Winter 2024 What-I'm-Watching Summary – Week 11 Hey all! Apologies for the delay on this. Can’t lie, I’ve bee […]

Black Lagoon – 23/24 [Snow White's Payback/The Gunslingers] – Throwback Thursday Welcome all, to the grand finale […]

Winter 2024 What-I'm-Watching Summary – Week 12 Dungeon Meshi – 13 [Red Dragon III/Good M […]

Spring 2024 Impressions: One Room, Hi Atari Futsuu, Tenshi Tsuki, Gods’ Games We Play, Shuumatsu Train Doko e Iku? […]

Spring 2024 Impressions: Re:Monster, The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases, Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf Re:Monster Short Synopsis: Man dies and is isekai’d as a lowly goblin, proceeds to level up Slime Isekai style only worse in every conceivable way. Lenlo: Look, I get it, you want a “Reincarnated as a monster” Isekai. It’s a slightly interesting twist on the usual OP MC Isekai power fantasy. But just… Go watch Reincarnated as a Slime instead. Seriously, Slime Isekai is better in basically every way. Production, OST, power system, world, civilization-style-advancement, everything. And I don’t mean it’s just a little better. Slime Isekai has Re:Monster beaten by leaps and strides. I swear, after a full episode I don’t even know what the MC’s character is meant to be. He’s just a hyper competent emotionless slab of cardboard. Seriously, don’t bother with this, it’s the most nothingburger Isekai I’ve seen in a long time.Potential: 0% The Banished Former Hero Lives as He Pleases Short Synopsis: Random person is Isekai/Reincarnated as a Duke’s son, sandbags his abilities to get disowned, proceeds to live the life of an explorer building a harem and defeating monsters with his OP abilities. Lenlo: I swear to god anime can hear what I’m saying and is actively trying to prove me wrong. I started watching this right after I finished watching/writing up Re:Monster above, so these are back to back impressions for me. And boy god have I just hopped from one mediocre, lifeless, creatively bankrupt Isekai to another. At least Re:Monster is trying to follow in a better Isekais footsteps, Banished Former Hero is just a basic ass Isekai in every way that doesn’t even pick a subgenre of Isekai to dive into. The MC is OP from the start, misunderstood by those around him, and instantly pulls three Waifu’s into his harem within 5 minutes of getting kicked out of his home. With Re:Monster I said to just watch Slime Isekai instead. Well with Banished Former Hero, just watch Re:Monster instead, and follow that chain up until you get to something not shit. Dear lord, this season is not looking good. Maybe Spice and Wolf can save me…Potential: 0% Spice and Wolf: Merchant Meets the Wise Wolf Short Synopsis: Remake of Spice and Wolf, Lawrence is a traveling merchant selling various goods from a horse-drawn cart. One day, he arrives at a village and meets a beautiful girl with the ears and tail of an animal! Her name is Holo the Wisewolf and she brings bountiful harvests. She wishes to return to her homeland, and Lawrence offers to take her. Now, the once-lonely merchant and the once-lonely wisewolf begin their journey north. Lenlo: I can’t quite figure out whether or not I like this Spice and Wolf remake. Visually it’s both better and worse, the modernized character designs losing some of their charm and the colors feeling flatter. At the same time though, it moves way better than the original did, actually feeling animated for most of the episode. Similarly, it feels like it’s suffering from the Brotherhood issue a bit where it tries to blaze through the early story a bit to get to the new shit. It’s of course possible that it’s just a first episode jitters and it will settle down as it goes, that it will figure out its rhythm. That would be nice! Plus I do enjoy hearing Holo’s voice again, I could listen to her whisper to me forever. Anyways to make a long story short, I’m not sold on this Spice and Wolf remake yet but I’m interested enough to keep watching.Potential: […]

Spring 2024 Impressions: Bartender: Glass of God, A Condition Called Love, Yuru Camp S3 Bartender: Glass of […]

