#in that third image he's about to go mob psycho 100

[baderpfulu]

✨️Mob and Reigen in acnh✨️

Thank you to @princeson for being Mob and taking pictures with me :^)

[brucebocchi]

Winter 2024 anime, Pt. 2: Mixed reactions, the bench, and the gems

hey y'all, this is also up on my ko-fi! it's free to read both here and there, but i'm struggling financially rn so i could appreciate if you'd throw a few bucks my way if you liked it! part 1 can be found here.

And we're back for part 2! Here's all the new stuff I finished this season, and one more I'll get back to later. As with before, these are sorted alphabetically within each category and are not ranked as of yet.

Also as before, the OP for each series is linked in the title. Check them all out if the header images aren't giving you the right feel for each show, but also check them out because most of them were actually pretty damn good this season.

[Solo Leveling OP voice] LET'S GET IT!

Mixed Bags:

Hokkaido Gals Are Super Adorable!

Your standard, quasi-harem “easily flustered Regular Guy wins over hot girls just by being really nice” shonen romcom. I really don’t have much to say about this one other than if you’ve seen My Dress-Up Darling, you’ve basically seen this already. The only thing that really sets it apart is the setting.

Tsubasa (voiced by Nobunaga Shimazaki, in a FAR cry from his turn as Mahito in Jujutsu Kaisen) is a straight-laced Tokyoite whose family situation lands him in a small city in the frozen boonies of Hokkaido. While looking for the bus to his new house, he runs into a gyaru in the snowy wild, the underdressed, hilariously-proportioned Minami, and they hit it off. It turns out they go to the same school, there are other cute girls there who take a shine to him as well, it’s nothing new.

I ultimately don’t have much to say about Hokkaido Gals, but I do have a soft spot for series like this, and after reading ahead in the manga I felt obligated to see it through. This is all junk food, but it’s all stuff you’ve seen done better in other series. I also have a soft spot for gyaru in anime and manga, and while I do like Minami just fine, she isn’t Marin Kitagawa or Rumiko Manbagi. I don’t really have it in me to recommend this show to many, though, at least not until another season rolls around, if that ever happens. The manga genuinely does get a lot better as it goes on, but the really worthwhile stuff may not happen until a third season, and I just don’t see that happening. 

The manga has issues that the anime isn’t willing or able to solve, chief of which being the visuals. The art style of the manga is wildly inconsistent, and getting a mediocre animation team on this didn’t help matters at all. While the colors often pop nicely against the pretty, snowy backdrops, nobody looks all that great overall. The characters are recognizable, but they just plain don’t look great a lot of the time, nor do they look consistent from one cut to the next; I said that Minami’s proportions are hilarious, but just as hilarious is how wildly they vacillate from one scene to the next for the sake of trying to titillate the viewer.

My biggest takeaway from both the manga and anime was everything I learned about Hokkaido in the process, and if the series is taking subsidies from the island’s tourism bureau, then it’s a job well done. I want some goddamn jingisukan now. The OP is a great time, though. I’m shocked it took over a decade for us to get a proper “Uptown Funk” knockoff in an anime.

Metallic Rouge

I’ll be upfront in saying that this was my biggest disappointment of the season by far. This show had so much going for it, and what we got was… ugh.

There was an unbelievable amount of promise from the outset: This was Studio Bones’ commemorative 25th anniversary production, and coming from the studio that gave us all-timer adaptations like Fullmetal Alchemist Brotherhood and Mob Psycho 100, not to mention later works from Cowboy Bebop creator Shinichiro Watanabe (including the Cowboy Bebop movie), you can’t fault anyone for having high expectations. It looked to be a fitting production as well: Watanabe’s influence shines through immediately in the gorgeous, lived-in cyberpunk off-world locales and racially diverse cast. Action takes the form of dope robo-tokusatsu transformation fisticuffs, and it’s entirely in 2D animation to boot. The first couple of episodes were killer, too; everything looked and sounded amazing, and there were just enough plot threads teased out that I just had to see how they’d unravel.

It brings me no joy, then, to say that Metallic Rouge collapses into a jumbled mess. I don’t even want to bother talking about what happens in the show because I don’t fucking care anymore. There are few media experiences more sobering than to have it dawn on you over a span of several weeks that “oh… this isn’t actually all that good, is it?” Episode after episode piles on with sloppy lore, weak worldbuilding, warring factions whose names you immediately forget, pointless double-crosses, and the most predictable twist you’ve ever seen. For a while I was willing to accept the fact that I didn’t know what was going on half the time and expected things to become clearer, but now I’m not entirely sure the writers knew either. The stakes apparently kept rising and everything just kept getting more claustrophobic. I’m glad it’s over, if only because if I had to hear “Clair de Lune” one more fucking time, I was going to go ballistic. 

There are several attempts at emotional beats, as the story is rife with tragedy and sacrifice, and every single one lands with a wet thud. Nobody gets enough time, motivation, or characterization for any of these things to feel like they actually matter, and that’s especially a shame because the finale might have been able to stick the landing if the previous episodes were less dense and better paced. Emphasis on “almost,” though, because just before the season ends, we get the absolute most pointless fakeout I’ve seen since The Rise of Skywalker, which is the lowest point of comparison you can make for any work of sci-fi.

This is especially frustrating because on paper, there is so much to like here. Rouge and Naomi are likable-enough deuteragonists with a fun dynamic, and they’d make easy yuri bait in a better show. The characters are all pretty and uniquely designed across the board, and the overall aesthetic, almost a pastiche of late-90’s anime futurism, is undeniable. The toku suit designs are neat and several of the action scenes are gorgeous. The score and soundtrack are outstanding (except for the aforementioned Debussy indulgence). I have few complaints about how the show looks and sounds; the style is great! All of my issues lie with the substance.

Metallic Rouge may have had all the ingredients, but it just needed more time to cook; whether that would have been by doubling the episode count or by more carefully planning the pacing and trimming some of the fat from the lore, I’m still not sure. Probably both. It probably needed better writers, too. Maybe it just isn’t as smart as it acts and there was no way to satisfyingly resolve the clumsy civil rights allegories that bring it uncomfortably close to the likes of Detroit: Become Human. So all of the above, I guess. I tend to adore stories that involve artificially-intelligent beings developing their own wills and emotions and learning to cut their own strings (the likes of Blade Runner, Nier Automata, even a couple of character arcs in the Persona series), but this ain’t it. I’m not even mad anymore. I’m just disappointed.

If there are two positives that will stick with me, though, they would be the absolute banger of an OP and, of course, Naomi Orthmann herself (pictured above, left). Outstanding character design. I’m mildly obsessed. She deserved a better show.

The Unwanted Undead Adventurer

This one isn’t even worth talking about, so here’s a brief synopsis, then I’ll add some commentary, and then we’ll all move on with our lives. 

Rentt, a beloved but mediocre adventurer in a fantasy town, gets lost in the mysterious labyrinth that all adventurers explore for personal gain, gets waxed by a dragon, and awakens as a shitty-looking CGI skeleton. He notices, though, that he’s able to level up better as a skeleton than he did as a human, and with the more monsters he defeats, the more he evolves into something closer to human. The rest isn’t really worth discussing.

If I’m being honest, I should’ve dropped this show much sooner. It looks kinda lousy most of the time, the plot (inasmuch as there even is one) is boring, character designs are forgettable (except for Rentt’s closest ally, Lorraine, holy hell) and it seems wholly uninterested in actually building its own setting. If it returns for a second season, I won’t be there, nor will I feel like I’m missing anything. Each episode felt like a chore to watch. I probably only saw it through because 1) I liked looking at Lorraine, I know what I’m about, and 2) I didn’t want to lump it in with the shows I did drop. The Unwanted Undead Adventurer isn’t as patently upsetting or frustrating as those three, but it just plain isn’t a very good show.

The Witch and the Beast

This show could have been so much more. I was drawn in by the gorgeous character designs and intriguing blend of Victorian gothic aesthetics and architecture with modern infrastructure, and very quickly disappointed by just about everything else. The first episode is an exceptional proof of concept, and almost everything that follows is an upsetting showcase of what could have been.

The story centers around Ashaf, a languid, chain-smoking agent of the governing church with a big-ass coffin strapped to his back, and his partner Guideau, a snarling hyena in a young woman’s body, as they investigate abuses of magic across the continent in search of nefarious witches. Guideau in particular has a bone to pick with witches, as the body they presently inhabit is the result of a witch’s curse, and they remain in furious pursuit of the one who cursed them. The curse can be temporarily undone by a kiss with a witch, allowing Guideau’s true body, a hulking brute confined to the coffin, to escape and wreak havoc. Meaning that on a few occasions we get a girl-on-girl kiss followed by a big dude wrecking shit. There’s also other investigations of serial killings, necromancy, and a cursed sword, and here’s hoping you like those, because the coffin breaks are few and far between.

This wasn’t great! By the third episode I had the sneaking suspicion that the animation talent on hand just wasn’t enough to support the aesthetic. While the character designs are exceptional, almost everyone looks awful in any shot that isn’t completely focused on them. This is especially true of Guideau, who looks so inconsistently off-model from one shot to the next that I’m still not entirely sure what they’re supposed to look like, and that’s kind of unforgivable when we’re talking about a main character. Everything looks too dim and too shiny at the same time, and action scenes look like shit more often than they look interesting. I can see so many flickers of something excellent (or at least really good-looking) in Witch and the Beast, and everything else that keeps those flickers from actually igniting makes it so much more frustrating to watch. Maybe just read the manga instead; the panels I've seen from it were uniformly gorgeous.

Actually, yeah, you should probably just read the manga, because for a season of anime, the pacing is atrocious too. It’s clearly trying to angle for a monster-of-the-week format, but each of these mini-arcs is a little too dense for a single episode, so multiple episodes are dedicated to these one-off curiosities, most of which do nothing to advance the plot or show off what the show does best. And if one of them isn’t particularly interesting, you’re saddled with it for the next two weeks like you've been stuck munching on a mealy apple. And I know you can only adapt so much in a 12-episode season, but the decision to end the season on a flashback arc and a lore dump was baffling. That’s not world-building, that’s lazy, and it made the show’s existing pacing issues feel that much more inane.

I feel like I was sold a false bill of goods. I can only imagine how the mangaka feels about this. Dull and uninspiring all around. What a waste.

The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic

Isekai, unassuming high school boy gains a unique power, impending war with the Demon Lord, yadda yadda yadda. The Wrong Way to Use Healing Magic isn’t anything new or special by any means, nor is it particularly well-animated or -paced, but at its best it’s silly and charming enough that it made a nice, brainless palate cleanser on Fridays.

Usato, your standard quiet high schooler, ends up walking home on a rainy evening with the popular, attractive student council president and VP, when an isekai portal happens. It turns out that it was just the seito-kai that was invited along for the ride (and President Suzune, as it turns out, is fucking psyched to get to be in an isekai), and Usato got caught along with them. When tested for magical aptitude, Suzune and VP Kazuki hit the jackpot with electric and light affinities, respectively, but things go awry when Usato’s reading turns up with healing magic. Terror strikes the palace as the intimidating dommy-mommy Captain Rose barges in to spirit Usato away from his new friends and into her squadron of goons to train him as a combat medic.

As character comedy goes, this one is actually pretty solid at times. Shogo Sakata is plenty of fun as the put-upon, lippy Usato (a much louder role than Chainsaw Man’s Aki Hayakawa), and Atsuko Tanaka (Major Kusanagi herself!) is a blast as the terrifying Rose, an uncompromising slave driver of a drill sergeant with a secret soft side. The dynamic between them is great, too; Usato is over Rose’s shit from the beginning and isn’t afraid to talk back to her, but before you know it, this transforms into friendly banter as Rose clearly takes a shine to Usato and knows he can handle any punishment she doles out. Suzune’s also a bunch of fun now that she’s broken away from having to be the competent, popular girl at school and gets to fully lean into being a complete dork.

Wrong Way also works decently as an isekai, because it makes an effort to stay rooted in high fantasy rather than fall back on JRPG mechanics, meaning there are no stat screens! It also avoids the trappings of wish-fulfillment isekai series by having Usato start out as a regular-ass guy; he’s not a Kirito type, just someone Rose sees as a rough gem in need of cutting. There are no cheat skills or OP weapons or anything, just a kid training every day to get stronger so he can protect the people close to him, and that’s the kind of anime protagonist you should want to be.

For better and for worse, I get serious mid-00s vibes from this one; watch the OP if you don’t believe me. Some of the colors pop uncannily in that early-digipaint-era way, and the animation is pretty middling; the most fluid animation we see is whenever Suzune is acting like a creep. Much like those mid-00s anime, though, Wrong Way may have benefited from being weekly (or twice as long) rather than seasonal. There’s a ton of planting with very little payoff, and it doesn’t feel like the actual scope of the story has even been addressed yet. We don’t even learn why the series has the name it does until someone literally says it aloud in the 11th episode. I may have to reevaluate this season after a possible second, if we ever get one, because this doesn’t stand too well on its own.

Of the anime in this “mixed bags” segment, I’d say I enjoyed Wrong Way the most, but it still had enough problems for me to keep it here. It’s not a particularly bad anime, but it’s not especially good either. I guess we can slot it into what Hazel refers to as “good mid.”

On Hold: 

Cherry Magic! Thirty Years of Virginity Can Make You a Wizard?! (three episodes watched)

Man, what a title. That was the main draw for this BL series, which on paper is basically a gay version of the Mel Gibson vehicle What Women Want. 

Adachi (a surname that will always make me laugh thanks to Persona 4), a gloomy salaryman, has hit the big 3-0 without getting any, and now he can somehow read anyone’s thoughts just by making physical contact with them. Just as he laments that this is his life now, he accidentally bumps into his handsome, popular coworker, Kurosawa, whom he learns has been harboring a massive crush on Adachi this whole time. Well dang, what now? Kurosawa’s a really nice, thoughtful dude, but Adachi’s never even thought about being with a man before! And isn’t there something wrong with already knowing this secret? How can he even go into the office and look Kurosawa in those big, handsome eyes… every single day…

What I’ve seen so far has been pretty solid, if not particularly well animated. The visuals are really my only gripe here; I just put it off for way too long and didn’t have it in me to finish it on time to actually get this thing written and published. Yaoi isn’t my forte, which feels like a shortcoming on my end as a fledgling bisexual, and I’ve already remarked on the solid LGBT representation this past season, so I do plan on hopping back on this one.

I gotta say, the co-leading voice actors put in serious work this season. Adachi is voiced by Chiaki Kobayashi, who continued his role as Stark in Frieren, returned to Mashle as Mash Burnedead, and contributed to Metallic Rouge’s cluttered cast as Noid. Kurosawa’s seiyuu, Ryota Suzuki (of whom I’ll always be a fan for his masterful turn as Yu Ishigami in Kaguya-sama), also held down leading roles in Bang Brave Bang Bravern and The Unwanted Undead Adventurer. They’ve been great in the few episodes of Cherry Magic! that I’ve seen so far, and they’ll be a huge part of what brings me back.

The Gems:

Bang Brave Bang Bravern

I feel like the mark of a perfectly audacious piece of media is in the moments where I find myself incredulously shouting “WHAT THE FUCK AM I WATCHING” at the screen, and Bravern made me do that at least once per episode. I have so many things to say about what makes this show great but all of it can be summed up as “it fucks so goddamn hard.”

A joint military exercise in Hawaii between Japanese and American mech pilots goes south as a sudden invasion by metalloid aliens portends certain doom for humanity. Just in the nick of time, though, a bombastic, autonomous mech named Bravern arrives from space and insists that ace pilot Isami Ao take his reins. Isami reluctantly agrees, and to his consternation, Bravern goes full tokusatsu on everyone’s asses, complete with fully-diegetic theme music, and keeps the threat at bay. With Bravern continuing to pester him to act as a pilot, Isami is forced to take up the mantle of a reluctant hero as everyone rallies around Bravern to save Earth. Tagging along is blond-haired, blue-eyed American pilot Lewis Smith, who gets to live out all of his Top Gun fantasies, right down to the latent homosexuality.

That last point isn’t a projection or anything: This show is legitimately gay as hell, and it rules. Bravern’s feelings towards Isami feel far more romantic than what you’d expect from a literal robot, and his description of how it felt to have Isami pilot him for the first time, as relayed to a grim-faced military council, is riddled with hilarious innuendo. Isami struggles not only with shouldering the burden of needing to be a hero to all of humanity, but also being beset on both sides by a loud, insistent mecha and a dewy-eyed gaijin, both of whom very well seem to want to get in his pants. Intricate rituals punctuate Isami and Lewis’ angsty relationship as these broad-shouldered, muscular men grow ever closer. It’s also worth reiterating that Isami is voiced by Ryota Suzuki, who also voiced Kurosawa in Cherry Magic!, and that may not have even been his gayest role this season. I’m not super well-versed in mecha as a genre, but I do know that there’s a lot of Warrior’s Bond-type stuff in these series, and Bravern lays it on thick. And hard.

This show looks killer, by the way. CGI implementation in 2D anime is still a touchy subject, but Bravern features some of the best I’ve ever seen. Simple cel-shading goes a long way to the point where, outside of some uncanny motion, Bravern himself feels perfectly blended into the hand-drawn animation. Mecha designs range from realistic military-style tech to otherworldly sentient robots, and battle sequences run the same gamut as the stakes rise. As goofy as all of the above may sound, it’s committed to being a grandiose, big-time mecha showcase.

This is as good as camp gets in anime; Bravern does for the mecha genre what Akiba Maid War did for yakuza film pastiche (I have also heard positive comparisons to Samurai Flamenco, which I’ll have to get on ASAP). It’s an excellent mecha show in its own right, and wildly hilarious to boot. Bravern himself is very genre-savvy and seemingly a bit of an otaku himself; he loves acting like a mecha hero, to everyone else’s chagrin. Several of the villains (also mechanical beings, voiced by an all-star seiyuu roster that includes Kenjiro Tsuda, the aforementioned Atsuko Tanaka, and Rie Kugimiya) are total dorks themselves. A CIA interrogator tries to waterboard a mecha at one point. Bravern is a deeply silly show, but its heart is planted as firmly on its sleeve as its tongue is in its cheek: For as wacky as it can get, the story still unfolds with a straight face and excellent emotional beats. 

This show also has the most unskippable ED of any anime since Chainsaw Man dropped a new one every week. I will not say what happens. You cannot predict what it is. Just watch it. One of the top YouTube comments on that video says “When I saw this ending after episode 2, I thought I was going crazy.” That’s a ringing endorsement.

