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brucebocchi · 1 month ago

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Summer 2024 anime roundup: ALL IN ONE

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Well, I'm much busier now than I was in the first half of the year, so that means less time for anime and less time for writing about it. I managed to watch only (ONLY?) nine shows this season, so might as well put it all in one post.

As always, each show's OP is linked in the title.

Let's jump in.

Returning anime

NieR: Automata Ver. 1.1a, part 2

After a COVID-plagued production delayed the last few episodes of its first half last year, A-1 Pictures’ adaptation of Yoko Taro’s landmark action-RPG returns to deliver the real meat of the story. And as with the game, the first half of NieR: Automata Ver. 1.1a was something I’d classify as “pretty good!,” while the remainder is what makes the entire endeavor worthwhile.

I’m happy to report that not only did the studio not lose a step, but they improved on the presentation of Ver. 1.1a immensely. The action sequences are superb and expressive throughout, and the CGI integration is actually, y’know, integrated this time out. The score, both original and borrowed from Keiichi Okabe’s contributions to the NieR duology, remains as evocative as ever. They also ramped up the cheesecake more than a little bit, and let’s be real, that was the draw for a lot of people in the first place.

If there’s any one thing Ver. 1.1a can claim as an advantage over the game’s narrative, it’s that the former does a lot more work in building on A2 as a character. There’s just enough to chew on in the game, but having more of her backstory from the YoRHa stage play and manga adaptation integrated into the narrative makes for more of a meal. Having A2’s history and real personality pinned up as a backdrop as she struggles to suppress both really fleshes out her journey and eventual resolve as shit continues to hit the fan. She’s also just a big ol’ tsundere sometimes. And not for nothing, but they gave her an absolute DUMPY for no reason, but I can’t really pin that as a negative.

9S’ whole thing happens too. I really don’t have much to add to that.

When I reviewed this show’s first half at the end of 2023, I mentioned that the initial concern with the anime’s very existence is that it’s adapting a narrative that is functionally being told through the very fact that it’s a video game. The delivery of the game’s true ending, especially, is so innately A Video Game that it’s functionally impossible to adapt directly into a television show. I’m happy to say that although that function is lost, Ver. 1.1a’s ending is still plenty satisfying (and I’m told especially so for Drakengard fans, without giving too much away). Something is still very much lost in the transition, though. In his review of the penultimate episode, Anime News Network’s James Beckett wrote:

What the anime of NieR:Automata has not been able to capture in these critical final moments is the way that the game makes its players complicit in the tragedy in a way that they could never be if they simply sat down and passively watched these events unfold from behind the safe veil of the fourth wall. It would be like if we were each individually guided on stage to place our hands on Hamlet's shoulder and push him gently onwards to his final destination. It doesn't change anything about what happens in the story, but it changes everything about what it means to us.

These acts of “ludonarrative culpability,” as Beckett called it, are the reason why Yoko Taro is considered an auteur in the gaming sphere. Both NieR games are tragedies writ large, and Yoko’s genius lies in making you, the player, carry out the tragedy, often well before you realize what you’ve wrought. And to Beckett’s point from his review, NieR: Automata is a perfectly fine sci-fi story in its own right, but the game puts the blood squarely on the player’s hands and inserts them into the narrative in a way that simply watching cannot. The connection I felt to the story was only there because I’d already played the game myself; I can only imagine how it would feel if this was your introduction to NieR.

So to return to a question I suggested at the end of last year: Do I recommend this to people who haven’t played the game? Eh, not particularly. It’s a well-made show, to be sure, but there’s enough missing from what makes Automata such an exceptional game that I’m not sure I can recommend it wholeheartedly if you’re not already familiar. Then again, I wouldn’t really know how it reads from the other side. To those who know and love the game, Ver. 1.1a isn’t quite the “Rebuild of NieR” some were hoping it to be, but it’s an interesting companion piece that takes surprising strides to tie it even closer to the preceding franchise. If you’re a newcomer? YMMV. Either way, play the game.

Oshi no Ko, season 2

I spent far more time than was necessary in the Discourse Mines following Oshi no Ko’s thunderous debut last year and a controversial (but fortunately inconsequential) turn of events in the manga shortly after the season finale. Though I remain one of the series’ foremost glazers, I’ve had my moments where I worried that maybe I overrated it a bit in my head, that I carried too much water for writer Aka Akasaka, and that I’m still riding the high of the series’ premiere.

Oshi no Ko’s second season completely erased any lingering worry almost immediately and reminded me and the world that yes, it Really Is That Good. The “It’s So Over” switch flipped to “We Are So Back” as soon as best girl Kana Arima and co-lead Taiki Himekawa dazzled their co-stars and one another with literally colorful displays of their acting prowesses. My expectations continued to rise as an active reader of the source material, and studio Doga Kobo continued to surpass them. This adaptation is just that good.

