Isekai Cheat Magician is yet ANOTHER show where some high school kids are plucked out of our world and into a generic western fantasy RPG setting. This time it’s Taichi and Rin, who get sucked into a magic circle and find themselves on a grassy plain and are immediately menaced by a killer horse. Fortunately some adventurers rescue and befriend them. They reach a town and the kids decide to become adventurers too, though they don’t have any magic, or so they think. Turns out their power is through the roof, and so the sexy magician Lemiya is going to start training them in episode 2. Through it all, Taichi and Rin act like it’s all a minor inconvenience.
I’m having trouble thinking of anything to say about this show. It does all the isekai tropes, except in a slower, duller way than usual. There was the brief spat between the kids because Taichi tried to sacrifice his life to save Rin and leave her all alone in that strange place, but even that was done in a dull way. Well, we do have an inkling of how they got there–someone tried to do a conjuring spell but was interrupted by an evil organization who are now going to look for them, so we know what the main story arc is going to be. As for the characters, Taichi has some guts. Rin has nothing but a ponytail. The rest are generic RPG characters, even the giggling green leaf that maybe got crushed. Maybe it will get better once the plot gets rolling.
In Machikado Mazoku an average, clumsy, impoverished high school girl name Yuko, awakens with horns and a tail. Her mom sighs and admits the family’s dark past, that they’re from a line of demons and that their power was mostly sealed away by the good guys, magical girls mainly. Now that Yuko’s true form has been awakened she has to kill a magical girl and spill her blood on the demonic object that her mom was using as a doorstop. She finds a magical girl, Momo, who not only rescues her from a truck but takes pity on her and gives her some bread. At school the next day her friends have no problem with Yuko’s horns and tail, think they look cool, and tell her there’s a magical girl in class A, Momo in fact, who again doesn’t consider her any threat at all and even gives her some combat advice.
As you can guess this show is crazy low-budget slapstick throughout, and some of it works. Everyone gets some good lines, and Yuko handles her transformation in an appropriately silly fashion. There’s no question of where this is going, either, since we see Yuko and Momo being best buds in the OP, and the show also hints that Momo is actually quite lonely. At least Yuko has a nice mom and little sister; Momo sits alone in her big house with nothing but a cat. On the other hand, part of the curse Yuko’s family lives under is near-poverty, and nothing in the show, demon heritage aside, suggests they deserve that. On the whole, if you like cuteness and silliness you might like this show. As for me, I’ll probably skip it. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good enough.
Next is To Aru Kagaku no Accelerator, starring, well, you know. First, some thieves rob a compressed air research facility which was, this being Academy City and all, also developing a weapon to defeat Accelerator. The thieves then visit the hospital where Accel’s getting some bandages removed and Last Order is planning a celebration with some of the sisters and acting cute. The bad guys, led by a typical Index-style crazy girl, retreat with a drop of Accel’s blood–genetic material!–so he chases them down, grins evilly a lot and, well, it’s over quickly.
As I expected, a simple standalone episode to start things off. Reintroduce the important characters and give Accel a lot of chances to be his bad self, oh, and gratuitous fanservice of course. Nothing we haven’t seen before. I wonder about the Sisters attending a party for Accel, but Last Order might have something to do with it, anyway, it’s not like this franchise has ever made much sense. I just hope its less senseless than the sprawling mess that was the last Index series. It probably won’t be so bad. After all, the nutty Railgun series was almost coherent compared to Index.
Tsuujou Kougeki ga Zentai Kougeki de Nikai Kougeki no Okaasan wa Suki Desuka?, which I will call Okaa-san Online like everyone else, stars Masato, an average high school boy, and Mamako, his hot and rather stifling mother. He fills out a questionnaire and then gets whisked to, sigh, a MMORPG come to life, which is, what, the third one this season? Still, Masato is happy to be there, but less happy when his mom shows up too. Some generic king gives him the rundown–it’s a beta game, choose your sword, etc. Mamako pulls out two swords instead of one, and turns out to be ridiculously overpowered, though quick to gush over Masato’s low-level attack. This is too much for Masato, who says some mean things and then feels bad about it. So they set off to recruit other adventurers.
I suppose the only thing you can do with “sucked into a game world” story by now is to add an interesting twist to it, and the story makes it quite clear that it’s all about mother and son bonding with the fantasy tropes just there to be mocked. Fortunately it’s not a bad first episode. There are some good gamer jokes, aided by the fact that Mamako is stuck in the Famicom days. She also does a good job embarrassing her son constantly, in a sweet, loving way, and Masato’s exasperated reactions were usually good and well-timed. I look forward to next week where Mamako will continue to point out that her son’s choice of adventurers are all female. A-la! … Okay, she never said “A-la!” in the episode, but she’s the type who could.
Dungeon ni Deai o Motomeru no wa Machigatte Iru Darouka: Familia Myth II, or DanMachi season 2, starts with your average dungeon crawl scene to remind us who the characters are, but it didn’t work. It’s been four years since season one and while I remember Bell and Hestia, of course, some of the others I can’t really recall. Anyway, the Apollo Clan pick a fight with them and Bell gets beaten up by Hyakinthos, about the only one of the Apollo group that can fight. Next thing you know, Hestia and Bell are invited by Apollo to a fancy ball, and they are challenged to a war game, whatever that is. We’ll find out next week. But at least Bell got to dance with Aiz in a lovely little scene first.
As I said, I don’t remember all the details, except that the gods can act like jerks. Why Apollo is mad at Hestia’s group I guess we will find out. At least Hermes has taken a liking to Bell. As for the episode itself, it was more of the same, a better-than-average fantasy adventure comedy with some fun characters. Hestia gets to show off both her kind and goofy angry sides. I just Bell would just hurry up and level up already. I’m tired of seeing him roughed up.
To finish this series I looked at BEM, where the Lower (poorer) district of a city is being threatened by a watery monster who can flee to the sewers and kills people by drowning them. Also a young detective named Sonia who spoke too honestly to her Uptown boss and got banished here. She chases a thief, gets rescued from a car by a guy in a suit, and then finds the thief drowned. Next day, after learning just how corrupt this district is, various people get drowned again, the guy in the suit fights the monster, Sonia shows up and freaks out a lot, as you would expect someone who has never seen a monster like this before. In between the suit guy and two younger colleagues talk about how to become human, and it is worth it?
Apparently this is a very old franchise, but it looks modern in its style and smartphone usage. It also tries to be very stylish and sometimes succeeds–the jazzy BGM helps. But while I was intrigued by the three heroes talking about humanity, and the monster having happily thrown his away, not every worked. You’d think the public would be more aware that there was a serial killer on the loose, and we got no reason as to why the monster just wanted to kill and laugh evilly. As it was he was just a generic serial killer to get the plot rolling. Sonia as the “girl scout” cop was too generic, and at the end of the episode, she seems to have recovered from her shock too easily. Still, this could turn into an entertaining series.
That’s it for this season. Since there’s nothing I saw that I feel I want to write about every week I think I will go back into hibernation mode until my current situation is more settled, which may mean in the Fall. Well, enjoy the series you liked.
I watched this just to see if it would offer any interesting variation on the school idol theme, and I was briefly intrigued by a bit early where idol girls were being dark and gothic with black wings and all, but it was just a video. I didn’t see anything new in the episode at all. I should add that there was nothing terrible about it, either. Just average. Mizuha can be fun to watch. Sayu has a nice touch of tsundere. There’s nothing remarkable about Mana, however, and she’s the main character. However, it’s all cute, and they’ll bring in new characters later on, but that doesn’t mean I want to see them.
Exedilica, the magical partner, and Matoba form an average relationship of this sort, at least in episode 1. She has magical powers but is completely new to Earth and naive about everything. Add that to her curiosity and we have Matoba saying “Don’t touch that” a lot. Also, she can’t believe that Matoba would make deals with crooked informants when he needs information. Matoba is too weary and annoyed to respond much. What interests me more is the place where they work, not only the gate but the city, which seems to be little more than a place for sex and drugs, indeed, the comment on the fairy in a bottle is that some good drugs might be extracted from her. What is the relationship between us humans and the people on the other side? I don’t know if the series will answer that in more than a superficial way. The story is guns-a-blazin’ with some good animation, a little gratuitous at times, but certainly not a bad first episode apart from the awkward ep1 meeting scenes, which hopefully are out of the way now.
This could be fun. Both characters are world-class schemers; Kagura often uses her high breeding as a weapon, while Miyuki relies on his common stock (his bento has octopus shaped weenies, which she has never seen in real life). Chika finds the perfect moments to mess their strategies up with guileless comments and offers, introducing “chaos theory” into their highly logical verbal battles. It’s kind of like if Tsurezure Children focused on a single couple and added a dramatic narrator. On the bad side, the narrator sometimes gets too dramatic and adds commentary when it’s not needed. I don’t mind his being there but I wish he’d tone it down a bit. Also, right now it feels claustrophobic, those three kids stuck in that room. If the show can expand a little, add a couple more side characters, and keep the situations and strategies fresh, this could be a good show.
Early on I thought for sure this was going to be a setup for a darker series. Yusha’s lines about making everyone smile, and eating cake, seemed too obvious. But it looks like this show is exactly what it shows–a cute, goofy show with little adventures and plenty of time for that cake. Episode one does the job nicely, if predictably. I’m happy to say that the girls, facing danger, don’t panic too much but instead draw their weapons and get ready for battle. That saves us some dull moments while we wait for the panic to subside so the story can get moving again. We still have to get used to the girls, but there’s nothing really wrong with any of them, cheerful or gloomy according to their types. And there are some funny bits, like Mei the mage using her fortune card to tell them their fates and discovering that it will rain tomorrow. Not a world-changing show, but could be fun.
Yeah, it’s pretty silly. The girls flying the aircraft, known as “Daughters,” though whether that refers to the planes or the girls I’m not sure … In fact, I’m not sure what the hell is up with them. Are they human? Where do they come from? And while this all seems to be leading to a cute girl pilot harem for Kei, there’s the fully human Minghua, whose parents are still in China, so Kei is all she has, so damn it he’s not going to go to war, in other words, a solid anchor for Kei’s often crazy ambition. This realistic counterweight alone sets the show above what I expected, as does the tragic flashbacks we sometimes get from Kei. So there’s backstory to unpack. As for the girl pilots, we only meet the one and she barely speaks. I don’t know if this will be a good series, but there’s potential here.
This doesn’t look like a great series by any means, but I did like a lot of it. I enjoyed the four heroes natural banter for one. But overall I love how they really messed with the Riding Hood story. Grimms tales are already twisted, but they twist it further, making the hunter the wolf, and then considering the roles of folktale figures when they’re aware they’re in a tale, one that is endless repeating. So RH’s fear and confusion about her getting eaten (even if she’ll be rescued) and her village’s complacency over her fate makes her lash out. As she should. I wonder if the legendary Storyteller who created these tales has any compassion for their creations. And what happens when we meet a character whose fate is to actually die? Aren’t our heroes, by fixing the stories, doing an injustice to lives that didn’t ask for their fate? Will someone, like they did in the great series Princess Tutu, rise and fight against the story itself? … Probably not, but maybe worth keeping an eye on. Too bad otherwise the show is a completely mundane fantasy anime …
Promising start. It works on the question of what a soldier, magical or not, do when it’s peacetime? Secret agencies? Espionage? Mercenaries? Can they return to normal life, with what they’ve seen? The show doesn’t hold back on the violence and it makes Asuka’s situation poignant. She doesn’t want to fight anymore, but she still sees everyday events as possible threats. Why they didn’t make these girls do therapy after the war I don’t know … The episode is done well, starting with a good for a change infodump and leading to normal life, where I found myself hoping Asuka could just have fun with Nozomi the jock and Sayako the bookworm. But I suppose that would be a dull anime. So the episode worked for me. I only hope they keep Asuka’s issues in mind and not just turn it into a fighting series …
Well, I’m glad the show finally, er, showed its hand at the end, because it was slow-going before that, just looking for those volumes and interacting cutely. It also helped the weirdness have a greater impact. Episode two, with its preview showing the girls shooting monsters in a world that looks like “Is the Order a Rabbit?” (VERY interesting) looks like it will have a completely different feel, though still cute. However, the show dumped a whole lot of girls on us, and none of them seem to have more than a basic stock personality … Well, you can’t flesh out nine girls in 24 minutes, I suppose. Unless the show intends to nod and wink at various manga/anime franchises, I don’t think it will amount to much. I’ll watch another episode.
This sounds creepy, and the show acknowledges this–little Hana is a sensible girl who is reasonably suspicious of this strange grownup fawning over her, threatening to call the police at one point. Also, the mothers, at least, are all nearby and attentive, so the show won’t get too creepy. Instead, it emphasizes the cuteness. I liked Hana’s dilemma: her best friend’s big sis is creepy, but she makes excellent sweets, and that is Hana’s weak point. And later on in episode it seems that Hana has begun to see the good points of Miyako as well as the questionable ones. Morals aside, this is another series that might die by not breaking out of the main setup. There’s another girl or two waiting in the wings, so that will complicate the situation, but will it be enough?
Yes, this is a darker Kemono friends. The character designs and weird movement are the same. The story is completely different though, as this one is full of dark menace, not the sunlight of Kemono. It’s an odd contrast because the characters are as cute and add “nyan” to their sentences a lot, but there’s a lot less smiling, especially from the older Rin, saddled with the main responsibility of keeping them alive. Watching them eat metal is another contrast. So what we have is a possibly interesting science-fantasy series (we’re nowhere near knowing the backstory yet) with Kemono-style characters. It’s worth keeping an eye on, I suppose, if only out of curiosity about how the staff is going to handle this completely different story.
Really nothing to this, and though the story cleverly jumps from one time to another, it isn’t very well thought out. I can’t believe bout staff mistook Yuuka for a seasoned fighter, even with their high technology (the battles are done in virtual spaces, street ads float in the air and point the way, etc). The battle we saw was adequate, not terribly exciting. The characters aren’t terribly interesting. The story is basically “let’s form a club!” coupled with the mystery of why the club was disbanded in the first place. Don’t think I’ll come back to this.
If Subaru was more sympathetic I might like this a little more. I felt sorry for Kawase for how Subaru treats him, though Hiroto deserves all the abuse he gets. The man/cat dynamic wasn’t bad, I suppose. I like watching Subaru trying to figure out what this fierce-eyed little thing is thinking. I also liked how the show turns the tables and shows us what the cat is thinking, though we already knew most of it. “The big man is not eating! I’ll bring him food!” I might give the show another chance, to see if new side characters can improve things, but the main story doesn’t interest me much, and I like cats.