Chained Soldier

On the heels of 100 Girlfriends completely rewiring my brain, I was raring for some more good old-fashioned anime trash. I was told that there would be plenty this season, but you can consult the “dropped” section to see how well that worked out for me. Chained Soldier came with some significant hype, and soon enough into the first episode I realized that I’d actually skimmed through this manga before (don’t ask why), so I was on board immediately. Now here’s some nice trashy fun.

The world is in peril thanks to creatures called Shuuki that can advance on our world via portals from another dimension. Women primarily lead the charge against these monsters, as this dimension produces a special fruit that can lend them (and not men) otherworldly powers to help them in the fight. Yuuki, a perfectly normal young man, ends up in grave danger as he stumbles into a portal, where he is saved by the beautiful Kyouka, a commander who is able to subjugate Shuuki at will and use them to fight others. In a bind, she asks Yuuki if she can subjugate him, which he agrees to by licking her finger and transforming into a monster himself, at her beck and call. Because of his utility in battle, Yuuki is enlisted into her squad of baddies (and also an 11-year-old), living in their home as a caretaker and answering directly to Kyouka as her “slave.”

I know. Hear me out.

I put “slave” in scare quotes because Chained Soldier fortunately isn’t going full Shield Hero on us; this arrangement has a give-and-take baked in. See, every time Yuuki completes his service, Kyouka (or whomever else takes advantage of this anomaly) is compelled to carry out whatever suitable “reward” springs from his unconscious, and this is where the ecchi kicks in. Sometimes it’s a kiss, and sometimes it’s something a little more; the reward corresponds to the length and intensity of Yuuki’s contributions to battle, so the heat can turn up in the form of, say, clothed face-sitting, a good scrubbing in the bath, or some nice, casual CBT. All of this is to say that “slave” is a bit of a buzzword here: It’s more of a dom/sub situationship with a lot of extra steps.

Yes, just about everything that isn’t an action setup is full-on harem trash, and Chained Soldier lays it on thick, right down to full-on nudity. Nothing about this show resembles high art, but I can’t help but admire such a high level of commitment to its aesthetic, including the sleaze. It fully commits to the bit and doesn’t even bother lampshading its own trashiness. Chained Soldier knows what it’s about, and I respect that. It also has the good sense not to sexualize the youngest girl, which is a point in its favor that I can’t award a couple other shows previously discussed.

And while this show is plenty fun, the action sequences often excellent, and the character designs usually delightful, there’s not actually a whole lot going on here. As I said with Mashle, I know that battle manga like this can take a minute to really get cooking, and as I said with Witch and the Beast, 12 episodes may not always be a sufficient runtime to adapt enough to break ground, but the debut season feels more like a proof of concept than anything else. That being said, Chained Soldier’s manga has a very effusive audience, and its praises don’t seem to entirely be about the boobs and butts, so I’ll wait patiently for the second season. I think it’s earned that much.

Delicious in Dungeon

This is the one I’m having the hardest time writing about because it so confidently and so completely speaks for itself that anything I could add would feel like scattering sawdust at the beach. Dungeon Meshi (I refuse to call it by its official English title) is a widely beloved manga among those who’ve read it, and for Studio Trigger to do an honest-to-goodness manga adaptation for the first time might as well be front page news among anime fans. 

The story follows Laios, the deeply weird human hero, as he delves back into a bizarre and mysterious dungeon to rescue his sister Falin from the belly of a dragon, along with his misfit party: The neurotic half-elven mage Marcille, the temperamental halfling rogue Chilchuck, and the dwarven warrior-slash-chef Senshi. The party is frequently low on supplies, so to survive the trip they’ll need to subsist on the most abundant resource in the dungeon: Monsters. Senshi’s aptitude in the kitchen helps ensure that everything is edible and sufficiently tasty, regardless of how nasty the monster it came from may have been. With monster obstructions out of the way and their bellies filled, our party delves deeper into the dungeon as the mysteries deepen in kind.

I love the character dynamics in this so goddamn much. Marcille and Chilchuck are frequently put off by the dubious monster food presented to them, but their consternation is worsened by the fact that Laios’ fascination with the monsters it came from annoys the shit out of them. I referred to him as “deeply weird,” but that doesn’t begin to describe his absolute galaxy brain, and I mean it as a term of endearment. Laios is deeply knowledgeable and curious about the fauna in the dungeon, and not just how they taste: He is vocally curious about how certain monster attacks may feel, sings along with siren songs, and even keeps a hardcover bestiary inside his breastplate. He’s one of those people you turn to if you have a question on a hyperspecific subject, but you have to be careful how you ask it or else you’re trapped for the next two hours. And I love him for it.

Even putting the comedy aside, there is a fascinating human element at play in Dungeon Meshi, and I can tell that that surface has barely even been scratched yet. Marcille is just as dogged in her pursuit of saving Falin as Laios is, maybe even moreso (remember what I keep saying about LGBT representation this season?). Chilchuck continues to convince himself that he’s only in the job for his own personal gain, but you can see that mask slipping. And I still wanna know what Senshi’s deal is. Even with the five major players I listed, there’s an increasingly deep roster surrounding them—showcasing a broad spectrum of races and ethnicities, both real and fantastical—each with their own histories and motivations, and I cannot wait to see how they play out and interact with one another. There seem to be much deeper themes at play here as well as we learn more about perceptions and grudges between differing races, oppositional magics, clashing ideologies, and the monetary incentives that drive both the dungeon’s exploration and its very existence. I’m here for it.

I’ve been holding off on reading the manga until the season is up in June (though I could crack any day), but I know a loving adaptation when I see one. Not that Trigger ever slacks off in the animation department, but they absolutely brought their A-game here. Everyone looks bouncy and cartoony in the way only Trigger can pull off while still looking as close as possible to Ryoko Kui’s source material (as far as I can tell). As with Frieren, the action sequences aren’t frequent, nor are they entirely what the show is about, but they look incredible every single time. And the food, of course, looks incredible, no matter how weird. This is practically a cooking anime and a fantasy dungeon anime at the same time, and both aspects are visually on point at all times.

I’m obviously speaking from my own bubble as one of the six people who still use Tumblr in 2024, but I rarely see new anime make a splash like this on social media every single week, and the ones that I do are usually the monster shonen hits like Chainsaw Man or Jujutsu Kaisen. Dungeon Meshi deserves the exposure and success it’s attained, and I’m excited to see it continue. I’d easily slot this right up there with Bravern as one of the best new anime of the season.

A Sign of Affection

I’ve seen a hell of a lot of shonen slice-of-life romances in the past year and change, so a nice fluffy shoujo like this was an excellent palate cleanser. There were a hell of a lot of Big Action Setpieces and panicky teens and grim dungeon crawlers this season, and at the end of the week I wanted to unwind with a bunch of pretty twenty-somethings falling in love with each other.

The show centers on Yuki, a young woman living with congenital hearing loss, making do at a public college after growing up at a school for the deaf. Though she’s able to get by with LINE messages and lip reading, she’s unprepared when a foreigner asks for help, but she’s saved by a handsome and mysterious young man named Itsuomi. He’s able to help out, and takes an interest in her when he realizes his fellow undergrad is deaf, and Yuki takes an interest in kind because he’s really goddamn hot. It turns out that he’s a polyglot and an avid world-traveler, but sign language is not in his purview. This mutual interest sparks the concern of her childhood friend, Oushi, one of the few people in her life who already use sign language, who wants to be sure that nothing untoward is happening. And it isn’t, because this is just a really lovely, low-stakes romance story.

This is pure, unfiltered shoujo at its best. Yuki’s internal monologue is peppered with flowery prose, and everything and everyone looks soft and beautiful. Fashionable, doe-eyed women and pillowy-lipped ikemen abound (seriously, holy shit, the lips on these boys) as the scope widens and the main love interests’ friends explore their own possible love stories. Itsuomi is very much of the “mysterious boy” archetype you’ll find in romance stories in this demographic, but he’s not hiding any sort of dark past like you’d typically expect; he’s just an interesting guy who keeps his personal life close to the vest. He’s a self-appointed world citizen who loves learning about how people of all cultures live their lives, and in Yuki he sees someone within his home turf who happens to live in her own world entirely. And it’s easy to see his forward behavior with Yuki as infantilizing at first (Oushi sure does, and I’ll get back to him in a second), but as they grow closer Itsuomi quickly becomes much more considerate of her boundaries and learns to accommodate her as he studies sign language and gestures that help ensure her comfort. This is a story about Yuki’s horizons broadening just as much as it is about Itsuomi wanting to be let into Yuki’s narrow world, and that sort of synergy makes for some exceptional romance.

A Sign of Affection deserves some credit for refusing to shy away from Yuki’s disability and making a point of depicting her world as one that does little to accommodate her. Very few people in her daily life ever bothered to learn sign language, she relies on a friend to take notes during lectures, and work is hard to come by. It’s an honest depiction that makes an effort not to be exploitative, which is a breath of fresh air. Not only that, but there’s some interesting meta-commentary in there: The only major conflict in the story stems from Oushi’s jealousy, and his reservations about Itsuomi possibly “taking advantage of” Yuki almost feel like he believes that he’s the only one who knows what’s best for her just because he’s done the bare minimum to accommodate her. He thinks he’s coming from a good place, but he winds up accidentally infantilizing her in exactly the way he thinks Itsuomi might. That’s a particularly interesting bit of irony!

I’ve seen enough shonen-oriented romcoms where an unassuming Regular Guy gets flustered as a way-too-casual girl pushes his buttons (hell, I’ve already reviewed two of those this season), so it’s nice to see the formula flipped for a shoujo as Yuki and her best friend Rin blush and squee over Itsuomi and his coworker Kyouya, respectively. A Sign of Affection isn’t afraid to get a little silly with it, either; plenty of these moments are punctuated by characters’ faces going low-detail or full chibi, and they are cute as shit every single time.

This one was just cozy as hell. If you’re into this sort of thing, swaddle yourself in it and bask.

Solo Leveling

I let this one collect dust after the third episode and didn’t pick it back up until the season was almost up, and honestly, I was kinda dreading it: The trailers didn’t look too promising, the show was slow to start, and it looked like yet another derivative JRPG-style dungeon crawler that managed to get popular. Turns out, nah, this show actually kinda fucks and the web novel series and webtoon it’s based on are popular for a reason. The story is nothing special, don’t get me wrong, but it’s a perfectly serviceable turn-your-brain-off action spectacle with a bit more lying beneath the surface.

In a modern-day South Korea where portals to mysterious dungeons open up and threaten the populace, those who can brave the dungeons, known as hunters, are an invaluable human resource. Once someone is assigned a grade as a hunter, they have that grade for life, barring some rare occurrences. Sung Jinwoo is at the lowest rung on that ladder as an E-rank, incapable of improvement, assigned the epithet “the weakest hunter of all mankind.” He mostly shows up to portal raids as a warm body to fill a quota, and one such job goes haywire as most of the raid party, Jinwoo included, is brutally slaughtered in an arcane secondary dungeon within a portal. He somehow wakes up in a hospital, unharmed, and able to access a digital menu before his eyes that exhorts him to do the One Punch Man workout every day, lest he incur punishment. He gets hilariously chadly in the span of a few days in the hospital, including an inexplicable haircut, and finds access to dungeons only he can enter and levels up within this new system.

This one gets off to a slow start and may have benefited from a longer premiere like Oshi no Ko or Frieren, but once the table is fully set, Solo Leveling really starts to cook. Jinwoo’s titular leveling process is a blast from one fight to the next, and as he moves to work in the dungeons that other hunters can access, it turns out he’s been training with the weights on. He’s suddenly fighting way above his pay grade, and after staving off attacks from hunters taking advantage of portals for nefarious ends, he is recruited by an ambitious corporate scion to make some real coin and establish an independent association of hunters.

While it can feel like there’s a whole bunch of table-setting between portal sequences, it’s some smart worldbuilding on Solo Leveling’s end to establish how portal hunting became a central pillar of this society, and doubly so how political and capitalist interests can leave a wide berth for corruption and bad actors. If there’s money to be made in hunting, of course people will find ways to make even more at the expense of others, both at the corporate and individual levels. There’s a lot of talk in there about “survival of the fittest” and “natural selection” and that… makes me nervous.

Those are terms that can be used to justify immoral actions in the name of money, sure, but Jinwoo also uses them to justify his own process. To what end is he constantly improving himself? Sure, he's doing what he can to provide for his younger sister and their ailing mother, but I see less and less humanity in him as this goes on. There are constant hints at something far more sinister at play than just a dude getting stronger for himself, not the least of which being “the system,” the UI that implores him to keep taking on these “quests.” Something, or someone, seems to be guiding him. Whenever another hunter turns on Jinwoo, of course his self-defense instincts kick in, but system pop-ups instruct him to defeat X number of hostiles like it’s a normal video game scenario. There’s something eerily depersonalized about these encounters, despite them being full-on mortal combat, that gives me serious Ender’s Game vibes. Consider me intrigued.

I’d heard that the Solo Leveling manhwa’s main draw was its visuals, and though I had my doubts early on, I'm sold now. This is a pretty solid presentation! Hiroyuki Sawano turned in yet another banger soundtrack to punctuate all the action setpieces, helping to stitch together a fairly complete tapestry. Said setpieces are exhilarating and almost impressively bloody, and while the animation is nothing impressive in the day-to-day, it goes absolutely batshit when the gloves come off. Movement is inhumanly fluid and the visuals can go into the same loose, psychedelic territories we’ve seen in the likes of Mob Psycho and the second season of Jujutsu Kaisen. If this is the new meta for shonen action, I’m not complaining.

By all rights, this is a pretty decent show, but if I’m being honest, this one just hasn’t stuck with me much. And that’s fine! Sometimes I just wanna see some nutty action stuff and move on with my day. Solo Leveling hits that spot perfectly, and I'll be right back there when it returns for its next season.

‘Tis Time for “Torture,” Princess

I was surprised to learn that the gag manga this is based on, with such a seemingly simple premise, has been running for well over 200 chapters and counting. As the anime progressed, I was far more pleasantly surprised to learn that it actually works.

In a standard anime fantasy world where the forces of good are fighting the demonic Hellhorde, an unnamed warrior princess and her talking enchanted sword are taken prisoner and subjected to torture as they’re squeezed for intel. Said “torture,” as the title’s scare quotes would suggest, is mildly unconventional, as the demon baddie inquisitor, aptly named Torture Tortura, attempts to ply the princess by presenting her with tantalizingly delicious-looking food that she can only partake in if she coughs up some info. Naturally, the princess caves every single time, but her intel is often inane and useless, so the “torture” continues. It’s not all food, though: The princess is soon held out of arm’s reach of adorable baby animals by a gyaru beastgirl, pampered into submission by a spa-loving giantess, and is faced with a tsundere vampire faildaughter, who… tries. 

And you’d think that would be it; the joke wears thin and you move onto something else. Before you realize it, though, something’s changed: The princess and her captors are quickly becoming friends. The premise almost feels perfunctory: These inquisitors are actual people just doing their jobs, and whatever happens after the princess’ myriad confessions is fair game. There’s no malice or animosity, even during the “torture” sessions themselves: Everyone will have a blast and grow closer as friends, and then the princess will voluntarily go back to her bedless cell. It’s like Sam and Ralph after they clock out, except they’re almost always off the clock. Everyone is genuinely looking out for each other in all directions, and the only thing that keeps the torture going is the need for a status quo to return to, even as it grows more elastic. If anything, Time for "Torture" is a good example of committing to the bit without having to necessarily rely on it.

The real irony in all of this is that it becomes increasingly apparent that the princess is having her needs met in captivity far better than she ever did back home. In her proud proclamations about how she’ll never cave to the temptations before her (shortly before she does just that), the princess often talks about her upbringing and her time as the head of an imperial legion, but these stories often betray her lack of friendship or any of the little things that make life worth living. Her life as royalty was one of isolation and deprivation, to the point where she finds more freedom and fulfillment as a prisoner. She truly lives in a society.

Hellholm, on the other hand, has a surprisingly healthy approach to things like work-life balance, food, and leisure, and its most valuable prisoner is no exception. The Hell-Lord himself is a surprising exemplar of this; for as much as he looks and talks like your standard terrifying JRPG demon king, he’s a surprisingly good dude! He looks after his family, employees, and even the captive princess as if they are all one and the same; he exhibits strong principles and an aversion to conflict, sees to his employees' needs and wants alike, and is a supportive, loving father to his unbelievably precious little daughter (who also serves as a “torturer,” to the princess’ delight). He’s also a big time anime dork, and even bonds with a knight attempting to rescue the princess over their shared otakudom before sending him off peacefully. As “villains” go, he’s top tier.

Time for "Torture" is nothing groundbreaking by any stretch, but it’s a cute, silly time and it plays with anime fantasy tropes in the same way a six-month-old German shepherd “plays” with a cheap stuffed toy. How long the premise holds up is entirely up to you, but I had a lot of fun with it. I have no idea how this ended up being one of the better shows this season, but I guess it just scratched the right itch for me.

[eshithepetty]

LISTEN. I KNOWWW that the polls haven't even started, but I'm impatient, ok, I'm just putting this out there now cause I can't take it..... anyways - I've seen people do powerpoints as a way to campaign for their blorbos in the various polls that have been going on, so!! I thought I'd do one of my own for the @autismswagsummit ^^ as I simply can't pass on any chance to be brainrotted over this series, it seems...

ID under cut, as it's very long!

[ID: a powerpoint presentation campaigning for Mob from Mob Psycho 100. It's formatted in dark purples and pinks.

The first slide is the titlecard, differing from the main slides by having a pink holographic aura, like the ones from the show, as the background. The text says:

"#MOBSWEEP 2023

Aka why you should vote for Mob in the upcoming autistic swag summit. Please

(JK follow your own heart ^^ but for your consideration:)"

The second slide is titled: "Who is Mob, aka Kageyama Shigeo?" and below the text lists:

"Source: Mob Psycho 100, which is also where Reigen comes from;

The protagonist! Only with background character syndrome (which is why he’s named ‘Mob’ – it’s kinda like naming your protag ‘John Doe’ lol);

A 14 year old with the psychic strength to destroy the world. Which he’s not very happy about actually;

Cause really, he’s just a nice, gentle boy who simply wants to improve and impress his crush by getting swole :) Oh, and he also experiences the horrors. Btw."

On the right of this text, there are two images: One is a zoomed in screenshot of Mob, his face blank and confused, and the other is an official art of the show, depicting Mob in the center, aura glowing, with many of the show's other characters around him, with the show's title at the bottom of the image.