Aqua’s quest for revenge and Akasaka’s continuing examination of Japan’s entertainment industry both lead us into the world of stage acting, specifically 2.5D adaptations of famous manga and anime. Aqua is cast alongside Kana and his sham girlfriend and former reality show co-star Akane in an adaptation of the fictional smash hit shonen manga Tokyo Blade, along with several members of a theater company to which Ai once belonged. While Aqua is more concerned with getting dirt on Ai’s background than he is with acting, Kana and Akane have much more personal stakes as they try to show one another up and still put on the best play they can. Kana can’t stand Akane’s absolutist, matter-of-fact approach to acting (nor the fact that she’s fake-dating the guy for whom Kana’s down abysmal), while Akane, who idolized Kana as a child and is disappointed to see her take a step back as an actress, is trying her damnedest to rekindle the spark that convinced her to pick up acting in the first place. On the fringes, rookie actor Melt Narushima is trying to make up for a heinous performance in the first season that earned him the scorn of his more experienced castmates as well as a mangaka’s permanent ire.

A good amount of this arc does feel like Akasaka was still sorting through his feelings about the Kaguya-sama live adaptation when he wrote it, but he also gave himself some room for reflection on his own side of the equation as a mangaka. Tokyo Blade’s creator, Abiko Samejima, holds her creation very dear and is not impressed with the script. Her friend and former boss, Yoriko Kichijouji, is entirely too familiar with how badly the process can go; her own manga, Sweet Today, was horribly botched in this show’s first season, and she wants to help Abiko-sensei keep a level head. Kichijouji-sensei is the voice of reason this time out as she points out all of the concessions creators may need to take in order to get their work adapted and the unimpeachable truth that mangaka are basically crazy people (and you can practically hear Akasaka screaming through her lines; four months after Kichijouji said this in the manga, Kaguya-sama published its final chapter, marking Akasaka’s retirement from illustrating serialized manga). At her urging, in addition to an all-nighter helping Abiko-sensei make a deadline, the play goes off without any more hitches.

I didn’t much care for the Tokyo Blade arc in the manga but I knew full well that it would translate well to anime just as well as the acting sequences in the first season had. Akasaka’s decision to have the actors treat the stage as a battleground felt a little silly on the page, but experiencing everything again in sound and motion reminded me that this was the same genre of psychological competition that made Kaguya-sama one of my all-time favorites. Doga Kobo is just stupidly good at adapting manga. God, the animation is incredible. Character animation is as deliberate and mesmerizing as always, and emotional moments are punctuated by interpretive splashes of watercolors. Melt’s breakout on stage was a standout moment in the manga, but the abstract, expressionistic depiction of his redemption was so perfectly conceived on screen that life imitated art: Kichijouji-sensei cried in the anime, and manga artist Mengo Yokoyari cried in real life.

I could go on and on and on, but if you’re already this deep into Oshi no Ko I really don’t need to tell you anything else. This season, for all its gorgeous visuals and onstage glory, does not hesitate to remind you at the worst possible moments that this is still ultimately a revenge story and pulls the rug from you just as gleefully as it dazzles. The first season was already exceptional, but the second cements Oshi no Ko as an all-time great adaptation. As a fan of the manga, this is as good of an anime as I could ask for, and then some.

Mixed Bags

My Deer Friend Nokotan

I’m just exhausted.

I’ll admit, I bit a little too hard on the marketing. The preview trailers promised madcap, nonsensical fun on the level of Nichijou or Asobi Asobase, the cast was exceptional, and the OP’s refrain was a total earworm (Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan! Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan! Shikanoko Nokonoko Koshitantan!). It even has the cast jumping in the air! And we all know the Ryo Yamada rule! This was going to set the bar for gag anime!

Oh, how little I knew. Y’know how sometimes you see a trailer for a middling comedy movie and you can tell they already gave away all of the movie’s best jokes? Turns out My Deer Friend Nokotan did just that. I did temper my expectations; it’s not like I thought this was going to be the second coming of Nichijou or anything, but I guess I was still expecting something, I dunno, funnier?

The premise seemed to lend itself to a good comedy either way: Torako Koshi, a former delinquent, has successfully expunged her prior reputation and worked her way up to becoming her school’s student council president. All of that is nearly thrown away when a bizarre new student, Noko Shikanoko, immediately clocks her and almost spills the beans. Also, Shikanoko (who prefers to be addressed as Nokotan) has antlers and can commune with deer. She may even be a deer herself. She hoodwinks Koshi into starting a Deer Club at school, where they recruit Koshi’s upsetting younger sister Anko and the languid, rice-obsessed Bashame. Allegedly, shenanigans ensue.

