Chatty AF 220: 2024 Fall Season Wrap-Up (WITH TRANSCRIPT)

ALEX: Cy, are you alright if I pass the baton back to you to talk about Ranma ½?

CY: Oh, boy! Or oh, girl.

[Chuckling]

PETER: Who can say?

ALEX: Who is to say? [Chuckles]

[Introductory musical theme]

ALEX: Hello and welcome to Chatty AF: The Anime Feminist Podcast. And welcome to 2025! Happy New Year, everyone.

CY: Yay!

ALEX: As you’ll see over on the website— Whew! Yes, we did it! We’re in a new year. The Sun has rotated around the— Well… Well, maybe the Sun rotates around the Earth, or the Earth rotates around the Sun. We will talk more about that later.

CY: Okay, don’t get into that Orb!

ALEX: [Chuckles]

CY: Don’t get into that Orb talk.

PETER: Dah! Son of a…

[Chuckling]

ALEX: In any case, over on the website, you will see that we’re already diving into our first impressions of the new season, winter ‘25, so be sure to go check those out. But we do also gotta come back and wrap up fall 2024, and that’s what we are doing today! So, for your hosts on this adventure, I’m Alex. I’m one of the managing editors here at AniFem. You can find me on Bluesky @arhenderson, because I actually joined that platform early enough that my pen name wasn’t taken, which is very exciting. I’m joined here today by Cy and Peter.

CY: Hi, I’m Cy and I am a contributing editor here at Anime Feminist. I also have a super sore throat because my asthma is acting up, so you’re gonna get a lot of drinking ice water ASMR or, as I call it, ASMR [pronounced “AZ-murr”], during this recording because I am gonna talk a lot but also be very thirsty. Oh, and I’m also @pixelatedlenses on Bluesky.

PETER: And I’m Peter Fobian. I’m an editor here at Anime Feminist. I’m @peterfobian on Bluesky since I also got in super early.

ALEX: Lovely. Alright, let’s jump into it, folks. As always, we are not covering everything that’s come out this season because they’re simply making too much anime for us to catch in our net. If you want to help pick and help us decide what to talk about in these seasonal coverage episodes, you can do that by becoming a patron over on patreon.com/animefeminist. As always, we are also using the Premiere Digest that we set up early in the season to determine the order that we talk about these things and the categories that they’re in and the kind of context through which we’ll discuss them.

Now that being said, we are starting today in our Red Flags section with Yakuza Fiancé.

CY: [Laughs]

ALEX: So, anime of the year? What do we reckon? [Chuckles]

CY: [Chuckles] Okay, so, Alex, I don’t know if you know, but in the 2000s there was a TV show called The Flavor of Love.

ALEX: [Laughs]

CY: And it followed Black rapper–musician Flavor Flav as he tried to find love. Yakuza Fiancé is officially the Japanese Flavor of Love but with teenagers. That is how I see this show.

ALEX: Okay, I will admit, I know… I know Ms. Tiffany Pollard better than I know Flavor Flav from that show. Is that the energy that it’s bringing?

CY: Oh, my God, this show is so horny and wild! And for what? For what reason? [Chuckles] These are not teenagers! Every scene, every frame a painting: a horny painting!

ALEX: I imagine there’s heaps to talk about with this one. Is there, like, a highlight reel of the most important things you want our listeners to know about?

PETER: I do want to call out the anime for… There’s a scene in the opening where Kirishima’s jumping down a flight of stairs with Yoshino in his arms, which is from the next arc. And the fact that they put that in the opening as if it was going to be in the anime and then never get to it… I’m extremely disappointed, since that arc is crazy. So, hopefully there’ll be a Season 2 so they can make good on their promise. Otherwise, that’s something of a bad taste in my mouth, unlike the rest of the show, which was wonderful, 10 out of 10.

CY: [crosstalk] Decadent. Decadence. It is like—

PETER: Best hand-holding scene in an anime.

CY: Yes.

PETER: I can’t think of a better one. Nastiest hand-holding scene… [Chuckles]

CY: Oh, yeah! This show is like going to the Korean barbecue and eating only the primest meats. It is decadent. It is all-you-can-eat, yum-yum-yum-yum, drama! Like, if someone can have trauma or a rough time, they will. And also, I just want to say, you could call Kirishima public works because this man is laying pipe as often as he can. This man is personally satisfying every woman in Tokyo and western Japan. And I’m just like, “You are a high school student! Calm down!”

PETER: And Yoshino does not give a single shit that he’s doing that.

CY: [Chuckles] All I hope is he’s using protection. Like, I’m so concerned!

PETER: I do want to say, I think… Well, I mean, I read the manga ahead, but I was kind of… I think last episode I was pretty curious on what people’s initial impressions were like, since Yoshino is kind of just on the receiving end of a lot of craziness in the first half, but in the second half I think she really steps up and starts joining in on the scheming as stuff starts to heat up and yakuza drama works its way into the story. So, kinda curious how you felt about that pivot.

CY: I really like Yoshino’s character growth. I like that she becomes… Because it’s not— I don’t want to say she becomes a fuller character. She does, but she’s a pretty interesting character from the beginning. But seeing her start to kind of stand on business in her own way and all these plots getting intricate and her growing into her own, coming into her own, is really interesting, and it makes it compelling. Like, I need a Season 2, pronto. Well, not pronto. I don’t want to overwork anyone. Not pronto, but soon, please. I guess I can just get the manga, too.

PETER: That’s what I’m doing.

CY: This is juicy.

PETER: [crosstalk] I’m up to date. Yeah, the art style is really great. I think it is particularly difficult to adapt that style into anime. They did their best, but the manga art is very good.

CY: Mm-hm, mm-hm.

PETER: Yeah, and I do want to say that I think that in the beginning it seems like Yoshino is one of your classic romcom girls, in that she kind of gets thrust into this weird situation, seems very ignorant—kinda like what we’ll be talking about in Nina later, and she’s like an archetypical example, where she just gets thrown in, there’s a bunch of guys who are savvy to politics, she doesn’t know anything, she’s very “Oopsie! I’ll do something unexpected,” which attracts the guys. And I guess we just sort of find out that that’s not true. We learn that she’s extremely savvy and is not at all ignorant about yakuza politics. 

And I think the story becomes very interesting in how she ends up… It’s kind of in how she’s handling the men around her like she handles [them] and learns more about Kirishima in a way so that she can learn about what makes him tick and kind of how to control him, as well as navigating some of the stuff that comes up with the other yakuza and mediating so that nobody ends up cutting another person’s throat, either over something else or just because, obviously, she’s got at least two guys fighting over her at this point. Like, in the end, just her giving him the classic shunning treatment, I thought, was very great—since how else can you really punish a full-on masochist?—as one of the final episodes was very fantastic. 

So, I think… She’s a really interesting character for me, right near where the anime ends and further on in the manga, for how she ends up navigating this world and specifically working with Kirishima’s completely insane personality to kind of keep him on the level and actually doing things that aren’t inappropriate around her.

CY: Mm-hm. Yeah, Kirishima is interesting because he must be like a therapist’s dream. This boy is just layers on layers on layers of complexity. But yeah, her shunning him for like 72 hours and being like, “If you do it again, if you do something to this level again, I’ll do it again. I’ll just make it longer,” it really demonstrates that she understands him on a certain level and that she’s also clever. It’s very engaging.

PETER: Yeah. He even says something like “Being ignored hurts, but I don’t enjoy it.” Yeah. So, it’s a hot mess, but love it.