The third slide's title is "Ok but tell me more about the autism", and below, the text says:

"Gladly ^^

Ok, first off – symptoms:

Bad at reading social cues, detecting sarcasm, lies, etc.;

Struggles with recognizing/expressing emotions. Has what could be called psychic meltdowns;

Very honest and blunt, sometimes appearing ‘ruthless’ as a result;

Explicitly low empathy, in that he can’t feel what others are feeling;

Actually very compassionate, and follows a really strict moral code;"

There are no images in this or the next slide.

The fourth slide is a continuation of the previous, with the text being:

"Abnormal reaction to sensations, but instead of overreacting, he underreacts, rarely responding to physical touch and disturbing imagery. Has shown to be at times sensitive to loud sounds, however;

Prefers following a routine. One of his biggest conflicts with Reigen literally arise from the man often calling him out of the blue and making him suddenly adapt, which Mob finds really annoying/upsetting;

Struggles in school. Explicitly bad at math, japanese and PE (really passionate about the latter tho), which could be for a variety of reasons, autism related conditions (like dyscalculia/dyslexia/dyspraxia) being one of them;

Has felt like an outcast for most of his life. Even if he grew up in a pretty loving environment, he recognizes that he is different to others, and people sometimes treat him as such (in a /neg way);

His main arc is about overcoming trauma and… just masking (and how to stop doing it), pretty much, lol."

The fifth slide, in contrast, is mostly just images, placed upon a white background. The title for this one is "Alternatively, just look at him:"

The images, from top to down, and then left to right, are:

Three cropped subtitles out of screenshots of the show, which say:

"I'm sure I just got the wrong idea again. How embarrassing."

"He's detached from urban legends, fads, and other hot topics among people."

"You just can't lie, can you?"

The fourth is a cropped screenshot of Mob's explosion meter. Both in Japanese and English. Specifically, it says: "Progress towards Mob's explosion: 92%". Additionally, there is an annotation above this image, saying: "Literally has a meltdown meter ksfdks"

In-between these and the next column of images, there is also a transparent image of Mob, him standing stiffly, faced towards the camera, his standard, blank expression with a small smile on his face.

The next column of images goes like this:

A screenshot from the show, done in paint on glass, of various kids towering over Mob, who's standing in the middle of the image, small. Their expressions wary, from sneering, to frowning, to looking disgusted. The subtitles at the bottom say, with one part blocked out due to spoilers: "[spoilers] didn't treat me any differently even though I could use psychic powers."

Next two are cropped dialogues as well. They say:

"This version of him was created from being suppressed and locked away."

"Social skills like that are beyond you."

And on the right of the slide is one vertical image, showing one of Mob's books, with the subtitles translating the Japanese title of the book as "The Proper Way of Reading the Room". Next to this one, there is also an annotation, saying: "He has a book on learning social cues :’)" That's all for this slide.

The sixth slide is titled "Is he good rep though?" Text below is:

"Well, to answer the first thing relevant to this question… no, he’s not actually confirmed canon autistic. But c’mon.. it’s so obvious. This kid is not fucking allistic like c’monnnn

Of course, what people consider good and bad rep is gonna vary from person to person. But to explain why a lot of people see him as very positive rep:

"1) He’s the main character, so he gets the most spotlight, and the narrative is formed around his pov, in that we only see things that are relevant to Mob, and visually things are often represented in the way Mob sees them as well (take the body improvement club or Tsubomi, for example), which puts all viewers soundly in his shoes and makes him easy to relate to and sympathize with, and makes it clear how important his emotions and view of things really are;"

On the right of this are 3 images against a white background. The first one is a screenshot of the Body Improvement Club - 5 very buff and large dudes - standing against an explosively red and yellow background, with all of them enthusiastically flexing. The caption below that is "The body improvement club! ...they're supposed to be middle schoolers lol".

The next two, below the first one, are two screenshots of Tsubomi. The one on the left has her smiling, her eyes wide and bright, the background being pastel pinks and yellows. The one on the right, however, has her frowning, the background turned black, her eyes dark and disinterested. The caption below says: "Tsubomi :) And how her design subtly changes alongside Mob’s view of her".

The seventh slide is a continuation of the previous, with the text being:

"2) He’s a very well rounded character, with well thought out strengths, flaws, motives, and his overall story is very cohesive and satisfying; 3) His autistic traits are portrayed neutrally – in both where they help, and where they can cause conflict. It balances between him learning what things he would benefit to address and deal with, and what things he shouldn’t be trying to change at all, and as the whole message of the show emphasizes – he is no more or less special than anyone, no more or less of a person – he is simply human, and his autistic traits are just part of what makes him himself."

This one has images next to it as well. The first one is a screenshot of Reigen looking towards the camera (at an off-screen Mob), hand to his chin, eyebrow raised and smiling, some food crumbs still stuck to his face, as he says: "Today you happened to save some people that only you could have saved." Next to it is the annotation: "Reigen reassuring Mob about how his inability to read the room and feel empathy actually can be a huge benefit sometimes :)"

The next image below is a zoom in of Mob's face, his eyes shadowed by his hair, the scene's lighting dark, as he says: "I'm not being mocked, nor am I easily taken advantage of." The annotation next to this one says "Mob learning to recognize his emotions and assert himself better as the story goes on!"

And the last two images is a screenshotted dialogue, saying "You don't think changing yourself for someone you love is natural?" "I don't. At least, not when we're talking about [spoilers]" (The last bit is blocked out again).

The eight slide is also a continuation. The text says:

"4) He is loved. Loved by his friends, his family, his allies… even most villains come to take a liking to him. In fact, he’s something I haven’t seen many autistic characters be – he’s admired! So many characters, and even viewers of the show I’ve found, really admire him and want to be more like him. And not because he’s a perfect person, or super smart or anything, but because he sincerely tries his best. And I just really appreciate that, personally,, 5) And more than just loved, he is accepted – the whole main arc and the resolution of his story centers around that, around how important it is to feel accepted by the people around you, in all your entirety, no matter how strange or destructive you may feel yourself to be. And how you need to come to accept yourself in the same way as well. I just think that’s a really sweet in a story centering around a neurodivergent person :’)"

And the images next to it are as follows:

A screenshot of dialogue from the show, saying: "At first glance, Mob may seem unreliable, but his strength is undeniable." The annotation clarifies with: "The ‘strength’ in question, in this case, being Mob’s ability to reach out to people ^^";

A screenshot of Teru placed against a blindingly white background, him grinning widely, looking down, eyes shining, as he says: "I knew it, you really are amazing!". Next to him, there is a small caption of "Lol gayass /pos";

And a screenshot of Mob, in the bottom center of the image, small, as he is surrounded by various characters. Most of them are smiling encouragingly, with the ones closest to him, like Reigen, Ritsu, Dimple, Teru and Tsubomi, being bigger and placed in the front. A small caption at the top says: "He has so many friends and allies ueueeueueue.."

The ninth slide is titled "Additionally:" and the text lists:

"Psychic powers as a metaphor for being nd/othered, if that suits your fancy;

His design is iconic and versatile;

The boy has. Issues;;

There are many other characters in mp100 who can be read as autistic. Not a single neurotypical in this show /hj

Mob has more than just autism swag. I’ve seen people with bipolar disorder, ADHD, anxiety and those who are plural (etc.) also relate to him :)

He is simply the Boy ever"

Next to the last line is a small, low quality image of Mob smiling from the manga. The rest of the images, on the right, are:

The meme "I can be your angle....or yuour devil", with images of Mob instead - on the left, him smiling brightly and blushing, placed upon a colorful magenta background, and on the right, a panel from the manga: Mob in one of his explosion states, surrounded by fire, face shadowed, hair pushed back by his powers and waving in the air, and his eyes, wide and eerie, being the only features on his face that are visible.

On the right of these images, there is a smaller one, of Mob in another one of his explosion states (the one from episode 3, season 1 of the anime). He is facing to the side, aura surrounding him, hair pushed back by his powers and his eyes a glower. His pupils are red.

Below these, there are three images of, in order, Serizawa, Tome and Ritsu. Serizawa is sweating, nervous, Tome is sweating even more and yelling into a phone, and Ritsu is simply glaring towards the camera. The annotation pointing to them says: "A few of the other autistic blorbos in question :] (as I personally see them at least)".

And the last is a panel from the manga, of Mob sobbing, tears and drool dripping messily down his face, his hair waving in the air. His expression is somewhat blank despite the clear distress, and the text boxes next to him read: "His tears won't stop. It's an emotion he has never experienced before."

And the tenth, final slide, is formatted the same as the titlecard with the pink aura background, and says:

"Thank you if you got this far <3

Have good days everyones, and remember, the true win for autism is the fun we had along the way :]

Buh bye!! ^_^"

Around this text, there are various images of Mob. Counter clockwise, starting at the left corner:

A low quality screenshot of Mob flying in the air;

Mob, in his puppy hoodie, sweating in distress as he points at a vase;

Mob caught mid smear frame, his leg kicked high in the air as he jumps, his school bag swinging to the side, his expression comically flustered.

A panel from the manga. Mob's eyes are shadowed, chopsticks held to his face, as he stares to the side and says "Tch... Shut up and eat.";

A Mob in an alleyway from the anime, smiling, pointing and looking up and to the left (the center of the slide);

A photo of a Mob plushie tucked into bed;

A low quality screenshot of Mob, standing against a wire fence, facing forwards, his eyes appearing a bit angry due to his hair cowering them.

End ID.]

[personne-writes]

Third challenger

There are no curtains, this time; no stage or spotlights. 

Only the clear, open sky, the wide arena of grass and the brightness of a sunny afternoon. 

No frills. No distraction. Nowhere to hide.

Donatello is starting to get pumped up. 

At the center of the stadium, two figures stand across from one another. They look small, frail even, in the middle of such an impressive volume. He knows the extra space will be much needed, though. 

The cameras turn to him, the speakers announce his name, and he confidently steps out of the shadows. The public in the stands welcome their third challenger with renewed fervor. 

It had escaped his understanding, these terms in the tournament reglementation. Up until the last minute, he’d thought he had secured his third place by winning the Wheel of Doom, and that was it.

The excited screeches of his family when he’d been told to get ready for the grand finals still ring in his skull. 

Applauds rain over him as he gets closer to his rivals. Stopping at a respectable distance, he makes a show of flipping his tech bo before tapping it to the ground in a practiced hero pose, purple pixels flaring up around him, and the crowd roars.

He feels a smirk spread onto his face. 

“Donatello-san?!” 

“Hi, Mob,” he answers with his best too-cool-for-you attitude. “Enjoyed the rest?”

“What are you doing here?” the boy blurts out. 

“Rude. You see, apparently beating someone once doesn’t necessarily result in his direct elimination.”

“It doesn’t?” 

“Well, here I am, aren’t I?” 

The surprise on Kageyama’s features morphs into something decidedly amused. 

“Heh. I should’ve guessed you wouldn’t give up so easily.”

“Damn right,” Donatello grins back. 

“So, Donnie-san, are we allowed to team up, or -”

“AM I THE ONLY ONE HERE WHO'S READ THE RULES?” the other opponent interjects, voice bold and cheeky. “THIS IS A SOLO DEATHMATCH SITUATION, NOT A TEAM-UP BOSS BATTLE.”

Donnie turns to the skeleton. He has taken some time to learn about him, of course: hard-working, keen on hindrance, element-of-surprise enthusiast. 

The handmade costume and bright, toothy smile only raise more red flags. 

“And you are…?” he asks casually, fully intending to keep his bad boy image up. 

As the skeleton lazily inspects his nails, it appears two can play this game.   

“MY NAME IS PAPYRUS, BUT YOU CAN CALL ME THE GREAT.”

Donatello decides he likes this one. 

“Enchanté,” he voices, then rolls his shoulders. “Well, gents, as much as I would like to keep this charming conversation going, don’t we have a public to impress?”

Mob nods. He doesn’t make any other movement, but the grass around his feet is already spiking up like hair charged with electricity. 

“I would hate to disappoint my master,” he agrees. 

Donnie looks over to Papyrus, and finds him cracking his bony knuckles, a ferocious look on his edgy features. 

“BRING IT ON, YOU SWAGLESS FROG.”

Around them, the giant screens broadcast their little exchange, and the crowd goes wild with anticipation. The match is finally about to begin; whatever happens now, there won’t be another round.

Donatello can’t help but feel grateful to be there. 

This last chance was unhoped for, and he is going to make it count, if only for kicks and giggles. 

If only for glory. 

--------------------------

Hey guys, uh. I guess I. Did it again?

Follow-up to this. Y'all can thank this anon because by making me say I wouldn't do it they actually made me do it. Whoops

DISCLAIMER: I know even less about Undertale than I do about Mob Psycho 100, which is to say I don't know shit about Papyrus. Took a hot 5 minutes of research and rolled with it. So once again this is probably wildly OOC and I apologize to whomever I may have offended

THAT BEING SAID I had a lot of fun writing this one as well! @autismswagsummit you don't know the state your tournament has me in. I think I might actually explode whatever the conclusion

Remember kids, have fun, take care, be cool, vote Donnie!

@autismswagreblogs

[tooomuchtofu]

From a series of DMs with @someone07.

[Images ID: A series of comic panels taking place during the car ride back down the mountain during the aliens arc in Mob Psycho 100.

First image: the back seat of the car is visible. Takenaka is looking out the window. Inukawa listens as Tome rambles about Homestuck, her words taking up the entire panel and dipping in and out of view around herself and her friends. The words “trolls”, “act 4,” “bug person race”, “grey skin”, “orange horns” and “legislacerator” are highlighted in red.

Second image: Mob and Reigen are visible in the front row. Mob is looking over at Reigen, who looks intensely uncomfortable. Tome is leaning around the seat in front of her to stare at Reigen.

Third image: View of the front row from behind, labeled “Tome Vision”. Reigen’s distressed face is visible in the rear view mirror.

Fourth image: same view of the front row from the second image. Reigen is just as uncomfortable. Tome looks pensive. A loading symbol and the word “BUFFERING” are written above her head.

Fifth image: same angle. Tome lunges forward around the seat with a manic grin to point an accusatory finger at Reigen, who now looks horrified. She screams “HOMESTUCK” at the top of her lungs. The image is shaded as if a minor explosion has gone off.

Sixth image: a view of the road. The car swerves wildly, almost driving off the narrow mountain pass. Someone inside the car is screaming. End image ID.]

(Extra under read more : ) )

Tome drags Reigen to Comiket and Reigen drags Serizawa along too.

[Image ID: A drawing of Tome, Serizawa, and Reigen, posing for a picture. Tome is grinning, cosplaying as Terezi from Homestuck with poorly applied grey face paint, a dragon cane, dark pants and a libra symbol shirt, horns, red glasses, and poorly made ear extensions. She is labeled “wanted to go to comiket” and her cane is labeled “made at club”. Serizawa stands in the middle, looking nervous and dressed in his work suit. He is labeled “was told this was a work trip.” Reigen is cosplaying as Dave Strider in a bright red suit that’s way too small for him. He is also wearing a pair of sunglasses and a pink tie (labeled “could not find his black tie”) and smiling broadly. End ID.]

[thefandomcassandra]

[Image Descriptions: Five images. The first is a page of fullbody and bust pencil sketches of Ebiwara from Mob Psycho 100. They have fluffy hair, a thick sweater, thick eye bags, and under their left eye is a cross-shaped scar. The text next to them (some of it cut off) says "Division 3 Head X-Gen[sic] They/T[sic] Specialty: pressure points - can lock up opponents energy and movement by forcing energy in[sic] pressure point". The second is a page of fullbody and bust pencil sketches of a fat, dark-haired woman in a tracksuit with diamond-shaped scars on her cheeks like dimples. She is labeled as Tsūren. The third is a page of fullbody, bust, and profile pencil sketches of a a skinny girl with an undercut and bangs covering her left eye. She has a scar on her head, above her right ear, more visible in profile. She is wearing a loose t-shirt that says "BANG!" in an explosion-shaped bubble. She is labeled Seiteki. The text next to her says "-uses aura like a tazer[sic] -battle junkie -big fucking airhead". The fourth is a page of fullbody and bust pencil sketches of a thin man in a black suit, wearing a blank white mask. His face beneath the mask is plain-looking with dark hair and dark, emotionless eyes, a scar running down the left side of his mouth to his chin. He is labeled as Zenkishi, the text next to him says "-puppets corpses/uncoscious[sic] people -D-list terrorist -so fucking boring he wears a blank mask and suit to stand out (it doesn't work)" The fifth is a page of fullbody and bust pencil sketches of a stout woman with short hair in a button up shirt and dark pants with suspenders. She is wearing round glasses that obscure her eyes and has a scar across her throat. She is labeled as Kosa. /End ID]

Info about these OCs and their powers (and spoilers for Champion if you care) below the cut.

My funny little OCs for Champion (and also a canon character I pulled to make the antagonist). Say hi to the Third Division Scars!

Ebiwara is an actual Scar that you see for like...half a second in the World Domination Arc and, sure, the wiki says that he is a dude but it's my world here and I decided I wanted to have someone who uses they/them. (Also he doesn't have any kind of canon specialty so I made one up lol. You can see me lifting from ATLA here.) Plus I realized halfway through that Ebiwara's Third has one (1) man and that was funny to me lmao. "I don't care about Ishiguro's little den of perverts and freaks!" They say, unaware of the irony.

Tsūren was the first I developed and, as a pattern you'll see going on with all the Third, I kinda patched together her name. Hers is a combo of "pleasure" and "pain" because she's a mean fucking bitch and also her aura is bruising and raw meat. Her specialty (cut off the page) is telekinesis used as restraints and to pull limbs past the breaking point. She likes causing pain. She looks cheery and sweet, sure, but she isn't and that's the point lol.

Seiteki was the second (alongside Zenkishi) because I thought "what if someone could use their aura like a taser?" and then i spelled it wrong on the page. She's fun coz she's a little punk and she likes getting into fights. Hence her hand-to-hand combat style and her frustration when someone isn't "fun". Unseen here is that she has dental piercings, a fact that, when I shared it with my friend, got an "eugh". Her name is a combination of "energy" and "accurate".

Zenkishi (once referred to as a "slenderman looking ass") was a little more of a joke than the rest of the Third. Because he wore the mask and suit, I decided he was just so boring and plain to look at that the suit/mask combo was an attempt to stand out among his peers. It didn't work because he's just...there a lot of the times, but it's a funny attempt. My friend is the one who called him a "D-list terrorist" lmao. His whole deal is "what if Mukai's skill but instead of puppets it's people" and then I made his aura beige lmao. His name is "former" and "dirt".