Take this with a grain of salt, as humor is very subjective, but this show just plain isn’t very funny. Nokotan’s gags hit at least as often as they miss, and a lot of them just feel unforgivably dull. One bad segment can feel like an entire episode. The only reliable gags are gross-out humor, outsized slow-motion violence, or Nausicaä references. Everything else is just Koshi barging into the lower third of the screen to shout about how wacky the joke was just then.

Look, I know that humor doesn’t always translate across cultures. The things I don’t understand about Japanese humor could fill several libraries. I do, at the very least, get the basics of the boke/tsukkomi dynamic (fool and straight-man, basically) and how the reaction to a silly thing is usually the real punchline. I’ve absorbed enough Japanese media to adapt to that momentum. That nearly goes out the window here, because Koshi’s role as the tsukkomi is a straight-up momentum killer. It’s rarely just a “wait, what?!” or a “yeah, that’s rich coming from you;” it’s usually more like “wait, that is so ridiculous! You couldn’t possibly have pulled that off! And what’s that you’re wearing all of a sudden?” The rhythm is just gone. Comic timing? Don’t know her. Even if I thought the joke was funny at first, you could probably see any semblance of a smirk fading off my face by the time she was done. And hey, maybe some of this stuff doesn’t translate. Maybe it’s not that funny in Japan either.

The other characters outside of our main two really don’t help. Anko’s whole “yandere siscon” act isn’t very funny to start with, and she brings nothing to the table otherwise. Bashame is such a nothing character that even Koshi was sick of her by the end of the season. And while I feel like a good narrator can add a good level of je ne sais quoi to a comedy anime (see: Kaguya-sama), an overly intrusive one can actively take away from the humor (see: the Kaguya-sama dub). Nokotan’s narrator comes at it with a sort of winking, nudging “HEY, WE’RE A GAG ANIME” energy that gets too grating, too quickly. What doesn’t help is that he eventually affects a fake-desperate “please watch this show and tell your friends!” bent that called to mind Ron Howard’s narration in Arrested Development’s third season as it was approaching cancellation. Meta humor, as in the latter, can absolutely elevate the level of comedy; 100 Girlfriends in particular wielded it like a machete. In Nokotan, on the other hand, it betrays a clear lack of confidence in the writing, and there’s nothing less funny than comedy that doesn’t even believe in itself.

It’s not all awful, I swear. There are genuinely some very good gags; Nokotan’s cat-and-mouse game with an anachronistic matagi was a blast from beginning to end, and the skin-suit gag got a bigger laugh out of me than almost anything else I saw this season. Any good anime, especially a comedy, lives and dies by its voice cast, and Megumi Han’s performance as the titular Nokotan is this show’s whirring, beeping life support. She makes the absolute most of her considerable range as the jokes call for it, while somehow never stepping on her own toes by dipping into her Kana Arima voice from Oshi no Ko. Koshi shares a VA with Hatsune goddamn Miku. Bashame is pretty much only tolerable thanks to the languid performance of relative newcomer Fuuka Izumi, whom I’m very glad to hear in something that isn’t Gushing Over Magical Girls.

And aside from the music (the OP, to be fair, is infectious), that’s about all there is to like about the production. Did Studio WIT really make this? It looks like it could’ve been made by anybody, and that’s not a compliment. The uncanny CGI deer were the only real visual standout, and even those lost their shine before long. Something attempting to be this audacious needs to have a look to match, and Nokotan falls flat. Again, maybe that’s on me for trying to hold it to the standard Nichijou set.

I’d honestly be surprised if this gets picked up for another season. I’d be hard-pressed to come back for more.

No Longer Allowed in Another World

(CONTENT WARNING for discussion of suicide)

Osamu Dazai was one of the most complex and fascinating figures in Japan’s modern literary canon, right up there with his ideological opposite and real-life rival, Yukio Mishima. Dazai was, frankly, a disaster. He was a serial womanizer, terrible with money, repeatedly disowned by his family, unemployable, a deadbeat dad, and hopelessly addicted to drugs and booze. His magnum opus, Ningen Shikkaku, or No Longer Human, is a stark semi-autobiography, just barely fictionalizing his repeated failures of dignity and self-preservation, including his several failed attempts at double-suicide with his many illicit lovers. The same year it was published, however, Dazai was successful in his final attempt, drowning himself alongside his mistress in 1948.

But like, what if he got hit by the isekai truck instead?

