I’m already not a fan of the villainess isekai genre, but this one felt especially empty to me. I do enjoy characters that have fun acting evil, and our main has that going for her, but I struggled to ever root for her when one of the first things she says was basically “the villainess is right - bullying uppity commoners is good, actually, because they should know their place”, which is a wild position to have in the modern day. I then got a bit distracted when they introduced our romantic lead, who appears to be a good 5 years older than our main. As teenagers this would be creepy enough (if she’s 15 and off to magic school, he’d already be 20), but he starts following her around and staring at her when she is 8 and he is probably 13, which was a HUGE red flag for me that I don’t think I’d be able to get past. It’s so bizarre to me because why not just make them the same age?

I’m getting a bit bogged down in these details, but I think that’s largely because it didn’t seem to have any substance to preoccupy myself with instead. It seems like the main draw for the show is to see her have fun trying to be evil, but that really isn’t enough for me. I give the premiere a 1/5

It’s sad to see stuff end, but honestly I’m glad whenever fiction gets a real ending instead of just dragging out for a million years.

And it looks like the author is planning a new comic about gay bird boys, a topic I somehow keep finding more comics about, lol.

This art is very cute so I went to read the comic and it is also very cute!

And for once it’s some mer content that’s not full of the dreaded (by me) mermaid knees…

I hope it gets a sequel

Good news! Well, maybe good news? It looks like we ultimately don’t know when or what form the new anime will be, but something is in the works.

Hi newcomers! Welcome!! You might see me around in most/all of the discussion threads for a week or two because I’m the sort of unhinged person who watches everything to start off (it gets trimmed down FAST, lol). Since it seemed to work last time, I’m going to continue to not have rikka make posts for stuff I don’t plan on continuing to watch, and instead review them in these threads.

Even with my hectic summer, I managed to finish my shows before fall started, yay! Here’s my thoughts:

My friends and I are still working through their three picks for this season (otokonoko, dahlia, and elusive samurai) because we run a couple weeks late, but i expect high scores on two of those (sorry dahlia, lol) when we finally finish them.

This one is a great example of why I don’t read descriptions or watch previews, because the dumb twist got me, lol. I was pretty convinced I was in for some bland edgy video game adventuring slop, but the bait and switch actually pulled me in quite a bit. I’m not sold on it quite yet, but the character writing reminded me of Eminence in Shadow, an all-time favorite of mine that also had a bit of a slow start, so I’m hopeful at least. The second half of the episode had some good comedy beats and our cast seems to be filling up with weirdos, so I can see it being a very solid show if it finds its feet. But, ultimately, the premiere promised more than it delivered, so we’ll have to see. I’ll give it another episode or two at the very least. 3/5

Wow is this main character unlikable, which for a show with only one central character is a pretty major blunder. He claims that he’s making himself OP, but like, buddy, you’re just relying on the secretly OP skills and items that you scoffed at and then got forced on you. None of this is due to your efforts. There were times where it felt like the story was hinting toward an unreliable narrator (like how the different cliques at school are drawn a little differently, as if he’s making divisions that don’t really exist), but ultimately the anime feels too earnest for me to have any real hope of the story turning that way (if anyone is familiar with the source material, please correct me if I’m wrong!)

Ultimately it’s fine for what it is, which is a popcorn isekai anime with no substance backing it up. I can see someone enjoying it, but only after exhausting other, better options. I give the premiere a 2/5.

I’m confused. It looks like it’s available for streaming everywhere right now, but it just hasn’t broadcast on TV yet (I think).

The summer’s been a bit busy, so I’ve unfortunately fallen off some of the stuff that I meant to watch and fallen behind on the rest, but I think things are actually settling down now.

For our weekly anime time, my friends ended up picking:

• Senpai is an Otokonoko - an absolutely beautiful look at the complexity of figuring out gender and sexuality with some truly gut-wrenching depictions of transphobia and homophobia, both direct and indirect.
• Elusive Samurai - stunningly animated action (Cloverworks is doing the thing they do) and it has made us hopeful that some of the historical figures might finally get english language wikipedia pages (we keep complaining that there are no resources to look at about how close this comes to the real story, lol)
• Dahlia in Bloom - a bit of the odd one out because it, um, looks terrible and the story is a bit rough as well. We’re enjoying the slow-burn romance (it’s a bit too slow for me, tbh) and pointing at all the weird animation quirks (we were SHOCKED when, after episodes of making fun of horse animation errors, we got an up-close shot of a horse and learned that this world had 8-legged horses the whole time and they didn’t tell us, so those were not errors after all)
• Odd Taxi - I slept on this when it came out because the dialogue felt really stilted to me and I couldn’t get my brain to focus on what was being said, but one of my friends insisted, so here we are. It’s definitely gotten better in the dialogue department, but I don’t really see why people call it a masterpiece, at least not yet. We’ll see.

