#tbh I skimmed through this manga cause I was more interested in him than the story so I might have missed out something

[citrushaven]

Inu x Boku SS Manga Whump List: Natsume Zange

Note: Half youkai and has abilities similar to a clairvoyant, but it takes a toll on his health.

Manga Chapters:

Chapter 12: Passed out, blood from mouth (he says it's ketchup, but who knows)

Chapter 16: Used his power, collapse, weak

Chapter 37: Collapse

Chapter 40: Collapse, emotional angst

Chapter 44: Collapse, cold sweat

Chapter 49: In hospital, crying

[soulreviver]

The Legend of Faust and other details in the Necromancer Manga

So as fun as the Necromancer manga is, it diverges from the original story of Dr. Faust in a few ways. The primary differences are that 1) Faust alone held the powers he received from the demon and he did not go on to have a massive family line that all shared his abilities and 2) Faust’s contract was with the Devil’s agent Mephistopheles not the Great Prince of Hell Stolas (though points to the mangaka for making Stolas an owl, which follows depictions of him in historical works).

For those interested in the Legend of Faust, I actually recommend picking up Frau Faust! Those of you familiar with German terminology, the title does mean “Miss Faust/Lady Faust/etc.” indicating that Faust is female in this tale with the name Johanna Faust. With that detail aside, it’s a rather good read with a surprising amount of accuracy to folklore and the time period, as it is written by the author of “The Ancient Magus Bride.”

Okay, enough digressions, back to the real topic at hand, the actual story of Faust.

So, the best known version of Faust is by Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (you see where the name Johann came for Faust?) and is considered his masterpiece. In this particular telling of Faust, the doctor is bored with his life to the point of depression (which is a real cause of depression in some people). Mephistopheles appears and offers to serve Faust to relieve his boredom in exchange for the man’s the life and him severing the Devil in Hell. So rather than being gifted with infinite knowledge, he has Mephistopheles to aid him in his endeavors, including the seduction of a woman named Gretchen (some versions have her named “Margaret”). Their affair produces an illegitimate child, which Gretchen despairs over, causing her to down the child and turn herself in. Faust goes to rescue her, but she rejects his offer and is thus able to redeem herself in the eyes of God and be welcomed into Heaven upon her execution (Some version have God reject her anyways and condemn her instead).

According to the wiki there is a lesser known part 2 to the play, that had even Faust finding redemption, as he spent his life striving to live a meaningful life he was still able earn redemption. Now, this all is a very brief summary of the story and a lot of things where skimmed over or plain left out on my part.

Now, if we look at this through the lens of Necromancer we get to make up some fuuuuun family history for Asutsuo! My ramblings get long, so I’m throwing the rest under a read more.

So, try as I might to find an exact time period for the Necromancer manga, the author did not writing it with historical accuracy in mind. Just looking at the differences in clothing between the characters tells you that much (what medieval age back robber wears a hoodie? Further more where there even banks back then?! All I know is there was no way Schutrusche Einzgrie could see a therapist! She’d have been thrown into a nut house* instead!) So, unlike Frau Faust, there is no way I can nail down a time period for it to take place. Going off my own feelings on it, I want to land thing before the Victorian era, especially before technology and electricity advanced too much. I’ll be honest, I swallow the “bad guys have more advanced and time-period-incorrect technology” trope fairly well, as it’s in most of my favourite games, so I’ll let Magdala have their electrically charged taser-lances.

Now, with a generalized time period for Necro, I do know the original tale of Faust was set way back in time, with the first print edition coming out around 1806, with earlier version being worked on between 1772-75. Given that we need Faust’s family time to reproduce enough to the point of having a small village-size clan, let’s place the events of Faust in the early 17′s and Necro in the early--NEVER MIND the internet has informed me the Georgian era overlaps with when Fuast was written (can you telling I’m googling stuff as I go?)

Okay, so, for the sake of Asutsuo’s family grown, Faust is being placed mid- to late-1600′s with Necro being set in the early 1800′s. Now, as Asutsuo and his father have “Johann-Faust” in their name, it’s likely Faust’s first and last name were taken as a single last name (though Faust is never given a first name in the original tale and it’s simply a nod to the author with having his first name be Johann). Last names are funny things, as if you go back far enough, they weren’t really a thing. You have Jon and then you have his son Jonson to indicate this is the son of Jon. So, that’s kinda how a lot of them came to be??? I guess??? This isn’t my area of expertise, tbh. 