CY: It’s so good. It’s so good. [Chuckles]

ALEX: Okay. A fine, hot mess. Excellent. Thank you for those thoughts. Next up on the list, we have The Do-Over Damsel Conquers the Dragon Emperor, which I gracefully tapped out of, and I think you did the same, Peter. [Chuckles]

PETER: Yeah.

ALEX: But that’s all right because we have… the valiant Chiaki from on staff has finished it and has left us some notes. The general gist is that our Dragon Emperor Hadis does actually get a bit less creepy—a bit—once Jill kinda takes the reins, and it sort of becomes this more politically tense story. But as per Chiaki says, the big takeaway is it’s a great show about Jill being an active heroine, trying to keep the world from falling apart because her husband could have an apocalyptic mental breakdown like in her past life, but also the specter of, quote, “lolicon husband who isn’t really a lolicon but maybe he’s gradually actually falling in love with the 10-year-old” kinda does make it a lot to deal with. If Jill and Hadis just sit down and she’s like, “I know this is crazy, but I saw what happens in the future and I’m here to prevent it. Let’s be political allies and break the bindings of fate,” it would all be so much cleaner. But they do gotta fall in love as husband and wife as the story has constructed it. 

But anyway, the show ends with Jill calming Hadis down by pledging to pop ten babies out for him, and Hadis, meanwhile, enthusiastically tells his whole kingdom that he has married an 11-year-old, and everyone who observes this feels rightly grossed out.

CY: Ten babies is so much for you to tell your 11-year-old child bride that you would like.

ALEX: Well, she tells him that, apparently, and that’s where it ends. And it ends— From having only seen this in screencaps, granted, but it seems to be doing the same joke that routinely pissed me off throughout the series, where Hadis will say or do something that is obviously a massive push of boundaries and is wildly inappropriate and the other characters will react like, “Hey, man, that’s really pushing boundaries and wildly inappropriate,” but them reacting that way is kind of a joke. So, the narrative framing of his whole deal is kind of “Oh, you!” whenever he does something like that. Which, you know, that kind of benevolent handling of his creepiness was what really set my teeth on edge and made it difficult for me to finish the show. So, thank you, Chiaki, for going into the fields for us [Chuckles] and handling that one. I think, uh, her wrap-up of that is very succinct and I don’t have anything to add. So, let’s just… That show sure did happen.

And let’s move on to the next thing on our list, which is similarly fraught but handled things differently. This is TsumaSho, for which we also have some notes from Chiaki. So, thank you. We have two Chiakis in a row. Everybody, knock your bingo cards. Chiaki says: “This show was pretty much exactly what you expected, since it followed the manga and drama that came before it. While some elements were skipped over for a shorter run time, it was a very faithful retelling. This isn’t anything particularly bad about it, since the central theme of the show is about dealing with loss and grief, and changing the story around would likely not help maintain that story and that theme. 

“Overall, the show is about owning up to mistakes and being able to embrace the fact people are enough by being who they are. This theme plays out in several ways, most prominently with Takae overseeing her family’s recovery. Likewise from Keisuke realizing that he should be a present and active parent for Mai regardless of whether Takae, his wife, is there to support him. Similarly, Mai, who is much younger, has a lot more work to do to her personal growth, but she also learns to let go of her mother while also cherishing everything she’s given her. And even Chika, Marika’s mom, realizes that she is enough and cherishes her daughter once Takae leaves her body. The finale is very touching. I do agree with some reviewers that it’s a bit convoluted. Still, I think it all leaves off with Keisuke really at peace with himself and leaves you a little introspective about your own losses in life, if you’ve ever had any such deaths of a close loved one.” 

So, the show did indeed turn out quite sweet, from the sounds of it, despite, you know, the sort of fraught concepts there in that reincarnation premise. So, hey, that’s nice to hear. We can always be pleasantly surprised.

PETER: Mm-hm. Yeah, I think… we heard a lot of— Usually with shows with this kind of premise, I think you hear a lot of people going, “It’s actually not that bad,” but the pushback to this one was like, “It’s not like that at all and it’s really trying to do something interesting.” So, it did sound like it was different from the get-out, and I’m glad that that’s true. [Chuckles]

ALEX: Yes, glad it stuck that landing and is genuinely a sweet story about grief.

CY: Yeah, similarly glad. Similarly glad, because I had some fears, and I’m glad I don’t have those fears anymore.

ALEX: Wonderful. Super quick, we also have just a note on I’ll Become a Villainess Who Goes Down in History. Unfortunately, the main takeaway from this one is that it drags out its adaptation of the first volume of its source material, only gets interesting right at the very end, and the construction of the main character’s quote-unquote “villainy” is not actually anything much to write home about. So, that’s an unfortunate one. Not another villainess show to hype up in that genre, unfortunately.

PETER: [crosstalk] Was that another Chiaki one?

ALEX: Yes, we don’t have formal notes from that one, but that was the impression I got…

CY: [crosstalk] Shout-out to Chiaki for going… doing the hard work.

ALEX: [crosstalk] Chiaki is so carrying us in this section! [Chuckles]

PETER: Are we sure she’s not actually a raccoon girl?

ALEX: [Chuckles] Ah, man. So, yeah, a bit of a shame to hear about that one. But hey, if you are a fan of that villainess reincarnation genre and want to keep collecting them and checking out them and building your own personal portfolio of them like Pokémon cards, check it out and let us know what you thought.

Now it is time to ponder that Orb. Cy, how is On the Movements of the Earth going?

CY: [Sighs] Okay, so, I’m gonna be honest.

ALEX: Yeah, that should be a nice, clean cut from me asking how that orb is in the beginning, so begin whenever you’d like to.

CY: [crosstalk] I don’t quite understand how Orb got made in the year of our Lord 2024. I don’t understand who the market is for this anime. I don’t understand who was like, “I really want to see this.” I… [Chuckles] I… I don’t— Oh, shit, it’s made by Madhouse! I forgot that. [Chuckles] Okay. It’s not that it’s bad. It’s a really stunning art style, and it is still ongoing. I believe Episode 16 comes out this week. I just… I just don’t understand who wanted to see this! It’s so sad! And I understand that history is often sad. I get that. But, like, who wanted this?

ALEX: It does seem a little different in terms of its genre and its tone next to basically everything else that’s coming out this season and everything you sort of expect from the anime market, doesn’t it?

CY: I almost wish it was a live action, because I think that would be more interesting, because it’s like… I mean, it’s like a historical sci-fi thing, but the science fiction is just that these people are like, “Nah, dog, the sun! And Jesus.” [Chuckles] I mean, after Rafal gets killed—well, he dies, he dies by suicide—it just gets sadder and sadder. Like, is this why people like Game of Thrones? Because I don’t get it! I don’t get it. And I like history anime. I mean, I love The Apothecary Diaries. But this is just men and history and occasionally a woman having a really bad time. And I don’t like it, and I’m not going to suggest anyone see it. If someone wants to explain to me why this is engaging to them, I would love it, but as it stands, I’m just kind of like, “They paid money to make this?” And that’s not a good way to feel.

PETER: Correct me if I’m wrong, but the anime is kinda, like, about how people are trying to… or that there are people that have beliefs based in science that conflict with fundamentalist religious beliefs?

CY: Yeah, that’s essentially it. It’s heliocentrism versus geocentrism. Which, it’s also hard for me because so many cultures at this point in history that this is set in already knew. They were like, “Oh, yeah, Earth go around Sun.” And so, it’s… [Chuckles] it’s just wild. And I mean, this is the P country with the C religion. Are you fucking kidding?

PETER: Yeah, like, try harder with the names, for sure.

CY: Are you kidding me?