Isekai Shikkaku, or No Longer Allowed in Another World, fully Goes There. The series begins with the legally distinct, unnamed Sensei and his lover Sacchan blindsided by an anachronistic truck along the riverbed. Sensei comes to, alone, in a monastery inspired by the JRPGs from well after his time. He doesn’t know what’s going on and he doesn’t care. All that matters is that he’s still alive, and that sucks for him. Sensei is greeted by Annette, an elf priestess in a virgin killer sweater, who is shocked to discover that not only has he not gained a single stat boost by coming to this world, but he’d also rather kill himself than take her up on the standard offer of an OP cheat skill (and he’d also just rather kill himself in general). So he bounces to go find Sacchan. His refreshing outlook on the new world, as opposed to the other excitable losers who got isekai’d before him, completely melts Annette’s brain to the point of falling in love with him on the spot, so she dons her sluttiest Persona 3 battle armor to chase after him.

Sensei hates this shit. Contemporary western fantasy hadn’t made its way to Japan yet in his time, so he has zero point of reference in this world, and he sure as shit has no clue what a JRPG is. The level-up jingles give him migraines. He has no self-preservation instincts and the only solace he has in this strange new world is a jar of toxic sleeping pills that he munches like M&Ms. He has no interest in or aptitude for fighting, so when he encounters a big-tiddy catgirl being squeezed half to death by a walking tree’s branches, Sensei sees the perfect opportunity to get himself killed. Unfortunately, his blood has become so toxic from said pills that piercing his skin instantly kills the tree, saving the young lady he incorrectly names Tama. Much to Annette’s consternation, she joins the party, and they set out on Sensei’s quest to find his lover and finally die in peace.

As you can guess, that’s not what happens. For some time, we see Sensei throwing himself in harm’s way, floridly imploring various fantasy monsters to kill him in one shot with their big bats, to the point where they get creeped out. His vaguely-threatening exhortations for death make for a fine formula, but one that can wear thin quickly. Before it gets that chance, though, the seed planted in Annette’s introduction bears fruit: The visitors to this world from our own aren’t here in isolation, and they have succeeded in completing the usual isekai goal of overthrowing the demon king. There’s now a massive power vacuum, and nature abhors that shit, so a cabal of erstwhile isekai protags dub themselves the Fallen Angels and decide to take over.

This turn was, to put it bluntly, the main thing that kept me watching. There’s a fine bit of commentary inherent to this framing that the type of wet-noodle, borderline faceless self-insert isekai protags tend to appeal to antisocial losers who would rather give into their basest impulses than see an opportunity to actually better themselves. This is not at all lost on Sensei; his keen eye for the human condition leads him to interrogate the Fallen Angels his party encounters so that he can write about their own failures as humans, as well as the gaping voids in their previous lives that led to them acting like petty tyrants as soon as they gained a bit of power and treating a brand new world like their own personal playground. Sensei’s writings reveal that he did indeed gain a power when he came over to this world; if he sees fit, a finished book will surround its subject and reanimate them back in their original world and afford them a second chance to right their wrongs or, in one particularly moving case, start over on the right foot.

For as audacious as No Longer Allowed’s premise is and as impeccable its comic timing and voice cast (you will find some absolute heaters completely buried on the call list), I just didn’t find it all that compelling. Isekai as a genre is so oversaturated that it was old hat to call it oversaturated even five years ago, so while I do try to pan for gold, sometimes I just come up with a neat-looking river stone. Hell, I can’t even say this one’s all that neat-looking; there’s nothing that looks all that great about it to begin with. The character designs and backdrops are pretty standard JRPG-style stuff that you’re just as likely to find in the likes of Helck, with lackluster animation to match. Didn’t care too much for most of the characters either. Even for its commentary on the isekai genre and the type of person it caters to, No Longer Allowed just ends up shaking out like another isekai series.

There’s clearly more at play here, and I might just go ahead and read the manga because I didn’t really find myself looking forward to watching the anime. Maybe it just didn’t translate well. No Longer Allowed in Another World does clearly have something to say under its silly premise, but its method of getting that message across is, ironically, buried underneath the usual trappings of the genre it’s trying to say something about.

Wistoria: Wand and Sword

I’m gonna preface this by saying that Wistoria is probably the best anime I watched this year that I’ve classified as a “Mixed Bag,” save for Jellyfish Can’t Swim in the Night. I’m generally of the mind that excellent production can make up for a middling story (my enjoyment of the likes of Solo Leveling and Wind Breaker this year was pretty emblematic of that), and that is the case here for the most part. Wistoria, story-wise, is nothing special; it’s your standard power fantasy set in a magical school, but the entire presentation is just almost fascinating enough to overcome that hurdle.

Hell, it’s almost not even worth going over the plot. Unassuming boy named Will goes to a magic academy, he doesn’t have any magical aptitude, so he makes up for it by honing his hand-to-hand combat prowess in the school’s designated dungeon. It’s Mashle meets Solo Leveling. Will gets picked on (like, a LOT), but he doesn’t care, because he made a promise long ago to reach the pinnacle of magical society to reach his childhood friend, who happens to be a genius mage. There are duels, there’s a tournament, there’s monsters, you know how this goes.

Will has allies in the school, namely a female friend who’s madly in love with him as well as a professor who covers for his shortcomings in magic-related subjects, but remember that this is a self-insert fantasy: There are also increasingly menacing bullies for him to put in their place. Will is challenged by a Snape-like instructor, a classmate who just hates him so much for not having magic aptitude, and a top performer at the school who’s just flat-out evil (and racist to boot!). And of course the latter two also have goon squads of snickering hangers-on. Will always succeeds, of course, because despite his shortcomings, he’s the strongest and most specialest boy. It’s almost like an isekai without the isekai. Too bad we find out that Will is hilariously shredded, which kinda blows a hole in the self-insert aspect.

Goofy shonen-isms aside, there’s still plenty to enjoy here. Varying types of magic, artifacts, and fantasy races abound, and lore is sprinkled throughout the show in character biographies in the commercial break eyecatches. The story does get gradually less stupid as the season goes on and characters are better fleshed out. And hey, there’s nothing wrong with watching a really strong dude beat the shit out of monsters and assholes.

The only thing that really kept me coming back to Wistoria was that, plainly, it looks and sounds fucking awesome. It’s not the best-looking anime I watched this season (that would either be Oshi no Ko or one of the next two anime on this list), but Wistoria takes such a surprisingly cinematic approach to such an uninspiring story that I couldn’t help but keep watching. The lighting effects are lush, combat animation is bonkers in its best moments, and the score is pretty darn good too. It definitely takes some big swings at simulating camera movements and perspective shots that don’t always accomplish what they set out to do, but I can appreciate the ambition bleeding through. I can see the vision, and that’s what counts.

The actual content is pretty paint-by-numbers, but Wistoria is well-made enough that it’s worth a shaky recommendation. Maybe just turn your brain off until the action picks up. I've heard the manga gets pretty good from here on out, so I'll probably stick it out for another season.

The Gems

The Elusive Samurai

If you’re not already familiar with this series, do me a favor and watch the OP linked right above. Pretty good character animation, right? Expressive, weighty, plenty of personality. The colors pop like crazy too! A lot of the time, an anime series will heavily stylize its OP to attract eyeballs and YouTube metrics, oftentimes bringing in outside animators and directors for a unique feel. In the case of The Elusive Samurai, I cannot stress enough that all that animation is the standard.

Yes, this show looks exceptional. Even putting aside the fact that it’s historical fiction, this show has a truly timeless look to it that I still struggle to put into words. The Elusive Samurai is clearly a modern production but bears all of the hallmarks of what great animation has always looked like when a studio is willing to invest in it: Colors are so bold and saturated that I want to take a damn bite out of them, backgrounds are painstakingly hand-painted even for brief cuts, and there even seems to be a film grain overlay to really sell the classic feel. It’s not perfect (I’ll get into that later), but holy shit is it a feast for the eyes.

Adapted from the pages of Weekly Shonen Jump, The Elusive Samurai is a heavily fictionalized retelling of the fallout of the Siege of Kamakura in the 14th Century. Tokiyuki Hojo, left without a family in a bloody coup of the shogunate, is prevented from committing suicide by enigmatic priest Yorishige Suwa and then thrown right back into the fire of the battlefield. Yorishige, who has prophetic visions of the future, foresaw Tokiyuki’s ascent to leadership and wants to see how he fares in battle. Tokiyuki didn’t bother with his training as a young master, instead playing elaborate games of hide-and-seek with the Hojo clan’s advisors, so in the face of certain danger, he’s left with no choice but to do what he does best and run the fuck away. And as with evading his training, Tokiyuki realizes that it’s way more fun than actual combat, and the future is suddenly even more clear to Yorishige: Evasion, not bloodthirst, will guide Tokiyuki’s path to revenge.

At Yorishige’s increasingly unnerving behest, Tokiyuki goes into hiding at Suwa Shrine and begins building a squad to take down the usurper, Takauji Ashikaga. Along with Yorishige’s daughter, Shizuku, he teams up with young warriors Kojiro and Ayako, and in their travels pick up the crass, kitsune-masked thief Genba and the food-obsessed swordsboy Fubuki. It’s fine as extended casts go, though we don’t get much from a few of them past their introductory arcs. Tokiyuki is an absolute delight, though. He’s a sweet and joyful kid despite his circumstances; real shonen protag material. And most importantly, he’s completely over Yorishige’s shit.