Back on track, the family history of the Johann-Faust clan started with the original Johann Faust forging a contract with Stolas to bestow his family with the powers of Necromancy and knowledge (Asutsuo is way too fucking smart for a kid who never went to school) until that bloodline came to and end. Unlike the original tale, his romance with Gretchen is successful in that she doesn’t kill their child, but they get married and have several children. These children go on the populate the Johann-Faust clan, with the family agreeing that the one with the strongest abilities as a Necromancer would be the family head. For the sake of avoiding the church they form a small hamlet/village way out in the woods between several towns, with few adults venturing into town and mostly sending the kids for necessities.

Speaking of the Church, the world of Necromancer does not seem to have the Christian Orthodox church as it’s religious staple. I say this because Germany, historically, held the Church very closely to authority especially in matters regarding the supernatural and with the time period I have chosen to believe Necro was set in, the Church would still have clout in the world. So why is this little religious ‘sect’ or ‘cult’ able to have enough sway to have the whole police force on it’s side to hunt down Asutsuo? Now, the use of ‘cult’ or ‘sect’ may have been an error by the translation team. Japanese does not easily translate into English by any stretch of the imagination, especially when Romaji terms or loan words are added to the mix. I believe that the Church of Magdala started small and EXPLODED over time, making it the religious organization of the German country (it has yet to be seen if their influence or followers extend beyond the German boarder). Furthermore, what is ‘Magdala?’ Who is this goddess they worship? Well a quick google search of ‘Mary Magdala’ brought up ‘Mary Magdalene’ (with Magdalene the translation of the church’s name used in the final chapters) who is a character from the bible, who was present for some significant moments in Jesus’s tale, including his Crucifixion and Resurrection, being the first person to testify of his return. Some Gospels even tell of her having demons driven out of her. Now, I could rehash the whole Wiki page, but that’d take way too much time. Just go read it if you’re curious. 

Moving along, the Church of Magdala (using the first version of the translation simply because I’m used to it) worships Mary as a goddess of sorts, so perhaps in their views she was the one to revive Jesus or some other miracle such as healing him from his wounds from being crucified. I take this angle because they are very interested in Shilverase who possesses special properties in her blood that allows her to heal all ailments (though we only ever see her heal physical wounds, so I wonder if she possesses an enzyme that’s great for the blood clotting process like wolves have in their saliva, but I digress). Now, the manga does have the followers refer to their ‘god’ with the male version of address instead of ‘goddess’, but again, translation errors happen**, so let’s just mentally switch all uses of the word ‘god’ in the manga when referencing Mary to ‘goddess’. Now with this connection to Christianity established, they likely have a similar groundwork for what is sinful and what’s not. Perhaps they take an extra interest in other groups trying to use necromancy or other healing/resurrection magics because they believe their goddess is the exclusive owner of those abilities, thus not just making it sinful but blasphemous to use them, as the person is assuming to be on the same level as their own goddess. The manga touches on how “the goddess is viewed as good, so therefore the Necromancers are evil” without much elaboration as to why, so I’m hoping the above explanation provides a reason of sorts.

I think that’s all I got for now. This was a bit disjointed as I did take a long break between when I started writing this and when I sat down to finished the last few paragraphs. Hopefully this will give us some cohesive idea on why the world of Necromancer works the way it does? My apologies for my ramblings being all over the place, I can only hope they made sense and flowed well enough for you who read this.

*Time period accurate name, as psychological disorders were all seen as a person simply being ‘crazy’ and getting locked up or killed. This knowledge pains me as a psychologist. **Please don’t think I’m narking on the translation team. Easy Going Scans did us a great service by translation this little manga and I’ve never have been able to enjoy it without their hard work and dedication <3

[midgetmeredith]

hi~ i read your about page where you said you might write up your reasons for not liking some ft ships like the whole debate with fraxus/miraxus & chendy/rowen but i couldn't find anything on it on your blog so i wondered what were your thoughts on that? i know there's fandom arguments about homophobia and crackshipping there too. i’m a multishipper but i really like your anti posts for naruto so i thought if you had any ft ones then they might be as good! �

