolutionise this world’s understanding of medicine. One of the rare isekai series that has the protagonist taking over an existing person’s body with the acknowledgment that this means the original person is dead.
• Yofukashi no Uta: model student gets bored with school, starts going and instead starts exploring the city at night. He runs into a vampire girl and decides he wants to be one as well. But to do so he has to fall in love with her so she can turn him. Really really good at depicting the appeal of exploring a city at night. Great music too. Also a top ten anime for this year.
• Hanabi-chan wa Okure-gachi: one of those short promotional anime, this time for pachinko gambling parlours. Fun though.
• Extreme Hearts: a sports series concieved by one of the writers of the Nanoha series and just as matter of factly bizarre as that one. A setting that has seemingly sentient humanoid androids walking around and the only thing that’s done with them is have them play extreme versions of games like baseball and volleyball with the protagonist as she slowly builds a team to take on a competition so she can become an idol.
• Renmei Kuugun Koukuu Mahou Ongakutai Luminous Witches: set in the Strike Witches world but this time the characters are not based on famous WWII fighter aces, but rather on famous WWII singers. A diverse band of witches not good enough to actually fight is brought together for another purpose: to inspire morale at the home front by giving concerts.
• Love Live! Superstar!! (2022): seond season of this version of Love Live. Excellent quality like always, with some fun new character introduced and also the biggest, worst chickening out of all time as the last minute of the last episode undos what the rest of the season was working towards.
• Warau Arsnotoria Sun!: a slice of moe show about cute magical girls training at magic school, interspersed with edgy scenes that showed witches being hunted and heretics being murdered in a fantasy version of puritan England? I kept waiting for the two to be connected, but except for some hints it never happened.
• Durarara!!: one of those shows that when I got back into anime in 2014/15 was supposed to be known to every serious anime fan. Over the years I’ve had three-four false starts trying to watch this, but this year I finally succeeded in finishing it. There are obvious reasons why it became such a highly rated show, but on the whole I found it good rather than great.

Autumn 2022

Seventeen shows on my watch list for this season. It’s no finished yet of course but I doubt I will have finished everything on that list once Winter 2023 rolls around. Some excellent shows this season though, with three contenders of Anime of the Year for me: Do It Yourself!!, Bocchi the Rock and Yama no Susume: Next Summit

• Bang Dream! Film Live 2nd Stage: A live concert by all the bands of the BanG Dream! franchise (except Glitter Green), each getting three songs. CG animated and one of the best examples of how to do CG animation well. For fictional bands the music is rather good. All somewhat idol adjecent of course, but with some variety nonetheless.
• Tensei Shitara Ken Deshita: a guy is reincarnated as a magic sword and rescues a cat girl from slavers. Most of the fun in this series is because of Fran, the cat girl and her responses as her sword dad raises her as an adventurer.
• Prima Doll: a left over from the Summer season. Turns out this was a Key visual novel adaptation. The Black Cat cafe’s employees are all humanoid steampunk android, decommissioned after the war trying to adapt to a new life. Their latest recruut has lost her memories due to having had to undergo extensive repairs. Now she too is trying to create a new life for herself. But is the past as buried as it seems to be? Of course not and this does the usual Key swerve into angsty melodrama.
• Yama no Susume: Next Summit: this fourth season of one of the best slice of moe series ever is great for newcomers as the first four episodes retell what happened in the first three seasons. (Made possible because the first season had three minute episodes and the other two were still only half length.) The rest of the series picks up from there as Aoi tries to get over her disappointment at failing to reach the summit of Mount Fuji and prepares herself for a new attempt.
• Do It Yourself!!: the second great slice of moe show this season, about Yua Serufu, a clumsy girl who joins the DIY club at her school to get back with her childhood friend, who goes to a nearby school. This was such a sweet, lovely series, especially in how it showed that relationship between Yua Serufu and her childhood friend Purin, a classic tsundere. It takes a long time for the latter to admit she too wants to be in the DIY club with Yua Serufu and I love the series for its patience in getting her to that point.
• Bocchi the Rock: introvert middle school girl wanting to make friends sees a television programme in which a popular musician says he was introverted in high school and that playing the guitar made him popular. So she gets obsessed with playing the guitar but is still bad at communicating and reaching out to people so now in high school she’s still alone. Until somebody in a band sees her in the park carrying her guitar and invites her to join. A classic case of a four panel comedy manga being adapted into something bigger, with the obligatory references to K-On taken for granted. I loved this series, the third excellent slice of moe series coming out this season. Because it tries to break out of the gag manga format it occassionally stumbles, especially with episode seven, which is just mean spirited.
• Kobayashi-san Chi no Maid Dragon S: Nippon no Omotenashi – Attend wa Dragon desu: cute little OVA about Kanna’s friend from America coming to visit Japan.
• Akiba Meido Sensou: let’s make a classic, melodramatic yakuza movie but let’s do it as an anime series and with maids instead of gangsters. The contrast is hilarious, the pastiching of the genre is on point and the series has a heart that makes it more than just a fun high concept romp.
• Yuusha Party o Tsuihou Sareta Beast Tamer, Saikyoushu no Nekomimi Shoujo to Deau: guy gots kicked out of the Hero’s party because he’s too weak to help them fight the Demon Lord, makes contracts with various overpowered women from various non-human species, starting with a cat girl. Of course it turns out he himself is incredibly overpowered as well but just didn’t realise it. Very much a wishfulfilment fantasy, but not as creepy as most.

