Anime

I’m somewhat glad that after the trauma that was the first episode of Takopi no Genzai the new anime season took pity on me by making sure most of the next few premieres were just more fantasy slop. Because I certainly cannot be bothered to review each of those individually, let’s throw them all in this post.

But first, let’s talk about naro. Taken from Shōsetsuka ni Narō, (Let’s Become a Novelist) a Japanese website where you can upload original stories for free. It’s been around since 2004 and draws millions of views and within a few years has become an important cog in the Otaku Industrial Complex. Any web novel on the site that gets popular enough will get a light novel adaptation; if that does well a manga will follow and if the stars align, an anime series as well. At each stage the story gets edited, tweaked and generally cleaned up. In the process these stories get slicker and more professionally told, but often lose a lot of their raw appeal.

With thousands of amateur novelists aiming to become the next to break out, chasing whatever the latest trend is, you get a lot of similar stories, small variations on the same over used settings and themes. This goes even those series that do make it into an anime, as a glance at any recent anime season proves. In the west we think of those as isekai slop, but it would be more correctly to call it naro slop. Isekai is a huge part of it yes, but no longer the biggest part, as we’ll see.

Koujo Denka no Kateikyoushi, Jidouhanbaiki ni Umarekawatta Ore wa Meikyuu o Samayou, Clevatess: Majuu no Ou to Akago to Shikabane no Yuusha, Tsuyokute New Saga, Tsuihousha Shokudou e Youkoso!. Though it may be hard to imagine, only one of these series is an actual isekai. They certainly feel like isekai: the same sort of power fantasy starring the same sort of protagonist, set in the same tired cliche fantasy world, but only one stars a hapless Japanese reincarnator, a fellow who loved vending machines so much in his past life he became one in this. A somewhat original idea at least and apparently Jidouhanbaiki ni Umarekawatta Ore wa Meikyuu o Samayou, was popular enough two years ago it got a sequel this year. As such it picks up directly from where it left of and promises to be a bit more serious than previously, as now the threat of a Demon Lord is involved. Not sure that will be all that interesting to be honest.

Tsuihousha Shokudou e Youkoso! looked more interesting: a dude is kicked out of his adventurers’ guild because he’s just a cook, so he decides to start a restaurant. Which may be fun, but thirteen minutes in and he buys himself a little girl slave and I just noped out of there. Nothing kills my interest faster.

Tsuyokute New Saga opens with the climax of what the narration tells us was a years long war against (of course) the Demon Lord, which killed most of the world’s population. As our protagonist finally slays him, he’s mortally wounded, just able to grasp some sort of magical gemstone that had started to glow ominously. Turns out it send him back in time to three years before the war started. What can he do to make sure things go better this way around and his childhood friend is not killed in the first attack? A more original premise than most naru slop, though 2023’s Kikansha no Mahou wa Tokubetsu Desu had a similar setup but then wasted it on magical school shenanigans. Hopefully this one does a bit better. An early candidate for a weekly turn your brain off watch.

Speaking of magical schools, Koujo Denka no Kateikyoushi‘s protagonist Allen, fails his exams at one and thanks to the generosity of his professor, accepts a Summer job tutoring the daughter of the Northern Duke. This is at least not set in the regular medievaloid fantasy world, but in a more Edwardian age, with steam trains and early automobiles. Allen actually has a reputation as “having a natural way with young ladies” which gives you a hint of the direction this series will take. Both the duke’s daughter and her big busted maid are noticeably shorter and younger looking than Allen and with both he gets into anime romcom shenanigans. There’s also a red haired, bad tempered childhood friend lurking in the background to complete the trifecta.

Finally, Clevatess: Majuu no Ou to Akago to Shikabane no Yuusha is the most ambitious of these series, starting off with a double length episode to set up the story. Int his world the various humanoid races are locked in a terroritory bordered by lands where Dark Beasts roam that kill anyone setting part in them. Each of these four border regions is ruled by a Lord and only by killing them could these lands be opened. Clevatess, one of the four lords, is the target of an ill conceived attempt to overthrow him, but easily slaughters the band of heroes that attack him. As revenge he destroys the capital of the country that sent them, sparing just one baby, planning to raise it to prove humans will always be a threat to him. Because the baby needs breast feeding, he resurrects the sole female hero who was part of the attempt, who is now bound to him as a servant to him and the baby… All of which is setup for the three of them to get exploring the human countries. The animation is a cut above the rest of these series and this may be an actual good series, depending on how it evolves.