Thank you! I’m really glad youthat like my Naruto posts. They’re pretty controversial, so nice commentsare always appreciated! 😅 Dude, I haven’t updatedby ‘about’ page in months, so doing that write-up completely passedmy mind… Thanks for being interested though! I guess I’ll spill:

Right, this might be quitecontroversial, so remember that any opinions expressed are just personalpreferences/reasons, okay? ⚠️

Like I said on my page, “Ihave a ‘manga > anime’ complex thanks to Studio Pierrot, so I only readFT. I wanted to avoid filler brainwashing, bias and only know of canon withthis series, after the mess with Naruto…” Therefore, I only really ship thatwhich I believe is substantially depicted/suggested in canon, and kind of havea bit of a pet peeve for anything outside of that.[ #1 justificationdisclaimer! ]

( 1 ) Mir/axus [ &Fraxus ]

So I was genuinelysurprised that Mir/axus was even a thing when I started searching the fandom’s tag, onceI’d caught up. I don’t know if they’ve been implied in filler, but theywere non-existent as a romantic pair in the manga. Honestly, theyhardly had any on-panel interaction… Like, the only evidence that came tomind for “logical” reasoning behind them was chapter 380’s cover art.(Maybe 329’s, at a push.) I even tried to find somesupposed “moments” under their Wikia page, but that listed was merelyscarce interaction with no romantic subtext; each synopsis was pretty muchgrasping for straws.

Here’s the thing –you mentioned the fandom discourse of “homophobic” accusations,right? Now, I too hate when shippers (in any fandom) cry that simplybecause others don’t ship a queer pairing. Like, c’mon. But, inthis case (and Wendy’s), I must admit that I do find it somewhatrelevant… Idk if this ship’s popularity (and, more so, acceptance alongsidethe actual semi-canon pairs) is because most have been influenced byexternal material or if it’s just because there’s no other member of the opposite sex that they’re paired with, but Fraxus was actually suggested in canon; emphaticallyfrom Freed’s point of view! Even on Laxus’ side, numerous chapters have moments that – here’s the thing – anyone would undeniablyaccept if either Freed or Laxus were female*.

[ My earlier volumes are enclosed in my bookcase, but I have 49 – 57 (Avatar – Alvarez) on-hand beside my bed, so I skimmed through to find (max.) five pages to evidence Laxus’ P.O.V. ‘cause this post will already be long enough. ]

Chapter 416: “At this rate, I won’t be able to protect what’s important to me.”

It’s also worth noting that the official tankōbon/volume translation of this reads: “I’m not strong enough to protect the people I love yet.”

Chapter 460.

Chapter 462: “But that ain’t important now. All I’ve got on my mind… Is bringing the pain to the bastard who took out Freed and the others.”

Chapter 472: “So you’re the one who did a number on Freed and the others?”

Chapter 473: “Thanks a lot, Freed… There’s no wizard that could break your spells…”

*That’s the key consideration – that if you were to replace either’s gender for that of the opposite sex, it changes how these scenes are perceived. These panels, for example, are dismissed by those who oppose Fraxus, but they would be regarded as “ship moments” and a validation of Laxus’ affection if you were to replace Freed’s name in the dialogue and/or presence in the panels with a female (Mira)!

That’s why I can kind ofunderstand these claims, ’cause the existence and general fandomacceptance of these ships is very heteronormative in that respect (i.e.ignoring present queer pairings for heterosexual ‘crack-ships’) which makes it kind of discriminatory; reminiscent of homophobia perhaps. Although, I agree that term is a little extreme, as it doesn’t seem intentionally prejudiced. And whilst Freed is emphatically portrayed as queer, Laxus’ sexualityis a little more implicit, yet he is assumed straight by default… It’sironic/hypocritical because the majority of ships across all fandoms are typically founded upon onecharacter’s feelings, whilst neither Mira nor Laxus have shown said romanticinterest in each-other.

( 2 ) Ro/Wen [ &Chendy ]

Again, I hate Ro/Wen dueto a similar reasoning. Finding out that they even existed as a ship wasbaffling, tbh! I mean, at least Mir/axus had the cover as some rationale,but Ro/Wen is based solely on them being the same age… Talk aboutheteronormative? Also, technically, that’s an incorrect claim, due to the sevenyear time-skip in which she remained frozen. Like, she’s actually thesame age as Sting & Rogue. But you don’t find her forced with them. Why,because they’re older and that’s frowned upon? You know, despite the samepremise applying to Ro/Wen; since Romeo was half Wendy’s age when she wasintroduced (6 & 12).