PETER: Yeah, that idea is definitely preposterous since the heliocentrism thing is so well established and so old at whatever possible period of time this could be taking place. But I do—

CY: Because this is set in the 15th century. Cultures knew.

PETER: Anyone with boats… Yeah. But I do understand, like… The friction seems very present, right?

CY: It is. And this is a really grisly anime. When people die, it’s very upsetting. [Chuckles] And there is something compelling in that it is about people pushing against, like, “Do I follow the beliefs that everyone else around me are following and abide by the law of the land?” because, you know, [it’s] back when theocracy and religion as a stronger law were not uncommon; it was a common thing. And so, there’s that tension between that and pursuing the actual science and learning the truth of the universe. And it is interesting. I’m not going to pretend that it’s not. It’s just that it is so fucking sad. Even with the plot twists that happen, it is so sad. Yeah, no one’s happy, no one looks like they’re getting enough food or sunlight, and even if they are eating, I’m just like, “Oh, God, y’all don’t even know.” And I’m just not sure why now for this anime. I think if this had been something that was around in the ‘90s, this would’ve hit. This would’ve hit. But now, I’m big sad about everything else; I don’t need anime to do that, too.

PETER: [Chuckles] Feel-good only.

CY: Feel-good only.

ALEX: Maybe they were like, “We’ve got too many wish-fulfillment fantasy anime. We’re gonna make an anti-wish-fulfillment, realistic, historical anime for balance, when nobody’s having a good time.”

CY: I hate that.

ALEX: [Chuckles]

CY: I hate every single word you just said.

[Chuckling]

CY: I hate that! But I’m done pondering the orb. This wizard? Back to my tower. No more Orb.

ALEX: Well, thank you very much for your Orb efforts along the way.

CY: Always.

ALEX: Peter, Negative Positive Angler. How did our fishing anime for this season turn out?

PETER: Oh, am I the only one who finished it?

ALEX: Yes. Take us away.

CY: [crosstalk] Yeah.

PETER: [crosstalk] Ooh, wow, okay. Well, I remember in the last episode I was kind of wondering whether… because, you know, this guy dropped out of college hugely in debt, and he’s got like two years to live according to his diagnosis, is just kinda wandering around, and ends up being picked up by this fisher gang. I was kind of wondering if the series was ever going to get around to him, I don’t know, doing something like maybe just at least notifying his family that he’s…

[Chuckling]

PETER: You know, something like that. And it does kinda come around. You know, the whole… His personal narrative develops, and it’s kind of like… I don’t want to say “fishing as therapy,” but him interacting with this group kinda helps him… I don’t want to say “overcome” but kind of like… well, in many ways kind of overcome and recognize the trauma he’s experiencing and that he’s obviously not been able to cope with so far. He’s just kinda… He was literally… He almost drowned himself in the first episode. I don’t want to say— It wasn’t intentional. It wasn’t like a suicide attempt. But… Yeah, yeah. Anyway, he has a… How do I want to say this? He has some interactions with one of the other major characters who has a previous grief surrounding a diagnosis that was fatal, and the two kind of come to heads about how he’s handling the issue, and he recognizes that what he’s doing right now is kind of irresponsible. He does suggest that he keep going to the doctor. I don’t know if the guy had actually… you know, he’s kind of like, “Check in on your progress,” since they basically said there’s no treatment. 

But he did call his parents and say he’s going to go home and talk to them and all that, so I think it kind of ended in a good place there, of him kind of recognizing he needs to do certain things and let his loved ones know what’s going on. So, I think that’s pretty good. And he helps his friend with some of the unresolved issues that that guy had around experiencing the death of another individual around an illness. Pretty good. I’m glad it was only 12 episodes because I feel like they were kind of pushing the fishing thing to its limit. I don’t know if I just personally hate fishing and I’m being a downer about this. It did help, once again, that the fish looked like they were straight out of Ocarina of Time, PS1 CG status. But, yeah, it kinda came around. It had a feel-good message. I think especially if maybe you’ve experienced the death of a loved one to something like cancer, it can maybe do a lot more for you than it did for me. I’ve heard some other positive things from other members of staff that are just picking it up right now, so maybe that’ll be an article in our future or something. But yeah, I think it nailed the landing.

ALEX: Lovely. That is wonderful to hear. Back to you, Cy. You wanted to introduce a new player to the mix and tell us about Demon Lord 2099?

CY: Okay, so, I wanted to talk about Demon Lord 2099 largely because I came to it late in the game in the season. But I do think it’s worth talking about as a… I mean, it’s labeled as a reverse isekai. I don’t know that that’s completely accurate, because the whole premise is that Earth and this fantasy world of Alneath merge together in this kind of cataclysmic magical event and that that results in the world that we have, where it’s like this magical technology and it’s cyberpunk and it’s really lush. I do think it’s worth watching. My biggest qualm is that I think they only should have adapted the first novel, because I think if you’re watching this and you haven’t read the first few novels, you’re gonna be like, “What? Why does it shift to schoolkids?”

PETER: Yeah, that was what I was thinking! I started seeing stuff out of it where all of them were dressed in school uniforms and talking, and I was like, wait a minute. Weren’t they in some sort of post-cyberpunk dystopia where he’s trying to become the number one YouTuber in the world or something? Make it make sense!

CY: Uh, he’s the number one streamer, and he’s trying to do it so he can get more people to believe in him and regain his demon lord powers.

PETER: Okay. But now he’s in high school.

CY: [crosstalk] I mean, we gotta give it up for my boy. Yeah, so the first novel really… because I read the novel alongside my watch. And the first novel… basically, it takes you through to Episode 7. And it’s a pretty tight arc, and I really wish they would have fleshed it out a little bit more. Like, I wouldn’t have even been mad if they added in some stuff, because I think it is jarring to only have, like, six episodes with the second novel, I believe. But I actually really liked it. I encourage people to watch it and read the novels because it’s a pretty compelling and well-structured world of, like, what would you do if you were an immortal and one of your underlings revived you? But also, it focuses on the hero who has been given the gift of immortality and is super poor in this modern world. And there’s a tension in that there’s also the fact that Veltol has to adjust to the modern world, and he does that partially by becoming a streamer who plays, essentially, retro games. It’s very funny. But I think it’s worth it. I liked it a lot. And I think it’s worth giving a try if someone is just in the mood for a little bit different of a fantasy story with a demon lord. Yeah.

ALEX: Cool, that is good to hear! Thank you very much!

Next up, we got Acro Trip, which I really liked. I wanted a bit more out of it in terms of an overarching story. It’s great. It’s very fun and silly and pretty charming, but it is one of those shows that sometimes feels like a series of bits that don’t necessarily come together as a whole. Which is not to say those bits aren’t good—it’s from very early in the show, but I do still think constantly about the part where Chrome, our villain… he flips over the non-slip mat outside a restaurant and just says, “Suffer inconvenience!” then runs away cackling. And that’s kind of how we set up this whole scenario where you have this hero and this villain, but they’re more like coworkers than actual enemies in the structure of what’s going on. That in itself is very funny. And this main character, this sort of ordinary outsider, coming in and ending up as apprentice to the villain and kind of being better at his job than he is, is also very charming and very funny.

It does occasionally pull plot points out of a hat and then just never come back to them. Like, Chizuko’s dad is introduced in one episode. It turns out [that] was her teacher the whole time. But there’s no lead-up or foreshadowing to that, really, because we’ve barely seen any scenes of school life, and it’s mostly in service of a joke about how he’s a really big fan of the villains, and she’s like, “Dad, that’s so embarrassing.” Anyway, [Chuckles] it occasionally does things like that.