Kosa is the one whose design I plan on reusing coz I like her whole vibe (her vibe being gaslight girlboss). Her power was to kinda mirror Muto from the Seventh Division as the psychic who manipulates people into joining them. But while Muto has his illusions, Kosa has something more insidious: she can change one memory you have of a single moment, influencing your emotions at the time to change how you feel at the present. That's why her aura is the impossible colors one (stygian blue, hyper orange, magenta). She's unassuming until you get caught by her. Her name is "grit/sand" and "liar"

[nyxravessnow]

2.5D Stage Ranking (Personal Opinion) pt.2

This is the part two, the ranking of enjoyment

Top 10 in Enjoyment

This will simply be how much I enjoyed the stage. Mostly I prefer comedy so for me quite a lot of these will have a lot of funny moments but not all of them do. 

This will be extremely opinionated but I will try to be positive. Weirdly even though these are the ten shows I most enjoyed, I don’t think three of them would be in my top ten favourite. Some explanations will be more emotional than others.

I will also not explain about the plot to the shows and will try to spoil as little as possible.

1. Prince of Tennis

This should come as no surprise and I won’t go into this two much but Prince of Tennis is the show that really kickstarted 2.5D in my opinion and is the show that made me absolutely fall in love with the industry. I can sing over 100 of the songs and know most of the actors names and is my absolute addiction. I just think Prince of Tennis is so fun, diverse and it’s so exciting to see all these actors who start in Prince of Tennis grow so much and appear in so many other things

2. Mankai A3

I was so surprised by A3. I didn’t really enjoy the game at first and was so confused as to why it suddenly became so popular. I must admit its popularity was one of the things that held me up watching it until I found I cheap version of Spring and Summer then gave in. I thing watched it every day for a week.This show completely pulled me in with fun songs, a compelling cast of characters and a surprising amount of emotion. (For me who did not play the game, if you did play the game, this would not have been surprising)

The company of actors is split into four groups and I was surprised how individual each group was. My favourite, summer, are the youngest of the company and I absolutely loved their play. 

For anyone trying to get into 2.5d plays, this is probably where I would point them first. It is such a fun play with a perfect blend of comedy, emotion, drama and action

3. Yowamushi pedal

Disclaimer: I have only seen up until the end of Ogoe Yuuki’s run as Onoda.

While I didn’t put Yowamushi Pedal on my top 10 for quality, I don’t think it was ever trying to be a high quality show. The showrunners knew there was no way they could show people cycling on stage in a wholly serious manor if they couldn’t use actual bikes. So, they decided to change the tone of the show, which I think wouldn’t have worked in the anime but works perfectly on stage.

If I ever need cheering up Yowamushi Pedal stage is definitely something I would turn to. Every single show has me crying with laughter and it is amazing to see actors having so much fun on stage.

There are so many hilarious moments but the top two for me is when Izumida’s peck Frank, yes his pecks are anthropomorphised on stage, starts touching the other members of Hakogaku and when they are at Toudou’s inn and their cleaner is Harry Potter and he cocks his broom as fires it like a gun at two actors who are pretending to be ducks. Both make absolutely no sense but are amazing to watch and I don’t think I will ever not laugh while even thinking of them.  

4. Touken Ranbu Musical

It is strange that I cry in every single musical and yet I still have an image of the musicals not being sad. I think they get the perfect blend of emotion and comedy for what they are trying to achieve. The actors, on the whole, portray their characters so well and the live segments may just be pandering to the fangirls, but I am a fangirl/fanboy and I love it. The songs fit so perfectly and I don’t think I’ve ever loved reasonably minor characters as much as I do the humans in Touken Ranbu. I think all their actors are excellent and I am slightly in love with Minamoto no Yoshitsune’s eye makeup.

The thing that sold me the most on this musical however, was none of that. I am studying Japanese and it amazes me how much actual history and Japanese culture I have learnt from these musicals. To the extent of me being able to have a conversation in Japanese about the Minamoto clan with an actual Japanese History Teacher whose favourite period of Japanese history is that period and him complimenting me on my knowledge. 

Touken Ranbu also celebrates Japanese culture so much. The taiko drumming in the live, the actual drinking song included in the show and the time where they put on a festival during a live. I feel like this show is a must see for anyone who likes Japanese culture and Japan would seem to agree with me as it far outranks any other show in the industry for popularity. 

While it doesn’t appeal to me in ways that the three above do I love this musical so much I can’t wait until I can see the next one. 

5. Bakumatsu Rock

I keep on forgetting I’ve seen this show live as I saw it in 2015 which was a while ago and was only the third show I ever saw and I was also sick before it so I was a little delirious. But I still remember the feeling of utter joy I had leaving the theatre with Crash My Head stuck in my...head. The acting is so good, the songs are amazing and the actors look like they’re having such a good time. 

I won’t go into the recast as I already mentioned that in the previous ranking but they didn’t stop me from still enjoying the final two stages. I think it was very sad that the show was so short but I don’t really want to see them bring it back.

I think what we have of the show is perfect and I love it with all m heart.

6. Aoharu Tetsudou

This is a musical I think very few people will have watched. A lot of people like it for the fact it combines a lot of Prince of Tennis actors who haven’t acted with each other in a while but while that is what originally got me into the show it is not at all why I stayed. 

This somewhat factual history of different Japanese train lines is utterly insane with the strangest characters, songs and moments. And has led to some of the strangest conversations with Japanese people who know the train lines well

‘So the Rinkai line is a bit ecchi and stalks the Saikyo line’

‘Oh yeah, that makes perfect sense’

‘??? How can a train line be ecchi?’

Also, this show is unabashedly gay. There is a character who continually asks another character to marry him, three different love songs between three different couples and actual other characters saying that they are gay. While it works in a similar way to Hetalia, if countries get married they are uniting, if trains get married they become one train it is still very gay. There are also multiple instances of characters stripping and cosplaying as women. 

I love this show to bits but if you are not used to Japanese acting or you want to show a musical to someone who is not used to Japanese acting, absolutely do not watch/show this musical. I love the overacting and find it hilarious but this is the most overacting I think I have ever seen in a show ever and while I think it really works for this show it will be pretty jarring if you are not used to it.

7. Hiragana Danshi

This show in my opinion is the most underrated musical in the 2.5d industry, along with Aoharu Tetsudou but even more so. The show is about letters of the Hiragana alphabet but they are more the sounds than the actual hiragana so they represent the katakana and kanji as well. Everything they like has to start with their hiragana and there are so many puns. The cast is hugely popular and talented and each one portrays their character so well. The show is so funny and you absolutely will leave with a favourite character. 

The songs are very clever and, almost, all the actors have very good voices and the songs compliment them well. It’s sad that the show seemed to be such a passion project and was truly beloved by the staff and actors but there were not enough fans to ensure that there could be a second stage. 

8. Bungou Stray Dogs

I don’t have very much to add from my previous comments on this show. It is exceptional as I loved the original anime I was so happy to see such a well done adaptation, that slightly made me realise that I am very attracted to Chuuya. I think this show would also be a very good introduction to 2.5d as it shows off the best aspects of the industry. 

9. Mob Psycho 100

I didn’t originally enjoy the Mob Psycho anime but after I loved the stage I went back and watched the anime again and I loved it. I thought the stage was so funny and I could not think of someone more perfect than Baba Ryoma to play Reigen and I’m so happy that recently Baba Ryoma has been given more chances to play comedic characters which I really think suits him. 

I don’t have very much to say about this play except I loved it and fully recommend it

10. Cells at Work

I have seen both stages as I actually managed to go see the second live last week.

While I do think I preferred the first one overall I did love the second one and I personally think that Kitamura Ryo fits with the image of White blood cell from the anime better. 

The shows manage to be so funny but evoke so much emotion with Yamada James Takeshi’s performance of the cancer cell. I think it is the best acting he has ever done and really wish they had a 2.5d version of the tony’s so he could get an award for his role. 

There is something about them that feels distinctly different from most other 2.5d productions in my opinion and I love it.

[animesavior]

“You got it all wrong, Pops. I don't give a damn about what happened in the past. This guy's in my way, so I’m going to beat him.”

-          “Gearless” Joe, Megalo Box (Ep. 06)

The Toonami Trending Rundown for January 26-27, 2019. It’s a good night for anime as Joe has a bout against one of Pop’s old students in Aragaki, while Yukako visits a beauty salon in her attempt to get Koichi to like her more, and Asta tries to recover from his harsh injuries against Vetto, among other great moments.

On Twitter, #Toonami as well as every show from Mob Psycho 100 to Shippuden would successfully trend in the US. Character trends for JoJo’s and Black Clover with both Yukako and Koichi as well as Asta. On Tumblr, Toonami would trend alongside Naruto and #BNHA. The full list including statistics and tweet counts from the twitter app and Amr Rahmy’s analytics app can be seen below.

This week, Viz Media has partnered with CineLife Entertainment to bring out a limited theatrical run of the second Hunter x Hunter feature film: The Last Mission. If you’re interested, check out http://www.cinelifeentertainment.com/event/hunter-x-hunter-the-last-mission/ for tickets and showtimes near your area and give your support to the anime industry on the big screen.

Also in Hunter x Hunter news, Viz Media has released Set 5 of the Hunter x Hunter Blu-rays and DVDs, containing Episodes 76-99 or the first part of the Chimera Ant arc, and is available to purchase at all major anime selling retailers with a $54.97 MSRP.

Viz Media has also released Set 3 of the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Blu-rays and DVDs, containing all of the Stardust Crusaders: Battle of Egypt arc. With an MSRP of $69.99, it’s available to pick up in all major anime selling retailers.

Dragon Ball Super: Broly’s box office total increased by $3 Million over the weekend, with the total US gross for Broly is now $28,222,444. The limited theater release is starting to wind down, so if you haven’t already, check it out in theaters while you still can. On a related note, reports have surfaced that during NATPE Miami, Toei Animation seemed to announce that new episodes of Dragon Ball Super are in the works, however Toei has denied those reports as of now.

And of course, the big news of the week…

In a case of “it was a matter of not if, but when it was coming” unless you were one of those SAO haters who were praying that Netflix and Hulu would somehow get Aniplex to snake their way out of its contract with Toonami, Toonami and Aniplex have announced that Kirito and Asuna are returning to their US broadcast home as the highly successful Sword Art Online franchise will be making its return to the better cartoon show for its highly anticipated third season in Project Alicization.

Season 3 will make its debut on February 9 at 12:30 am Eastern/Pacific, taking over Mob Psycho 100 on the schedule as the dub for season 2 of the latter is not ready for release as of now (Kyle McCarley, during his most recent Unlocked stream as of this writing, had mentioned that he has still yet to be called in to reprise his role as Shigeo/Mob). As the first episode is an hour’s length, Megalo Box will have the night off to make way. Episode 16 just aired in Japan and on streaming subbed this week, so while this isn’t a simuldub like the ones we’re used to from Funimation, it’s a relatively quick one compared to what we usually see from Alex von David, Bang Zoom, and Aniplex.

In anticipation for Sword Art Online’s return to Toonami, we covered the Project Alicization premiere in Hollywood back in October and got the opportunity to interview Bryce Papenbrook, the voice of Kirito. For those who would like to know what to expect going into this new season, I recommend checking out those articles if you haven’t so already. And of course, for those who are late to the party or who just want to rewatch the previous two seasons and Ordinal Scale in anticipation, the show is available to binge on Netflix, Hulu, Funimation Now and Crunchyroll as well as available to purchase on iTunes, the Microsoft Store, and available on Blu-ray and DVD.

As previously mentioned, as Season 2 of Mob Psycho 100 isn’t ready to go just yet (when the dub will be ready and when Toonami will get to air it are both yet to be announced), the show will be going on an off-season after next week, so make sure to tune in for the season finale of season 1, among other great moments. Until next week, stay gold.

Legend: The shows listed are ordered based on their appearance on the schedule. Show trends are listed in bold. The number next to the listed trend represents the highest it trended on the list (not counting the promoted trend), judging only by the images placed in the rundown. For the Twitter tweet counts, the listed number of tweets are also sorely based on the highest number shown based on the images on the rundown.

United States Trends:

#Toonami [#8]

#MobPsycho100 [#7]

#MegaloBox [#7]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [#7]

Koichi (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [#8]

Yukako (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [#17]

#BlackClover [#9]

#HunterXHunter [#4]

#Shippuden [#6]

Temari (From Naruto Shippuden) [Trended with #Shippuden]

Tweet Counts:

#Toonami [4,825 tweets]

#Boruto [4,544 tweets]

#MyHeroAcademia [4,335 tweets]

#MobPsycho100 [3,086 tweets]

#MegaloBox [1,369 tweets]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [3,075 tweets]

Koichi (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [3,299 tweets]

Yukako (From JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure) [1,296 tweets]

#BlackClover [1,345 tweets]

Asta (From Black Clover) [5,597 tweets]

#HunterXHunter [1,770 tweets]

Amr Rahmy Counts:

#DragonBallSuper [#7 with 1,856 tweets]

#Boruto [#17 with 1,423 tweets]

#MyHeroAcademia [#7 with 2382 tweets]

#MobPsycho100 [#12 with 1,467 tweets]

#MegaloBox [#18 with 816 tweets]

#JoJosBizarreAdventure [#18 with 924 tweets]

#BlackClover [#17 with 1,008 tweets]

Tumblr Trends:

#Toonami

#BNHA

Notes and Other Statistics:

#Toonami: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @blumspew and @ToeiAnimation started the trend in the US.

#MobPsycho100: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @Kirbopher and @CaseyTheVA started the trend in the US.

#JoJosBizarreAdventure: @WhoTrendedIT reported that @DC_Douglas started the trend in the US.

Special thanks to @coreymbarnes  and others I forgot to mention for spotting some of the trends on this list.

Split it evenly, 50/50. Only Toonami on [adult swim] on Cartoon Network.

[paperbookteacat-blog]

Sorry all, I am pretty late on this one. This is due to a double whammy of a vacation and then getting seriously sick from the vacation. Better late than never some say. Here are my thoughts on Anime Winter 2019, any other anime I’m watching, and the Spring 2019 season thoughts…

Winter 2019 I watched:

Kemurikusa

Mob Psycho 100 II

Boogiepop wa Warawanai

The Promised Neverland

Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace note – A Grave Keeper, a Cat, and a Mage

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka

Grimms Notes The Animation

Karakuri Circus

Anime I am watching, but not part of Winter/Spring:

Kino’s Journey, 2003 and 2017

Winter 2019

Kemurikusa

Synopsis

The story follows girls who fight with weird entities nicknamed “mushi” (bugs) and survive in a world of red fog.

(Source: Anime News Network)

-Image from LiveChart.me

Episode 12/12 (Complete!): I really loved this one and its a shame it was languishing on Amazon Prime. While I don’t think it ever would have been the season favorite, I will probably remember it for times to come. The characters manage to be charming even if they aren’t deep, I also loved the theme of sisterhood and how the girls stuck together no matter what. I enjoyed the build up of the mystery, the ultimate solution and even how certain things remained unresolved or uncertain. Ultimately I loved the vibe of the show. Despite the bleakness there was a hopeful spirit to it. For something that could have had an epic scale, instead it felt cozy and intimate. I highly recommend this if you want some cozy post-apocalyptic anime.

Mob Psycho 100 II

Synopsis

Kageyama Shigeo, a.k.a. “Mob,” is a boy who has trouble expressing himself, but who happens to be a powerful esper. Mob is determined to live a normal life and keeps his ESP suppressed, but when his emotions surge to a level of 100%, something terrible happens to him!

As he’s surrounded by false espers, evil spirits, and mysterious organizations, what will Mob think? What choices will he make?

(Source: Crunchyroll)

-Image LiveChart.me

Episode 13/13 (Complete!): I really enjoyed this one too! A heavy hitter of the season and deservedly so. Despite a few hiccups in the beginning, it ended up being better written than the first season. I don’t have any real deep thoughts on this one and hope there is a season 3 so we can see how the new Team Reigen interacts. Someone to out awkward Mob!

Boogiepop wa Warawanai

Synopsis

There is an urban legend that children tell one another about a shinigami that can release people from the pain they may be suffering. This “Angel of Death” has a name: Boogiepop. And the legends are true. Boogiepop is real.

When a rash of disappearances involving female students breaks out at Shinyo Academy, the police and faculty assume they just have a bunch of runaways on their hands. But Nagi Kirima knows better. Something mysterious and foul is afoot. Is it Boogiepop, or something more sinister…?

(Source: Seven Seas Entertainment)

-Image from LiveChart.me

Episode 17/18 (DNF!): I stopped caring and didn’t finish this one. An utter disappoint. I just recommend people read the light novels. The only parts that seem to be interesting are the ones around Nagi Kirima but she didn’t show up in the final arc so…. bleh.

The Promised Neverland: 12/12 (Complete!): I wasn’t planning on this but wow was this an incredible romp! That said, I have mixed feelings on the ending. It felt like this anime preferred SURPRISE! rather than telling a good story. There was one revelation in particular that made me feel like I was watching a completely different anime and certain scenes didn’t line up. But then there was the revelation between Mother and Ray that was actually well done?  IDK, while I enjoyed the ride, its hard for me to 100% recommend or go onto season 2 (if there is one).

Lord El-Melloi II’s Case Files {Rail Zeppelin} Grace note – A Grave Keeper, a Cat, and a Mage: 1/1 (Complete!): Although I’m not too invested in the Fate franchise overall I did enjoy Zero and Waver Velvet so I watched this. Well done and there is going to be another episode in Summer 2019 which I will definitely catch!

Magical Girl Spec-Ops Asuka: 12/12 (Complete!): Another show I just happened to check out and it really it me in the soft spot. I love magical girls and bro-y military anime and this had both! Combined with some interesting world-building and character development and this show had me hooked. I hope there is a season 2, but the ending made it satisfactory, even if it does not.

Grimms Notes The Animation

Episodes 12/12 (Complete!): This one was ok to start but kind of went off the rails. At first it was sympathetic to fairytale villains like Snow White’s step mom and John Silver, but then completely forget them in order to hone in on the point that the good guys are fighting to preserve stories, even if they suck. I feel like Mattel did better on this subject. I don’t really recommend this.

Karakuri Circus

Episode – Current! – Ongoing!: This show is continuing on and should end with the Spring season if I am correct. It just put on its third and final opening, which is nice and uplifting. I still feel like this is an underrated anime. Every episode has been entertaining if not heart wrenching, and I love where most of the plot lines are going. It also weird to think of where this anime started.

