Spring has brought us some powerful stories about girls growing up and compelling-but-fraught speculative fiction about decaying systems.
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. Unless specifically noted, we will not be mentioning overt spoilers for anything beyond episode three.
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:
A Ninja and an Assassin Under One Roof
Tony: Perhaps I am Shaftpilled, given I dragged encouraged Vrai and Peter into watching Monogatari with me for our watchalong, but as far as I can tell the fan service in NinKoro has reduced from the modest but annoying level of before to almost nonexistent. While we still get some occasional shots of Konoha laying around in bed, they don’t include the kind of panning or intrusive camera angles that usually come with cheesecake shots, and mostly just establish her as a lay-z-girl.
In a happy surprise given what we thought in the premiere review, the show has gone all-in on explicit lesbian representation, which is by far the most wholesome part of this show. Satoko’s friends from the village are a sweet lesbian couple with one butch and one femme, and honestly given how hard butch representation is to come by it is nice to see it played so straight. The show makes gentle jokes about them essentially teaching Satoko (appropriately!) what it means to live with your significant other, but none of the jokes are at their expense as lesbians, and Satoko’s reaction is chill.
As we go along, there are subtle and not subtle indications that Konoha is manipulating Satoko, such as her giving Satoko bad advice about applying for jobs (”resumes are for lying!”) and decking her out in a sweater that looks straight out of Mabel Pines’s reject wardrobe. I’m not sure how much longer this show can really play this for laughs or make it part of the tonal dissonance dark comedy before it starts to feel gross, and I suspect this will also depend on how much the show leans into the toxic yuri angle.
Episode 3 has suggestions of larger ambitions for the show thematically, seeming to be using the episode to investigate the lives of people who are trying to move to Tokyo without much job experience, education, or training. The way the episode is bookended with the pursuer-of-the-week attempting and failing to quickly learn the different orders at her coffee shop, then ends with the shot of her replacement succeeding after she is disappeared into leaves creates a sense of transience, and leaves room for the pursuers to become connected to the show’s thematic threads. (It is nice to see them heavily implied to be in pursuer heaven rather than just…dead.) Satoko being trapped into doing assassin work or monitoring the body disposal swimming pool(?) suggests that the show is very aware of how those without opportunities are pushed into the underground economy. (I still wonder if she was working for the Yakuza.) I may keep watching, but I’m not entirely convinced.
To Be Hero X
Cy: I’ll admit: I’m very invested in To Be Hero X, and that’s not just because Sawano Hirayuki is handling music for the show. It’s because I think seeing a normal guy who happens to look like a hero become said hero is interesting, as is the ongoing mystery around the exact “why” of Nice 1.0’s decision to die by suicide. There’s so many moving parts here, whether you’re examining the concept of why someone would become a villain, why heroes get born, or the nature of being at the top of a meritocracy based in trust and maintaining favorable public opinion at risk of who you are.
That said, I find this show’s treatment of its female characters, notable and passing, alarming, and that’s something I genuinely was hoping to avoid, but here we are, and I have to address it.
In the first two episodes, we witness hit hero Moon sacrifice in order to further her own ambitions but primarily to further the ongoing legacy of Nice, and while by Episode 4, it’s clear he wholeheartedly rejects Moon having to do so on his behalf, he also doesn’t necessarily resist the life he’s living. Nice is nice, sure, but in this case, niceties aren’t enough. If anything, he remains passive outside of emotionality, and while emotions have power—especially in a world where heroes manifest through trust—our current iteration of Nice seems to have a distinct lack of agency around turning certain emotions into action. A combination of trauma and being forced to play the game? Yes, but I hope eventually, Nice is more than just an ascended fanboy. The building blocks are already there: the show just has to lean into the literal dimensionality of his powers.
That in mind, I am planning on continuing the series. I find it engaging, even if the first four episodes have caused trepidation around any future prominent female characters. It is my hope that this series, which is part of an ongoing anthology project, will inject a bit of character into the women who occupy this world because while not interchangeable with a lamp, they feel one note at time outside of Moon getting to take the spotlight for multiple tragedies. I have a rather heroic sense that we’ll get characters that are less serving as stepping stones or emotional support for men, but I’ll also never be able to get the bittersweet taste of Moon being a plot point instead of a full-fledged person out of my mouth.
Lazarus
Spoilers: Discussion of Episode 4
Tony: I was ready to drop Lazarus after its astonishingly messy third episode, which revealed the incompatibility between taking Rule of Cool to its logical extreme and actually supporting progressive values. On one hand the episode introduces a trans woman who leads a homeless encampment, which allows Axel to in essence look directly at the audience and say: “Why would you assume homeless people are so dangerous? Trans homeless people deserve respect. Poor people aren’t dangerous.” On the other hand, five minutes later we are introduced to a slum in Istanbul where if you merely walk around looking like a foreigner with a fancy watch, then armed Middle-Eastern goons will chase you through the streets in broad daylight and hold you down so they can chop off your arm. Not exactly coherent messaging.
