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akashi

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Leorio x Kurapika edit.

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Im not really sure how i feel about Food Court de, Mata Ashita quite yet. On the one hand, it feels like a drawn-out excuse for product placement, what with the shameless plugs for american chicken and ice cream and such in the first ep. Not so down with that.

It also feels very Lucky Star, but with our conversational girls being jaded instead of intellectually curious. I definitely get the sense that our “not-like-other-girls” duo is very much attuned for a male audience — not that there’s anything wrong with that. It’s just a bit tiresome.

But still, there were a few fun gags. I like the OP, and I think there’s definitely room for this show to grow into its fairly novel premise. I dig the idea of people just sitting in chairs and talking, and im glad this show isn’t just cute-girls-doing-food-court-things, but ill give it a short leash in case it gets boring/annoying.

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★ 【yunkkker】 「 傷 」 ✔ republished w/permission ☆ follow btt’s fanart twitch stream!

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Ｎｏ Ｍａｔｔｅｒ Ｗｈａｔ

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My suspicions for why Bisque Doll succeeded so much in its first season are threefold:

1. Absurdly high dedication to its subject matter

2. Genuinely heartwarming love story

3. TnA

That third reason is immortal, especially with CloverWorks putting out some of the most, uhhhh…high-quality smut in the business. But I think S2 of bisque doll will have some challenges with the other two points.

For one, there’s only so much interest that I have with cosplay, and the first season did a good job scratching the surface with how dresses are made and how cosplayers self-actualize. But in order to raise the stakes in S2, which the first ep does in spades, is to get nerdier with the nerd shit—and I fear that’s going to lose a lot of folks. Like…I genuinely don’t care how clothes-makers support a corset, and that was one of the biggest storylines in this ep. How deep are we going to get with the seamstress knowledge?

Another is the love story, which at this point seems set in stone? I understand Marin and Gojo are not “officially” dating at this point, but is this not a de-facto pairing already? What is going to stop them from making it official? There’s no real weight to this part of the story, I fear.

However, the final act of the ep gives me some hope, where Gojo rediscovers the internal conflict of his gender roles in relation to his obsession with making and dressing hina dolls. This is the most interesting crux of the show to me, and honestly provides enough material for the entire plot to revolve around.

Except bisque doll wants to do everything, and that made the first ep of S2 kind of overstuffed for me. I understand there are high hopes for this show and many different groups of people looking for different things, but i kinda wish it would just focus its absurdly competent production value on one or two.

Im still gonna watch though, because…you know…

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It is way too early to make this call, but if the rest of S2 of Call of the Night is as good as that first ep, we’ve got the best show of the season on our hands.

Also, the new op is an instant fucking classic.

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Kowloon Generic Romance uses a lot of delicious ingredients tailor-made for my kind of meal. Adult romance! Urban exploration! Late-90s aesthetic nostalgia! Gay shit! Longing! It didn’t take much for me to be sold on this show, especially as someone always on the lookout for anime about adults with adult problems doing adult things.

Unfortunately, Kowloon comes out of the oven a little undercooked.

Part of it is the show’s sci-fi aspect, which is admittedly interesting but rarely explored with the depth required to make it seem like a critical part of the storyline. There’s also the romance part, which i wanted some more out of but at times was very fun.

My biggest gripe with the show, however, was the setting. I’ve never really agreed with any analysis that says that “x city” is ACTUALLY a character in the show (settings are settings, characters are characters, im kinda a hard liner about this), but this show really wants us to feel like Kowloon is this special place that breathes life and is worth saving even though its already been knocked down twice. Im just not buying it—at least in this context, Kowloon seems pretty hot and miserable and unable to provide the basic services its citizens need.

But maybe that’s just a first-world perspective blocking me from the romanticism of urban poverty. Either way, Kowloon is always interesting to look at but never very pretty or exciting, both the show and the setting. I really struggled to get myself up to watch this show week after week, even if after every episode i was like “huh, that was pretty good.”

So…yeah! Lots of interesting stuff that doesn’t quite add up to the sum of its parts in this show. People seem to love the manga, so maybe it succeeds more in that space. But as a tv show, i cant give it higher than a 6/10.

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Lost in all of the indefensible nonsense that Rent-a-Girlfriend does (and there is quite a bit of it) are some pretty worthwhile attributes that keep me interested season after season.

For one, this is a show about college students (Ruka excluded), making all the weird horny shit a bit more tolerable and all the dating exploits so much more fun.

For another, this show has surprisingly progressive views on sex work, even if they’re hidden under layers of irony and gloss. It’s a show chock full of adults making informed and responsible decisions, even if they’re silly and cringeworthy half the time, and it doesn’t ever demonize the transactional nature of these various relationships. Cool stuff!

