Number of shows watched: 16
Number of shows dropped: 9
A high school show by the same mangaka as You and I are Polar Opposites from last season. The character art is pretty much the same in terms of design, but the colour scheme of this show is much more realistic (no bright green and pink school uniforms). It’s got the classic “high school debut” character, which is a crazy overused trope that I’d be happy to see take a break.
I remember the excitement and pressure of a new school year in terms of getting new clothes and haircuts and trying to look good on the first day back. But putting on a whole new persona to see if it helps you get along with classmates better? While still reverting to your real self with friends and family? There are a lot of high school anime tropes grounded in real issues, but this has got to be nonsense.
Aside from that, though, the characters are cute and it seems like the kind of show that will have some pay off.
This is the fourth season of Bookworm, and it’s supposedly been picked up by a ‘better’ studio. Unfortunately, I’m finding this season to be a total downgrade so far. The animation definitely isn’t objectively better, and is maybe worse in terms of my personal preferences. The plot of the season also seems to be non-existent — I don’t know what larger goal Rosemyne is working towards anymore, and the stakes seem to have fizzled away.
The ‘everyday’ events of the show aren’t interesting me like they did before, and all of the new noble characters seem pretty boring. Honestly, most of the episodes this season have failed to keep my full attention, which is super disappointing. I’m not sure if this season is one or two cours — it certainly feels like it’s a slow-starting two-cour season, but maybe that’s just wishful thinking. Either way, though, 10 boring episodes is still far too many.
This show is nothing but a simple shounen, and although there have been many such shows historically, it feels like they’ve fallen a little out of fashion lately. Maybe the isekai boom killed them? Either way, it’s nice to have a shounen or two around, and this one is pretty entertaining. I do find the pacing a bit weird though — this second season truly feels like the second cour of the first season, as if they were meant to be aired consecutively. But in reality, the first season aired almost two full years ago during the Summer 2024 season.
There are way more cheap drama anime lately compared to shounen, which really makes the differences in character writing stand out. Sure, shounen characters are silly and exaggerated, but even those who start out on the wrong side of the story eventually make friends with the protagonist and join the cause. In modern drama anime, on the other hand, characters just fuel conflict for the sake of the plot, no matter how little sense it makes for them as characters or how obviously mistaken they are.
This is the prettiest anime I’ve seen in many years. It’s not just ‘good compared to the no-effort trash that exists nowadays’ — it feels like film-level animation rather than a normal TV show. The characters are always detailed and perfectly drawn, and even in low-movement, dialogue-heavy scenes, they animate such elaborate movements. I didn’t really know anything about the show before it started, except that it was very highly anticipated, and people had been waiting for it to air for a few years. And judging by looks alone, it definitely deserves the hype.
However, I’ve found a few things to be disappointed about as the show has progressed (or not progressed). The first thing is the episode count. It’s a one-cour season — just 13 episodes. No matter how pretty it is, a story cannot get very far in 13 20-minute episodes, and who knows how long the next season will take. The second disappointment is the characters. I’m as interested in the deep magic system as anyone else, and they have shown a lot of cool ideas, but when it comes to anime, it feels like every show is just about kids, and it really gets old. They’re young, squeaky, overly childish, and their personalities seem pretty one-dimensional so far.
The third thing is the pacing and setting up of expectations — we’re 12 epsisodes in and I don’t really have any detailed ideas of where the show is going or what its larger story is. There are good witches and bad witches, sure, and perhaps a twist is waiting to happen, since the ‘good’ guys seem awfully suspicious. But what are the ‘bad’ guys aiming to do? Is Coco special somehow, or just being dragged into something by chance? I don’t know, and I’m clearly not going to find out this season. With the high chances of a long wait, this ‘mystery’ doesn’t feel exciting or intriguing, it just frustrates me.
The last thing is a bit of a believability issue. Coco accidentally set off magic (that was probably manipulated by these Brimmed Hat people), and it froze her house and her mother — that’s fine. It’s also fine that she be brought into the world of magic and taught to keep the secret. But why is no one helping her mother? I think Qifrey put a barrier of some sort around the house so perhaps that’s why those witch police haven’t caught on (although literally everyone seems to have heard rumours about Coco and her situation, so not sure that adds up) — but either way, why haven’t Qifrey and Olruggio done something about it themselves? They’ve put it in Coco’s head that she’s learning magic to help her mom, and it’s fine if she believes that since she’s just a kid, but in reality, the adults would absolutely take care of this situation. Even if it’s not a simple task, at the very least, we should be seeing them work on it. It just doesn’t make sense that this person’s life is being treated as some kind of long-term goal for the girl to work towards once her education is finished. The girl herself seems to accept this, too, when you’d think she’d be nagging the witches around her every day to go back to the house and start working on a solution. The only twist that would make a little more sense, in my opinion, is if the mother isn’t actually saveable, and only a few of the adults know it.
These are all pretty normal anime problems, but as I said, this show was highly anticipated. I heard a lot about the depth of its magic system, and people were predicting that it would be “the next Frieren.” I suppose there’s a lot of ways to interpret such a statement, but it left me expecting a more mature and tightly written story. Oh, well. That production quality is impossible to turn down either way!
Nothing special about this one either, but I like it when characters make friends through their hobbies. The friendship turns into a relationship in this one (within one season), which is certainly better than an extended will-they-won’t-they situation.