The ship can’t even besupported with evidence, since they had no significant canoninteraction until the Alvarez Arc. Their only other contact was in an omake.Yet their age difference is evident in both; dismissing any reach atromantic subtext. In the omake, Romeo refers to Wendy as “nee[-chan]”.Similarly, she is presented comforting him like a child in their limited Alvarez panels, with him lookingup to her as that same sister figure. I have seen some of these shippers disregard Chendy asbeing “platonic”, when Romeo and Wendy’s dynamic isactually – canonically and strictly – such.

Chendy, however, do have asubstantial, visibly and literally present, mutual bond. They have extensive,plentiful interaction, as well as actually present romanticsubtext… I know that it may be difficult for (I guess) anyone outside of theLGBT+ community or a truly ‘open’ one to understand, due to ourheteronormative society – as Chendy are often disregarded as “justfriends” (🙄) – but many of theirmoments transcend platonic affection and bear intense likeness to theother romantic pairs’ depictions. For example, they are also featuredalongside the semi-canon couples in art-work, like Mashima’s couple sketches onTwitter.

Not to mention thatfriendship is the foundation of any healthy, romantic relationship! Of coursethey’re going to be best friends before engaging in such, particularly in thecase of same-sex pairs. Yet no-one uses this dialogue (of labellingeach-other as “friends”) against NaLu, despite them stating the otheras that same description on numerous occasions. But despite the justification mentioned above,Chendy are still dismissed. Again, if either were the male, it would be a completely different situation… I mean, since people shipcharacters based solely on covers and all – chapter 421’s cover (amongothers)?

Summary:

Obviously there’s nothingwrong with crack-shipping! And, no, not liking a queer pair [more than astraight one] doesn’t make you “homophobic”. But – in the case ofFraxus 🆚 Mir/axus& Chendy 🆚 Ro/Wen –I think that there is something kind of messed up with arrogantly defying acharacter’s canon depicted/suggested sexuality and/or romantic interest(s).There is something somewhat discriminatory about disregarding theirother prevalent, significant and actually developed bonds, to the extent that someone’sheteronormativity is so severe that they substitute a same-sex character foran irrelevant one of the opposite sex, who does not even have decentinteraction with the character in question; fabricated entirely from theridiculous, inaccurate [R/W] rationale of them being “the same age” or merelysharing a chapter cover.

That sounds much harsherthan I intended, I’m so sorry! Btw, I don’t blame shippers –everyone is (obviously) allowed to ship what they want! What’s stated above issimply why I’m against Mir/axus and Ro/Wen, especially as an avidsupporter of the LGBTQ+ community, a bisexual myself and a university scholar who has studied/written about this field.

[ I’ve updated by ‘about’ page now too, btw! ]

[funkaliciousfrog]

I’m bored, so I’m temporarily turning into a seasonal anime blog for a single extremely long post. 

I’m checking out more new anime than usual this season, and I’ve been in the mood to write lately. So, I thought it’d be fun to record my expectations for each show and my impressions of their first episodes. Even if no one but me ever reads it. 

Joran the Princess of Snow and Blood

That one show I’m watching partially just cause Aoi Shouta is there. I’m interested to see if he can pull off a female character who dresses as a man, which as he put it himself is the “gyakku-pattern” compared to his usual roles. Tbh watching shows just cause Shouta is in them hasn’t worked out super great for me in the past (I didn’t really like 2.43 or Kimi to Boku, and Hamefura was just alright), so we’ll see what happens here. It’s an anime original so who knows how the story will end up. But going off the trailer, at the very least we’ll get some cool aesthetics and sick fight animation.

I guess I shouldn’t be surprised that the plot of this show is gonna involve some politics, since it takes place in an alternate 1930s where the reign of the Tokugawa shogunate hasn’t ended yet. Yeah, you might need to skim a Wikipedia article or two on Japanese history for this one. The main characters are assassins, working undercover for the shogunate and fighting some group of superpowered shapeshifting animal people. The protagonist works in a bookshop by day and lives with her very young sister who does all the housework. She also has some kind of crow-related powers that haven’t been explained yet. In fact, there’s a lot of things about the setting that were only touched upon and I guess will be elaborated on later. 

