What if you made a thoughtful, subtle, mature anime about somebody moving back into the family business after having spent a decade fruitlessly chasing his dream, make it about what it means to be family, about love and relationships and starting again, full of well thought out supporting characters but have it star this muppet:

Nagomu left his family’s Japanese sconfectionery shop in Kyoto to try his luck as a rock musician in Tokyo. Ten years on with success still eluding him, his fellow band members finally quit. Just as he’s feeling low he gets a care package of sweets from his mother, but included in it is a letter saying his father has been hospitalised. When he tells his girlfriend that he wants to go back home, she leaves him. Rushing home he finds out his father is already back at work and they really don’t need him. Instead they’ve ‘adopted’ Itsuka, an elementary school girl whose father abandoned her. Nevertheless, his mother believes that Nagomu could be a father figure for her and his ex-girlfriend still has feelings for him and has moved to Kyoto too.

Every other character in this series is realistic, subtle, somebody who you can believe could actually exist. But they’re all constantly undermined by somebody who thinks it’s a good gimmick to dress up as giant chestnuts to promote his band and kept doing so for ten years. Nagomu is the type of protagonist who is dumb and useless at doing anything, the type who cries when he has to sell one of his parents’ sweets because he hates to see them go. The type of protagonist who has heart but little else going for him, with a measurelessly irritating voice as well. Yet this dude managed to keep himself not only alive for a decade living alone in Tokyo, but also managed to keep his band going and score a girlfriend who honestly is way above his league?

It makes Deaimon a mixed bag. On the one hand this is a rare example of a series that looks at what it’s like to be an adult and realise you’re never going to make your dreams come true and finding peace with it. An anime that looks at becoming family and what it takes to be in your early thirties and having to remake your life. But it’s constantly undermined by the very anime! protagonist being an insufferable idiot. If you can stand that this is a great series.

It’s a Christmas miracle: an anime fantasy series with a town that isn’t a perfect circle!

S-Rank Monster no “Behemoth” dakedo, Neko to Machigawarete Elf Musume no Pet toshite Kurashitemasu (I’m an S-Rank “Behemoth” Monster, but I’m Living as a Pet of an Elf Girl, I’m a Behemoth, an S-Ranked Monster, but Mistaken for a Cat, I Live as an Elf Girl’s Pet) aka Beheneko is about a knight who reincarnated as a monster and for more information, reread that title above. Yes, this is very much another generic pseudo-isekai series, but it is one that seems that had a little bit more care put into it than normal. The mere fact that the city actually looks like a proper town is one example of this. Animation, design and setting are all a cut above the rest, even if the plot is still fairly standard.

All this really needed was for the cat and its elf girl master to be reasonably cute and it succeeded with both. This first episode was pretty much the usual one introductionary one, basically setting up the title (and indeed name dropping it at the very end). A nameless knight gets reincarnated as the S-class monster Behemoth, but he looks like a little kitten, has fun killing other monsters in the dungeon until he runs into a dragon and nearly gets killed. At which point the elf girl finds him, takes him home and nurtures him back to health. Visiting the adventurers guild she is accosted by a rapey co-worker, the cat saves her and they fight a duel which she and the cat wins. The one sour note in the whole episode was the guild master being an obnoxious gay stereotype.

On the whole though this very much looks like a nice, light show to watch week by week.