The closest thing I have to an actual critique about the show is that, weirdly, it’s not about the relationship between Chizuko and Berry Blossom. Because that’s the inciting incident of the show, is that she is such a big fan of this local magical girl that she ends up joining the villains to give her challenges that let her really shine. And then the two of them don’t actually, necessarily, really interact until quite near the very end, and we had a scene with them that had this really interesting tension where they’re kind of being nice to each other but there’s also like, “Well, you’re my enemy, aren’t you?” And she’s like, “Well, yeah, but I’m a huge fan, but I can’t…” You know. That was fun, that was cool, and once we got that scene in quite a late episode, I realized how much I’d been missing that from the rest of the show and how it felt like a little bit of a missed opportunity, storytelling wise. But that’s a fairly minor gripe. I think that could have strengthened the show much in the same way that having a more cohesive story arc actually could. You know, I was just kind of like, man, we get a backstory episode about the relationship between Chrome and the former incarnation of the little magical cat sidekick before we get a conversation between Chizuko and Berry Blossom. You know? And that smarted to me a bit, because I wanted to see more of that.

But, hey, it’s certainly not a bad show. I was left a little hungry for more of it and more of what it could give me, but I do still recommend it. It’s a lot of fun and certainly, it goes without saying, the more fun and more friendly version of this concept. We saw a similar thing in Gushing Over Magical Girls a little while ago, and this is naturally the… probably the more preferable iteration on a similar theme. But we don’t have to go too much into that. That is Acro Trip.

Cy, are you alright if I pass the baton back to you to talk about Ranma ½?

CY: Oh, boy! Or oh, girl.

[Chuckling]

PETER: Who can say?

ALEX: Who is to say? [Chuckles]

CY: So, I’m gonna say something really upsetting, which is that I just think, for me, Ranma is a little too ‘80s, ‘90s. I’m going to be honest. It’s fine. Like, I understand why people like it, I think it can be very compelling, the romance between Ranma and Akane as they actually start to like each other. But I want to take a moment to talk about Shampoo in the dub. Now, Shampoo is played by… I believe Grace Lu is Laotian and Taiwanese, so, someone who would speak Chinese. But why… why does Shampoo sound that way? Like, it is 2024: we could’ve made Shampoo sound like she, at least, I don’t know, studied a little Japanese. Everybody else in the cast sounds normal. And I’m going to use “normal” because I do think that the direction on Shampoo makes her sound very stereotypical, and that really made me not like the show.

ALEX: Hm. Okay, so she sounds— Just for extra context, she sounds, like, very stereotypically heightened Chinese accent and not speaking English very well in the dub?

CY: Like, I… because I don’t like the term “broken English,” but she speaks what we would call broken English in the dub. [And I would] assume that she sounds similar in the sub. It just upset me to the point… That and the slapstick comedy. I’m so tired of people hitting people and, like, that’s funny. And I had this problem with Urusei Yatsura because, like, I love Lum as a concept, but in execution, it turns out I just don’t like high school boys that are perverts!

ALEX: Fair enough. [Chuckles]

CY: And, I mean, you know, I’m gonna be honest, I love Inuyasha and you can’t take the wolf boy out of the queer person. You just can’t. Or anyone who loves Inuyasha. You don’t have to be queer to like Inuyasha. But maybe because I watched that at the right time in my life, I have nostalgia for that. As a 32-year-old, I just could not get past Shampoo. And the episodes were kind of the same in vibe. And I know this is a long-running manga, and I know there’s a lot of nostalgia around it. I’m not saying it’s bad. I think I’m just saying it’s not for me. It’s a beautiful adaptation. The animation is great. That OP slaps. It’s really well voice-acted in English. It’s a great script, really good direction. But I don’t know. Something about Shampoo and the fact that there was an ice skating episode that was multiple episodes… I was just like, “Jesus! Oh, my God!”

One thing I will say in its corner in regard to Shampoo, I do think it’s funny that she seeks out vengeance largely because Ranma, an outsider, beats her, but also, I think in part, because Ranma and his dad ate her victory food. And I think that’s pretty funny. It just feels like a product of its time. And honestly, I feel like that was a lot of the case with Urusei Yatsura when that came out, was that— You know, humor is always subjective, but we’re talking about series that… You know, humor was different 30-plus years ago. And I think there’s power in nostalgia. I think there’s also… your ability to be objective can also be obscured by nostalgia. And fortunately or unfortunately, I don’t really have nostalgia for Ranma ½. And, yeah, I’m kinda… I appreciate my time with it, maybe I’ll revisit it, but I just kind of fell off of it.

ALEX: Mm-hm. Well… Yeah, so, some points in its favor, but some points they definitely could have updated or perhaps played with a bit for the contemporary adaptation, sounds like.

CY: Yeah. And, like I said, I do understand—because I’ve watched all that’s available—I do understand why people like it. That’s actually been the real joy, is I get why this is so important, I get why it’s nostalgic. I get why people do gendered readings of it and all these interesting things with fandom and academic interactions with it. It’s just not for me, and I’m okay with that.

ALEX: Cool. Well, no worries. Thank you for taking the plunge with that one.

Hey, we get to bring everybody to the mic for this one. This is Nina the Starry Bride, is next. How are we feeling?

PETER: Oh, boy.

ALEX: Stressed. I will answer my own question. I’m feeling stressed.

[Laughter]

PETER: Yeah, I don’t know if I had much to say about this when we checked in at, like, Episode 6, and I honestly kind of fell off of it, but I caught back up and I chose the wrong time to stop because it’s at that point that everything really gets crazy. Once Sett comes in the picture, it’s like, “Oh, no, it’s a love triangle but one of them recreationally does purges in other countries!” [Chuckles] And you’re like, “Oh, wait a minute. That’s not a good guy to have in a love triangle.”

[Chuckling]

PETER: And also, I don’t know… Her quirkiness has gone to new levels. Like, I think he steals— Well, it wasn’t her first kiss, but Sett steals a kiss and she gets revenge on him. I’m not sure if she bit his mouth or just, like, kissed him to put the kiss back or something, but she seemed very proud of herself and he was super confused. That was after he just killed a tiger out of nowhere, too, and now she is carrying the tiger’s baby around. Very crazy stuff.

CY: [crosstalk] Well, no, no. The whole point of the kiss… The whole point of the kiss was that she was showing [that] without love a kiss means nothing!

PETER: Oh, was that it?

CY: She says that.

PETER: Oh, after… after…

CY: Yes. That without pasión, without amor, a kiss is nothing, which is wild to do when this man has you locked up in his big palace house!

PETER: Well, that was after he was bleeding from a tiger slash on his chest after saving her life.

CY: Yeah. Right, right. Because she— Because y’all, I’m gonna be real, when… Spoiler: when that carriage fell with Nina in it—

PETER: Yeah, oh, my God.

CY: —a part of me got the excitement I get when I watch Jaws 2 and see the sharks attack people, where I was like, “Whoo! Oh, plot twist!” And, I mean, she survives. Which, I shouldn’t sound upset about that. She does survive. And then she gets a pet tiger after she gets attacked by a tiger in the woods. Which, like, where is this country that you just have wild tigers?

PETER: Well, and, yeah, now, at the end of the series, she got sent to a gulag in the frozen norths, which is also apparently in the same country. So, it has gotten pretty crazy.

ALEX: I guess the territory is pretty widespread. They’ve made a big show of how they are a very greedy, unforgiving empire, so I would— We haven’t— Or maybe the manga has a nice fantasy map at the beginning of it or something, but I’m assuming it’s like, “Look, we can cover any biome we need to.” I’m really enjoying the sort of cross-cultural, sort of part–East Asian, part-Byzantine, part-European… Like, the costume design is very interesting to me.