The character designs and background art are very nice, but something feels off with the actual animation. Things move in weird stiff ways, some of the special effects are kinda ugly, and the fight scenes in particular are disjointed at points. Although I think that disjointedness came more from the storyboarding than the animation itself? I can’t say for sure since I’m not one of those sakuga expert people. But, I can still tell the production value here isn’t quite as high as it appeared from the PV. The premise has potential, but as the story unfolds we’ll see if it’s good enough to carry the less than stellar animation. 

And as for Shouta, all he really got to do this episode was be dapper and talk in cryptic insect-themed metaphors. Oh, and randomly pull out a lightsaber, since I guess they have those in this show? I’m mostly curious to see how the people who don’t pay any attention to voice actors will react when his character’s actual gender is revealed. 

Mashiro no Oto

Hibike Euphonium was one of my first anime and remains one of my faves. So,  I’m always interested in shows about classical music and/or playing instruments. The manga has won multiple awards so it should be a good story, and hopefully this adaptation is just as good. As another show about a traditional Japanese instrument, the Kono Oto Tomare comparisons will be inevitable. But honestly, I’d be happy just learn some stuff about the shamisen cause I think it's cool. 

This was quite the whirlwind first episode. Our main character Setsu has been playing shamisen with his grandpa since he was a little kid. But, turns out his grandpa is displeased with his grandson’s sound, so he makes it his dying wish that Setsu stop playing shamisen. Once his grandpa does die, Setsu feels distraught, impulsively gets on a bus to Tokyo, ends up living with a random gravure idol for a week, picks fights with her no-good wanna-be rockstar boyfriend, at the very end a SWAT team shows up... it’s a lot. 

And I don’t really know how it will proceed from here either. After speeding through this escapade in Tokyo, I think (or hope) that the pace will settle down starting next week. And going off the poster we’ll eventually end up in a high school shamisen club, somehow.

I really enjoyed the bits and pieces of shamisen music in this episode, it just sounds so cool! I hope to eventually get more specific information about the instrument and its repertoire. All I really want from these shows about extremely specific topics is to be educated! They also played either the OP or ED at the end, and it sounded pretty neat. Unlike Kono Oto Tomare they actually put the instrument of question into the song, which I appreciate (though I still like all the Kono Oto OPs and EDs). 

The art in the PV didn’t seem like anything that special, but the episode itself actually looked very nice in the important moments. I especially liked the snowy background art from the beginning. They also took an interesting direction with the character designs: everyone is drawn with very thin lines and most of the time without cel shading. Sometimes it looks like an aesthetic choice, and other times it just looks kinda cheap. The animation itself is nothing crazy, but at least from my uneducated perspective the shamisen playing looks pretty believable. 

After 2.43's Fukui-ben from last season, I guess this show will be my new source of Japanese regional dialects. Apparently Setsu’s accent is so strong that the girl he’s staying with asks him if he’s a foreigner, which I thought was funny. They don’t mention where he’s from, but he and his family use the same “-be” ending as the main character from the Great Pretender. Which isn’t helpful cause I can’t remember where he was from either. But anyway, for some reason it just amuses me every time someone says “dabe”. 

(A footnote about Setsu’s accent: I’ve done a bit of research, or rather literally just typed “be” into jisho.com, which I can’t believe actually worked, and it seems to be some type of Touhoku dialect. His voice actor, Nobunaga Shimazaki, is from that area so I guess that checks out? Although according to the Wikipedia page it’s used as a generic rural accent in media, so maybe they don’t care about the specific region as long as he sounds like a country boy.)

Farewell, My Dear Cramer

Finally, an all-girls sports anime! There are a few out there already, but I haven’t seen any of them yet (except maybe Chihayafuru, which has a mixed gender cast but an awesome female lead). As far as I’ve read, most have mixed reviews and tend to lean into other genres and/or have a lot of fanservice. So, I’d really like this show to be the female version of a straightforward realistic sports show like Haikyuu that is missing from all our lives. But it looks like it might be a drama about sports instead, which potentially could be just as good. It did come from the Your Lie in April mangaka after all, if you couldn’t tell from the weird lips. Besides that, the art in the trailer looks really nice. 