Then the fourth episode hit, and dear lord, there is a lot to talk about. First of all, this is the first episode actually written by series composer Sato Dai, whose work on other series I have always found uneven at best. However, in the 4th episode he drags Lazarus into the kind of thoughtful, if extremely on-the-nose social commentary that it had been only striving for before and the charming character writing it had never even attempted. There were many pitfalls this episode could have fallen into, given it force-fems Leland to use as “bait” for two villains, one of whom is a chaser DJ while the other is a cryptobro who roofies a whole room of women he calls “sluts.” I feel happy to report that the climax of the episode could be summed up as “would-be rapist gets his ass handed to him by partygirl who does so much poppers she is unroofiable.” Chris emerges as the heroine of the episode and gives the audience some much-needed catharsis, as our own world has become increasingly run by the exact kind of cryptobros that she woops the ass of.
This episode, as you can probably tell, has given me a lot of hope for the series as a whole, as once Sato takes the reins again the show might actually have a vision for what it’s trying to do. Taken with the series’ thrilling animation and action sequences and absolute embarrassment of riches with its soundtrack (Floating Points and Kamasi Washington are two of my favorite artists of all time), I am definitely going to be watching this to the end.
I do have to address, however, that the dreidel that appeared innocuous enough in the first episode is becoming more and more sinister as the show goes on—with the repeated opening monologues about the medical conspiracy every episode ending with a dreidel being spun by a shadowy figure. It is becoming difficult not to see overtones of antisemitism in this imagery, as if the apocalyptic situation was “spun” by some shadowy Jewish cabal. The villain of the show himself is reminiscent in his pre-Hapna progressive political projects to George Soros, the main target of antisemitic conspiracy theories, which is very strange given that I’m almost certain that the same political projects that Watanabe cares about—fighting climate change, overcoming prejudice, etc—are the ones that this villain (and often George Soros) was promoting. While this villain grew up in Istanbul (which does not preclude him from being Jewish), the show’s engagement with antisemitism is not helped by a very prominently placed photo of him running around Tel Aviv as a child in his in-show Wikipedia page.
Kowloon Generic Romance
Chiaki: “Kowloon’s” got that juice that attracts audiences for the same reason the characters within it are trapped in the old Hong Kong slum. Nostalgia binds us to the concept of the walled city in an anachronistic setting where the Kowloon Walled City still stands in a world where people have smartphones. Vrai’s reading on the show remains generally true three episodes in, but with additional complications to note.
Most worthy of flagging for AniFem readers: Hebinuma makes his formal introduction in Episode 2, and his presence becomes oppressive in any scene he is in. As a predatory character who has Kujirai set in his sights, Hebinuma confirms just how much of a slime-ball he is by forcing his prehensile forked tongue down Kujirai’s throat toward the beginning of Episode 3. His brand of “queer coded” villainy, which crosses into explicit queer villainy as the show reveals he—indeed—fucks dudes, is over the top and promises to likely be a menacing yet integral presence from here on out.
Meanwhile, although Vrai went over the theme of nostalgia in their Episode 1 review, I would like to spend some time going over just what that sense of nostalgia Mayuzuki hits at in Kowloon is. Why specifically Kowloon, and how is such an inhospitable space romanticized more than 30 years later? While the West has its own fascination with the city from film and more recently through second-hand aesthetics imported from Japanese cyberpunk, that initial fascination that inspired Oshii Mamoru and Watanabe Shinichiro, as well as Yu Suzuki, likely comes from Japan’s own relationship with Hong Kong as a British colony.
Throughout the post-war years, as Japan grew as an economic powerhouse, Hong Kong and Macau were prime tourist destinations for cheap weekend getaways for middle-class Japanese, especially those looking to gamble. Because of this, though not as populous as British or American expatriates, many Japanese also worked and studied in Hong Kong. And in those years after the Cultural Revolution in China and before Hong Kong’s reintegration in 1997, the walled city also grew.
Thus, the Walled City symbolizes a exotic locale from a period prior to the economic bubble bursting in Japan, one that more than likely left an impression on many visitors to Hong Kong, just as much as the experience of flying into Kai Tak Airport. It is a vision of Hong Kong that no longer exists, serving as a backdrop to a story about a woman who seemingly no longer exists, yet continues to persist in physical form like the Walled City. Kudo is beholden to a concept of Kujirai, much like how readers are likely adopting that sense of nostalgia for the exotified Walled City, even though 30 years on, few readers and viewers likely truly even understand or care what the actual Walled City was. It’s a fitting characterization that also touches upon cultural appropriation that is distinctly from a Japanese point of view, hence why so many of the principal characters caught up in the “nostalgia” in the show are Japanese. It’s evocative of a bygone era of cool that folks who can remember it yearn to return to, just as how people yearn for an old-fashioned and honorable yakuza like Kiryu Kazuma, even though such a yakuza was never real in the first place.