CY: It’s got that Ottoman vibe.

ALEX: Yeah, yeah. So, they’re a big—

CY: Got that Ottoman vibe.

ALEX: They’re a big, nasty empire. And, you know, I admire Nina for staying strong and staying positive in the face of all of this.

CY: I admire her for staying strong. I don’t admire her for staying stupid.

ALEX: I— Ooh! Okay. [Chuckles] Let’s talk through that. [Chuckles]

CY: I mean, look, I love in shoujo series where the main lead is just like, “I’ve got stars in my eyes, and if I believe I can get through it!” But I’m gonna be real: like, Nina, I guess you didn’t go through 2024 because, were I in her situation, I would be like, “I can get through it, but I’m a little upset. I’m a little traumatized.” And I guess part of the charm is that Nina is persistently kind and happy, except for one moment where she’s very, very sad. But it’s just also like she is naive in a way that is kind of grating at times. And I’m like, “Nina, you were like a street orphan in this plot. Where are those street smarts?” And then I think back to the fact that she trusted her friend at the beginning who was gonna leave her to get killed, and I’m like, “Okay, well…” [Mumbles indistinctly] She’s just a really kind person. She’s just a really kind person. 

But it frustrates me because she doesn’t feel like a fully formed human in that she just keeps being— She’s, like, toxically positive. And, like, Nina, it’s okay to be upset. And I say that because I feel like part of the cliffhanger we get left on with Sett getting poisoned is a bit of her positivity coming through, because Nina is very ready to kinda take the blame for everything a little. She’s also like, “I didn’t do it. Get a doctor. Can I see Sett?” But it’s just… I don’t know how to put it because I don’t want to go against my kind of feminist mindset, because I do think that teenage girls have a right to be unabashedly happy, but there is something about the way that Nina is written sometimes in scenes where I’m like Nina is not realistic.

ALEX: Mm-hm. Yeah, no, I get that, yeah.

CY: And I know she’s fake. Like, she doesn’t exist. But you know.

ALEX: Yeah, no, I totally get that read, and I have pretty early on, as well—I think I said this last episode—I was a bit frustrated with how she is, sort of, in a certain way, ping-ponged between plot points and just sort of reacts to it as best she can. Later in the series, I really did come to appreciate… I’m like, okay, maybe some of it is her naivete, being very new to this world, you know, being forced in here as an impersonator and just not knowing how it works. And her decision, then, is to say, “Well, my resilience is going to come from me not giving up and being aggressively nice to everybody even when they are absolute worst to me,” which does, in some cases, really work. It really throws some people off, especially Sett. That’s kind of where we start to begin to get character development from him towards a positive direction, is he’s just so confused by the fact that she is a good person, and you can sort of see the wheels turning in his head. And perhaps he was starting to become a better man. Who knows? 

Certainly, she makes an interesting contrast, then, against characters like Sett, who have very much grown up in this heartless imperial system and have been abused and have suffered the consequences of just being born as who they are, basically. I don’t remember exactly the genealogical arrangement of it. Basically Sett ended up growing up in this freaky little monastery where he was treated a certain way because his parents were certain people. And part of that is why he’s… He’s also in this, you know, classic bullshit where he has four brothers and they’re all trying to kill each other and their aunt, who is the king, is like, “Hell, yeah. This is fun. Go for it.” You know, it does a good job—

CY: She— I just want to say: shout-out. She was the best part of the series.

ALEX: She is fun. Well—

CY: She was so hot. She was so hot.

ALEX: [crosstalk] “Fun” is maybe the wrong word [Chuckles], but she’s very…

CY: No, “fun” is the right word!

ALEX: [Chuckles] But, you know, you see, you build up a contrast between Nina, who is very new to this, and the people who have grown up in this very nasty dog-eat-dog system and the kinds of people that that turns them into, both at Prince Azure’s different type of resilience and Prince Sett being the way that he is and so confused and baffled that Nina would actually want to be a good person. [Chuckles] And then you have Nina in the middle of it being like, “No, no! I’m going to be resilient. Part of me wants to break down. That’s not going to get me anywhere.” I think it’s something she says in the 12th episode. She’s like, “Being sad about this is not going to do anything for me, so I’m just going to bottle that all up and I’m going to be good and I’m going to be positive and I’m going to try and just see what I can do.” And it does end with a bastard of a cliffhanger—with, hopefully, a Season 2? But maybe just a big banner that says, “Go and read the manga.”

CY: If we don’t get a Season 2… If we don’t get a Season 2, I will riot. Don’t leave me like we got left when Talentless Nana came out.

ALEX: [Chuckles]

CY: I need Nina the Starry Bride S2 2026! I mean, 2025 would be great, but 2026, I’ll take it.

PETER: Being realistic here—

CY: Don’t leave me, cliffhanger.

PETER: Yeah. In the US, that definitely would have been a sequel hook, but in the world of anime, sometimes that’s just like, “Hey, look at all this cool stuff you can expect in the manga. Go ahead.”

CY: [quiet] No…

PETER: So, we’ll see. We don’t know one way or the other.

ALEX: Yeah, it is, of course, in that unfortunate camp of being a shoujo or a josei, where sometimes those adaptations just don’t get the resources that they deserve. Sometimes they do, like My Happy Marriage is getting a second season right now, I believe, first episode airing very soon. So, maybe there’s hope! I don’t know. I really do not know how the dice rolls on these things in that corporate world, but it would be really cool to be able to see, in full color and motion, the next step of their adventures, because there is… maybe it’s not as tangible as it could be, but there is a sense of growth there for Nina that I would like to see. And just the way the stakes keep escalating, it could only get more bananas from here, and I do want to see how those relationships develop and how she survives it all. You know?

PETER: Yeah. And really, like, will she end up with the guy she likes and survive? And will there be a genocide or not? Keep adding on top of that, yeah.

ALEX: [crosstalk] Yes. [Laughs]

CY: [Laughs] Those really are the stakes!

PETER: Mm-hm.

ALEX: Individual people are definitely gonna feel differently about this, but I thought it walked an interesting… it walked a line where it was sort of explaining and giving backstory as to why Sett is the horrible way that he is without necessarily excusing the horrible things that he does. It wasn’t like, “Aw! But, you see, he’s so sad, and so he had to shoot that lady in the face the first time we met him. Don’t you see? He had to go to war and become famous for being a bloody war god who commits genocides, because he had a bad childhood.” It didn’t quite feel like it was doing that.

CY: [crosstalk] It’s so out of pocket when you say it out loud.

ALEX: [Laughs]

CY: Like, who gave this traumatized child a gun?

[Chuckling]

ALEX: They’ve invented guns in this world, and it was a terrible idea.

PETER: Yeah, and the only person they gave the gun to was Sett, the guy who loves doing purges. There’s one gun, and they gave it to that guy, yeah.

CY: [crosstalk] And he will use it! And he will absolutely— He will pull out the Byzantine glicky, in a heartbeat!

PETER: Yep. He’s an endangered animal. He’s going off.

ALEX: I felt like they balanced it nicely enough, letting you know his tragic backstory but not using that to handwave away his more nasty activities and personality traits. But again, different people may read that differently. Different people may be completely sick of his shit and not support him at all. I mean, I will say, if we’re doing the whole love triangle thing, I’m definitely wearing the T-shirt that says Team Azure. He would be my pick!

PETER: The other option is the genocide guy, so I hope there aren’t too many people on the other side of that rivalry.

CY: I’m Team Sett because I could fix him.