It’s the nineteenth of December and I just got started on writing about what I watched in the Spring season this year. I had high hopes of this project to list every anime I watched this year, but it has become a burden, a millstone around my neck. The idea had been to do just short posts noting down what I liked or disliked about a series, something like what Draggle does seemingly effortlessly every season, but as the posts got more ambitious the tempo dropped. I found myself starting to deliberately not watch anime just to keep my backlog under control. Yet here I am with 32 anime done with a backlog that’s still the same and yet another season almost ended. Something needs to give. I know I’m mostly writing this for myself anyway, so why do all this? Do I still want to be writing about the anime I watched in 2022 in June 2023?

Of course not. So let’s do a season’s roundup instead.

Spring 2022 was a standout for me this year. I went in expecting to watch some sixteen shows and ended up completing eighteen by the end of it. This was the season with the most surprises. Everybody knew Spy x Family would be good, but for me the standouts were Paripi Koumei, Birdie Wing and Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road, none of which I went the season in wanting to watch.

Healer Girl

The closest thing anime has gotten to a proper musical. Kana, Reimi, and Hibiki are vocal healing apprentices; they can cure people’s illnesses through singing at them. Some people were upset by what they saw as promoting quackery, but if you think of it as a Magical Girls show it works. It helps that the show never has the audacity to suggest singing can cure cancer, just that it can alleviate stress and help recovery from surgery and such. It’s also strictly regulated from what we can see from the girls’ journey into becoming proper healers, with regular exams and even internships. The series is basically a year in the careers of these three apprentices, with the climax being that internship as they each end up in different circumstances. As a story it felt like this could’ve done with one or two more episodes. The music is the highlight of the series, properly subtitled even, but the animation itself was pretty good as well, some of the better this season, especially in the extended healing sessions.

Gaikotsu Kishi-sama, Tadaima Isekai e Odekake-chuu

Ark, a VR fantasy player gets reincarnated in his avatar, which unfortunately is a skeleton, so he makes up a back story for it and goes happily exploring his new world. He then runs into a slavery ring kidnapping elves and other non humans and decides to make it his mission to rescue them and crush the slavers. Yes, that most rare of anime, an anti-slavery isekai series! Together with an elf warrior who is looking for the children stolen from her village he goes in search of the slavers and discovers that the conspiracy behind this illegal slavery ring is much bigger than he could’ve expected. Despite the dark subject matter the series is rather light hearted, with Ark being a loveable goofball most of the time he’s not killing slavers. As often the case, it ends on a cliffhanger and if a second season ever shows up, I’d watch it.

