Taming the Final Boss is an extremely endearing premiere, with a great heroine and solid table-setting for its central romance. It’s also almost certain to get lost in the wave of Fall titles, for reasons that are not its fault.
Vrai sat down with Camacho at Otakon 2022 to ask her about her influences, her dream role, and the expectation put on marginalized public figures to act as educators.
The series saw praise for its well-characterized Black heroine, optimistic outlook and its swing-for-the-fences tale of pushing back against injustice (including a spot in our 2019 recs list). At the same time, it’s received its share of criticism for the way that core optimism lends itself toward over-simplification of fraught issues, as well as its stumbles in portraying Black masculinity and queer and trans characters.
Discussion about wages and working conditions have exploded to the surface of the anime industry over the past few years. Anime Feminist had a chance to talk with Zeno Robinson, acclaimed actor and vocal supporter of the unionization movement, at Otakon 2022.
The premiere seems determined to squander its good ideas with a combination of misdirection and persistent inconsistencies.
A pretty strong offering for fans of the idol genre.
The script’s predictable but the execution is superb.
An escapee from another era that feels every inch of it.
The found family elements are nice, but it can’t commit to its own premise.
A decent premise buried in shounen bullshit.
Not gonna light the world on fire, but it’s a soothing watch.
It definitely has the aura of a legacy remake, but that doesn’t mean it’s not fun.
Y’all, I wanna believe.
Visually, there’s a lot to like about Engage Kiss. Unfortunately, then you get to the plot.
Miscommunication as narrative conflict is often linked with contrivance and bad writing—and no genre faces this criticism more than romance. That’s what makes Yuri is My Job! so refreshing. In the process of building a will-they-won’t-they story, it explores the gendered, neurotypical, and heteronormative expectations that are built into social interaction.
Here is a tip: if you want to endear me to your trash gremlin heroine—something which should not be hard, given my record—then probably the last thing you should use is a one-two punch of “filming a fake suicide attempt” and “threatening the hero with fake sexual harassment claims.” Because I’ll tell you, I’m just not gonna come back from that even before you start dangling incest in front of my face.
Have y’all ever made a zombie brain? It turns several very tasty alcoholic beverages into one of the single worst textural experiences on Earth. This is like that.
It’s a fantastic premiere that mixes dance with commentary on toxic masculinity.
Over the years I’ve gotten accustomed to the incorporation of very soft, cutesified character designs in shows. So RPG Real Estate has come along to catapult me directly back to the 2007 as punishment for my hubris.
A shoujo-esque coming-of-age series? Idols with art nouveau aesthetics? And its production has more than a ham sandwich to its name? Is it my birthday?