So apparently soccer, especially women’s soccer, is an unpopular sport in Japan? The protagonist Nozomi thinks she’s too good for girl’s soccer after playing with the boys for all of middle school, but is convinced to join the girl’s team in high school anyway. Then we meet a couple of her new teammates who were similar prodigies in middle school, and jump right into a scrimmage between the first and second years? 

It’s kind of a weird first episode. While it does technically establish the setting and characters, after the first few minutes it kind of feels like we’ve just been thrown into the mix of things. There’s also a noticeable lack of music in a lot of scenes which makes it feel even weirder.

The character designs are less of a problem than I thought they’d be, although the lips and sometimes the eyes still do look a bit strange. The simple, almost graphic quality is actually kind of interesting. It’s also very refreshing to see a variety of female characters that just look and act like normal high schoolers. They’re really just here to play soccer, not to be sexy or cute or really attractive to the viewer in any way. 

Although we do get some nice soccer playing in the ED, the animation in the episode itself definitely isn’t at Haikyuu levels or anything. They avoid actually animating a lot of the action with speed-line backgrounds and barely-moving shots where only the hair and clothes flap in the wind. 

Nozomi has the same voice actress as Kaede from Gal and Dino, and her performance there was one of my favorite parts of that show so I’m looking forward to more from her. Aoi Yuki and Tomoyo Kurosawa, definitely a couple of notable names, also show up in this episode. 

Fruits Basket Final

More Fruits Basket, lets gooo! Second season was awesome so I have high expectations. I’ve already been slightly spoiled on a few things about the ending, but I’m still looking forward to seeing the specifics of the mystery of the Soma family curse wraps up. 

We pick up right where we left off last season with Kureno dropping the ~big reveal~ about Akito’s gender on Tohru. Turns out she’s a girl, but raised as a boy by her mother from birth for yet unknown reasons. Then he talks more about her parents: her dad Akira seems to be dead (yet another mysterious white-haired Akira Ishida character for the books), and her relationship with her mother Ren is messy to say the least. 

Finally, best girl Saki shows up and saves the day! She brings Tohru back to her house, and along with Arisa gives her the reality check we’ve all been waiting for: she is going to burn herself out if she keeps on putting others’ needs before her own. 

Interestingly, even though she seems to be a pretty bad mom, Ren is in the right here about the unhealthy relationship between Akito and the zodiacs. Is she really being kept inside because of physical and mental illness, or is that just Akito’s excuse for locking her mother away? I suspect it’s the latter. Akito loves a good power trip, and if Ren were allowed to talk to the zodiacs she could possibly undermine the hold Akito maintains over them. It could also be a combination of both reasons, so I’ll just have to wait and see.

The OP is awesome! The photo backgrounds incorporate the 2D characters well and it just looks very nice. The song’s R&B-ish sound also stood out instantly from the pop ballads Fruits Basket usually gives us. Once it comes out on Spotify, I will be adding it to my playlist along with Chime and Eden. Btw, if you haven’t heard the full version of Eden I recommend you check it out cause it really goes some places you don’t even get to hear in the TV-sized version.

On a side note, this show has some real fashionistas. Rin, Haruhatsu, Saki, and this episode Arisa have great outfits. That cropped shearling jacket with the skinny scarf? 👌 It’s also adorable how Saki and her little goth brother coordinate their looks. I will never forget that time they casually rolled up to an okonomiyaki restaurant rocking black opera gloves. 

Zombieland Saga Revenge

More Zombieland Saga! The best part of the first season imo was the comedy, but I’m guessing we’ll get more into the mystery/drama part of the show here: more information about Kotaro and his motives/methods, Tae’s identity, etc. We’ll see how it goes. I’m also hoping for more bops like Adabana Necromancy and Saga Jihen. 

Oh how I missed this show’s manic energy...

Since the end of the last season, it seems Kotaro got overzealous and booked an arena for a concert that only sold 300 tickets, putting the group into a whole bunch of debt. So now the girls are all working part-time to pay it off, and they’re not nice jobs either: factory worker, farmhand, construction worker... milk-deliverer? Do they even have those in Japan? Now there’s some #commentary on showbiz. 