PETER: Oh, no.

CY: I could fix him.

ALEX: [Chuckles]

CY: Nina could fix him.

ALEX: Nina could fix him! I actually believe that. [Chuckles] You know, good for her!

CY: Nina can heal him. Like, that’s just the messiness inside me.

ALEX: Mm-hm. Yeah. So, hey, we could keep talking about that for ages, I think. And I hope we get to keep talking about it, because I hope it gets to continue. But for now, again, leaves us on a bust of a cliffhanger but gives us a very interesting journey along the way that I do encourage people to check out, a few content warnings withstanding, obviously. Any more thoughts on that one?

PETER: We’ve had too many already.

ALEX: [Chuckles] Well, for a complete change in tone, how about we talk about Magilumiere? [Chuckles]

CY: Yay!

ALEX: Yay! Something a little more lighthearted.

CY: It’s so good! It’s so good! It’s so good! Like, ugh! I have craved a magical girl show where they ask the question “What if being a magical girl was like a salaried job that you could do?” And this is it. It’s so good. It has a lot— I mean, I know the manga is a little bit more complex. I really liked it. Every time they transformed, I was into it. The Kaii that they fight, I was into. They have a magic expo. So, like, you can go to the industry expo and learn about the different tools of the trade and programs. And things go awry, and it’s our girls in to save the day. They have, like, the Amazon of magical girls. It’s so good! It’s so good. The Amazon of magical girls is definitely AST. And it’s a really compelling show, and it ends in a place where I hope we get more? Please?

ALEX: It ends on a thing saying, “See you in Season 2.” So, this one, we actually do have confirmation it’s going forward. So, woohoo! Which is good.

CY: It sure did. I think I was so rattled by the shocking amount of MrBeast commercials I got during my watch on Amazon Prime that I think I forgot it said Season 2. I was just being hate-crimed by a 24-year-old with too much money.

ALEX: He’s 24? Okay, anyway, that’s a different tangent for a different day! [Chuckles] Yes, no, this was really good, this was really fun. I have the smallest of nitpicks, which is that they…

CY: Give it to me.

ALEX: Well, there’s just that one-off line where they feel the need to explain why it’s mostly magical girls rather than magical anybody, which is some sort of pseudoscientific fantasy lingo about how the energy in women and men is inherently different and only women can wield magical power this way. Which, I get why you’d want to do that, but, meh, you know, gets a bit essentialist. Not that great.

CY: It activated my inner Iron Widow YA fan, because in that book there’s the concept of, like, women and men have different levels of chi. Here in Magilumiere, literally, they say the line, “Men have…” something like unchecked power levels. Like, they can’t refine it, essentially. Which begs the question, like… so, is it only cis women that can be magical girls? Like, could a trans woman be a magical girl? Could someone who was assigned female at birth but transitions… like, do they have to retire? It was upsetting.

ALEX: Yeah. Again, I see why they would want to throw in a justification for that, because, you know, like, why are they all magical girls? It’s like, well, because magical girls is the genre that we’re tapping into. But trying to do logistics of it does lead to some unfortunate essentialist things like that. However, they might… you know, I want to leave them room to maybe unpack that a bit as they go forward and to maybe learn more about how the whole system kind of works. The other thing we—

CY: Right, because I think it would be compelling for the boss to be a magical girl.

ALEX: Yeah! Well, I mean, I do want to talk about the boss, because I do love him and I wish I could talk about him more but they have unfortunately left us hanging with regards to his backstory, which is implied to be quite significant, possibly tragic, and is implied to be tied into why he started dressing like a magical girl at work. There’s just a couple of things throughout, right, that they’re like, “Oh, well, you know, he only started doing this at a certain point in his life.” Ooh, what could have happened?

CY: Right, because it was like 15 years ago during… I believe they just call it the Calamity, the Kaii Calamity.

ALEX: Yes. So, I wish… I kind of wish we had gotten more of that so we could see how that was handled and we could talk through it and assure people one way or another, because obviously the worst-case scenario with that is it’s like, “Ah, he had this tragic thing happened to him and he started dressing more feminine,” which, you know, whether or not it intends to, does slip into that shared kind of transphobic idea that you would only start quote-unquote “crossdressing” and gender non-conforming if something sort of pathologic happens to you. Which is not necessarily what the show is going for, but if it is tapping into that, it may be very unpleasant. You know?

CY: It’s an unfortunate implication that, like, yeah, he’s only doing this because of trauma instead of, like, he’s doing this because he likes frilly things.

ALEX: He could just be doing this because he wants to look cute. So, we don’t know that, I can’t comment on it either way, and I won’t make a ruling on it either way, given that I haven’t… we don’t have that information yet. I don’t think the manga, where it’s out in English, gets to that yet. So, as it is, the middle-aged businessman lore remains a mystery. But hey, it is getting a Season 2, so we’ll be able to comment on it later. As for now, I—

CY: Yay, more MrBeast ads.

[Chuckling]

ALEX: I do like him, though. I think that he’s… Apart from, again, maybe that implication, there’s something kind of iffy going on with the way it’s framing his cute fashion sense and, of course, that very unfortunate introduction scene where he’s so tall and so scary and so weird. He’s lovely. He’s great.

CY: He’s such a good boss.

ALEX: [crosstalk] You know, he could have just been a one-off joke character, but he’s genuinely a really nice character and he’s got, like… Koyama Rikiya is in there doing his very serious mentor voice and adding a lot of gravitas, and it’s… You know, I appreciate it for that, even if it maybe has some more wonky things down the track. So, more Magilumiere coming soon. Soon, question mark? Maybe. We’ll see.

CY: I hope.

ALEX: I hope. Fingers crossed. We believe in magic.

Okay, speaking of gender, [Chuckles] I gotta talk about How I Attended an All-Guy’s Mixer, which has been interesting, because a few of us on staff watched this and had quite different reactions to it. So, I’ve shared some notes here from Caitlin, which she has helpfully provided about her thoughts. You’ve heard some of my thoughts already, so I will go to Caitlin, and then I’ll go back to me.

So, Caitlin says: “I really enjoyed the differences in each couple’s relationships and their relationship with their own gender. Suou starts wearing menswear outside of work more intentionally, even buying matching shirts of herself and Tokiwa, which is cute. Meanwhile, Hagi finds himself equally attracted to Kohaku both in and out of drag, but in different ways, and spends a lot of time reflecting on just what that means for his own sexual orientation, rather than simply being relieved that he was attracted to a girl the whole time. Given, he does it in the most histrionic way possible, but that seems to be more about who he is as a person than any kind of homophobia. There are certainly cisheteronormative readings available, but the characters don’t come across that way to me, and even so, I think there’s a value in a series that probes at the boundaries of cissexuality and heterosexuality, because even cishet people can develop their own relationships with their gender and sexual orientation. Finally, it’s important to keep in mind that Japanese culture has a distinct history of cross-gender play and performance, separate from ours in the West. There’s a lot of cultural connotations that may be flying by us.”

Now, I don’t disagree with any of that. I think that is all totally valid, of course. And in fact, it was nice to hear a more positive read on the show from Caitlin and from Dee because I think what happened to me along the way was, between all the stuff I talked about last time and between another couple of small unfortunate moments that I will explain more in a moment, I hit a point where the show… The show is being playful with ideas of gender, with ideas of sexuality. And in that space, it stumbles a couple of times. And whether or not that stumble is uncomfortable or not for you will depend on you as a person, your sense of humor, what you’re bringing to the table, all sorts of things. For me, the stumbles were such that at a certain point in the show, I was just sort of on edge and braced for a microaggression, which is not very conductive energy to enjoy a romcom. So, I was, at a certain point, just uncomfortable and not actually being able to engage and enjoy when it actually was being cute and actually was playing with more nuance.