The Too-Perfect Saint: Tossed Aside By My Fiancé and Sold to Another Kingdom
Cy: I’m not going to lie: I kind of dig The Too-Perfect Saint because I love it when someone gets to heal by just being themselves. And that’s really what this series is being set up to be after its first episode, which depicts a downright fairytale level of abuse, misuse, and general childhood mistreatment that’s shaped Philia into a workaholic who, unable to express her true emotions due to trauma, has basically kept her kingdom together as a Saint.
But now, she’s finally getting the recognition and treatment she deserves, making for a really pleasant series that I think is well worth watching, especially for the duality of Philia and Mia’s stories and how they shape a wider world. I found this especially engaging and honestly, what’s probably going to keep me watching as Girtonia has to deal with having just one still very skillful Saint instead of one skilled Saint and a powerhouse of a young prodigy.
This continues to delight in its most quiet moments by combining tried and true aspects of fairytales with a genuinely interesting lead in Philia, who has so much heart and is slowly demonstrating who she actually is versus the young woman her parents forcibly shaped her into. Intrigue and mystery abounds though as the plot thickens and more monsters flood the world, but also… Philia is just kind of happy now, and I think the build up to seeing her find the start of a peaceful life really makes this series well worth watching.
Rock is a Lady’s Modesty
Alex: I’ve recently been reading The Guy She Was Interested In Wasn’t a Guy At All, which means now I have the exciting and unprecedented chance to make a joke that goes “if I had a nickel for every yuri where the girls talk about how much they love The Red Hot Chilli Peppers…”
In any case, Rock is a Lady’s Modesty is a delight, and the first three episodes unfold into a sharp comedy about the inherent romance of shredding guitar and screaming at each other. But as well as being wild fun, this show clearly has social and economic commentary woven tightly into its premise. There’s no untangling this from being a story about class, whether it’s digging into high society’s restrictive standards of femininity or the constructed nature of so-called “classy” deportment and manners. As we understand it, Lilisa’s place in her step-family—and thus her and her mother’s financial security—is dependent on her carefully performing a farce of this prescribed set of behaviors, and she’s essentially been forced to squash down any form of self-expression that doesn’t fit this mold. When she’s in the safe, soundproofed space of the music room, she has an outlet where she’s allowed to actually emote and express, dare I say reclaim some of her sense of self outside the highly binary-gendered, classist confines of that idea of “ladylike.”
The rock music aspect isn’t just set dressing (or a funny juxtaposition), either, but a crucial part of the class critique, dissecting the arbitrary lines drawn between “high art” and “low art.” Learning an instrument takes a massive amount of skill and practice, but that only earns respect if it’s the right kind of instrument. Guitar? No, yuck! Lowbrow and vulgar! Violin? Now those are some classy strings! It’s clearly ridiculous, but it’s a system of expectations Lilisa has to navigate.
The question is, where does this leave her drummer and narrative foil Otaha? It seems way too convenient that her rich family is okay with her playing rock music, and I know that she’s just as capable of putting on a beaming, pretty facade as Lilisa (that’s what makes them so perfect for each other, after all). I have a feeling in my bones that there’s a capital-S Significance to some of her dialogue pauses, carefully-placed placid smiles, and questions about why Lilisa wants to become the Noble Maiden so badly. But we’ll have to keep watching to see how that all unfolds and how it plays into the show’s themes. I’m certainly along for the ride.
Mobile Suit Gundam: Gquuuuuux
Vrai: I can admit when I’m beat. We sent Tony into Gquuuuux’s premiere to see how it would fare for total newbies to the franchise (answer: confusingly!), but I sort of assumed I’d be a little better off as someone who’s had approximately two seconds more Gundam experience. Granted, my points of reference are exclusively non-Universal Century shows, and I mostly know Char as “that masked pillar of the ‘80s doujinshi scene who goes three times faster and maybe dropped a colony on Earth that time.” But I’d absorbed a fair bit about Gundam’s recurring archetypes and sat through more than a few panels by friends, so I figured I could fake it.
Readers, I could not. Machu, Nyaan and Shuji might be new characters (enjoyable ones!) but the core pleasure of this show is as an alternate universe take on the original 1979 series. You’re supposed to go, “whoa, if that happened HERE now, then THAT means….!” And while I know in basic form that this show pivots on Char stealing a Gundam, thus leading the Principality of Zeon to win a war they lost decisively the first time around….I don’t know what that means. The cultural backgrounds and goals of Zeon and the Federation and the colonies have been built extensively in other shows, and I’m clearly meant to perk my ears up when specific names get dropped because it has newfound implications for how warfare and political muckraking has shifted. That’s the kind of stuff Gundam does, and it’s great! But it’s largely inferred here, and new additions like Clan Battles are more of a hook to get the new characters into the trenches (and have cool action scenes) than a scene we’re meant to invest a lot of mental energy in.