Of these five series, only Clevatess started as a manga, while Jidouhanbaiki ni Umarekawatta Ore wa Meikyuu o Samayou, Tsuyokute New Saga and Tsuihousha Shokudou e Youkoso! all came from Shōsetsuka ni Narō while Koujo Denka no Kateikyoushi originated at a similar site. If you look at the list of selected works on its Wikipedia page, you can get an even better view of how much Shōsetsuka ni Narō domniates otaku imaginations. Hence naro slop, to give credit where credit is due.

Anime doesn’t often use trigger warnings but when it does, it means it.

It all starts when a cheerful but hungry little octopus like alien from the planet Happy befriends a girl who is kind enough to feed him her leftover bread from school lunch. He wants to return the favour by using one of his Happy Gadgets to allow her to fly, but she refuses, saying she has to go buy a writing board to put under her papers and besides, flying won’t change anything. While the alien, who she calls Takopi doesn’t notice, as a viewer you do immediately see something is wrong with Shizuka. Her red backpack is battered and looks like somebody has kicked it, while she herself seems flat and lifeless.

The next few days sees her visiting Takopi to feed him her leftovers, as he tries but fails to interest her in his Happy Gadgets as a way to pay her back. One of which is a Happy Camera, which he uses to take picture of the two of them, but doesn’t get to explain why it’s more special than just using your mobile to take picture before Shizuka leaves again. All Takopi is thinking about is how to use his gadgets to make her happy, while as a viewer you get more and more hints of what’s going on with her. A group of her fourth grade classmates walk past and talk about breaking her writing board and how she can just buy a new one from her ‘welfare money’ as her backpack looks rougher and rougher and it’s clear she’s being bullied. Takopi doesn’t notice, coming from a planet where this sort of thing just doesn’t exist; he’s just worried about making her smile.

And then he does see her smile, when she has to leave early to go home to feed her dog, Chappy and invites him to come along. The moment Chappy sees her he’s all over her, licking her face, with Shizuka laughing and smiling. Later on, she tells Takopi how much she loves that dog, having know him from when he was a small puppy. She tells him she can take anything else that happens to her, as long as she has Chappy. Taking the dog for a walk, Takopi tries to get her to try his gadgets again and promises to give her the biggest smile ever amnd she gives him a little kiss. It’s a very touching, happy scene but you can’t help but worry.

And indeed when Shizuka shows up the next day, she’s bruised, bleeding and battered and holding Chappy’s collar in her hand. When she explains she had a fight with a friend, Takopi brings out another gadget, the reconciliation ribbon, which can stretch to infinity. Shizuka asks if she can borrow it and Takopi reluctantly lets her, knowing it’s against his planet’s rules. As he watches her go he tries and convinces himself that it’s alright, but he can’t help but worry. As the evening falls he hurries to Shizuka’s house. And what you’ve been worrying about ever since shizuka mentioned how much she loves Chappy becomes true: Shizuka has committed suicide. The episode is not even halfway done.

The slow dread building up in that first half was bad enough, but seeing this cheerful, naive little alien discover the suicide scene, not understanding what had happened, was so much worse. I felt so sorry for him slowly starting to realise what had happened, what he had allowed to happen in his naivety. One of the most upsetting scenes I’ve ever watched in anime. But the show wasn’t done yet.

Fortunately it turned out that the picture he took with his Happy Camera allowed him to travel back in time back to the moment he took it, so he could prevent Shizuka from dying by figuring out why she was sad enough to do so. The second half of the episode has him going to school with Shizuka as he, still naive, tries to deduce what made her sad while you first hand how she is being bullied, all of which Takopi misses or misunderstands, but still manages to mitigate, increasingly frustrating her chief bully, a girl called Marina. Finally Marina calls out Shizuka to show up behind the school. With Shizuka clearly terrified to do so, Takopi transforms into her and goes in her place. He’s convinced if he can just talk to Marina he can sort everything out and the two will be friends again, still not understanding what exactly Marina is doing to Shizuka.