I’m a sucker for magical realism, and The Elusive Samurai delivers. Yorishige really does appear to be a prophet, to the point where he can even predict Dragon Ball Z (yes, really), and he and Shizuku are capable of pulling off acts that any actual person would consider a literal miracle. Mythical beasts roam the land and those that were slain appear to reside on a different realm accessible to the Suwas. All of Takauji’s top soldiers have senses and abilities far beyond anything human or animal, and Takauji himself seems to have borrowed some of his prowess from the devil himself. With this show’s commitment to top-tier visuals and animation, the sky's the limit for what we can see, and it kept me glued to my TV every episode. It almost made me want to watch Demon Slayer. Almost.

The cast has some solid performances from familiar names and voices: Yuichi Nakamura is his usual blusteringly silly self as Yorishige, Aoi Yuuki is a riot as Genba, and Katsuyuki Konishi (Kamina himself!) infuses Takauji with appropriate menace. There’s some Chainsaw Man and Bocchi sprinkled into Tokiyuki’s clan of rookie warriors as well. Good stuff, but what really caught my attention was a surprisingly familiar voice giving life to the bug-eyed villain Sadamune Ogasawara: None other than Yutaka Aoyama, the narrator of Kaguya-sama: Love is War. Nobody could have more perfectly infused Sadamune with the appropriate level of self-serious goofiness than the guy who narrated Kaguya-sama’s balloon game like it was an NFL Film. Perfect casting.

As incredible as this show looks most of the time, the remainder does have a critical issue: CloverWorks didn’t seem too invested in hand-animating horses or any of the show’s characters riding them, so it opted instead for CGI. Very poorly-implemented CGI. I really try to take stuff like this as it comes, but the modeling looks way too video-gamey for the style the rest of the show is going for, to the point where I’m taken out of it. There’s really no excuse for something this uncanny with the high bar The Elusive Samurai set for itself early on (and yes, Uzumaki is airing as I write this, and I’ll talk about the similar problem that show has at the end of the year).

I know I just said this about Wind Breaker last year, but this may be CloverWorks’ other Big Shonen Hit. It certainly has the juice, between the wacky gags and shockingly brutal violence, and CGI issues aside, the studio has clearly invested in it. A second season is already on the way, and I’d say it’s paid off. If the studio can iron out the kinks, this could end up becoming an all-timer.

Makeine: Too Many Losing Heroines!

If I haven’t made it clear enough, my anime journey has turned me into a bit of a romcom guy. Couldn’t tell you why. Maybe it’s because Tenchi Muyo was a formative anime for me, or maybe it’s because I got on Kaguya-sama relatively early in my return-to-weebdom trek and I’ve been chasing that high ever since. I could go on and on about the ones I’ve watched and which particularly stood out, but we’d be here all day. At the same time, though, a burgeoning market for the genre, particularly among the shonen demographic, means that there’s gonna be some real slop out there. Plenty of anime, manga, and especially light novels are targeted at the “lonely boy who wishes cute girls would attach themselves to him just because he’s A Nice Guy” type, and while there are some genuinely excellent series that cater plenty to that kind, there’s a well-defined line between the good and the trash.

Makeine is well aware of that line and elects to skip rope with it. Genre subversion is at its best when the work in question shows a genuine care for the milieu it’s satirizing, and Too Many Losing Heroines is to trashy light novel romcoms what The Eminence in Shadow is to edgy isekai and Bang Brave Bang Bravern is to vaguely homoerotic mech warfare. It’ll slap you in the face with every dumb threadbare cliche you’ve come to expect from the genre, and it’ll do so with a smile.

These stories are usually fronted by a total wet noodle and Kazuhiko Nukumizu is the soggiest soba you’ve ever seen. His main interests are water fountains and hey, wouldn’t you know it, light novel romcoms. As far as he’s concerned, he’s a background character with the personality to match. He’s thrust to the forefront, though, when he’s caught staring at his classmate, Anna Yanami, embarrassingly picking up the pieces from being brutally rejected at a cafe. She forces herself into Nukumizu’s booth and helps herself to several courses’ worth of stress-eating on his dime, which he never agreed to. As recompense, Anna decides to cook him lunch until her debt is more or less repaid, and would you look at that, Nukumizu just made a friend!

As the title would suggest, Anna’s not the only lovelorn maiden finding her way into Nukumizu’s school life. He’s exhorted into joining the school’s literature club, where he meets the track runner, Lemon Yakishio, and the lit club’s stammering stalwart, Chika Komari. He also has to bear witness to each of their own crushes backfiring and deal with the fallout. And amidst this chaos, there’s plenty of botched confessions, getting locked in storage closets, boob faceplants, and all the other nonsense you’d expect from the genre. And it’s terrific! And in the midst of all this, even as Nukumizu seems to be a passenger in this journey, you see him ever-so-slowly realize that he has some agency and grow closer to these girls. Makeine is plenty silly and more than a little stupid, but there’s plenty of heart in here as well.

The offbeat character dynamics and clever dialogue are what really make this. Everyone is just refreshingly weird in their own ways. Anna is a complete menace and totally convinced she’s the protagonist of life, and she may not even be wrong. I almost don’t care whether she and Nukumizu get together or not; they’re such a fun “serious guy/goblin mode girl” pairing that I’m not that interested in their dynamic changing. Komari and the lit club VP Koto are a dynamic fujoshi duo, ensuring that the club’s shenanigans aren’t too shonen-centric (and funny enough, Koto has her own idea for an Osamu Dazai isekai). Everyone in the student council has something demonstrably Wrong With Them, the homeroom teacher is a disaster, and the school nurse probably belongs in prison. I love every single one of them. I could’ve done without Nukumizu’s offputtingly-clingy little sister (and learning about her analogue in this season’s other romcom LN adaptation, Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian, was enough to put me off of watching it), but it looks like one of her own female classmates is in love with her, so that could be gold in later seasons.

A-1 Pictures, to borrow an industry term, put its entire pussy into this production. As with last year’s Heavenly Delusion, there was so much love put into the lighting effects, background art, and character animation that I felt like I was watching a Makoto Shinkai film at times. All of those elements working in tandem massaged my brain in such a way that when every episode ended, I was left confused because hey, where the hell is the rest of the movie? Makeine is also loaded with killer visual gags, and I give A-1 a ton of credit for letting those jokes land without calling too much attention to them, unlike a certain other show I watched this season. The opening and endings were real treats, with three different EDs as the season progressed, each depicting one of the titular heroines’ personal journeys (and performed by each respective girl’s VA, no less). This is some real investment on the studio’s part and it absolutely paid off.

I promise that every time I compare a romcom to Kaguya-sama, it comes at a great inner struggle to prevent myself from doing so, but if that anime is truly over and this is where A-1 is focusing its resources, Makeine may very well be a worthy successor. I really can’t say for sure whether this or The Elusive Samurai was the best new anime of the summer season, and it doesn’t help that they aired on the same day and I’d always watch them back-to-back. Just know that they’re easily two of the better anime I’ve seen this year.

Mayonaka Punch

If “mega-cancelled YouTuber starts up a new channel with a bunch of disaster lesbian vampires” isn’t enough of a hook for you, I really don’t know what else to tell you.

Masaki got kicked off her popular NewTube channel after punching one of her co-hosts, and the internet is letting her hear it. Maybe barging in on the “we’re firing Masaki” live stream and tackling one of them didn’t help either. Rather than film the bog-standard apology video, she figures she can just wing it and start up a solo channel. Masaki decides to start by playing the hits and drunkenly recreate her first channel’s breakout video in a spooky abandoned hospital, and finds more than she bargained for in a vampire named Live (pronounced like it’d be short for Olivia) who really, really wants to drink her blood in particular. Masaki nearly falls to her death in a panic, only for Live to save her and reveal that she has the very filmable ability to fly, so Masaki cuts a deal: If Live can help her get a new channel off the ground, Masaki will let her drink her blood.

This is tremendous content, so Masaki moves in with Live at Banpai Manor along with her vampire roomies to produce a new channel, co-starring the eternal 10-year-old day trader (night trader?) Ichiko, the soft-spoken fujoshi musician Fu, and the heavy-vaping gambling addict Tokage. They name the channel Mayonaka Punch (because mayonaka means “midnight” and because Masaki punched the shit out of her former co-host) and quickly get to work trying to beat Masaki’s former channel to their goal of a million subscribers (and a delicious lunch for Live). Even though they try to pass off their vampire shenanigans as Very Good CGI, they run afoul of a vampiric authority figure for exposing their identities, so they have to get internet famous the old fashioned way: Cute Girls Doing Cute Things.

I can’t quite put into words what a blast this show is. Mayonaka Punch frequently barrels along at a madcap pace, often punctuated by an electro-swing score, as its cast of loud idiots (and Fu) carom off of one another to chaotic effect. The voice cast really sells it, too: Ikumi Hasegawa (Kita in Bocchi the Rock!, Vladilena in 86, Übel in Frieren) owns every ounce of Masaki’s mounting exasperation as she deals with all the vampire nonsense while continuing to avoid the consequences of her own actions. Fairouz Ai continues her MVP-caliber resume for 2024 in style as Live, infusing her with a kind of desperate manic energy as she scratches and claws for Masaki’s approval. This was easily my favorite of her many roles so far this year, and two years removed from Chainsaw Man’s debut, it’s been a treat to hear her once again voicing a feral, bloodsucking loser.

As silly as Mayonaka Punch gets, though, it delivers some serious emotional blows when you least expect them. The fourth episode, centering on Fu’s history, is one of the best of any anime I watched this season. There’s also some very interesting history between Live and the head vampire’s go-between, Yuki, that was told through (though partially buried by) a series of video game facsimiles, and I hope there’s more there someday. And, of course, there’s Masaki’s evolving relationship with Live, with romantic undertones so tantalizing they might as well be overtones. I really thought there wasn’t enough time left in the season to reach a satisfying conclusion, and though it might not have fully reeled in the yuri bait, I was pleasantly surprised at how well everything tied together.

Mayonaka Punch’s ending is open enough that I can only hope it gets a second season, but I’m not about to hold my breath. That’s a tall order for original anime that don’t set the world on fire, but this one has all the right pieces for a future cult classic. Liked and subscribed.

Suicide Squad Isekai

When this was announced, the only reaction it really got out of me was “Sure dude, why not.” As far as what this show is, it does what it says on the tin. It’s an isekai featuring a motley crew of anti-heroes plucked directly from the David Ayers and James Gunn Suicide Squad films. You already know what you’re in for.

Sure enough, this is a straight up Suicide Squad story from the jump: Harley Quinn and the Joker (the latter sporting yet another heinous makeover) try to pull off a heist, it goes sideways, Harley gets arrested and forced into Amanda Waller’s scheme to mine rare resources in another world alongside Deadshot, Clayface, Peacemaker, and King Shark. It’s your standard JRPG-style isekai fantasy world, except the previous Suicide Squad of Enchantress, the Thinker, Ratcatcher, and Killer Croc seem to have run roughshod over tensions between races and kingdoms, leaving Rick Flag alone to pick up the pieces.

And what ensues is pretty much what you’d expect. Everyone looks appropriately anime; Psycho-Pass character designer Akira Amano did especially good work with Harley, to the point where I’m shocked that a billion-yen idea like “anime Harley Quinn” was slept on for so long. All of this makes it even funnier that Peacemaker is still very much just John Cena. Character designs aside, Suicide Squad Isekai only seems to look good when it wants to; most of the moment-to-moment stuff looks a bit muted but absolutely pops off when business picks up. There’s even a flashback sequence of Deadshot and Ratcatcher that has a sort of loose, crumbly Masaaki Yuasa look to it. Despite the genericism of the setting and inconsistency of the aesthetic, though, Suicide Squad Isekai still carries plenty of style with it. The intro and outro are both blasts; I didn’t realize until the season ended that the “Tank!”-style OP was by Tomoyasu Hotei, the composer of the most iconic piece of music from Kill Bill. The ED (content warning: Mori Calliope) heavily features Amanda Waller getting down in ways I can only hope to one day see Viola Davis recreate.

The fusion of American and Japanese styles is definitely awkward at times; the occasional references to other Warner Bros properties like Lord of the Rings and Tom and Jerry feel particularly shoehorned in considering this is a Japanese production, but the voice cast makes up for a lot of faults. Anna Nagase captures Harley’s freewheeling energy perfectly, and her penchant for nicknames is extra cute in Japanese when she’s calling the Joker “Purin-chan” or King Shark “Nana-chan.” Jun Fukuyama is a real standout as Clayface, channeling the flashy spirit of Joker (not this one, the Persona 5 one) to animate Basil Karlo’s irritating showmanship. Takehito Koyasu as Peacemaker doesn’t quite have the self-serious goofy energy we’ve come to expect from the live action version, but it’s such funny casting on its face that I don’t really mind. Can this tradeoff go both ways? I want John Cena as DIO yesterday.

For a Studio WIT production and a story by Re:Zero’s writers, Suicide Squad Isekai may occasionally feel like less than the sum of its parts (par for the course for the property’s recent adaptations, unfortunately, save for the Gunn film), but if you don’t come at it expecting too much you’ll have a good time. Far from my favorite this year, but it’s a crowd pleaser, and those, I like.

#anime reviews #nier automata #oshi no ko #my deer friend nokotan #shikanoko nokonoko koshitantan #isekai shikkaku #no longer allowed in another world #wistoria wand and sword #the elusive samurai #makeine #too many losing heroines!#mayonaka punch #suicide squad isekai

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