There is still stuff I could appreciate—I like that Shuji takes on the ethereal waif role while Machu is the blustery pilot protagonist, the writing turns a minor but notably critical eye to the police in addition to the armed forces, and it’s cool to see the show follow The Witch From Mercury’s lead in shaking up the kinds of roles the story has for women. I think there’s a lot worth following here. I just feel like I’ve been asked to leave until I finish my homework.
Maebashi Witches
Vrai: What a treat this show has shaped up to be. The first episode is a little hat-on-a-hat with its magical girl witches who also inspire you through song, but as Cy predicted it settles into itself once it’s not trying to stuff all its gimmicks into one episode. In fact, it’s started setting up a pattern of giving each of its main girls a two-episode spotlight, splitting the difference between the episodic conventions of the genre and the constraints of a 12-episode runtime. Then it decided to come out swinging with a two-part storyline about fatphobia. And it’s really, really good.
The girls’ first “real” customer is a plus-sized model (who’s incidentally also queer!) who’s feeling conflicted about her job…but not, as acid-tongued Azu assumes, because she’s looking for a magic solution to become thin. As it turns out, Azu’s projecting her own reasons for wanting to become a witch onto this stranger, and that reveal opens up into an extremely poignant (and possibly triggering, as a heads up) conversation about the strain of living with daily fatphobia, one that walks a fine line of hopefulness while also resisting easy answers. It is a little disappointing that Azu continues to appear as her thin façade within the shop, which encompasses most of her appearances, including her magical girl numbers—but I also appreciate that they made a real-world design for her present self that’s cute, fat, and present.
Shows that tackle fatphobic bullying often approach it through the lens of formerly fat girls who’ve reinvented themselves and come out with scars (Skip and Loafer’s Mika is a recent example). They tend to be critical of the bullying and aware of the trauma it causes, but ultimately rather academic about it since the girl has already completed her transformation into acceptable cuteness. So while I wish they’d carved out a second unique rig, I appreciate leaving the door open for Azu to give herself grace without magic in future.
There’s a pretty clear focus on giving these girls serious stuff to talk about, both in the central episode topics and side conversations about, say, the ethical problems with fast fashion. And Yuina ties it all together with a big earnest bow that leaves me smiling. And if all of that isn’t enough to pique your interest, please consider that this is Yoshida Erika’s latest outing after her hard work adapting Bocchi the Rock!, and she deserves your eyeballs.
Anne Shirley
Alex: This is actually my first time experiencing Anne of Green Gables, so I’m coming to this as a total newbie. And folks, I’m having a great time and can absolutely see why this story has had such an impact. Most of this comes from Anne herself, who I’ve become deeply attached to. There’s a lot I could talk about here, but I want to highlight her characterization and the way the story frames her, because Anne’s perspective and agency are central to the narrative in a really endearing and rewarding way. My favorite iteration of this is that, when she sticks up for herself, the narrative always rewards her even if she gets in trouble more literally. For example, she gets punished by her teacher for whacking Gilbert on the head (in what’s surely one of the top ten anime fight scenes of 2025), but Gilbert’s reaction and his immediate change of heart makes it clear that the audience should see Anne as being in the right.
And yes, fair call, you should not hit your classmate so hard with your slate that it shatters dramatically. But even if her impulsive reactions are played as a character flaw, her anger at being teased is always justified by the emotional stakes of the story, and she’s given the space to stand her ground against people much more structurally powerful than her (an adult, in the case of Rachel, and an older boy in the case of Gilbert) without anything too terrible befalling her. As an Edwardian-era child with no blood family (and again, a young girl in a patriarchal world), Anne has very little autonomy and is at the mercy of the system around her, but the storytelling is doing the work to give her as much agency as possible within the constraints of its setting. Emotions and reactions that might be dismissed as the frivolous outbursts of a silly little girl are given real gravitas, and it’s satisfying to see that.While the audience gets to spend time with some of the other characters, overall the visual storytelling does a lot of work to invite us into Anne’s point of view, meaning that we experience the world as she does. The simple rural setting is dreamlike and breathtakingly beautiful because that’s how she sees it, and the stakes of something mundane like not being allowed to go to a picnic are heightened to the most devastatingly important thing in the world. It’s tempting to say that some of the emotional development feels rushed—Anne’s immediate, undying devotion to Diana, for example—but that’s sort of just how it is when you’re a kid, and I believe in it all because I’ve been invited to share Anne’s headspace. I think there’s something special about that, and am definitely swept up in her tale and will be following along to see what she does next.
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