And so, I think, yeah, from our very rigorous study of three different people on one editorial staff, different people may have very different reactions to this show. And, you know, it’s important to have shows like that. It’s important to have shows that play around in this space and maybe get a little messy with it, because, you know, gender presentation, sexuality… It’s a messy space, and it’s a really funny space, potentially. The risk is—this is the thing that I kind of want to bring up—is that when it plays around with those kind of jokes about gender and presentation, it runs the risk of wandering into, as you mentioned before with Magilumiere, potentially, that shared language of transphobic clichés and jokes. And the example I’ll give of that is—

CY: Exactly.

ALEX: Yeah. And the direct example I’ll give of that is… there’s a bit fairly late in the show, middle-ish, where Fuji’s poor, unassuming boyfriend [Chuckles]—what’s his name?—Asagi… he spills something on his shirt in the bar, and so he has to borrow a uniform, which means that a customer comes in at that moment and assumes he’s a staff member: a.k.a., she assumes that he is a woman dressed as a man, as opposed to a cis man. And then, at a certain point, she figures out that’s not the case and everyone’s a bit embarrassed about it. That’s the joke. That’s fine, sure. But the punchline of the joke, the bit where she realizes that he is not a staff member and is, in fact, a dude, it comes with a bit where it zooms in on his Adam’s apple and does big red arrows pointing it to it going “Boink, boink, boink!” And again, in context, not at all what it’s doing, but certainly I have also seen that visual coding and that punchline used elsewhere in jokes about clocking a person, basically, like, “Oh, you thought this person was a woman, but then you noticed they had man parts. And goodness, me.”

CY: Well, and I think you can have a gendered joke that is with a cishet group and it still be transphobic. Like, you can have— Unfortunately, this is Burger King: you can have it your way and you can have it both ways. And sometimes you can have a joke that, in context, is just a sight gag and it makes perfect sense, but it can also still echo those more transphobic things. And while Japan does have a different history with crossdressing and gender play, Japan also still has its own transphobic society, and so that still informs jokes like that.

ALEX: Yeah, and it’s… Yeah, it’s tricky. I mean, on one hand, I feel kind of silly getting so tangled up in that one joke because it is just a quick one-off thing and it really doesn’t affect the rest of the story. But I wanted to bring it up— Well, first of all, I wanted to mention it so people know that it’s there, because I found that quite jarring and quite upsetting. And fortunately for me, I have never been on the receiving end directly of that kind of transmisogynistic joke, so I could only imagine how confronting it could be for somebody who has. So, you know, there is a content warning if nothing else. 

But also, it is just a little throwaway punchline, but that’s what they go for as a little throwaway punchline. It’s this thing, which is… You know, even if that’s not what they intend to do, it’s quite offensive and quite upsetting. So, things like that, again… it just stacked up. I’m like, hey, well, if that’s what you’re gonna go for, things like that and things like making a big deal out of seeing the girls out of drag for the first time and the weird voyeurism of other characters seeing the couples and assuming that they’re gay dudes and going a bit “Ooh-wuh!” Which, in fairness, Caitlin also mentioned not liking that heaps. So, we have a bit of consensus on that. You know, just that kind of stuff.

CY: [crosstalk] And I think it’s one of those things— I think it’s one of those things where someone could say, “Oh, it’s silly to get caught up on that.” But the thing is, like, when it is one in millions of examples, to some degree it doesn’t matter if it’s a neutral example. When it’s one in millions of times where the sight gag has been “Let’s point out this person has an Adam’s apple,” a thing that literally every human being has—every human being, you can touch your throat and feel it—it doesn’t lessen the inherent transphobia. I think I’ll give All-Guy’s Mixer a try, because, let me tell you, winter 2020 is a dry season, y’all.

ALEX: [Chuckles]

CY: “2020”? 2025! Trying to take us five years in the past. But, yeah, I really, actually appreciate you and Caitlin’s perspective.

ALEX: Yeah, well, give it a shot. Like, I don’t want to necessarily deter people from watching it. I appreciate what it’s going for. I had a bad time with it. Those statements are both very true. And I think that depending on what you bring to the table in terms of maybe your own gender experience, just your sense of humor generally, how sensitive you can be to these kind of things or how much you can laugh them off— you know, someone may watch that and be like, “Ah, yeah, that happened to me. Really funny.” I don’t know.

 You know, I think it’s… As with all things that deal with these kind of identity-based things, it will be very personal how you react to it. So, sorry to anyone who is settling down to this episode like, “Oh, boy! I can’t wait for AnimeFeminist.com to give me a definitive answer on whether the show is problematic or not.” I mean, maybe don’t bring that kind of attitude [Chuckles] to our content, but we cannot offer that to you in this case. But, you know, check it out and see how it speaks to you, is my response on that one. It’s not one that I’m going to be returning to and not one that I’m personally going to be recommending, but I leave the door opened for folks to make their own opinions, for sure.

Goodness. Now, with that, we are into… We’re way over time. But how’s Dandadan? [Chuckles] Lots to talk about with this one, as well. A highlight or maybe a lowlight reel? What should the folks know? Oh, this is also confirmed for, I think, a second season, or maybe a second cour.

CY: It better be!

PETER: Yeah, spring or summer—I can’t remember which—it’s coming back. I think summer. I think it’s six months but can’t remember for sure.

CY: I mean, highlights… The opening. Always that opening. It’s a banger. I love the character development, aside from two pretty big problems. Aira actually became my queen. I did not like her before; I like her now. Lowlights. This is just a personal grievance: wow, this show uses a lot of African American vernacular. So, don’t like that. Don’t like Jiji. Want to push him down some stairs. There is nothing like the fierce dislike you can have when you are praying on the downfall of a child in an anime.

PETER: Wait, why? Just because Jiji’s annoying or…?

CY: I just don’t like him. He’s so annoying! He’s messing up the vibes.

PETER: Wow.

CY: He’s messing up the vibes! Get him outta here!

PETER: [crosstalk] Well, is that how you felt about Aira to start out with, and then it shifted on you?

CY: Yeah. Yeah, that’s how I felt.

PETER: Okay, well, maybe get ready.

CY: [plaintive] No…

PETER: You don’t want to— You don’t even like the idea of liking Jiji? [Chuckles]

CY: I just… He’s so annoying. Because I’m watching the dub, and in the dub—okay, aside from the “Deez nuts” line, which was funny, it was well timed—he’s just annoying!

PETER: Okay. Well…

CY: I’m just like, “Who is this interloper who’s eating all the good sushi?”

PETER: Six months, I’ll be checking back in with you on that one, because… Yeah, I feel— Like, they’ve doubled the size of the main squad, and I love literally every character. And yeah, I kind of felt the same way about both Jiji and Aira to start out with, but then, I don’t know, you kind of learn about the character, they have one really sad episode, and then you’re just like, “I will kill for this baby. This small child.”

CY: Yeah, because I would absolutely murder for Aira. Like, it’s not a question. I would say, other lowlight for me is, ooh, hope we’re done with the weird sexual assault as a part of the plot element, or the nudity.

PETER: Mm-hm. This was, to my recollection, the last time that the series really utilizes this, and I was kind of blown away that they decided to make it the first season’s cliffhanger, kind of at—

CY: [Chuckles] Yeah!

PETER: So, I don’t know if this is too spoilery, but I made a post about it on Bluesky where I was saying, like, if they had literally fit in one more chapter on the end of the series, that danger would have passed. It literally gets resolved, like, right away. Those guys get beat up.