As for my own shows, I had to make some cuts and I’m still a bit behind on it all, but I’m watching:

• Yatagarasu - This one keeps surprising me with its weird twists, lol. The big one two-thirds of the way through made me go read the manga (I may try to find translations of the novels as well), and I learned that the anime blended the first two novels together into a single story (they cover the same time period, but different characters, as I understand it), and I think the story was much better for it. The manga’s pacing, at least on the ladies’ side of the story, was really janky and the tone felt all wrong.
• How to Become Ordinary - Why is this so cinematic?? I really like all the subtle character moments in this show and the extreme low stakes of (most) of the mysteries.
• Twilight Out of Focus - as far as BL anime goes, it’s fine. It’s sort of endearing how seriously it takes itself and how artsy it’s trying to be, but I don’t know that it works that well.
• Alya Sometimes Hides Her Feelings in Russian - I really liked this as a romance at the start of the season, but I’ve become more disinterested as it’s (predictably?) become a harem anime. I’ll probably finish out the season, but if there’s no romantic progress, I won’t be back for a season 2.

As always, I’m going into the season as blind as possible, though I am tentatively hyped for Ranma 1/2.

Also, I’m not sure if this counts as the new season (or as anime, since it was sort of a slideshow), but here’s my thoughts on the first(?) fall show:

I am under no circumstances saying you can’t criticize art or say that the writing was bad or whatever you seem to think my position is.

Writers can and do get fired for not doing the job they were hired for and rarely get to lead the creative process (and usually if they do they’re like, writer/director, or a big name). All I’m trying to say is that a worker can do a good job within the bounds they’re given and still have the result be terrible because the bounds were terrible.

You seem to be giving a LOT of agency to writers for the stories they tell. Some stories are going to be something writers worked hard on wanted to write, and in those cases ya they should be blamed for the resulting flaws, but many times they are constrained by the instructions they’re given.

To go back to the metaphor, did the worker decide that the stuff you need goes out of your reach or are they putting it where they were told to?

“Just following orders” absolutely does excuse bad writing as long as it’s not harmful. I wouldn’t get mad at a writer of a thing a studio ruined just like I wouldn’t get mad at a grocery store worker for rearranging the shelves for the fifth week in a row. Just because I don’t like it doesn’t mean doing a stupid and pointless job makes them a bad person. If the writing is racist or whatever, sure, they’re complicit, but writers have to eat and it’s not morally wrong to write a boring script if that’s what your boss is asking you for.

The problem is, nazi is a political ideology, but Russian is a nationality and ethnicity. I agree with your point about gay nazis, but would you say the same thing about gay germans?

It definitely reads like an ai hallucination, lol

I read the books over and over as a child and knew the anime diverged from them but holy shit none of that sounds like the story I’m familiar with except the name jasmine and the fact that there are mountains

Edit: I skimmed/searched the linked page and that description doesn’t actually sound accurate to the show as a whole, so maybe that’s just a singular episode?

Edit 2: It sounds like the thing OP was looking for wasn’t Deltora Quest after all, which makes me extremely skeptical your description has any truth to it at all.

Makoto’s dad is the real MVP. It’s one thing to support your kid if they come out, but it’s another to proactively say “if you’re not sure, you should give it a try and see how you feel”. On the other side, it’s hell on earth to have a parent make your struggles about them, and Makoto’s mom will not be forgiven.

I thought it was interesting that Makoto kept using “boku” even at the end of this episode, seemingly implying that they’ve settled on being a boy who likes crossdressing, though I still don’t trust that that will hold and suspect they’re deep in egg mode.

Also, Ryuuji, I’m still on your side here but you gotta step it up. You were absolutely put to shame this episode.

Happy to see Elusive Samurai jump up like this. I think it probably got overlooked before the season started because it’s a historical fiction starring real historical figures (I did not learn this until after episode 2 because I don’t pay attention), but I’ve heard the sakuga sections have been circulating and I suspect that’s why it’s picking up speed. Cloverworks is going ham with this one and I hope it gets the attention it deserves.

For reference, and without too much spoiler content, here’s what the show is up to

It’s the subtle moments that I think really pull the show together. When Masha meets Kuze you can see the moment her brain goes from “this is my future brother in law so I should make friends with him” to “oh no, this is my longlost childhood friend / first love”, and we never get any exposition explaining it, nor do we get any when she test him by speaking russian to him. Beautiful storytelling.

I’m honestly really sad for Masha. It’s clear she’s going to ultimately lose the love triangle, and I think she already knows that. The Sa-kun she was in love with is in the past, and while there are still some lingering feelings between them, they don’t have a connection anymore like Kuze does with Alya. And Masha seems like she understands that doing anything other than letting those feelings go and moving on would ultimately do more damage to her sister and their relationship than it would do any good for herself or Kuze. But maybe that’s just me reading into things a little and we’ll end up with another mess like over in the other sister love triangle anime, lol.

So cute and so comfy. I’m liking this a LOT more than I expected to.

I was pretty sure that the revive + re-kill day was going to end up having revived Ryuuta, but I wasn’t expecting that reveal to happen so quick, nor that no one would react to this revelation with any real amount of surprise. The explanations this episode were at least possible to follow, but it feels like they’re doing set-up and reveal so quickly with these “mysteries” that it’s hard to even follow what’s happening. Because of that, it’s difficult to even tell who is on whose side, what anyone’s motivation is, and what the reason for any strategy is. But I’m grateful the wackiness is getting turned up via the prime rights, since it reminds me that there is no reason to take anything this anime is doing seriously.