Love Live! Nijigasaki Gakuen School Idol Doukoukai

The first season had felt like an endless series of introductory episodes and then the season ended. Season two seemed to promise more with the introduction of a proper Idol show antagonist in the form of Lanzhu. Lanzhu was bold, brass and had no interest in being pals with the school idol club, just in being the best. She lights a fire under the other’s asses and spurs them on to be more ambitious. As good as it was to see that domme energy being brought to the series, it couldn’t last of course. By the end she is assimilated into the group, become part of Yu-chan’s idol harem. Which of course how it should be: “everybody is an idol, everybody is a friend” as PriPara put it. The animation, performances and songs were as strong as you’d expect of a Love Live series but on the whole it never quite clicked with me the way the original series or Sunshine did.

Shijou Saikyou no Daimaou, Murabito A ni Tensei Suru

The Demon Lord gets bored of being the strongest person in the world, so reincarnates himself far into the future as an ordinary shrub. Turns out the future isn’t what it used to be and he’s still the strongest by far. so now poor Ard Meteor has to deal with the usual problems any such protagonist encounters: being underestimated at magic school, having to develop a harem of mostly platonic love interests, as well as getting time displaced back to his original time trying to avoid his past self. Well, that last is at least original and there is something more than just wishfulfilment happening in this series, as a big part of his decision to reincarnate was losing his only friend and he being responsible for her death.

Yuusha, Yamemasu

Leo, the Strongest Hero defeated the armies of the invading Demon Lord, but he’s not welcome in the human world as people don’t trust his strength. So he defects and joins the Demon Lord’s army where he puts his talents to work, but has to do so without the Demon Lord finding out as she was not impressed by his offer to work for her. Leo also has a secret: he has lived much, much longer than anybody suspects and is tired of living as a hero if it means always being apart from others. The first part of this show was a light hearted sort of workplace comedy as Leo sets about fixing the flaws of the Demon Lord’s subordinates. That changes in the second half when he attempts to end his life by getting them to attack him so they can take the power stone that keeps him alive and use it to fix up their home realm. All in all an entertaining enough series that may deserve a second season.

Spy x Family

Yes, this was as good as everybody expected it to be, some of the smoothest animation this season or even this year, a perfect adaptation of a hit Shonen Jump series. But I didn’t love it. It was too safe for me, everything done perfectly but with no real surprises. As if you’re being served the best meal you’ve ever had but it’s still a hamburger. The second cour is airing this season but I haven’t felt any urgency to watch it. I know it’s going to be good, but it felt too glitzy for me to get properly attached to it. Also, I don’t like the way Yor is treated. Loid gets to be the cool spy daddy beset by the problems caused by his family, Anya is the comedic heart of the series but Yor is just this ditzy assassin woman and the butt of the joke. No sir, I don’t like it.

Shachiku-san wa Youjo Yuurei ni Iyasaretai

There’s no escaping work in Japan, no way to get out of the rat race. Not even when an adorable little ghost does her best to spook you into going home earlier. That’s the depressing premisse of this series, almost as depressing as thinking too much about where this adorable ghost girl comes from. Luckily the series quickly settles in the home routines of Shachiku-san and her little ghost girl, while a series of other moeblob supernatural girls join the cast. A slow paced, likeable series.

Koi wa Sekai Seifuku no Ato de

Red, the leader of superhero squadron Gelato Five is in love with evil organisation Gekko’s top lieutenant the Shinigami Princess. To keep their love hidden from their team mates and enemies both, they have to resort to ever desperate ploys. A cute little romcom. As you’d expect Shinigami is more interesting than Red, a second generation villain pressured into the job by her family’s expectations. I liked the series broading its scope to also include her daily life at Gekko headquarters and not just her romance with Red. Her relationships with her fellow murder princesses were great and the subplot of one of them shacking up with her boss, a genetically engineered bear monster was actually sweet.