Watching, but not part of the anime season

Kino’s Journey -the Beautiful World- the Animated Series

I don’t which remember which episode I stopped at but blargh this is sooooooo bad in terms of getting the point of the light novels and the Kino character. Its almost on par with Boogiepop in terms of how can you rip the heart and soul of an adaptation so badly? I kind of want to do a 2003 vs 2017 post but don’t want to finish this. ;_;

Also I watched the 2003 version and it surprisingly holds up well for an older anime. Shoot, my heart was in my throat for nearly every episode. I recommend this one.

Merc Storia: Mukiryoku Shounen to Bin no Naka no Shoujo

Slowly working my way through this one. Its cute but meant for a younger audience. I have a hard time watching as Yu is a boring protagonist.

Overall Winter 2019 was amazing for me. More great watches then disappointments. While I have my eyes open for Spring 2019 there isn’t anything calling to me that I can watch (*shakes a fist at One Punch Man Hulu exclusive*) so I’m concentrating on older anime that I missed out on. You might see them on this blog when I finish or DNF them.

A big problem this season is that there are so many supernatural anime, its hard to tell them apart so I’ll check out which ones people are still watching a few weeks in.

Also this is good for my other hobbies. I really need to finish Kingdom Hearts 3, I’m about 2/3 done with it along with some other games on my list. Also I need to concentrate on posts and social media more!

Hope you all had a good anime season! What did you like or not like? And thanks for checking out this Big Bite!

Finally going over #Anime Winter 2019. There was a lot of good stuff this season! And my plans going forward! Sorry all, I am pretty late on this one. This is due to a double whammy of a vacation and then getting seriously sick from the vacation.

[xtremedespair3d]

Anime Winter 2019 Final Impressions + Plans for Spring 2019

(I’ve seen Screen Rant and Crunchyroll using this shot as a thumbnail for news posts when the second trailer dropped, so I might as well use it too 😂)

The very first anime season of the year ends and we’re moving on to the next one, and it appears that this season is going to be the best one yet, before I discuss why with what shows I’m going to watch, let’s go back to the Winter season to rank every show I watched this season!

(Just don’t expect to see Kaguya-sama on this post, I haven’t really watched it at all, sorry. (but I will binge it eventually))

1.- Mob Psycho 100 II: Mob Psycho 100 continues to be a sakuga wonder and powerful storylines, I always thought the first season would be much more memorable for me, but I think this season definitely tops the character development and plotlines.

As for the sakuga wonder, this proves why Mob Psycho 100 is being held at better hands unlike One Punch Man, it went from Madhouse to JC Staff which is utterly disappointing, but Mob Psycho 100 being adapted by Bones and continuing to work on it is the best thing the series ever has.

I still haven’t read the manga but I can probably tell this is not the series finale, I wonder if there could still be a third and final season so it can adapt the final volumes of the manga, since it has ended recently, that third season would come in a quicker time, maybe like a year, a year and a half, or two, I don’t know, but it’s not impossible for that to happen anytime soon.

10/10 - Rank: S++ - 100% - AOTS #1.

2.- Kemurikusa: This all-new reboot has completely lived up to my expectations and it delivered some neat changes to the original and some big surprises.

Part of my experience was a bit dragged by the uncultured assholes that is 4chan with “Kemono Friends 2″ is better and such (Since it’s 4chan, some of them could be trolls, some of them could tell the truth, can’t really tell for sure), but it didn’t completely ruin my enjoyment of Kemurikusa, this is no big deal. And then there’s also the janky animation, but it’s Tatsuki’s quirk, so I’m not completely bothered by that and let him have it.

There are still some plot holes around the universe and everything else that raises questions after witnessing certain moments, but I think it’s best to leave things as it is, I wouldn’t expect Tatsuki to answer every single question, or even touch the world again.

I wonder what's next for Tatsuki now that Kemurikusa is finished when it comes to a new TV project, another remake of his classics or a completely original series? He would probably continue doing shorts for now. Either way, I totally need more Tatsuki TV projects since Kemono Friends. But for now, I would expect to see shorts being posted by parts on Twitter and then the full compilation on YouTube and NicoNico.

I almost forgot, I needed to address something: For the longest time I’ve been hyping up to watch the original 30 minute series before watching this reboot, I realized that you don’t really need to watch the original, but you should at least acknowledge its existence. But if you want to compare this to the original that badly, then you do need to watch the original. (We’re back in square one lol)

And for all the haters, please read this thread, and when you finish doing so, apologize and go take the L, conche tu madre, thank you.

10/10 - Rank: S++ - 100% - AOTS #2.

UPDATE - April 4th: Okay, a week after the finale’s release (Wednesday), Tatsuki out of the blue released a brand new 12.1 short video! (So far it raises so many questions)

I genuinely did not expect to see more Kemurikusa content, sequels even, but this is quite a surprise. I don’t know how long this is going to be but I’m sure it could be a weekly release. Anyways, this is really neat.

Smiley Riku is best Riku.

3.- The Promised Neverland: This was a pretty solid adaptation and the suspense has kept me on the edge of my seat constantly.

I’m so happy to see that a second season got announced for 2020. I wonder if it’s going to be a My Hero Academia situation, where it started with 13 episodes (in TPN’s case, it was 12 episodes long) and later seasons have two-cours.

9/10 - Rank: S - 95%

4.- BanG Dream! season 2: The first season heavily focused on building Poppin’ Party, this season features all of the bands and some episodes were focused on each band, which I was really interested, definitely looking forward to the 3rd season in Fall. (which I genuinely forgot it was coming out too)

Speaking of season 3, I recently researched that Rokka is a member of RAISE A SUILEN, and I wonder if S3 might get a storyline with Rokka becoming a member of RAS.

This looks way better than Monster Strike, I like that the characters have more like shading/lighting than being pure cell-shaded anime-like, but my common complaint with Sanzigen, or maybe even CG anime in general, is that they tend to make some background characters completely hand drawn which doesn’t blend well with the CG characters, it’s just horribly noticeably bad and inconsistent. You can add hand drawn effects and such, but for the love of god, never do hand drawn background characters and even main characters in flashbacks. (like Lay and Tae)

The third season was originaly going to come out on Fall but it got delayed to Winter 2020, which is a bummer, it could have been like BBK/BRNK three years ago but time is always needed.

9/10 - Rank: S - 96% - AOTS #4

5.- Ikki Tousen: Western Wolves: After spending an entire week binging everything Ikki Tousen, I couldn’t wait to see what Western Wolves had in store given on what I last saw with Extravaganza Epoch (even though I kind of forgot already), with 3 episodes for 3 months, this was a solid series with good fan service.

I hope I won’t wait for another 5 years or so for another series.

8.5/10 - Rank: A+ - 88%

6.- Kakegurui XX: Now I’m worried if this was a worthy follow-up given MAPPA’s track record of making crappy second seasons, best example being Rage of Bahamut: Virgin Soul.

Occasionally I was less motivated to watch an episode when it came out raw and rewatch that episode with subtitles by whatever group and sometimes I also felt like this series was way over-the-top than I previously felt like the first season

Anyways, I thought it was a decent follow-up.

7.5/10 - Rank: A- - 76%

7.- Manaria Friends: Decent series, but the most important thing I want to talk about is, this was supposed to come out on April 1st, 2016, but it got on hold a month prior its release. Since CygamesPictures was founded in 2016, perhaps they took the series and reworked into what it is now, after 3 years of reproduction and release, I wonder if it was even worth the wait. I’m also surprised the show is 15 minutes long, I’m not sure if this was part of the original version, but it’s that kind of short.

For some strange reason, I wish any footage of the original version of Manaria Friends would be leaked somewhere. 😁

Now with Manaria Friends released, and with the upcoming Princess Connect! Re:Dive anime series (and maybe they even took Granblue Fantasy: The Animation (that’s right, it’s confirmed that it’ll get a second season) away from A-1, that’s my theory), let’s see what does CygamesPictures have in store when it comes to anime based on their IP and maybe even original projects of their own (which has gotten me more curious since I’m an original anime fanboy).

Also, the show’s English title is called “Mysteria Friends” for some reason. (Well, not really “for some reason”, there’s definitely a reason why, but I’m not that big of a Rage of Bahamut person)

I never knew the show was going to be 10 episodes long, since it premiered late in January, I thought it would run for 12 episodes which it could be in April, which is way late to the Anime Winter 2019 closing party, but closing the series at episode 10 feels like a good time.

7/10 - Rank: A- - 74%

8.- Boogiepop wa Waranai: Not much to comment on this one, and I haven’t really read the LNs, but this one seems interesting. The only thing I’m not a fan of is its own style of character designs, it just looks weird and doesn’t really respect much to the original artist’s style, which lead to this whole thing with this Twitter rants and Kadokawa apologizing for the miscommunication (Can’t stop talking about this), so I guess the damage control wasn’t worth it to get used to the anime’s designs. At least the animation and visuals look good, though.

7/10 - Rank: B - 70%

9.- Lupin the 3rd: Goodbye Partner: After Part 5, I didn’t expect a new OVA special would appear right away, it’s a self-contained OVA special, it doesn’t have anything to do with Part 5 at all, though.

The only thing I’m super dissatisfied is that in 37 minutes, it seems like there was a huge skip, we jump to a crazy situation right away, after a conflict Lupin and Goemon had with Jigen minutes prior, we see that they’re working together again, like, what? It’s just feels so random...

7/10 - Rank: B+ - 72%

10.- Mini Toji: This franchise continues to give less of an impact in my life and to consider it to be on the range that of Kancolle and Touken Ranbu (you know, those games I always joke about that Toji no Miko is their baby), one year later after the base anime series, they decided to make a short spin-off series, I couldn’t turn down the offer to watch it, I was curious on what’s it going to be, and the show overall is alright, it is funny at times and I had some laughs but it’s not too hilarious.

As for the chibi style, it just looks so weird. Seeing the image below which I found in 4chan when episode 8 came out just makes me wish they could have chose this style instead of the one from Mini Toji because the current style just looks so wrong.

And there’s also the most painful, if not, the worst running gag ever, Kaoru is always getting mission jobs from her boss, every episode we see her tired and it makes me feel super bad for her, let her rest, let her suffering end. ;_;

Not to mention the show has a very sluggish pace, everything happens so fast I don’t even have time to understand or even laugh at what the fuck is going on. For a 3 minute short series, the best thing they could have gone is make a shorter opening or don’t feature an OP at all, just feature a title card to open the show and that’s it. Or maybe they could have extended the run time to 7 minutes (a la Sugoiyo!! Masaru-san) so I can enjoy the pace better.

Unlike Manaria Friends, I did know but then I forgot this series was 11 episodes long, but at the same time it threw me off thinking there could be an 11th episode but then I realized episode 0 counts.

6/10 - 60% - Rank: C-

And now... time for the top 3 worst anime of the season!

11.- W’z: I’ve probably never paid a lot of attention to the trailers (and even vaguely remember it), I thought it would be a stand-alone and different kind of series with a lot more music themed or something, but when the series premiered, it revealed itself as a sequel to Hand Shakers... THAT’S RIGHT, A SEQUEL TO HAND SHAKERS NOBODY ASKED FOR.

Despite being surprised that W’z is a sequel to Hand Shakers, I’ve grown to really like the series overall in a short amount of time, it makes me like Hand Shakers more than I previously could.

In like 3 or even 4 episodes, I couldn’t stop fanboying out constantly seeing the characters from Hand Shakers who look so grown up after the 10 year time jump after the series happened.

I mentioned that I thought that W’z was self contained, there are some moments and characters that are barely self-contained because the plot is all heavily linked to Hand Shakers (not that I’m complaining, though). I genuinely didn’t care much for the new characters, except Yukiya because he’s the adopted son of Break and Bind (Real names: Reijiro and Yukine Araki, respectively) , and he’s the McGuffin for accessibility to the Ziggurat to find Nagaoka and Mayumi. The one character I was the least satisfied for their lack of development was Midori, at first he’s had a couple of interesting moments, but the rest he barely appeared in the series and only in the previews, but in episode 9, they finally gave him plenty of screentime and even dropped some good info bombs on what the Ziggurat can do and stuff, so that redeemed my feelings on the character.

Another complaint would be the DJ Nielsen character, he’s got interesting motives and he’s the one who gave Reijiro baby Yukiya in a flashback, but his rapper-kind of voice can be so annoying. He and CHU2 from BanG Dream S2 would make a great team, or maybe a contest on who speaks the worst. (SPOILER ALERT: It’s a draw, they’re both so bad in different levels)

Then we get to episode 10 where the most important thing is that NAGAOKA AND MAYUMI FINALLY SHOWED UP. It actually took so long for them to appear because there was like a lot of stuff in the way, but whatever, I was so happy to see them... albeit with a caveat. Since the goal was to get Nagaoka and Mayumi out of the Ziggurat, it turns out that the duo themselves can’t get out because they want to live a normal life and Nagaoka was sick, as Mayumi said. It’s a little sad and it sucks that they can’t get out, but at least Mayumi had a phone call with Koyori after all.

I thought episode 12 with a Midori/Seba episode (it wasn’t an episode dedicated to those two) and to be on par with Hand Shakers with the 12 episode total, but I’m glad there was a 13th episode to have a good conclusion, and boy, this episode delivered some good surprises: The biggest moment is where Nagaoka told Yukiya how much he has grown and then Yukiya himself straight-up called him “Dad”, like three episodes prior, I had theorized that Yukiya would be Nagaoka and Mayumi’s true biological son but I backed off because I thought it would be disturbing (maybe not really, Mayumi must be old after the 10 year gap and she and Koyori don’t look like they have aged at all), BUT IN REALITY, HE REALLY IS, GOHANDS THE FUCKING MADMEN. The second thing I was happy to see was Makihara, at long last the man finally shows up, he always narrated the first few episodes and I couldn’t stop saying “Show yourself, Makihara!” or something and then there were a couple of namedrops, they took so long but maybe they wanted to save Makihara’s appearance in the flesh for last.

This may not be the biggest deal, but since every single character from Hand Shakers appeared in W’z all grown up and such, the one thing I really wasn’t happy with is the absence of Hibiki and Kodama. Sure, they both got namedropped once (though Kodama was namedropped twice) and mentioned their current careers (Kodama being a singer and actress and Hibiki being a costume designer) but I never got to see them at all, maybe they weren’t the most popular amongst GoHands’ staff. They weren’t my bigger favorites of the Hand Shakers cast (and I don’t mean it in a negative way) but seeing them how they have aged would have been really worth it, come on, GoHands!

Despite the hideous visuals GoHands has grown to have in recent years, I really liked W’z, it makes me like Hand Shakers more than I previously could. If I really liked the show so much, then why it’s in the top 3 of my worst anime of the season? Well, mainly for the aforementioned hideous visuals, while they don’t bother me much, it’s for the sake of people who can’t stomatch it. (Says the guy who put Kemurikusa on second place and gave it a 10/10, Rank: S++, 100%).

Like Kemurikusa, W’z also has a couple of plot holes, which I don’t really expect they could get answered that much, but some parts certainly raise a lot of questions, most notable, this Composer character, we never got to see who was this Composer Senri and Hana worked with. (They both don’t have in common, but they both made me ask questions about the plot and lore.)

Regardless on how you feel about the visuals nowadays, I still want GoHands to continue doing projects, one day they’ll return to their former glory with good visuals like the K franchise and they’ll win their old fans back, but the more important thing is that I still want to see them creating interesting stories.

I’d like to see more stuff taken place in the Hand Shakers universe, just don’t make sequels with every 10 year gap because I don’t want to see all the characters from Hand Shakers and W’z grow really old and die, prequels would be fine to explore more on the Akutagawa/Okuike families and/or fill the 10 year gap between said series. If GoHands decides to make completely different IP that’s not set in the Hand Shakers universe, being its own self-contained universe, I would be totalyl fine too. (I previously thought W’z was a self-contained series before it premiered after all.)

You can call me a lunatic or tell me I’m high, and say whatever you want about Hand Shakers/W’z, I’ve grown to like the franchise and I got the balls to tolerate the visuals unlike you. Besides, It’s not about the visuals anymore, it’s about enjoying the story a lot more.

By the way, I made this meme ages ago and I’m so proud of it. 😂

5/10 - Rank: C - 52% - (AOTS #5 :^) ).

12.- Virtualsan - Looking: This got announced and released a trailer simultaneously out of nowhere, but when I saw the trailer (though it was focused at introducing the main VTubers) and the opening preview, I always thought the show was going to look half-assed, and indeed it did. And speaking of the opening, this series should have been hand-drawn so it would have been cooler to see the VTubers that way.

The bigger problem is that there’s no Kizuna AI at all, which many people aren’t happy with, I’m not worried too much since I like seeing the other VTubers (people should at least watch other kinds of VTubers, not just Kizuna AI alone). Even if Kizuna AI sings the first opening theme, it won’t make up for the fact that she’s completely absent. (At least try to learn to like other VTubers the same way you have your many normal YouTubers/Let’s Players you like, you dumb fucks)

The weirdest selling point of this show, Hideaki Anno was involved in the series. Yes, you read that right, the very same guy who did Evangelion and Shin Godzilla. No wonder why there’s this one sketch where we see the main cast dressed as the girl school uniforms from EVA.

The title of the show, Virtualsan - Looking has given a lot more meaning as I kept watching, it turns out that it’s actually referred to the VTuber Baacharu always watching, he always pops up at the very start of every episode and he’s a recurring star in “Listen Sister!” (forgot the name already, oops) where he always get thrown by Tokino Sora in order to confess to Sister Claire herself [Tokino]. Then he occasionally appears at this Siro segment where some VTubers take a seat and Siro gives a lot of trivia about different topics (then Baacharu became the last guest to star in this segment). It all makes sense now, but for some reason the subtitles called Baacharu “Virtual”.

Speaking of localization, for some reason Crunchyroll decided to license the series a week after its release, but guess what? The episode release schedule was behind, they simulcast the previous episode before the new one aired in Japan, that is until with episodes 5 or 6 which made things even.

There’s no real reason for me to hate this series, I quite enjoyed it and had a lot of laughs throughout the series but the half-assed special effects and stuff are not for the faint of Western audiences’ heart.

Though, I gotta say, this has the potential to spawn more genuine VTuber anime, I’m really optimistic to see more of them in the future.

4.5/10 - Rank: D+ - 48%

13.- Kemono Friends 2: *sigh* Oh boy, trying to write a series review on this one is going to be really tough, but to make it short, it’s as expected, Kemono Friends 2 is a soulless cash grab of a show, a shadow of its former self, definitely the WORST of the season. There’s just so many problems the show has:

Recycled storyline from the first season with a new human character nobody asked for.

Boring ass opening theme song that isn’t memorable and isn’t singable like WELCOME TO YOUKOSO JAPARI PARK.