Mostly though, I think Kazuya is a pretty swell guy to root for. I think it’s accurate but a bit unfair to classify this as an “incel show,” if only because the term “incel” has some seriously misogynistic baggage attached to it. But Kazuya doesn’t hate or even disrespect the women in his life. He clearly cherishes all of them! And learns ways to appreciate and cherish them even more as the story develops! Growth!

Yes, the writing and translations are probably the worst I’ve ever seen in an anime romcom—truly F-, embarrassing, please-don’t-let-my-wife-catch-me-watching-this levels of suckitude. And if it were attached to a generic high school romcom, then I’d be throwing this garbage in the garbage where it would belong.

But I’m putting this garbage in my face week after week instead, because life is short and I like Rent-a-Girlfriend. Roast me. I don’t care.

(Okay i care a little).

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By the sea and stars

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A lot of my feelings about Rock is a Lady’s Modesty are informed by my distaste of its chosen musical style—not the “rock” it purports to represent, but the instrumental heavy metal it actually presents. Just not my jam.

But that’s not a great reason to dislike a show in my opinion, so I gave Modesty a shot thinking it would have interesting things to say about education, femininity, class struggle and identity. And while it introduces those ideas pretty strongly early on, it abandons them in favor of poorly thought-out musical pieces, ending up with a show that sounds line a dissonant chord. And not in the artsy way, either.

Which is too bad, because I really came around to the music in the end. Of all the recent girls-playing-in-bands shows (Bocchi, Jellyfish, Girls Band Cry, Whisper Me a Love Song), I could convince myself this show has the best performance scenes of them all, even if I like the music from all the other shows more. There’s legit tension and release in all these concerts, with excellent camera work and just so much energy. Very rawk if i do say so myself 🤘.

Unfortunately, there’s just so much cringe here that makes the show a difficult watch when our ladies are not rocking out. I flat out hate the character design. The writing is Rent-a-girlfiend level embarrassing. And Tina’s whole thing is, uh…I’m just not going to talk about Tina, okay?

Bottom line: if you wanna see some anime girls play heavy metal, find performance clips on YouTube and have fun. That’s all I would really recommend about this show, however, easily my least favorite of a recently very active sub-genre. 6/10

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The title card to this season’s final episode of Shoshimin misspells the word “desserts,” and I’m not entirely sure why. If it was a translation error, it’s a pretty big one, considering it feels like the central theme of the season for Jogaro and co.

But if it was an intentional play on an English-language idiom, I can’t say I get it. And this is pretty emblematic of my relationship to Shoshimin as a whole.

The penultimate episode of this last season was easily the show’s best. It did all the cool Shoshimin stuff of Jogaro walking us through his thought process while piecing together the puzzle, but this time it did it with far less active narration, leaning on flashbacks far and close to weave together a complicated narrative tapestry. And when we get to the final confrontation, it leaves us hanging with virtually no understanding of what’s occurring, raising the stakes of a semi-serious mystery romp to a full-on crime show. It was creative and perfect and the pinnacle of what this show could achieve.

And it almost sticks the landing in the final episode. Unfortunately, this is where it does the annoying Shoshimin stuff again.

By that I mean two things: One, ripping out responsible adults from the scenario at the time when they were needed most (there were zero employees/awake patients at the hospital during the attempted murder of a minor? Seriously?). And two, leaning on convention to stall what could’ve been a far more realistic plot progression, in Osanai telling Jogaro to stall for time by getting his assailant to monologue on top of the hospital roof. The Incredibles addressed this 20 years ago!

Alas, I left the final episode of Shoshimin S2 with an overall improved but still disappointed opinion of the show, namely that it’s very pretty and well-directed, but ultimately falls flat when it’s trying to be smart. I used to think this was because KyoAni wasn’t at the helm like the studio was for Hyouka, but now I’m starting to think this is mainly a problem of the source material (though I do not read LNs, so I could be waaaaay off base on this).

After last week’s episode, I was seriously considering knocking off The Apothecary Diaries and placing Shoshimin as my show of the spring season, but the last episode reminded me why I’ve literally never thought that way about Shoshimin in the first place. This is definitely a case of “you can only criticize the art you want to be great,” strongly alongside Oshi no Ko, but I can’t really justify any long-term obsession this show might create, especially when Hyouka exists.

S2 is better, though. Good direction, great ideas, raised stakes and legitimately interesting understandings of young romance. But it’s also joyless and riddled with questionable decisions for a show that seems to pride itself on being airtight and glossy.

Very good show, 8/10, I wish never to talk about it again.

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After the sun

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★ 【kieed】 「 phos 」 ✔ republished w/permission ☆ follow btt’s fanart twitch stream!

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