That quickly changes. Marina wastes little time in hitting and abusing Takopi as Shizuka. It’s even more harrowing a scene as that of him discovering Shizuka’s suicide. Seeing this little alien experiencing genuine fear for the first time is heartbreaking. Seeing him finally realise what Shizuka is going through is too. The final gut punch is that Marina too is heavily implied to be abused, by her mother and that this plays into her own bullying of Shizuka as well as her reason for doing so.

An incredibly bleak, hard to swallow episode and the series as a whole doesn’t promise to improve its mood quickly, if the reactions over on R/Anime are to be believed. And all this while it stars something that’s more at home as a mascot character in a Precure series. It’s Takopi and his relentless cheerfulness that makes this bearable, that we see things through his eyes. But which of course also makes it that much worse when he is forced to confront the ugliness at the heart of this story. The animation and acting has to be excellent to make this work and they are. None of the abuse or suicide scenes come across as gratuitous, sensationalist or heavy handed. A season that promises to be full of excellent anime is off to a great, if harrowing start.

You can’t tell that 2015-2018 was my most depressed, so let’s watch every anime being streamed period from this, right?

The chart goes from 2006 up until 2024, but only shows the twelve most watched anime (in Japan) each year; I watched a lot more obscure series too. While I started watching anime regularly in 2014, I only started watching it seasonally the year after, Fall 2015 being the first season I did so. Almost a decade of continuous seasonal anime watching in other words. Those first few years I watched a shit ton of anime, because that what everybody does who is falling into the rabbit hole. Everything is new and interesting and you don’t quite know what you’ll like yet. Not to mention that there are decades of finished series to catch up on too. In hindsight though the sheer quantity of anime I watched in 2015-2018 was just abnormal even so; I may not have been quite my usual cheerful self.

One thing I noticed from this is that in the peak Covid era, 2020-2022, I seemingly watched less than in the years before, even though I had more time to spare what with being stuck at home for most of the period. I blame the rise of vtubers.

But there’s also a difference in the reasons for why I’ve not watched series, roughly before and after 2014. Series older than that not listed here I’ve mostly not gotten around to yet. Meanwhile many of the post-2014 series not checked here I’ve consciously avoided. No interest whatsoever in watching Goblin Slayer or Redo of Healer.

You can make your own version at anime-sedai.

What happens to Uma Musume when they lose their races too often:

Over on Bluesky, Yukino has a complaint about a recent episode of Mono:

my favorite thing in the world is isolated translations of onscreen text that is downright impossible to tell what it’s referring to unless you already know the language

The example she attached was this (image & alt text by Yukino):

Anime publishing legend ‪Justin Sevakis‬ knew why this caption was displayed in this very unhelpful way:

This is done for compatibility with various streaming service’s subtitle/caption standards, which are based on closed captions and are absolutely not up to the challenge of anime and yet are insisted upon by said streamers

Which explains why this happened, but not why the anonymous translator decided this particular tag had to be translated and put on the screen in the first place. there’s no reason for it, the glasses are never seen again; it just seems to be translated because it could be, just like the other examples in Yukino’s tweet. And by floating them on the top of the screen instead of on or near the text they translate, they are as she says, completely useless unless you can already read the Japanese and so work out what they refer to. I’ve seen and been irritated a lot recently by exactly this combination of subtitling over eagerness and lackadaisical placements of captions, so it’s gratifying to see I’m not alone in this.

So often that we get completely superfluous captions translated (like school name plates or class number signs) while actually important text is left alone. When it’s then also displayed as incompetently as in Mono episode four as Yukino showed, it’s adding insult to injury. What it also does is show the importance of typesetting:

That video is four years old and sadly things seem to have deteriorated since then. As I keep saying, translation, including typesetting things properly, is the one added value anime streaming services add. But currently they fall at both deciding what is important enough to translate and then at displaying it properly. If a Crunchyroll has no respect for its own product, how can it expect its customers to have it?