Having two characters who serve the Raccoon and Fennec-type of roles. (despite having them featured in the OP numerous times and started to appear on episode 10)

Ceruleans look like unfinished CG mess compared to every character and heck, even the Ceruleans from the first season.

Occasionally inconsistent framerate from character movements, most of the time is a bit slow but there are a few times that it goes really fast.

Completely wiped out Serval’s memories of the events from the first season

etc.

Let’s go part by part:

The biggest crime of this season is of course not following the To Be Continued teased at the end of the first season and they decided to soft-reboot the series with a totally new human character, Kyururu.

Then, enter Armadillo and Pangolin, two characters who are looking for Kyururu for reasons [that is from the beginning of the series, later it was explained why they did it, it was to bring Kyururu to Domestic Dog], sound familiar? That’s because their roles are very like Raccoon and Fennec from the first season... when Raccoon and Fennec ALWAYS appeared in the opening (and then finally appeared on episode 10).

Speaking of the opening, the theme is a boring jazz earrape and it’s certainly not memorable or even singable as the first season’s opening, WELCOME TO YOUKOSO JAPARI PARK, those days are over.

I mostly didn’t even care for literally every character in the series. However, there are characters I do care, Kaban-chan (which I’ll discuss about her in a bit) of course, I will always care for Kaban-chan, and Domestic Dog, she’s the one Friend I’d definitely protecc because she’s a doggo and I feel bad for her in episode 8. The characters I’d definitely least protecc are Kyururu, nobody asked for a brand new human to take the Kaban-chan role, and Serval, because she doesn’t remember shit about the first season, they kind of ruined her character.

Serval was the worst change that has ever happened to her, as I stated, they basically wiped out all of her memories of the first season (or so it seems). Caracal told Serval that she had traveled with a human before and there was a small flash with Kaban-chan’s silhouette, this is one of the many things this season broke my heart very badly.

As for Caracal, the chemistry between her and Serval this season didn’t absolutely work here. Her character is depicted kind of a tsundere compared to her Welcome to Japari Park version which, gotta be honest, I definitely prefer the Welcome to Japari Park version and voice way better than the Kemono Friends 2 one. Without disrespecting the VA way too much, her voice for Caracal didn’t work for the character.

Rewatched a small portion of the first season, despite Serval having the same VA, she sounds a little different in Kemono Friends 2.

Speaking of Welcome to Japari Park, there’s the finale coming up in two weeks, so I hope it has a better conclusion than Kemono Friends 2 (which I’ll talk about later).

Now... let’s talk about Kaban-chan! If Serval wasn’t that of a poorly written character enough, Kaban-chan has definitely suffered the most! At the end of episode 5, a paper plane with a flame on its tip was flying out of nowhere, just to drive the Beast away, I heard a voice and IT WAS KABAN-CHAN!!! I was so happy that she finally appeared and I was eager to see more of her in the next episode, then the next week came and... she had plenty of screentime but... SHE DIDN’T DO SHIT! SHE DIDN’T DO A LOT OF SHIT, LIKE, SHE COULD HAVE INTERACTED WITH KYURURU A LOT MORE ABOUT WHAT DOES SHE WANT AND EVERYTHING, I CANNOT FORGIVE THIS EVER!

Well, it’s not like I wanted her with Serval to be like “Hey, Serval! Do you remember me?”, I understand she had her reasons and she must have been aware on Serval’s memory or something, but at the same time, she didn’t do a lot, though later in the episode, it was more focused on Kyururu talking to the owls about the origin of the Ceruleums, Kyururu theorized that the Ceruleans must have been spawned from the sea, and they all decide to test this out, which I don’t really blame too much that it turned out that way because they need to focus more on the overarching story of Kyururu’s search for her house, but come on...

At the end of the episode, Kaban says goodbye to the main trio, but most importantly, to Serval, as she asked Caracal to take care of her, she was downright sad.This episode was completely unsatisfying that I went so far to make a review out of it.

But that’s not the end of Kaban-chan, as she did appear in the final episodes, which I’ll talk about them in a bit...

But I gotta say, I really dig Kaban-chan’s new design. She has indeed grown up given by her height and her matured voice. 👌

There’s something I haven’t discussed very often and that is the NicoNico ratings. I haven’t seen these very often but I’ve seen two screenshots of two random episodes of the ratings, and guess what? Japan definitely voted for the “I didn’t like it.” option! Here’s a screenshot of episode 6:

This is the exact same episode with the underwhelming reunion with Kaban-chan, it deserved it.

This is very funny because, two years ago, Pop Team Epic also a lot of dislike ratings, but it’s not because PTE is bad bad, I think it’s because it’s a kuso anime and people would follow the gag that it sucks or something, but in the case of Kemono Friends 2, it’s plain bad.

Moving on, episode 9 came by, the PPP episode, and there was no Crunchyroll-Hime cameo from the first season, wow, the disrespect. Then we get to see Crested Ibis again! Though she was not a main Friend of the episode (as it is a PPP-centered episode), she has become more of a minor role, just doing auditions, she even name dropped Alpaca.

Next we’ve come to the one episode where Armadillo and Pangolin finally captured Kyururu and brought to her master, the master appeared to be a Friend called Domestic Dog. She started talking to Kyururu that she has finally met a human after a long time, she brings Kyururu to her house and OH MY GOD, SHE MADE DOG SOUNDS, DEFINITELY PROTECC, I’M BEING SERIOUS, PROTECC.

Then comes the scene where Doggo was protecting Kyururu from the Beast, the moment I saw her full of scratches and dirt, my god, I cannot unsee that, that was horrifying.

(Yes, I couldn’t resist bringing John Wick jokes)

Then when doggo let go of Kyururu, to come back to her friends, I felt so bad for her. I saw a comment on Crunchyroll where someone said “Oh no, she’s Seymour from Futurama” and things couldn’t be any more painful.

Right at the end of the episode, these two Friends from a promotional poster I saw a while before the series premiered finally showed up.

They’re purpose was to give Kyururu some sort of existential crisis (well, not that much) by asking her if her house really exists, why did she made her drawings, etc.

Now we’re finally in episode 10 where Raccoon and Fennec finally appear after being in the OP literally every episode ever (Maybe I was asking for meaning or pay-off way too much), then KABAN-CHAN REAPPEARS and that time she was hella serious because she, the professor and her assistant, found out that there were Ceruleans being spawned from Kyururu’s drawings. Kyururu then made a drawing of literally every Friend she has met, including Pigeon which she just met but wanted to include her, and that immediately screamed maximum danger, as I thought there would be a huge army of Ceruleans shaped like the Friends, this is where things got interesting.

Episode 11, comes this war of Friends vs Ceruleans shaped like them, blah blah blah...

Episode 12 came and NOW LET’S TALK ABOUT THE ENDING!

THE ENDING, I.... TAKE A LOOK AT THIS!

Then there’s the post-credits scene:

My face during the very end:

................................................................................................................................................................................................can somebody explain to me what the fuck just happened?

That Kaban-chan and Serval scene........ how could they do this to me.... and I don’t mean it in a good way.... Then that drawing with Mirai and two other Japari Park workers...................

THEY JUST MADE KABAN-CHAN SUFFER!!! ;_;

AND THEN THAT JAPARI PARK FRIENDS DRAWING, WHO ARE THE OTHER TWO WORKERS, MIRAI GETS TO CAMEO, EVERYTHING AAAAAAAAAAAAA

FUCK... THAT!!!

Sure, these moments should bring hype and I should be happy that they did this, the Kaban-chan and Serval scene and the drawing, but it won’t work for me, Kemono Friends 2 tries really hard to redeem itself with hype-worthy moments like these, they just won’t make up for this irredeemable garbage.

Now, I wasn’t a douche on watching the entire series, there are some moments that I found genuinely interesting, had some laughs and made me smile (probably out of confusion, I have problems smiling even on inappropiate shit), the models perfectly capture Mine Yoshizaki’s art style, but without disrespecting Tatsuki, at the same time the models feel lifeless compared to the first season’s.

One thing I don’t understand about the designs is that I’ve seen people in 4chan blaming Tomason for the lazy designs and stuff, or something like that because I’ve seen them use “they” and I don’t really think they’re referring to Yoshizaki, they must have been really referring to Tomason, and that’s not true, Mine Yoshizaki does all of the Friends’ designs, and please don’t call some of them lazy, don’t disservice the man.

Then there are also the next episode previews made by Kikuchi Milo featuring the characters from the first season. Because of Crested Ibis’ minor appearance in episode 9, now I kind of wish the Friends from the first season to show up in the series, not just the next episode previews.

There were also two ED themes, which I find it bizarre that a one-cour series changes theme songs.

We never got to learn more about the Beast character though, she was like an underdeveloped Friend and she behaved more like a genuine tiger animal or something, we never get to learn her origin, or even her race.

Boy, this review turned out way better than I expected, I had a lot of fun writing about this soulless pile of trash. I hope the Welcome to Japari Park finale will help me forget this shit, let’s see how it would build up to the first season of Kemono Friends given that it’s a prequel and this is really old footage, I’m sure there must be how the future of the series got set up or something.

This might have been the most brutal anime review I’ve ever written but it’s the truth.

Watch Kemono Friends 3 get announced but inb4 it could be an adaptation of the mobile/arcade game of the same name instead of following the anime’s overarching story.

Though I think if Kemono Friends 3 happens, it could still be a continuation of the anime's story and it has nothing to do with the mobile/arcade game of the same name. It could be a similar situation with Welcome to Japari Park where there's a manga and a short series and they're both totally unrelated.

To conclude this series review, let me just say this:

Kemono Friends 2 is the Pacific Rim: Uprising of anime.

0/10 - Rank: E - 0% 🔥 🔥 🔥  Hail Hydra (or in this case Hail Kadokawa) No Tatsuki, No Tanoshii

Fuck you, Kadokawa. 🖕

Fall 2018 ongoing:

At last, ongoing anime from the previous season, I wasn’t having this streak lately and it was about time I had it.

JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind: JoJo Part 5 continues to be strong. There’s not much to add but I got some small things to say: When I’m 4chan threads, seeing screenshots of Part 4 makes me realize that Part 4 is the WORST looking and poorly produced part out of all the rest, thankfully Part 5 looks way better.

Since I was so accostumed on how the characters sound like in All Star Battle and Eyes of Heaven, the new voices have definitely grown on me now.

Also, how does King Crimson work?

Ace Attorney season 2: I genuinely had this post written with JoJo as the only ongoing Fall 2018 anime alone and somehow I have forgotten about Ace Attorney despite still watching the series. I feel like I enjoyed the Bridge to the Turnabout episodes a lot more.

I felt like this second season has genuinely given me a little bit of a sour taste in my mouth unlike the first season, which it definitely lead me to drop the series, but I didn’t drop it completely, I have picked it up again around episode 10 because I felt bad.

Now, let’s start talking about the Spring season, and why is this going to be the best anime season yet? Well...

1.- Kimestu no Yaiba - April 6: I’M SO LOOKING FORWARD TO THIS ONE! Ahem, well, to tell you the truth, I just love being wowed by Ufotable’s fantastic visuals. I’m definitely checking this one blindly, I feel like this is something I should read the manga because I’m starting to feel like it could be an unfaithful narrative mess, and it’s already making me sad. But is Ufotable the type of studio to go off the rails and completely butcher the story? (Probably God Eater as people say but I don’t really see what’s with the hate and why is it offensively bad, I played God Eater Burst long afterwards, though. Call me an Ufotable stan if you want, but I really don’t see any problem with God Eater even when I binged it years ago, aside from a bit of animation hiccups (probably the/my first with (modern) Ufotable having a bit of hiccups) but I don’t mind it, I just enjoyed the way it is; people are gonna tell me this too and I’d be like totally disagreeing their opinions, refusing to seek the reality; I’d love to rush my ass off and read the manga like I did with One Punch Man, My Hero Academia and Monster Musume but I’m just so lazy to do it now, and I can’t read manga with over 100 chapters long.)

I always watch a lot of anime without even reading the manga first, even I don’t read JoJo (Even though I know some of the biggest spoilers from every part through the games) and Mob Psycho 100, but for some reason Kimetsu no Yaiba feels like a huge deal for me, I wish I couldn’t let the opportunity of reading the manga first go to waste, yet, I’m here about to watch the anime. I wish I could have realized this sooner.

Anyways, enough of that insane talk and wouldn’t boost hype confidence, I’m still going to enjoy it regardless how the story goes and the music might be something worth praising because the composers are fucking Yuki Kajiura and Go Shiina, animation and visuals are no surprise worth of praise , I’m just ready to watch Ufotable’s next big TV project since Katsugeki: Touken Ranbu. (yes, there was 2018′s Emiya-san chi no Kyou no Gohan but it was a monthly series and each episode was 12 minutes long, so it’s not kind of a big deal; then there’s also the Heaven’s Feel movie trilogy (loved the second movie (even though I’m an anime only, I’m legit scared of Gavin and other kinds of elitists now; even though he unfollowed me)), but like I said, TV project)

As of March 27th, I read some news that Ufotable is under investigation over tax evasion and now I’ve grown way concerned than I was. It may not affect the releases of Kimetsu no Yaiba and even Fate/Stay Night Heaven’s Feel III but I just don’t want to see Ufotable close. After Kimetsu no Yaiba come out, let’s see how Ufotable will do.

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Quick update, I HAVE read the first three chapters, it’s relatively solid and given on the scenes I’ve seen in the trailers, I do believe Ufotable is going to make a pretty good job on adapting the series faithfully narratively.

But most importantly so far, I hope Ufotable will do justice this panel! Which I had posted this on my Kemono Friends 2 series review.

Bones disappointed me with the anime version of Mina’s “NO WAY” scene from My Hero Academia, and I hope Ufotable won’t do the same, I want a perfect recreation of that Tanjiro face.

Here’s the comparison below:

Anime:

Manga:

Do you agree on this? (If you don’t, it’s fine, don’t worry about it)

UPDATE - April 13th:

UFOTABLE, YOU FUCKING BLEW IT!!! GET BANKRUPT!!!

I changed my mind about Bones with the Mina “NO WAY!” part, it actually looks faithfully recreated, UNLIKE UFOTABLE.

(Alright, I gotta stop updating this post constantly with what’s happening right now)

RELATED: What will Ufotable’s final release be?

2.- One Punch Man season 2 - April 2nd: I’ve said this before and I will say it again, I’m NOT expecting OPM S2 to be any good and I’m NOT looking forward to it, even if I say that, I’m still going to watch it, regardless, but I’m not very hopeful for the visuals (Man, all I ever care about in anime is the visuals, I don’t give a crap of the story, I just want good animation!).

Since the release date is revealed to be April 2nd, which is Tuesday, I’m going to miss the good old One Punch Man Sundays when the first season came out, but Tuesdays are a good day for anime, so it’s worth it.

Well, I wrote that sentence literally like a day or two, and a new visual got revealed, it looks clean but it’s already not gonna look like that, very S1-like, given the first teaser trailer released. That aside, Viz Media confirmed that it will be premiered on April 9th on Hulu (RIP Daisuki.net), which that’s on Saturday, so that’s close on the good old OPM Sundays 4 years ago.

Actually, I’m pretty split on that information, in one hand, the official Twitter account tweeted the visual with the April 2nd release, but in the other, Viz Media tweeted that it comes out in the 9th and calls it “the same day as Japan” and “ Details and availability regarding the April 2nd special programming in our territory are currently unavailable.”, I’m so confused.

(Sorry, this post has been in progress for the entire Winter season and I’m writing stuff I was currently experiencing at the time)

March 18th, the second trailer dropped and somehow I’m kind of alright with it, still not super impressed but at least it’s kind of something. But the biggest let-down is the new opening theme by JAM Project revealed in the trailer which it’s not as great as THE HERO. I’m a bigger fan of the way THE HERO is, I’m probably the more upbeat type of person, and with this? I don’t want something calm, I wanted a more action packed song! I hadn't payed a lot of attention to the editing of the trailer with the black screens, but yeah, it's so bad.

The more I think about the trailer and seeing people’s reactions, I’m starting to think it’s really looking like absolute ass than I previously mentioned, so I couldn’t agree more. But hey, at least I love seeing some of the jokes and memes related to the trailer.

I thought I had to wait until AnimeJapan to drop the trailer but they decided to do it now.

I now understand what’s with the April 2nd and April 9th releases. The April 2nd release is going to be more like an special of sorts and next week is when the series for real starts. It’s the same issue I had with Kemono Friends 2, but that was unpredictable at the time, so with One Punch Man, I can totally wait for next week. (At the time of posting this, the day has come)

3.- Attack on Titan season 3 second cour - April 28th: It’s seriously been like annoyingly forever after the first cour ended in Fall 2018, but I’m finally it’s going to continue.

I still don’t know what took so long, but whatever.

4.- Isekai Quartet - April 9th: From what I see now, this is going to be more like a show with different isekai projects focused as sketches or something, I randomly thought it would be a crossover but apparently it’s not the case. Regardless, I’m still going to watch and enjoy the way it is.

By the time I saw its announcement, I immediately went to binge Re:Zero, I have seen Youjo Senki, Overlord and Kono Suba, so I needed to watch Re:Zero so I can be complete or something.

Since I write this post as time goes on, the trailer for Isekai Quartet has released and indeed it is a crossover like I wanted!

5.- Girls’ Frontline comedy anime short - ???: It appears that we’re getting our first Girls’ Frontline anime and it’s a comedy which it’s even cooler.

The trailer was first revealed on a BiliBili livestream on January for Chinese audiences, then a few days later, there was another livestream taken place in VTuber Nekomiya Hinata’s channel for Japanese audiences, where they showed off the same trailer but one frame of new footage and then there’s a new trailer for another Girls’ Frontline anime, that’s right, we don’t have just one, but two different Girls’ Frontline comedy anime, this one’s focused on the AR Team and 404, and the other one has a variety of T-Dolls featured, but the former is the bigger focus here.

What I find rather surprising about this short anime is that ever since they showed the trailer on said livestreams, there’s no official upload of the trailer, not a whole lot of news sites reported about this, and not even a full release date after two months. I thought there would be more information on AnimeJapan 2019 but there was nothing in sight.

So I guess I’ll have to wait until April to see if this will indeed come out, it could be a surprise release not everyone is going to notice or it might be delayed to Summer. Nevertheless, I’m excited to see this one, and the other one too but I prefer this one with the AR Team and 404 the most.

By the way, thanks for tagging me twice on these Girls’ Frontline anime, Moetron. I’m happy that I let you know these trailers exist. Here, have this powerful image of G11 meditating.