However, I don’t really care for the generic high-school drama the main girl has going on with her friend group (blonde best friend plus two others). There’s some light bullying going on with two members of the group trying to push out the main girl, and when they get found out, the best friend just doesn’t seem to care at all? I think it’s because she’s just meant to be a one-dimensional ‘nice to everyone’ character, but it really makes no sense not to critise bullies for their bad behaviour. Saying nothing doesn’t make you a ‘nice to everyone’ person, it just makes you a ‘has no principles’ person.
I personally never saw any signs of bullying when I was working in Japanese schools, but the country is known for having problems with it, which is why I don’t really agree with stories like this being so common in anime dramas. They need to take a leaf out of the shounen genre’s book and popularise more ideal and positive reactions. The bullies themselves don’t need to be treated like complete villains — we generally want young people to grow out of the behaviour, not be permanently categorised by it — but the behaviour itself should always be called out and condemned.
My lord, there are so many villainess anime nowadays. It’s surely a sub-genre aimed at girls, but it just seems so niche. We all know that the European aristocracy setting is popular among girls, but do we also have a thing for reversing a bad reputation into a good one? Or perhaps it’s more about taking down the sickly sweet heroines? But honestly, there’s never too much emphasis on the heroine character, and it’s fairly common for them to become friends, anyway.
Not in this one, though — the original heroine thoroughly loses. Both the heroine and the villainess are tenseisha (people reborn into the world) after having known this universe as an otome game. The villainess wins because she tries to keep the game’s plot on track for the sake of the prince’s happiness, and the heroine loses because she tries to keep the game’s plot on track for her own happiness. Nothing subtle about it, but it’s cute all the same. It’s also got the (ususally blonde, for some reason), slightly sadistic but actually sweet prince trope. And I suppose there’s some “I can change him” trope in there too, since he apparently has some latent heartlessness in him that pops up in the various game routes. All in all, I suppose it’s just a girly trope extravaganza. It’s not the best one I’ve seen, but it’s cute enough.
This is the new anime from Hiromu Arakawa (author of Full Metal Alchemist), and I had no idea it was coming. I remember being in Japan when the manga serialisation first started, and it was quite heavily promoted — which makes sense, of course. It’s one of the most famous anime of all time!
The opening episode for this series was great, especially going into it with no knowledge of the story. The ‘twist’ is revealed almost instantly and yet is still really surprising, and the uncertainty around who we (and the main character) should trust is quite interesting. It’s a show with plenty of talking and explaining, but it also lets the action take over and speak for itself, and — most importantly — it’s a two-cour season, so it has plenty of room for dialogue and slower pacing. Short seasons with long breaks between them is not an anime-only problem, but it really bothers me to no end. TV production seems to be hopelessly broken at the moment. But, oh well, at least this show has a full 24 epsisodes! I’ll probably write up a separate post on this when it finishes.
A generic time slip do-over X high school debut story. I don’t really know how many people wish they could do high school over, it seems more like a thing you naturally stop caring about, even if it wasn’t great. Anyway, the first episode of the show is ridiculous because the protagonist goes back to his middle-school-graduate self one month before high school starts. He is considerably chubby, and decides to change that before school starts — and succeeds. In one month! He doesn’t just lose a bit of weight, either, he tones up and puts on enough muscle that characters comment on it. It’s just nonsense.
Everything else about the show is as boring as the first episode is silly, and I’m close to considering it dropped. I just put it on in the background if I’ve run out of other stuff.
I remember I just clicked on this show when the first episode aired without knowing or realising what it was about at all. I just thought the art looked cool (and it totally is cool), and I was super surprised when it turned out to be a “BL” show. Of course, it’s not really like other BL shows, where the protagonist is magically surrounded by many other people who are open to same-sex romance. In this show, the protagonist has a crush and pursues it cautiously episode after episode, just for the crush to get a girlfriend during on the penultimate Valentine’s day episode (though it doesn’t last).
It’s funny, cute, and isn’t totally without hope for the protagonist, but also highlights a legitimate point about the experience of young gay people. Being young is not like being an adult — you don’t decide where you live, you can’t travel freely, and you have no control over who you end up in school with. While other people are all having their first romantic experiences during high school, gay people have a much, much smaller chance of getting to experience the same thing. Equally, they’re much more likely to develop one-sided feelings that won’t get resolved in the usual way. And depending on where you are, your personality, and how sure you are about your sexuality, you might not even have any friends you can talk to about it.
Luckily, high school romance hardly matters at all once it’s over, (and it’s arguably an experience best left until your brain is a little more developed) so missing out on it isn’t something to get hung up on long term. But during those teenage years, it must really suck for those who don’t get really, really lucky.
This show is so random. It’s about a giant six-foot Russian bird-type creature who can talk. He’s called Kujima, and he’s come to Japan for the winter, where he ends up staying with a high school kid and his family. The bird speaks broken Japanese is a funny accent, makes lots of strange noises, and cooks Russian food. I don’t know why he exists, but he is kind of cute (ugly-cute though, because he is not a looker).
The weirdest part about this show, though, is the brother of the main kid. He’s like super depressed because he failed the university entrance exams last year, and has spent the past months shut in his room studying. He won’t come down for meals, he doesn’t particpate in holidays or celebrations, and he doesn’t seem to leave the house at all. It’s so bad! I know things are different in Japan, but those parents should have just taught him about the internationally practiced concept of the ‘gap-year.’ Waiting a year to start school should not be a big deal, and he should have spent it attending group classes, doing part-time work, and probably taking his first trip outside of Japan. I can’t believe his parents just let him spiral like that. And it’s such a weird angle for the otherwise completely lighthearted show to just have the brother silently suffering in the background (though he does become a plot point in later episodes and manages to pass his exams this time round).
Other shows I’m watching:
Shows I dropped: