It’s a little bit more like a four- or five-episode check-in this go ’round, but that just means bonus chat!
The team split up the three-episode reviews between staff volunteers, with one person putting together a short(ish) review on each series. Like we do with our check-in podcasts, we started from the bottom of our Premiere Digest list and worked our way up.
If we didn’t watch a show for at least three episodes, we skipped it, and we’ve used nice bold headers to help you quickly jump to the shows you’re interested in. We’ve also excluded shows that are continuing on in basically the same vein as our premiere review to conserve space. Because this article is coming out later than the usual check-in, writers may be mentioning detail up to episode five.
We don’t have the time to keep up with everything, so please let us know about any gems we might be missing in the comments!
Wondering, “hey, where’s the show I’m into?!” As we mentioned, we’re not able to cover everything every season—but we’d like to. In fact, we made it a funding goal. So you can make your dream a reality!
“Staying the Course” Digest
We’re still enjoying and watching these shows. However, they’re not doing anything dramatically different in terms of themes, characters, etc., so there isn’t anything new to write about them. Please check out the premiere review for details:
- Gnosia
- A Mangaka’s Weirdly Wonderful Workplace
- Pass the Monster Meat, Milady!
- Plus-Sized Misadventures in Love!
Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider
Vrai: I’ve never felt the pang of Samurai Flamenco’s removal from streaming as I did while watching Tojima Wants to Be a Kamen Rider. The debt the latter series owes to the former is enormous, and one I was willing to chalk up to incidental genre overlap until Tojima replicated the cross-cut introduction of the series’ rival female hero almost precisely from SamFlam. And while it’s no replacement for one of the most breathlessly weird shows I’ve ever seen, it does have that ebullient heart Cy described so well in the premiere. I imagine this is a great deal of fun for Kamen Rider fans, with its traced recreations of classic series and clearly sincere affection for the franchise.
I just wish it hadn’t also inherited SamFlam’s off-putting treatment of women. Yuriko’s origin story about loving Kamen Rider’s first female fighter, Tackle, only to be anguished when her hero was killed off, has a relatable core for any fan of marginalized “first X ever” characters. But while she’s comparable to Tojima in strength, most of her appearances focus on her readiness to strip to get into her disguise, breasting boobily before removing her pants and shoving her ass into the camera. She’s also being followed by a student who’s in love with her, and his existence seems mainly to be a vehicle for horny fantasy sequences.
Then again, age-gaps do seem to be an increasing thing. There’s the student with his one-sided crush, Tojima already developing a crush on Yuriko (they’re both adults; he’s 40 and she’s 24), and then there’s the second female character Yukarisu…a high-school girl who’s dating the show’s third Kamen Rider enthusiast (who’s also her adult boss). She too has a balloon-esque bust that lightly defies the laws of physics, talks to Yuriko only so they can fight about a man, and lacks much characterization outside of her relationship.
It’s the kind of low-grade continual bullshit I’d be willing to muscle through for an otherwise excellent show, but if you’re not a toku fan then Tojima is kinda just okay. Its earnestness counts for a lot; it just doesn’t have enough else going on to offset the growing list of irritations dragging it down.
With You, Our Love Will Make it Through
Chiaki: With You continues to be a sweet and heart warming series about teenage romance and I am rooting for Asaka and Hidaka like you would a baby taking their first steps. I’m here for the tender chemistry among the main trio as Aida and Asaka try to work on getting their dog boy classmate find wider acceptance at school while they all wrestle with their own attraction for each other as well.
That said, there’s always the question of how fantasy races can become the stand-in for a story about discrimination and institutional racism. With You spends considerable time establishing the other-ness of beast people and it continues to pervade throughout the story. Hidaka continues to face bullies at school and also casual racism from passersby as they observe him in public, such as when people assume he is accosting his classmate when he and Asaka are just sharing a sweet moment together on their way home from school.
Akasa and Aida have noble intentions to try and help Hidaka find a more welcoming space by showing their classmates he’s just one of the guys, yet the show continues to prove Hidaka is anything but that: he is incredibly athletic, incredibly smart, and he goes into heat when he smells a girl he likes (i.e. Asaka).
I feel like there’s a lot to unpack there and the story quickly gets messy when the dude we want to push as “just another normal guy” aside from looking like a hot dog boy (not a hotdog boy) kind of has all these caveats.
The “goes into heat” aspect is especially concerning, and is actually likely a carryover from With You’s author’s previous work Jujinsan to Ohanachan, a teen’s love (pornographic) story about a human woman finding herself in the beast people district on accident and meeting a really hot dog man (again, not a hotdog man) who shows her the tender side of beast people—before eventually going into heat and the two screw like jackrabbits with the guy muzzled for her safety (it was actually kinda hot).
It really feels like one of those cases where an author wrote a kinda fucked up and horny setting to get through the contrivances of “why would these two wind up together?” and had to clean it up when revisiting the setting for the all-ages serialization of With You. Hidaka no longer goes into heat unless he’s with a girl he likes, and the story gives more emphasis on the systemic racism rather than a carnal love story.
All said, it’s an honorable attempt to make it less problematic in a sense, but those caveats remain. That said, again, the kids are honestly alright and it doesn’t really matter how smart or athletic Hidaka is to Asaka. Their romance is just sweet and maybe a tiny bit horny with the whole heat thing, but I’m able to just appreciate it nonetheless.
Sanda
Caitlin: Well, I can’t say we saw this one coming from the first episode.
Despite the high-energy goofiness of its premiere, it turns out Sanda actually has a lot to say. While, yes, this is a story about a petite teenage boy who transforms into a elderly muscular man when he wears something red, it’s also an examination about the complex relationship between children and adults. The second episode reveals that this takes place in a near future where Japan’s birthrate has dropped so precipitously that children are treated like precious jewels, sheltered in a boarding school where deferent adults tend to their every need. Under the guise of a “zero trauma” curriculum, their access to information about the outside world is tightly controlled, and their futures are set in stone.
There’s so much going on here, I could probably write a full-length article based on the themes of the first four episodes alone. This isn’t the time or the place, so I’ll put the deeper examination in my pocket for now and simply say that as an educator trained in anti-bias curriculum, the harm caused by their determination to shelter children from trauma struck me deeply. The series villain is the school’s 92-year-old headmaster Ooshibu Hifumi, who has had so much plastic surgery to keep his face youthful that it’s frozen in a perpetual wide-eyed grin.
The students’ lack of education on the practicalities of real-life, including adult development and sex, has caused the exact sense of abandonment the curriculum is supposed to be designed to protect them from. Despite this, Fuyumura and the missing Ono managed to stumble into sex and sexuality, discovering their own queerness and the love that drives Fuyumura to search so desperately for her missing girlfriend. Of course, the intentions here are much more sinister than Ooshibu first claims; their intent is to transform naturally curious children into complacent adults who will accept their pre-determined life paths without complaint. It’s a scathing critique of institutionalized educational systems in the real world, many of which are designed to do exactly that. Santa represents the opposite of that; he is hope and whimsy and wonder despite all reason, which is why he is hunted by an “Anti-Santa Squad.” Yeah, don’t think for a second that this show isn’t still deeply silly.
I want to talk for a moment about Fuyumura’s design, which I adore. I came of age when Tim Burton was considered the perfect marriage of whimsy and edge and while I wasn’t a devotee, I enjoyed the occasional episode of Invader Zim at the behest of my classmates who read Johnny the Homicidal Maniac. How could I not love Fuyumura? It’s crucial to the themes of the show that she’s still very much a child, despite appearing more “adult” than her peers on the surface. That could have been achieved by giving her a body that developed prematurely; while that’s a real and valid experience for many adolescents, it would have been difficult, if not impossible, to escape from the stink of sexualization. Instead, Itagaki Paru made her extremely tall, creating the same effect. This contrast makes the moments where her childlike vulnerability comes through deeply affecting. Also, despite her warped approach, she views Santa purely as a child sees an adult: a source of comfort and hope, when everyone else has abandoned her.
…And I’ve already gone long, despite barely scratching the surface of everything Sanda is saying. I meant when I said I could write a full article on it, but won’t. At least, not yet.
Mechanical Marie
Cy: Gonna be real: if you told me the most hilarious rom-com of all time would be the subterfuge of a poor girl full-time pretending to be a robot well…I wouldn’t be shocked because Mechanical Marie has quickly captured my heart over the first three episodes, and certainly keeps me glued to my TV for at least half an hour on what I’m calling Mecha Sundays. This is the day of Marie, and she’s all that matters when I load Crunchyroll up for dinner.
That said, not all is perfect coding and construction because, as Alex mentioned, there’s a lot of questions: how did Marie get this job? How oblivious can one biracial rich kid be? Will Marie be able to pull off this gig without having to be sent to the countryside to never see Arthur, who she so clearly is falling-slash-has fallen for? Also, will these two charming numbnuts, one stoic, the other deeply unserious when it comes to his robot companion, ever be able to stand on equal ground? That all remains to be discovered, though I will say it’s minor when it comes to the overarching story beats. I find that now, with episode 5’s debut, I’m less focused on the details we don’t get and more on what exists, and that’s the romance and Marie 2 being the best-worst robotic wingwoman a high school girl could have.
The concerns about Arthur’s authority, and to some small degree, manhandling, of Marie continue largely because he believes she’s a mechanical marvel and not a real girl. However, as this series grows it legs, it’s becoming more and more that so does Marie’s personhood, even if Arthur thinks she’s malfunctioning when she’s actually starting to display emotions that often have felt foreign to her in terms of how they show on her face. I also think that as they grow closer, Arthur’s handling of Marie will mirror a more equitable relationship, even if he think she’s made of the finest stuff his father’s company money can buy.
For me, this is a must see this season, simply to shut off your brain and enjoy something that has that blast from the past (i.e. the 00s) feelings without the ick that often coats oddball boy meets strict and stoic girl romantic comedy series from those long lost halcyon days. Plus, I’ve got to admit: I’m all in on watching this entire season simply to see whether or not Arthur ever figures out that the girl he keeps feeding dry cell batteries to is well…an actual girl incapable of eating batteries.
DIGIMON BEATBREAK
Vrai: It’s quite tough to judge a show this long (rumors have put it at 49 episodes)—while the other shows on this list are getting close to half-finished, Beatbreak is barely hitting the 10% mark. While it’s disappointing that teammate Reina is the only significant female character (though I like her very much), I have been enjoying the show’s attempts to wend Digimon into the “broke bounty hunter” genre. The colors are vibrant and lovely, and I like the way it’s been steadily drip-feeding crumbs about the conspiracy behind Sapotama and the bounty system that hints at foul play by the powerful.
As always, though, I’m left to worry about whether this is a cyberpunk story or an “old man yells at cloud” one. A key fact that many, many sci-fi writers miss is that good cyberpunk isn’t about how technology or transhumanism are inherently threatening. It’s about someone having the unchecked power to control or remove access to an augmentation or device after they’ve sold it to you, often because they’re protected by oppressive capitalist systems.
On the one hand, Beatbreak’s mystery is all about the dangers of people not understanding—and being kept from fully grasping—the function of technology integral to their lives. The fact that Digimon are clearly living, sapient beings but are marked for capture and destruction upon their birth is a metaphor so loaded it could go a hundred different directions. There’s a walled city for the rich while everyone else struggles on the margins. And it’s hard to imagine a Digimon show, of all things, advocating for a return to Luddite society.
But I am always slightly afraid of the specter of Konaka rearing its ugly head, but it’s too soon to call how the show will distinguish between Digimon (actual self-aware AI) and the slop that pervades our real world. When the most recent episode introduced an imperiled village of outsiders who happily refuse to own Sapotama, I did have brief flashbacks to the initially promising Yurei Deco. But that story’s only half-finished as I write this, so I don’t want to be too doom and gloom about it. Overall, it’s not a bad time if you’re a Digimon fan, but there’s not yet anything so exciting that it warrants calling total strangers in for a look.
This Monster Wants to Eat Me
Alex: To call Hinako a “passive” protagonist is a double-edged sword. I always want to assess a female character’s agency and autonomy, but I also recognize that her drifting aimlessly through life is the point, an accurate depiction of her grief and suicide ideation. She has no motivation because she doesn’t even particularly want to live. Likewise, Hinako being tugged between two characters—her relentlessly positive friend Miko versus the ominous mermaid Shiori—feels like intentional storytelling, showing how she’s dragged along by the tide of other people’s decisions, ultimately representing life and death and setting up the two opposites that she’ll need to choose between. It makes the viewing experience a bit frustrating, but I get it. The show seems to be doing something with this.
I’m most reassured by Episode 3, where Hinako—having been dragged around in all directions by other characters—finally latches onto a clear motivation. She’s going to get well and happy so that she’s in prime condition for Shiori to eat her. The story is now underpinned by a dreadful, delicious irony: Hinako will die when she finally finds life worth living again. It’s simple, but Hinako’s mini character arc to get to this point is satisfying. I’m curious to know how things will progress from here, but it’s clear that the narrative is making room for character growth and for questions about Hinako’s autonomy over herself, so I’m on board. I’m not 100% convinced on the chemistry between her and Shiori, but the animators and sound design team are clearly working hard with their limited resources to give her an otherworldly, eerie vibe—death personified as a pretty girl—and that feels most important right now.
Now, what about Miko, the other point in what is clearly a budding love triangle, if the opening and ending credit sequences are anything to go by? Well, my initial knee-jerk reaction was to find her a bit abrasive, though I recognized that her devoted happy-go-lucky attitude was clearly her way of trying to blast through Hinako’s grief, and that was a valid thing to explore, too. But, to put it lightly, Episodes 4 and 5 reveal that Miko has much more going on than simply being the chipper childhood friend, and the series is playing her as a foil to Shiori in a much more direct way than I was expecting. I’ll leave the details for you to discover, but I’m certainly intrigued! This is a series that’s growing on me slowly, but it’s sowing the seeds of some interesting interpersonal drama propped up by a few key supernatural elements.
Shabake
Tony: I did not get through more than three episodes of this show, to be honest, because I did not enjoy this show. It was a slog to watch basically from start to finish, with its bland-as-unseasoned-rice protagonist, the nothing burger murder plot that you could not pay me to be interested in, and its slideshow-esque animation style.
Ironically however, when the show is attempting to say something (and potentially something quite profound!), it honestly just made me more frustrated. This show does not like how people with disabilities are coddled, treated as fragile, and robbed of agency, and by golly does it want you to know. Our protagonist is severely chronically ill (although we almost never see him actually experiencing the symptoms of his illness, oddly). Almost the entirety of the second episode consisted of various characters Ichitaro meets telling him why he should listen to his spirit guardians and acquiesce to doing nothing “for his health.” As somebody who myself suffered from extreme chronic migraine for many years, and struggled for a long time trying to figure out what levels of activity I could engage in without throwing myself into days of debilitating pain, these kinds of challenging experiences are very real! Disabled people need to have agency over their lives to be able to decide for themselves how to dish out their “spoons.” Even if the show is aware of this, it is exhausting to watch 20 minutes of a disabled protagonist being condescended to and told he should think of himself as fragile and that the people telling him this have his best interest at heart.
This coddling takes a backseat for much of the third episode, but comes back with a vengeance in a scene that steps right into a minefield. In it, a queercoded Nozoki Byubo flirts heavily with the protagonist; in response, the protagonist’s guardian spirits Sasuke and Nikichi beat the Nozoki Byubo to a pulp in full view of the camera. It is a horrifying, blatantly queerphobic assault, and lasts for an absurd stretch of time before the protagonist finds the guts to call a stop to it by reminding the spirits he is their master. Clearly, this is intended to thematically connect to the question of disabled people’s agency and infantilization, but in doing so it accidentally steps right into a narrative around gaybashing that the show is wildly ill equipped to deal with. Shabake is playing fast and loose with such violent, queerphobic imagery without any intention of addressing the themes it evokes. Sure the Nozoki might get more development, but in a show that is, let me remind you, otherwise placid to the point of being boring, including such a queerphobic assault onscreen felt absurd, as if the queer character just exists to be a punching bag, or as if such severe onscreen violence is acceptable only if it happens to a gay character. And I highly doubt the show intends to make Sasuke and Nikichi straight up villains now, making it hard to believe the show takes the assault seriously.
So, yeah. I don’t know if I can keep watching if the show is going to be completely unaware of how it actually makes queer and disabled audiences feel to watch it.
May I Ask For One Final Thing?
Alex: May I Ask is doing a lot of fun things. I like that the series gives Scarlet a revenge plot for the abuse and nonsense she’s endured from more powerful men, but that the depiction of that abuse wasn’t indulgent in its nastiness (a narrative trap that some stories can fall into, to try and make the vengeance as satisfying as possible when the heroine finally “snaps”). And—the bar is on the floor, but it must be said—it’s nice to see a fantasy anime take such a direct “slavery is bad and everyone who thinks it’s acceptable to own another person is abhorrent” stance, even if it’s chosen to depict the enslaved group as non-human supernatural beings and thus inherits some of the awkwardness of that trope. One of the beastkin features as an active participant in Scarlet’s plans, so these enslaved people aren’t entirely set dressing for her quest for justice, which is also (again, low bar, but) nice.
Where the series is on shakier ground, at least for me, is with its depiction of women… or rather, its lack of. Scarlet is great and I’m really enjoying her as an unconventional female lead, but she’s rather isolated in an ensemble cast full of men. She has a couple of female friends at the academy, but they haven’t had much bearing on the plot, nor have they appeared outside of school flashbacks. The only other girl in the cast is pink-haired Terenezza. We’re introduced to her as “that bitch” (Scarlet’s words) and the narrative hasn’t really proven that crude assessment to be wrong: she seems to be manipulating things behind the scenes and plotting Scarlet’s downfall and even death, all while wearing a truly wicked smirk. All signs point to her being a nasty piece of work that the audience is meant to dislike and distrust, all the better for clapping along in delight as Scarlet punches her lights out.
There’s still plenty of time for Terenezza to emerge as a more nuanced character, and I have my fingers crossed that future episodes take the opportunity to flesh her out, and/or to introduce more women to provide some balance. As things are now, the series risks reinforcing the dichotomy of Righteous Heroine versus Scheming Villainess. And sure, maybe it’s a little subversive to flip those roles around and have Scarlet be the protagonist (and, following a reveal in Episode 4, it is admittedly kind of fun to cast the person who got isekai’d as the obnoxious villain). But all this still relies on stuffing the female characters into restrictive roles and pitting them against each other, and surely that’s the kind of BS that we should be punching through with our enchanted fists? Combined with the introduction of an “I love you and I’m going to make you my bride and I won’t take no for an answer no matter how much you hit me” male character in Episode 4, May I Ask is making me sigh in frustration more than its making me whoop with joy at the moment.
The Dark History of the Reincarnated Villainess
Chiaki: A very smart person on the Internet once said, “I may be cringe but I am free.” They are absolutely wrong and Iana is bearing the full brunt of every poor narrative decision she ever made when she was a teen and is now getting smothered by every word of her self-insert 150 chapter Scribble Hub fantasy adventure. It’s beautiful.
By forcing Iana to confront the cringe, there’s something really innovative about Dark History that seemed absent from so many other isekai villainess stories. The genre is quickly becoming a saturated field and every story needs it schtick, but I really enjoy the fact Iana isn’t having to deal with tropes that stem from competent and sensible plot beats, but from stacking the deck so resoundingly against her by building the self-insert character she was meant to assume into the definition of a Mary Sue, while she’s now stuck in the body of a villainess who was supposed to die in episode one.
Whereas so many other villainess stories often settle into the realm of “woman stumbles her way into a harem by redefining villainy to ‘quirky woman with a heart of gold,’” Iana does not get as easy of a pass. Now Iana and Konoha are both fundamentally different characters surrounded by an unending torrent of over-the-top trials and tribulations Iana was meant to overcome with superpowers, and constant suspicion cast on Iana for her mysterious foresight in the various plots against her sister.
It’s funny, it’s raw, I’m shouting “oh no” at the screen every episode. I still can’t get over the fact Konoha’s boyfriend is named “Ginoford Dandelion.” I also wonder if I should revise my own bad pokemon fanfiction from middle school just in case I end up reincarnating as a Bulbasaur.
Also, Lizzie seems to be on to something with the idea that Iana’s past life may not have been as rosy. Though Iana has yet to really confront who she was in her past life, the show does reveal Satou Konoha may have had a lonely adolescence. It continues to pepper in those moments of teenage odd-ball behaviors that seem comedic on the surface, but may reveal a much more lonely adolescence with further interrogation. That, however, will have to be something to be seen as the story continues.
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