As for Kotaro, the whole thing has left him in such a haggard state that he’s managed to grow his hair down to his collar bones in a month flat. Now he spends his days bar hopping and rambling even less coherently than usual (although Mamoru Miyano is clearly having as much fun as ever). Franchuchu are left to prepare all by themselves for their anniversary concert at the tiny venue where they made their debut. But, they decide they’ll use it as a chance to sing the unperformed encore song from the arena concert for Kotaro, thinking it might relight his spark. 

We do get a drop of new information about the plot: turns out there’s a strict deadline on the Zombieland Saga Project, which is the real reason why Kotaro so upset. Maybe whatever necromancy he used on the girls will wear off after a certain amount of time and turn them back into corpses? The bartender at his favorite spot is apparently in on the whole zombie thing, and he’s the one who finally snaps Kotaro out of it. He sprints over to the anniversary concert and literally starts throwing hands with the unreceptive metalhead audience. To finish out the episode we get a glorious slow motion brawl sequence as Franchuchu sing the encore song. 

I don’t know if that encore will be the OP or ED, or if it’s just a insert song. It was alright I guess. To be honest I liked Iron Frill’s songs more than Franchuchu’s in the first season, and I feel like that will continue to be the case this season. I’m excited to see the new OP tho, even if it’ll be hard to beat the iconic Adabana Necromancy. And on a vaguely related note, it was cool to see the real Zombieland Saga ost album, Franchuchu The Best pop up in the episode.

Pretty Boy Detective Club

This one has people intrigued because it’s written by the author of the Monogatari series (which I haven’t seen yet) and animated by Shaft. There’s also the extremely Ouran-esque setup, with Maaya Sakamoto even voicing the cross-dressing main girl. Also I just think the title is funny. Honestly I don’t really know what to expect from this one besides the usual Shaft aesthetic, so we’ll see what happens. 

Mayumi wears glasses to keep attention away from her pretty eyes, but while stargazing on the roof she gets caught without them by Ayumu Murase in a detective hat. He ropes her into the Pretty Boy Detective Club, a shady secret organization at her middle school. We enter the clubroom and meet the members, a bunch of over-the-top eccentric tropey characters that wouldn’t be found in any non-anime middle school in a million years. Shoutout to that one guy in the hot pants. Then Mayumi reveals that she’s been looking for a star she saw once on a family vacation, and the boys decide to take up her case. 

I knew I was really in for something when I was hit with musings about Voltaire right out of the gate. Although from what I’ve heard about the Monogatari series, this kind of ~intellectual~ monologuing is totally on brand. And I don’t know if anyone else picked up on the subtle hints they were dropping in those monologues, but I sense that, maybe, perhaps, beauty is going to be a theme in this show...? Maybe it’s going to be some kind of #meta #commentary on pretty boys anime? That could be interesting, although there’s also a chance they’ll just play it straight. They even have an idol-anime-esque ED sung by the the main cast, so honestly it could go either way. 

As expected from Shaft, the visuals are all on point. I love both celestial and geometric imagery so this show’s aesthetic feels made just for me. The shifts in art style are also pretty neat. As for the character designs, my favorite part is probably the snazzy school uniform with the galaxy printed ties and striped pants and skirts. Although Murase’s character momentarily sprouted one of those flesh-fangs that I HATE they look so NASTY. 

I has a pretty fun time with this episode, it was just so absurdly Anime. I liked hot pants guy and his poses (tho I don’t love that he’s 12), and delinquent guy who was just tired of everyone else’s nonsense and casually ate food off the ground. They were at the beach too, so it probably got all sandy? And when this popped up I died laughing; truly words to take to heart.  

(A footnote about the ED: I thought I had spotted an Elements Garden member in the songwriting credits, and then of course I had to find out if they actually made it or not. The lyrics were written by RUCCA, who isn’t actually in the group but collaborates with them frequently according to the Google Translated version of his Japanese Wikipedia page. He’s written for quite a few Elements Garden produced Aoi Shouta songs, which is where I recognized his name from. The composer is Masatoma Ohta, who as far as I can find isn’t associated with Elements Garden but did a pretty good job emulating their sound. Both of them have done a lot of work for seiyuu, idols, and seiyuu-idols, so I guess that’s why I instantly understood what this song was going for lol.)