6.- Fruits Basket remake - April 5th: I never watched the original Fruits Basket and I’ve been seeing a lot of announcements about returning English voice actors and stuff, I dunno why but I’m thinking the remake could be overhyped with all this stuff, but I’m sure it’s still going to be enjoyable for the people who read the manga, who watched the original anime series and newcomers alike.

Speaking of the manga, I wondered why is there a need for a remake now, one of my friends told me that there could be an actual ending of the series since the original anime prematuredly ended when the manga was still going at the time, so I believe the remake might add the manga’s ending or something, I don’t know anything about it but it sounds like a likely thing to happen.

7.- Miru Tights - May 11th: There isn’t much to comment on this one, but it’s interesting because it’s basically Yom the anime. Yep, the man of the thights is getting an anime. Who would knew one day this would happen? Also, it comes out on May 11th, it’s kind of an unusual date even for a web series.

8.- 四月一日さん家の (Watanuki-san Chi No) - April 19th: After Virtual-san wa Miteiru, it seems like the anime industry wouldn’t give up on start making anime with VTubers now.

Unlike Virtual-san wa Miteiru, this one’s not really classified as “anime”, it’s more like a drama as its official Twitter account says or something. Well, at least this show stars Tokino Sora as one of the three leads, so it’ll be interesting. Though I’m not sure anyone would really like to torrent this but at the same time it’d be a waste not to.

9.- Bungou Stray Dogs season 3 - April 12th: I’ve watched the first two seasons of the show in December 2017, then watched the movie in my cinema with my older sister on her birthday, I’m definitely quite a fan of the series, not completely hardcore as I need to read the manga, but I’m fine for now. Anyways, I’m glad there’s a third season happening and can’t wait to see it.

There was originally going to be a Chiitan anime this Spring but it got delayed to Summer. And yeah, you read that right, a Chiitan anime.

HONORABLE MENTION (Since that just happened): Pop Team Epic special: I genuinely forgot a special was going to occur on April 1st (being April Fools), but I’m glad I watched it and still loved it like the base series and now I want season 2.

Thanks for reading this post, this must have been the longest post I’ve ever made yet for so many reasons. What’s your most anticipated anime of the season?

Twitter: @HKomaeda.

[eshithepetty]

EXCELLENT CHOICE to actually show ???%'s expressions a little instead of them just being a black void with white, blank eyes. Especially since we don't get their internal narration like we do in the manga. Gives a nod to the fact that this is a person, not just an unthinking entity,,, i love it

[ID: two screenshots of Unknown Percentage from season 3, episode 10 of Mob Psycho 100, where they're first shown to be glaring, teeth gritted, then raising their head, eyes widening in what looks like surprise. End ID.]

Also, anyone else get the sense that here, ???% was leaning in to Teru to check if..... well, maybe not if he's okay, but if he's alive at least? Whether or not that means they care for Teru's well being, I'm not sure, but I find it interesting. In the least, it does show that they are aware that they are hurting people, and not just doing it indiscriminately, so that's something.

[ID: a screenshot of Unknown Percentage eerily leaning over Teru, who is prone. End ID.]

In light of that, it's also interesting to consider exactly what ???% kept attacking Teru for then. This part is gonna get a bit long, though (as ???% is my childe and I have many a dozen thoughts about them), so I'm putting it under readmore.

(Also, there are gonna be manga spoilers on account of me getting way too deep into it, so beware !!)

[ID: a screenshot of Unknown Percentage, facing away from the viewer, looking up at the sky where Teru's bag is exploding where it floats. All the following images are screenshots as well. End ID.]

1 ) First thing first, ???% immediately destroys Teru's bag. I don't think there's much to this one, but you could consider this a sign of hypervigilance - they saw Teru drop something, and immediately went to destroy it, perhaps in fear that it was aimed for them. So it quickly becomes obvious, that ???% is quite distrustful.

[ID: In the first, Teru is in side profile, looking to an off screen Unknown Percent, saying, "I'm not sure what happened," and in the next image, he is facing front, his face still relaxed, but now illuminated by the white light of Unknown Percentage's powers, saying "but if I'd suffice, I'd be happy to lis-" then cutting off. End ID.]

2 ) Next, Teru says this, and ???% immediately gets angry... I think. The first part, the implication from Teru that 'something must have happened for you to act this way' is what annoys ???% more. Because to them, they're just finally acting as they've always wanted to.. This isn't a bad thing to them. And they're frustrated that Teru, this person that acted much like them not even that long ago, is looking to talk them out of it.

[ID: In the first, we see Mob's bouquet of flowers, Teru off screen saying "Oh, you bought flowers! That's great!". In the next, he's smiling as he says, "But it might be a little dangerous going as you are right now.". In the third, he is illuminated by that same light, only brighter, his hair sweeping back, his expression turning panicked. End ID.]

3 ) Now this one... manga readers will know, ???% wanted to see Tsubomi as much as Mob. And so Teru denying them that chance here... well, suffice it to say, they feel a bit rejected here. Reigen told Mob in the previous episode to show his 'true self'. And in ???%'s eyes, they are the true self. To let Mob simply continue on, lie to Tsubomi as they see it, and keep pretending ???% wasn't a part of him, as if they weren't the whole reason he was even still alive right now... ???% probably would find that unbearable.

[ID: In the first, Teru is frowning and sweating, saying, "You leave me no choice." In the next, the background behind him has turned an ominous purple, his expression intense, Unknown Percent's shoulder seen in the corner as Teru restrains them with his telekinetically powered scarf, and says "I'm gonna have to keep you restrained until your powers calm-". And in third, we see his vacant face, flying through the clouded sky, his noise slightly bleeding. End ID.]

4 ) Once again, Teru is denying ???% being a part of Mob, being Kageyama-kun, instead labeling them as just Mob's 'power'. Fitting for Teru, who just in this episode said, "[Kageyama-kun taught me], how important it is to accept yourself without any psychic powers." For Teru, accepting himself without his powers was essential, since he hinged his everything on them to an unhealthy degree. But to Shigeo, the opposite is true. And ???% has had enough of being restrained.

[ID: In the first, it's closed up on Teru's trembling hand, which he is clutching with the other, saying "Kageyama-kun...." The second image is a closeup of Teru's eye, slightly serious, as he says "Stop this. You should head home for the day." And third is a similarly composed closeup of Unknown Percent's eye, glowing a bright white against his shadowed skin, as Teru continues off screen, "It's for your own good." End ID.]

5 ) The same as in the third point, except this time, there's the added salt of Teru saying "It's for your own good", as if he even knows the slightest thing about ???%, and, by extension, about Shigeo (as ???% sees it). Logically, we know that it truly doesn't do Shigeo any good to let ???% just keep rampaging like this. But ???% doesn't. Feelings are often irrational. And in this case, ???% just feels scorned.

[ID: In first, it is closed up on Unknown Percent, them turning back to the flowers flying behind them, their mouth slightly open in alarm. Teru in the background is staring wide-eyed, aura glowing. In second, Teru is looking more serious, saying, "If I destroy those...". In third, it is focused on the flowers, Unknown Percent and Teru in the background, as the bouquet gets enveloped in Teru's powers, seemingly exploding. In fourth, it is closed up on Teru's gritted teeth, as Unknown Percent grips their hand around his throat, choking him. End ID.]

6 ) Once again, same as third point... ???% is very determined to do this one thing 'right'. The fact that Teru almost took that chance entirely away from them probably scares them. And, of course... there's the obvious parallels with the choking.... this follows Teru's little inner monologue about how Mob has changed him. So even though I am still undecided on whether this was an intentional act of revenge on ???%'s part or not, the narrative meaning of this is pretty clear... they are, as Mob said all that time ago, the same, in that Mob needs to deal with his feelings involving his powers just as Teru did.

[ID: In first, Teru is noticeably beat up, expression worn and concerned, as he asks, "Kageyama-kun, are you having some kind of episode?". In second and third, it pans the back of Teru's head across the screen to reveal more of Unknown Percentage, a he says "To think you, of all people, would go berserk and lose control of your powers...". In fourth, the background has turned to a splash of warm yellow, as Teru disjointedly smiles, points a finger at them and proclaims "I guess you're pretty average, too! I'm a bit relieved, honestly.". The fifth is a closeup of Unknown percent's eye, staring angrily. And the next, the lines shadowing them get more intense, and Teru in the background lets out a "No..." End ID.]

7 ) Whoooowgh,,, this part..... it's hard to hear, but ???% gasps a little after Teru calls them average. I think... this runs deeper than Shigeo's relationship to Teru and their collective view on a person's worth. I think, this traces way back to Reigen. When he told Mob, right after he hurt a loved one with strength beyond any 'normal' person all by accident, that he's 'just like everyone else'. That he's average. I think... this talk. Was instrumental to the born divide between Mob and ???%, just as the actual violent act was. Because how do you reconcile the fact that you're apparently just some normal, average, harmless little kid, with the fact that you can also kill people without even trying? While not even aware?

Reigen does say, after all, upon seeing this. Upon actually witnessing ???%, Mob's power in it's entirety, that he didn't know about this. He didn't know. He had no idea, and he was just speaking out of his ass about things he didn't understand... so while that advice did help Mob immensely in a lot of ways, people aren't wrong about that... I think. A lot of people are also missing that this advice Reigen gives isn't the full picture. That it is, just like everything about the conman, flawed. Just as Reigen influenced Mob positively, he was also one of the negative influences in his life, that led to this point. To Mob splitting himself in halves, and paying the price.

Everything and everyone, after all, has two sides to them.

[ID: First is a closeup of Teru's eyes, the background being a stark white, everything illuminated in a haunting red glow. His expression is horrified, he is bleeding from his nose, and someone in the background is yelling "Help!". In the second and third, Unknown Percentage turns to Teru wordlessly, as the people around them continue to shout "Look out!" and "Save me!". End ID.]

8 ) And you can see it here. The way ???% is staring at Teru, almost asking him, "Do you see it? What I am actually capable of? Is this really 'the average' you speak of?" because I have the feeling, Shigeo is tired of people brushing past his very real concerns of being more than capable of hurting people, to a disastrous extent. To deny he is different in any way, is to deny his capabilities are different, and that what he needs is different as well. He cannot go on living just as any other human without powers, or as any other esper even. Because although he is equal to everyone else on a human level, he is not the same as everyone. This desire to fit in, to not stand out, to not acknowledge his unique fears and desires and feelings, is the entire reason 'Mob' as a persona got constructed. And ???% is finally finding the chance to unravel all of it.

[ID: two shots framed from low perspective, the background being a cloudy, gray sky, as Unknown Percentage first looks down at an off screen unconscious Teru, then turns their back, beginning to walk away. End ID.]

It is meaningful, then, that after this, ???% just lets the people Teru saved float, and leaves the boy to lay on the ground, to continue on. It wasn't really their intention to hurt people just to hurt. They certainly don't care that much about their pain right now, either, but. It was for a point. It was all just to prove a point, to Teru, to the world. That they're not something to be stifled. That their desires deserve to be heard, too. And, more than anything... I think it was a way to get back at Mob, at this person that has shunned them all this time, and say - you think you're the only one who deserves to be happy? You think you can be happy, with me continuing to writhe underneath the surface, unacknowledged, like this? How long are you going to go on? How long, until I'm able to exist freely again? And how long, until you realize, that what happened 4 years ago, wasn't a fluke?

Because they're not the one who hurt Ritsu. It wasn't some otherworldy entity, this power that is inhuman and uncontrollable and unreachable. It was Shigeo. Shigeo, who is comprised of Mob, in all his desire for self control, and ???%, in all his desire for freedom. And only through them meeting together, can they fulfill both, and learn to not repeat those same mistakes.

Because Shigeo is human. And Shigeo is the protagonist of his own life. For better, for worse <3

[grimmseye]

Fandom: Mob Psycho 100

Relationships: Teru/Mob — Unrequited (but not really)

Characters: Ritsu Kageyama (brief), Teruki Hanazawa, Shigeo “Mob” Kageyama

(Prompt at the bottom, given to me anonymously.)

On a chilly day in Seasoning City, Shigeo Kageyama goes missing.

If one were to go looking for him, they would find him in none of his usual spots. The school day was over, and club activities had passed, so those items could be immediately crossed off the list. A little ways deeper into the streets, the Spirits and Such Agency was occupied by a single man giving a massage — that is to say, a full-body exorcism — but his student was nowhere to be seen. And the boy was not at home, either, which would certainly be the place to find him after school on a day he did not have work.

Though to say that he went missing is something of an exaggeration, the impression was certainly garnered by a boy wondering where his older brother could be. It was too early for real concern, but Shigeo was a simple boy without many deviations to his schedule.

Now, had Ritsu simply called his parents, he would know that his brother was spending the day with Hanazawa Teruki.

“I apologize for being late.”

Mob’s voice drifted over the babble of traffic as he strode towards Teru, head dipping in apology before he even got across the street. Teru’s eyes turned to his phone, finding that Mob was exactly two minutes past their scheduled meeting time — two minutes which he knew were spent waiting for the signal to turn.

Rather than point this out, Teru smiled and said, “You’re here now. Shall we go?”

A nod was the response. The pair turned to begin heading down the block.

He shivered as the breeze swept past, unprotected by the T-shirt and shorts he wore. At that, Mob’s head turned to him, and Teru looked back with the expectation that he would speak.. Instead the boy unzipped his jacket and held it out to Teru.

“Kageyama-kun?” He blinked. It was a lavender zip-up, crafted of a fuzzy-looking material that was likely quite soft.

“You’re cold,” Mob stated. Dark eyes didn’t waver from him. Underneath his jacket, he was wearing a long-sleeve, so Teru tentatively allowed himself to take it and pull it on. It was just a little bit short on him, and its soft tones clashed with the deeper violet of his shorts, but the material was as soft as it appeared.

A pleased bubble of warmth formed in his chest, one that he immediately crushed. Mob was only being friendly. He had an unfortunate tendency to put others before himself — the cold had left his face flushed, and yet he’d given Teru his sweater.

He told himself he kept it on because Mob would be sad otherwise.

When they arrived at Paprika Middle School, they inevitably parted ways, Mob taking his sweater back and going to perch in the stands as Teru strolled up to the rest of the team.

“Hanazawa!”

“Good to see you!”

“Actually showed up this time, eh?”

He was a little late, cutting it close to the start time. They only had minutes to talk.

His eyes flickered. The stands were full of familiar faces. A couple of the thugs that still trailed after him at times, some classmates he recognized, parents, teachers, and Mob. His eyes lingered there. The boy had his face tilted down into his lap, eyes fixed on his phone.

Something twisted in his gut, heavy and cold and chasing all the heat to his face. Teru dragged his eyes away, staring at the turf instead to examine the little beads of rubber with sudden interest.

It had been foolish for him to assume Mob would be interested in this. He probably thought Teru was being arrogant again, trying to show off. And wasn't he? He invited Mob with one intention: to impress him. To look good in front of him. Teru hadn't changed one bit and now Mob knew it and he—

“Hanazawa!”

His head jerked up, a glare flashing onto his face for whoever interrupted his brooding. The captain stared right back, unimpressed by Teru’s glower. “You need to focus,” he berated, though not harshly.

All the same, anger flared hotly on the back of Teru’s neck. “I—” he began, snappish. Then stopped, and physically swallowed his words and his pride.

“I am sorry,” he amended.

The captain gave a sharp nod, but some of the sternness in his face had eased. “As long as you're with us now.”

Soon after that they’re called onto the field, and Teru did all he could to shut the image of Mob out of his mind — only the thought immediately made his eyes lift up again, gaze darting instantly to where he’d seen the boy before.

This time his gaze was mirrored by a pair of dark, dark eyes. Even from across the field, Teru was enraptured, and he stared until Mob lifted a hand in a small wave, and then smiled.

They won the game. It wasn’t close by any sense of the word, likely a rather boring match to watch as Black Vinegar pulled far ahead of Paprika, but every time Teru looked up he saw Mob staring back, never clapping or cheering with the crowd but always with his eyes on the blonde.

------

The entire way home, after changing into clothes appropriate for the weather, Teru felt like he was walking on air.

“Ah, Hanazawa-kun?”

He couldn’t fight his smile, looking down at Mob. “Yes?”

Mob only pointed. Teru followed his gesture, and immediately flushed.

Correction: the entire way home, Teru was walking on air.

His feet touched the pavement as he drew his energy back into himself. Immediately, the prickle of psychic energy faded from the air — how he’d missed the entire time was truly something to marvel at. “My apologies,” he gave a sheepish grin. “I didn’t even realize I was doing it.”

There was a hint of shame in his voice as well. So used to employing his powers in every aspect of his life, Teru had released them without even thinking about it.

Then to his surprise, Mob nodded in understanding. “I do that too,” he responded. His fingers rubbed up and down over the fluff of his sweater. “Mostly with spoons. Though lately I’ve been making plants grow when I’m, ah…”

He trailed off, eyes drawn to a dalmation puppy trotting along on a leash. He didn’t smile with his mouth, but his head tilted down and his eyes softened so it really meant the same thing.

They didn’t speak much after that, Mob going silent and Teru, for once, content to let things remain that way. The air between them was not empty from silence, but warm and content as they strolled towards Teru’s apartment.

They shed their jackets once they came inside, Teru draping his over the back of the couch and Mob only tying his around his waist so his fingers could still brush over the material. One phone call to a delivery place later and they were hunkering down on the couch to watch one of the dozens of movies in Teru’s apartment.

— By now Mob’s parents will have arrived home and told Ritsu where his brother was — news that will make his eyebrows climb on his forehead as he tries to recall just how often the two are around each other theses days. —

Dinner arrived halfway through the film, and when they sat back down after eating and stowing away the leftovers, Mob was significantly closer to Teru than he’d been before. Even as his eyes were fixed on the screen, Teru’s skin was warm from the air pressed between them.

Somewhere around the second movie, Mob shifted in his seat. His leg brushed Teru’s.

On the third, Mob leaned fully against him, and Teru’s heart almost stopped in his chest before he heard the boy’s even breathing, and realized he’d fallen asleep.

The movie finished. Teru used his powers to float Mob into his bed before he set up on the couch for the night. He knew it meant nothing, but the sensation of Mob’s body against his left him tingling and with a giddy smile on his face.

Unfortunately, it only lasted the night.

A buzz on his phone woke him. A message that he read through blurry eyes, that immediately had him bolting off the couch, getting his foot caught in the blanket, and crashing onto the floor.

“Hanazawa-kun!”

Mob was abruptly crouched beside him, eyes wide. Teru hadn’t noticed him up in his haste. “Are you hurt?” He asked, concern tinting his voice.