RPG Fudousan

A slice of life series set in a world straight out of Dragon Quest about a stereotypical group of female adventurers, but they’re selling real estate and rent out houses. I liked this well enough but an episode a week was enough. It also got too serious in the end which wasn’t that interesting.

Shokei Shoujo no Virgin Road

In the first episode we got a typical Isekai protagonist being summoned to a fantasy world only to be brutally murdered by the person who saved him when he was throw out for his seeming lack of power. Because it turned out he did have powers and like every other person summoned, those powers were dangerous. Whole continents have been lost because a summoned person’s powers went berserk. That’s why Menou, his assassin killed him and she’s prepared to do so again for the other person transported to this world, until she comes face to face with Akari. Akari herself immediately trusts Menou and believes her when she says she will take her to the holy city to transport her back home. That’s a start of a long journey with increasing danger at every step as it becomes clear the relationship between the two is much more complicated than Menou could ever suspect. A great gothic lesbian murder thriller with a great supporting cast of other murderous lesbians as well. A sequel has been promised and needs to happen because this very much was a textbook cliffhanger ending.

Birdie Wing: Golf Girls’ Story

Eve is an extremely talented underground golf player, using her talents in high stakes mob controlled games and challenges to earn enough to bribe the local cops to leave her found family of ‘illegal’ migrants alone. She doesn’t really care for golf as a sport and has never met anybody that really challenged her. That all changes when she meets Aoi, the Japanese heir to a golf dynasty, the “Innocent Tyrant” who like Eve can demolish her opponent’s will to live in a single game. Eve and Aoi immediately fall in love with each other’s golf and Eve is so desperate to play her she willing gets in debt with the mafia to do so.

The first eight episodes of this series are set in this gritty, hard boiled world of mafia bosses organising underground golf tournaments as surrogate gang wars and betting vehicles. This world is filled with charming but deadly golf supervillains and gang bosses with ultra high tech hideouts that can become any gold course you want. Then, once Eve wins her freedom and her family is safely out of this world, she travels to Japan to catch up with Aoi and it turns into a high school sports series for its last five episodes. Not that the opponents there are any less outrageous though. In all, this is a golf show for people who like their golf lesbian and not too serious.

Genjitsu Machikado Mazoku 2-Choume

The second season of the misadventures of Shamiko, Shadow Mistress Yuko as she fights against her bitter rival Momo of the Light Clan, to undo the curse on her family that keeps it in eternal povertry. Well, that’s how Shamiko sees it; Momo may see things entirely different and even consider her a friend. Basically a Magical Girl comedy, this second season dives more into the circumstances behind the Curse and what happened to Momo’s sister, the original Magical Hero that may have transformed Shamiko’s father into an cardboard box. A somewhat underrated comedy as it falls squarely in the Manga Time Kirara slice of moe genre that no critic seems to take serious.

Kaguya-sama wa Kokurasetai: Ultra Romantic

Actual plot progression? In my romantic comedy anime? it happens more often than you think! Kaguya-sama has always been good at mixing the comedy with progress in the relationship between Kaguya and Shirogane, but here it went in overdrive. It started off with the usual one or half an episode standalone incidents, but from episode 6 onwards, which is all about the cast’s plans for after high school, the focus shifts. In the Cultural Festival arc it’s not just Kaguya and Shirogane making their plans to get the other to confess, but it’s also Ishigami trying to woo his senpai, Tsubame. But while the plot gets more serious the end results are still hilarious. This is still one of the best comedy anime ever created. I just wish that the effort put in the animation and such was matched by a similar effort for the translations, with neither opening or ending translated and th esubtitles insisting on not using proper honorifics.

Onipan!

A trio of cute Oni girls is send to mainland Japan to change the image of Oni from violent brutes into something more suitable to modern times. To do so they need to transform using Oni underpants (see above) into what ever sort of profession is the focus of the episode. Yes, this is not entirely serious. I quite liked this half episode length series, especially the voice acting of the main three girls, slightly more real life than most voice acting. Catchy opening too.