Spring 2024 Impressions: Sentai Daishikkaku, A Story About a Grandpa and Grandma Who Returned Back to Their Youth, Vampire Dormitory Sentai Daishikkaku Short Synopsis: Super Sentai rangers defeat the big bad only to enslave the remaining minions, forcing them to launch attacks every Sunday to forever propagate their franchise, allowing them to make money forever. That is until one lone grunt gets fed up and decides to try and destroy the rangers from the inside! Lenlo: I enjoyed Reject Ranger a lot. I mean a lot, a lot. From the very beginning you can tell that it not only understands the Super Sentai genre, but that it knows exactly what parts it wants to take the piss out of. Ads plastered everywhere, each Ranger with their own specific mouth shape to sell their personality while still making it clear they are the bad guys, how clearly manufactured the whole situation/fight/show is. And when we get a look at the other side, with the monsters? How they have to come up with these fights every week like showrunners run ragged, how tiring and creatively bankrupt that must be? All while still being a fun deconstruction? It was a great time. I bought it, not only with the lead and the world, but the entire premise. So long as Reject Ranger can avoid becoming stale, can stay a “Monster of the Week” while still slowly evolving the background story with the Dusters and Rangers, I think it should be a lot of fun. At the very least I’m going to be blogging it this season, so that should be nice. Sidenote, I want this blond girl to step on me I mean whatPotential: 80% A Story About a Grandpa and Grandma Who Returned Back to Their Youth Short Synopsis: Grandma and Grandpa find a magic golden fruit that returns their youth to them. Proceed to seduce everyone in town, including their own grandkids. Lenlo: Somehow a show meant to be about the wholesome relationship between an older couple reliving their glory days with regained youth has instead turned into a weird age-play family incest thing. Why is the granddaughter immediately hitting on the grandfather, despite KNOWING he’s her grandfather? Why is the daughter-in-law doing the same thing? Why is this show so obsessed with everyone wanting to fuck the old people? I don’t know. What I do know though is that it isn’t worth watching, which is a damn shame considering what I went into it hoping for.Potential: 0% Vampire Dormitory Short Synopsis: After being rescued by a sexy male vampire, a suicidal “boy” vows to become his thrall so “he” can be of some use to him. Wooper: Yes, I revealed the main character’s actual gender in the synopsis above. That our boyish hero Mito is secretly a girl serves as the episode’s closing twist, but believe me, Vampire Dormitory isn’t worth getting worked up over, even if you’re a major spoilerphobe. Mito is the sort of protagonist who sparkles like Edward from Twilight, even before she comes into contact with any of the series’ vampires, leading an entire ramen shop full of female patrons to squeal at her boyish good looks. People stare at her and whisper in awe as she walks down the street, but alas, not all is well in poor Mito’s world; her parents died in a fire, none of her relatives wanted to take her in, and she just was fired from the only job she could find. This combination of incredible attractiveness and tragic circumstances is pitifully written, but things don’t get any better after the vampires enter the picture, with Mito’s previously hopeless outlook transforming into a fervent desire to “be of some use” to the first one to suck her blood. What’s worse, her blood apparently disgusts him because she has never experienced love, so the plan going forward is for the vampire to love her so that she’ll taste less nasty. I don’t want to think any harder than I have to about what the author is implying with that setup, so I think I’ll bail out of this paragraph without another word.Potential: 0% Lenlo: I know that Vampires are supposed to be a polite metaphor for rape, abuse and pedophilia, but it stops being a polite metaphor when you take an already emotionally stunted and abused victim and turn them into a vampires thrall while trying to play it off as a “Good” thing for them. What I’m saying is, Wooper hit the nail on the head up above and I don’t see any reason for anyone to want to watch this […]

Spring 2024 Impressions: Henjin no Salad Bowl, Astro Note, WIND BREAKER Henjin no Salad […]

Spring 2024 What-I'm-Watching Summary – Week 0 (?) Hello all! This is a bit of an odd week, what with one season […]

Guest Post: Unearthed Baubles with Firechick – Lunaria: Virtualized Moonchild (77/100) I hadn’t initially planned o […]