Teru swallowed and shook his head. “No, no, I’m fine.” He began to struggle with the blanket. It was tangled around his legs, effectively cuffing them together. “I just — oh no — maybe I…” He reached down to try pulling at the blanket, but it only tightened its hold. His face colored with frustration, giving a tug he wished would just rip the material so he could quit making a fool of himself and get up.

Blue and violet light checkered around the blanket. At once it lost its tension, unwinding smoothly to fold itself and drop onto the arm of the couch. Mob lowered his hand, only to extend it again to Teru.

Teru stared. “Oh. Right.”

He took the offered hand. Pulling himself up almost made Mob tumble down with him, and he got the idea that he needed to use his own legs more than the boy’s arm.

Once he was on his feet, Mob asked, “Is something wrong? You look like you’re in a hurry.”

The text he’d received sprang back into Teru’s mind. “Right!” His voice was high pitched and hurried. “I have an appointment later! With the doctor, it’s really important and it completely slipped my mind.”

Mob nodded.

Teru’s palms began to sweat. “The appointment is today,” he clarified.

And then, when that didn’t get a reaction, “I need to leave soon.”

“Oh!” Realization flashed in Mob’s eyes. He ducked away to where his bag was hanging off a chair, lifting it up onto his shoulder. “I understand, I’ll leave now.”

Guilt clawed its way up in Teru’s chest. “I’m really sorry,” he blurted. Mob looked up him, meeting his eyes, expression blank. Desperately, he added, “I don’t want to kick you out. I really did just forget.”

Mob nodded. “Okay,” he said. He already turning towards the door. “I’ll see you later Hanazawa-kun.”

At once, Teru wished he could call him back. There was nothing to say even if he did, though, and so he watched with a sinking heart as Mob stepped into his shoes and walked out the door without a backwards glance.

The sound of the ticking clock filled the room. It made Teru’s breath restart, and he jolted into movement. He would need proper clothes. His hair wasn’t brushed, either. Too little time — oh but if he was late he could just use his powers to — no he couldn’t if he was late he would have to deal with the consequences like any other person—

He was out the door fifteen minutes later, walking at a brisk pace towards the coffee shop near his school. Outside, he already saw her waiting.

Sonoko-chan, a girl with short black hair with a pink clip, dressed in a blouse and black jeans. She smiled when she saw Teru, lifting a hand to wave.

I’m excited for today the text from this morning had read.

Me too Teru had sent, and didn’t include the part where he’d forgotten about their date altogether.

Really, he was just an awful person. It was no wonder at all that Mob couldn’t return his affections.

But Sonoko’s gracious smile when he bought her coffee made his heart a bit lighter. She listened to him talk about his soccer game and laughed when he made a joke, and that made his stride stronger. It was good to get lost in meaningless chatter. And when she began to speak, the cues in her tone told him when to smile and when to laugh and when to look shocked or awed.

He was going according to the script, a role he made for himself, and it was nice. Sonoko was nice. She deserved better than him, but if Teru played the part he could pretend that he liked her and told himself the fluttering in his chest was from infatuated nerves and not inward disgust.

Until a familiar sensation washed over him, too striking not to notice. That familiar aura of violet and blue, trickling out into the open air as naturally as a human breathed. His heart stopped, his head jerked up.

They were in the park, now. And so was he.

Mob, that is, kneeling on the ground by a cat that was suddenly trotting away, ears pinned back. His eyes were fixed on Teru and Sonoko’s hands, linked between their bodies.

The temperature seemed to plummet by degrees, the pressure growing heavy on his shoulders. It was choking, all-encompassing — or maybe that was just Teru’s own lungs closing up.

Around Mob the grass and dandelions were withering away, until the the surrounding plantlife browned and cracked in a perfect circle around him.

---------------------

Prompt: “Teru has come to terms that Mob might never return his feelings so he starts dating again. However, Mob has developed feelings for him and it's obvious to pretty much everyone else but Teru. He doesn't know he's been hurting Mob by dating around. Cue overprotective!Ritsu confronting Teru about the whole thing.”

(I hope you enjoyed this! I would be willing to write more — especially because I wasn’t able to fulfill that last bit of the prompt — if readers are interested. As always, comments and critique are appreciated!)

[reinzsinjoy]

In Mob Puz’ new event, as same as the traditional occasion that is currently happening in Japan, we are joining their girl’s celebration that is Doll event or also known as Hina Matsuri. I already shared a post about it just a few days ago about how the dolls are placed in a step altar. Now, considering we have 5 new limited characters from Mob Psycho 100 as dolls as shown already, I figured out where to place them based from the blog sources I found. I also included the others that aren’t mentioned based from my creative imagination of my mind. I’m also looking forward for a step altar fanart that is arranged traditionally according to Japanese culture and customs by looking at the following information below. Let’s say this is a challenge for all artists out there 

Now, going down to the Hina-Ningyo placements using the Mob Psycho 100 characters. In Japan,  You can’t just arrange the dolls how you’d like, and wouldn’t you believe it’s actually quite complex. Some additional information that was already been shared/posted but it’s still quite important because of this gorgeous occasion (for girls):

The dolls themselves are usually acquired by the family after the first girl is born; either by inheriting them, as a gift from the grandparents, or by simply purchasing themselves. This custom of putting dolls on display is said to have begun during the Heian period (794-1185), and as such the dolls are all modeled after the hierarchy of the imperial court during that time.

Some Hina-Ningyo displays are very extravagant and elaborate.

Traditionally they are arranged and displayed on a five or seven-tiered stand covered with a red carpet.  Sets can range from a few hundred-thousand yen to up in the millions! Although, due to the cost and limited space, it is now common to see smaller versions on display in homes. In fact, today it is most common to only display the very top-tier.

First platform:

The top-tier holds the two most important dolls. These dolls represent the Emperor, called Odari-sama (御内裏様) who is holding a ritual baton, and the Empress, called Ohime-sama (御雛様) who holds a fan. Using MP100 characters, as already showed in the game, the top tier includes Emperor Mob and  Empress Teru. 

Between them you’ll see an arrangement of two vases of peach blossoms called a sanbo kazari (三方飾) i or in other term known as Momo no hana, and to the outside of the platform there are bonbori (雪洞), paper lanterns decorated with plum blossoms or cherry blossoms which represent the spring season.  In traditional arrangements the female is seated at the right side of the male doll, because historically the Empress was always seated to the right side of the Emperor. However, in the 20th century the Empress began to sit on the Emperor’s left side. You’ll find this change has since been incorporated in the modern Hina-Ningyo placements– except in Kyoto where they still place them in the original, traditional position.

Second platform:

In the second tier are the three court ladies, sannin kanjo (三人官女), and each one is holding some form of sake equipment.

From left to right:

Kuwae no choushi (加えの銚子): backup sake-bearer (standing)

Sanpou (三方): sake bearer (seated)

Nagae no choushi (長柄の銚子): long-handled sake-bearer (standing)

Since we don’t have court ladies presented in Mob Puz game, I will be using 3 ladies that are commonly showed in Mob Psycho 100, the left will be Emi, the middle will be Takane Tsubomi and the right will be Mezato Ichi

The accessories placed in between the ladies are called takatsuki (高坏), which are round-topped tables used for serving seasonal sweets. A dinner tray on above image is an image for it.

Third platform

This tier features five male musicians, gonin bayashi (五人囃子). Each one holds a musical instrument besides the singer, who holds a fan.

From left to the right:

Taiko (太鼓) drummer (seated)

Otsuzumi (大鼓) drummer (standing)

Kotsuzumi  (小鼓) drummer (standing)

Fue (笛) or Yokobue (横笛) flautist (seated)

Utaikata (謡い方), the singer (seated)

I will be using the 4/5 members of the Telepathy club as a dolls for this platform:

From left to right:

Drummer (seated) - Inugawa

Drummer (standing) - Kijibayashi

Drummer (standing) - Saruta

Flautist (seated) - Takenaka

Singer (seated) - Kurata Tome

Fourth Platform:

The fourth tier displays two ministers (大臣, daijin), who are usually equipped with bow and arrows.

Udaijin (右大臣): The Minister of the Right, who is on the left side.  

Sadaijin (左大臣): The Minister of the Left, who is portrayed as much older with a long white beard.  

The Minister of the Right is depicted as a young person, while the Minister of the Left is much older.. Also, because the dolls are placed in positions relative to each other, the Minister of the Right will be on the viewer's left and the Minister of the Left will be on the viewer's right. Both are sometimes equipped with bows and arrows. Between the two figures are covered bowl tables kakebanzen (掛盤膳?), also referred to as o-zen (お膳?), as well as diamond-shaped stands hishidai (菱台?) bearing diamond-shaped ricecakes hishimochi (菱餅?). Hishidai with feline-shaped legs are known as nekoashigata hishidai (猫足形菱台?). 

I will be using 3 characters that are already shown in the Mob Puz game, the MInister on the Right is Udaijin Ritsu, the Minister on the left is Sadaijin Reigen and Diamond shaped rice cakes whom is Hishimochi Dimple

Fifth Platform:

The fifth tier holds the three samurai protectors of the Emperor and Empress.From left to right:

Nakijogo (泣き上戸): the maudlin drinker

Okorijogo (怒り上戸): the cantankerous drinker

Waraijogo (笑い上戸): the merry drinker

On the leftmost side there is a mandarin orange tree (ukon no tachibana 右近の橘), and one the rightmost is a cherry blossom tree (sakon no sakura 左近の桜).

I will be using 3 guys from Body Improvement Club as the protectors of the Emperor and  Empress.You are free to choose whoever from the 5 will be the 3 protectors on this platform since in the manga and anime, it’s also their duty and responsibility to look after their member whom is considered as one of their family like Mob. Goda Musashi must be included as one of the 3 here since like guys from BIC, he’s a really reliable president and of course a friend too.

Sixth Platform:

There are actually no dolls on the sixth tier, and instead used to display a variety of miniature items that can be found within the imperial palace. Common items include:

Nagamochi (長持): a long chest used for kimono storage

Kyodai (鏡台): a chest of drawers with a small mirror on top

Tansu (箪笥): a chest of usually five drawers

Hasamibako (挟箱): a small box used for storing clothes, it’s placed on top of the nagamochi

Daisu (台子): utensils for a tea ceremony

Haribako (針箱): a sewing kit box

Hibachi (火鉢): two braziers

Seventh Platform:

Like the sixth platform, this level also contains no dolls. These items however are all things that can be found outside the imperial palace. Some common items are:

Jubako (重箱): a set of lacquered food boxes tied together by a cord with a handle

Goshoguruma (御所車): a carriage pulled by an ox

Gokago (御駕籠): a palanquin

So there, I hope to see this in one of your fanart soon. Take it as a request from me but I’m not rushing anything so you are free to use your time whenever you want. Just in case you’ve finished it, please feel free to share your arts in fanart category of our discord server. Please be followed of the pinned rules over there

Web/Blog sources: Japan Travel in Translation, Japanese dolls tumblr blog and Wikipedia

[recentanimenews]

Bookshelf Briefs 4/30/19

Arpeggio of Blue Steel, Vol. 14 | By Ark Performance | Seven Seas – Last time I wondered if Arpeggio of Blue Steel really was going to become a high school series, and it’s certainly trying its best, with a School Festival arc in the offing. That said, the tone of the series is still very much Tom Clancy, with much of the volume taken up by I-402’s negotiation with retired general Ryokan on behalf of the Fog. Meanwhile, we also get a flashback as to how Gunzou started all this in the first place (Iona basically forced it on him, but it doesn’t take much pushing), and start to see pieces shifting into position for the next big battle. Will that battle take place at the school? It might start there, but my guess is we’ll be back to the Navy before long. Still underrated. – Sean Gaffney

Crocodile Baron, Vol. 3 | By Takuya Okada | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – Crocodile Baron comes to an end without evolving much since volume two. Alfardo and Rabbit Boy run into the former’s bad older brother, who seemingly turns his life around after eating some ramen. Alfardo eats spicy curry with a desperate warthog and possibly saves his marriage. Rabbit Boy hates Christmas because it’s his birthday and buys a cake from a camel. A lovelorn elephant filmmaker finds his muse and eats pond smelts. They have an Okinawan adventure during which Rabbit Boy nearly drowns. Honestly, I cared about no one and found it all boring. If there had been more emphasis on the food, I might’ve felt differently, but this was a big ol’ yawn banquet. – Michelle Smith

High School Prodigies Have It Easy Even in Another World!, Vol. 3 | By Riku Misora and Kotaro Yamada | Yen Press – Again, I beg the authors for a character sheet. There are quite a number of interesting things going on in this volume, but I suspect the reader may have trouble finding them among all the bouncing boobs. The fanservice is laid on with a shovel here, and can be hard to take. That said, there’s a nice scene with Tsukasa and Lyrule where she berates him for feeling guilty over not prioritizing saving her. The bulk of the serious plot goes to Shinobu and Elch, gathering intel at a seemingly friendly village with a very dark secret. Fortunately (assuming that it’s not a double cross), she may also have come across the resistance. Too many boobs spoiling the pie, alas. – Sean Gaffney

How to Treat Magical Beasts, Vol. 3 | By Kaziya | Seven Seas – Lest we try to run on “the sweet and heartwarming adventures of a vet” for too long, this volume introduces a smiling maybe-villain-maybe-not, who helps Ziska with a cat’s injury and then takes her way out into danger to attend to a wounded Greif, because no series with apprentices and magic is quite complete without a test to see if they’ve got the right stuff. I assume Ziska does have the right stuff, but we’re caught up to Japan, so it may be a while till we find out. In more sweet news, that is one adorable gargoyle, and I’m happy it’s found a friend. Seven Seas has carved out a genre niche with these types of series, and I quite enjoy it. – Sean Gaffney

Mob Psycho 100, Vol. 2 | By ONE | Dark Horse – I keep wanting to call this MPD Psycho, but that is something very different. This is the story of an unassuming boy named Shigeo Kageyama who possesses super powers but wants to live without relying on them. This challenges the worldview of another superpowered boy named Teru, who spends two-thirds of the volume flinging his power at Kageyama in order to make him fight back. (Kageyama is resolute that he won’t use his powers against another person.) The anger meter appears again (with a fun gag about how Teru’s exorcism of Mob’s sycophantic spirit companion doesn’t actually change it at all) and only when his life is in true peril does Kageyama reach “???%.” Will he wreak havoc in the next volume? The story’s definitely getting more interesting, but I’m still not in love with the art. – Michelle Smith

My Hero Academia: Vigilantes, Vol. 4 | By Hideyuki Furuhashi and Betten Court | Viz Media – This gets better with each volume. I had not realized that the Vigilantes series takes place a few years before the main series (though the authors cheat (and say so) for the extra side story). I had suspected that Knuckleduster was somehow connected with the villains, but that connection turns out to be much closer than imagined, and leads to possibly the best fight of the series. Meanwhile, Pop Step finds her confidence and does something only she can do to help out. All this and one of the most horrific images in the manga to date (which also made me wonder if the authors had seen a certain meme about bees). This has become essential. – Sean Gaffney

My Pink Is Overflowing, Vol. 1 | By Yuki Monou | Kodansha Comics (digital only) – I bought this hoping it would be hilariously trashy, and for the most part it was. The premise has a girl who’s tired of being screwed over by pick-up artists decide she’s only going to date virgins from now on… then find out that her boss, seemingly an overly serious taskmaster, is one! They enter into a relationship so fast it boggles the mind, especially since their first kiss is interrupted by her having an orgasm as she does it. At its heart, this is a “ditzy girl/serious guy” title with a decent heart, but the girl can get very over the top at times, and the series seems to want to go as far as it can while keeping the hero a virgin. Plus there’s that title. For fans of Cosplay Animal. – Sean Gaffney

Teasing Master Takagi-san, Vol. 4 | By Soichiro Yamamoto | Yen Press – It has to be said, a lot of the teasing that’s going on here is Takagi-san being as obvious and blatant as she possibly can that she loves Nishitaka. You’d have to be a brick—or a male protagonist—not to get it, and indeed sometimes it’s so blatant he almost shows sings of figuring it out. But this is a long-running series, and resolution just isn’t in the cards right now. So we get Takagi-san visiting his room, playing poker, chasing cute cats, and getting each other’s emails so that now she can tease him whenever she wants to (and have cute photos of her on his phone). Everyone else in their class knows they’re going out. Most of what they do qualifies as a date. But… so dense. Love this series. – Sean Gaffney

Witch Hat Atelier, Vol. 1 | By Kamome Shirahama | Kodansha Comics – Even before it was licensed in English, Witch Hat Atelier was a series that had caught my attention, in large part due to Shirahama’s gorgeous, sumptuous artwork, but also because my Japanese-reading friends spoke so highly of it. At times, the exposition is a little heavy-handed in the first volume as the premise of the the world’s history and magic are introduced. (I expect this to become less of an issue as the series progresses.) However, the explanations are regularly incorporated in a way that makes sense—Coco, the story’s heroine, is also new to the basics and she’s learning right alongside the readers. Coco is a young woman who has always been fascinated by magic not realizing that she has a natural talent for it. Unfortunately, the initial budding of her magical skills ends in tragedy as she hasn’t had the training needed to fully understand or control them. – Ash Brown

Yowamushi Pedal, Vol. 11 | By Wataru Watanabe | Yen Press – No, the Inter High still hasn’t come to an end, but this is still a pretty satisfying volume, what with all the inspirational performances and teary appreciation of same! Watanabe does a good job getting readers to root for Hakone, too, and we learn why Arakita is so motivated to propel Fukutomi to the finish line, right before he runs out of speed. Yes, it’s a harsh truth that all six members of Sohoku aren’t able to ride together for long. The first-years prepare themselves to make the sacrifice for their teammates, but that isn’t how it turns out at all. I was fully expecting that Kinjou would be the one to win this, given his experience in the previous year’s competition, and was honestly surprised when he’s sidelined by injury. I suppose the next book will wrap things up but I kinda don’t even remember what this series is like when it’s not the Inter High! – Michelle Smith

Yuri Is My Job!, Vol. 2 | By miman | Kodansha Comics – Now that Hime is aware of who Mitsuki was in her past, everything is terribly awkward, and the number of times “she must really hate me” is said in this volume boggles the mind. If you guessed it’s all based on misunderstanding what the other is thinking, give yourself a gold star. For all that Hime tries to be the perfect little sister, it’s only when she’s honest with herself that things really take off in the cafe. I’m hoping that things will improve soon, but there’s also the problem of Kanoko, Hime’s best friend from school whose phone turns out to be entirely devoted to Hime. I dislike the term “yandere,” but I have a sneaking suspicion we’re going to see the tropes that lead to its overuse in the next book. – Sean Gaffney

By: Ash Brown