CY: Oh, that’s such bullshit that they ended it there.

PETER: Yeah, it’s, like, not even a thing. And then, the next scene ends with her… or the next scene she’s in, too, there’s a fight scene where she literally does that same kick she did in the first episode again—you know, to her boyfriend when he was being a piece of shit. So, they could have had a better cliffhanger where someone’s actually in danger and her showing up to deliver… In the first episode, almost the first scene, she would have kicked a person the same way, except it would have actually blown ‘em up because she’s super powerful now. And that would have represented the character growth with an actual cliffhanger representing a non-sexualized danger. So, just one more chapter they could have included, but I think they thought this was a more compelling one, which kind of speaks to, I guess, the ideas of the people making the show—

CY: It’s compelling, alright!

[Chuckling]

PETER: Yeah. Unfortunate. I agree. I’ve been kind of racking my brain trying to think of all the times that this happens in the series. I believe this is like the last time. But sorry to anyone if I got that wrong. So, yeah, I think that’s kind of the big discussion point for the second half, is just how it ended unfortunately, even though I think we can all agree pretty much everything leading up to it was pretty excellent, Jiji’s annoying behavior aside. Canonically annoying, by the way. He’s supposed to be annoying.

CY: Okay, because I was just, like… The moment he arrived, I was like, “I hate him.” And, like, it’s not nice to hate a child. [Chuckles] It doesn’t feel good.

PETER: No, he’s supposed to be—

CY: It does not feel good.

PETER: That’s his gap, is he’s athletic and handsome and tall and looks like he’s like the… (what do you call it?) the prom king or whatever, and then he’s just an absolute cringelord behind it all.

CY: He is! Like… And I think once I fall in love with this character… which I know is gonna happen when I go and climb in bed tonight and read the manga. But, like, [Chuckles] you know, it’s the same thing that happened with Aira, where I was like, “Who is this child?” And then, now I’m like, “I will fight for my daughter.”

ALEX: Well, we will return to that when the second season comes out and see what’s going on with it, see how it keeps playing with the material that it’s been given.

Super quick, I will stop off on The Stories of Girls Who Couldn’t Become Magicians. Another note from Caitlin here, which unfortunately does just say, “Yeah, I dropped this one. There were way too many plot threads to be resolved in too little time, they didn’t intertwine in a satisfying way, and I found the one-note background characters increasingly intolerable. And Lily Hoshino deserves better than this.” So, a shame, because that was one of our, you know, ones we thought had great potential that did not end up living up to it, unfortunately, as can sometimes happen.

To bring us to a grand finale, though, we have 365 Days to the Wedding. I had a lot of feelings about this one. I really enjoyed it. What did you think, Peter?

PETER: I think I really liked it when it was… it had, like, two modes: one where— The tension of them putting themselves in a situation where they’re pretending to be in a relationship and then realizing they actually liked each other was a great premise, and it expressed itself in kind of two modes over the course of the story. The first was them literally not being able to realize that they were attracted to the other person, which I found just unbearable. That can be a thing that you do for a couple episodes, but then after that, it’s just like, what’s wrong with this person? They’re not able to… Like, you’re like, “I’m blushing when I’m in the same room with them, and I really like spending all my time with them. What could be going on? I have no idea. There’s no way to know!” That… I just find it so boring. 

The other part that I like, though, is that they both consider themselves so weird that they—and they are both weird—that they kind of have both a difficulty imagining themselves in a relationship and uncertainty about how the other person would, if they saw their true selves actually, think of them after that. So, basically, the type of stuff I liked in the series was, well, one, the fact that they are genuinely weird. So, when she is like, “Okay, we gotta find out what living together is like. And in preparation for that, I set up a tent to set up in your room so that we wouldn’t actually be sleeping in the same area.” Like, that is a weird thing to do. You are a genuinely weird person. But then, of course, you know… So, that’s fun hijinks. And then, on a more serious note, her saying… and this was also funny, but it’s kind of like, “Let’s go on a date. I want him to see what I’m actually like, and then he’s just gonna realize that I’m a weirdo, he’s not gonna be attracted to me, and we can finally get this over with.” And then, of course, you know, they go on the date, she’s just looking at… (what’s that called?)

ALEX: It’s an aqueduct.

PETER: … a river that was a tributary to Edo and, like, enjoying the history. Actually, that’s the exact thing I do when I’m in Japan, so I was like, “Oh, what the hell? [Chuckles] I’m not boring, am I?” But yeah, and then the guy’s like, “Oh, this is pretty fun, although I wish she weren’t being so distant from me, like she was preparing for me to get pissed off and leave at any moment.” So, that part… that’s the stuff I thought was really charming. And then, of course, when they kiss at the end of the date and they’re both just screaming internally, I think she then remains silent and just gets home after, like, a two-hour commute and then screams inside of her apartment or something. That stuff’s all fun. So, I think that it was a good idea, and when they were executing on the independent weirdnesses of the characters well, it was an extremely charming series. It’s just they were doing a lot of those really annoying, usually high-school tropes of the people having difficulties recognizing their own emotions that… just, I would hope that people who already are set in their careers and have so much evidence in front of them would not participate in, I guess.

ALEX: Mm-hm. Yeah, I very much appreciated the depiction of the overthinking and the various ways that kind of manifested. Like, there was a scene where he confesses that he’s interested in her and asks her out on a date, and she just has to go silent for like 20 minutes or something. He basically gets awkward and leaves, politely. But that’s from his point of view. You see, inside her headspace, she is just screaming at herself, like “You have to say something, and you have to say the right thing. You have to respond. Don’t just sit there saying, ‘Oh, my God, oh, my God.’” Like, she’s spiraling, but it doesn’t appear externally, and I really liked that and appreciated that. The characters are obviously—

PETER: Yeah, that happened after they kissed, too. She said, “I’m gonna have to leave now because I have a lot to think about. I want to let you know that I am not angry, and I will talk to you at an unspecified time in the future.” [Chuckles] And then she leaves.

ALEX: They work out how to communicate with each other. But they are very— I think I noted this back when I did the premiere review. They are very— I don’t want to say— Okay, maybe I will. I will say “neurodivergent coded” or, at least with a lot of stuff that will really resonate with— No matter what ways your neurons diverge, I feel like there’s a lot of relatable stuff in these characters, both as just the way that they are and as a result of how they’ve grown up and the things that have happened to them. Like, Rika especially, I felt a lot of emotions about her thing where she sort of was forced to grow up a bit early and has really compartmentalized and learned to switch off her emotions to make things more convenient for the people around her, and especially living with her single mother who was always off working, and her best friends were maps, because she understood that; she didn’t quite understand people and was just trying to be good and helpful. I love her a lot.

So, I think, yeah… And the way that they… they figure their way past all of this weirdness around the traditional expectations of how their relationship should be and come to the absolutely shocking conclusion that you should marry someone if you like them and not because society says that you should and holds it up as this arbitrary standard of successful adulthood, which is the theme of the show. It comes across in those two characters but also really interestingly in some of the background characters. Which, I’m like, is this an article? Maybe. I’m turning it over in my brain. 

But as a quick version, you had, for example, the character who got divorced, which you mentioned last time, and just felt like his life was completely falling apart and hadn’t seen it coming, and everyone thought he was so perfect until it happened. And the younger coworker who was on all the dating apps, who, it turned out, had not had a very happy childhood, and so was chasing this very nebulous idea of getting married and having kids and that that would make him happy and that would fill in those holes in his life, and he was looking for that more than he was necessarily looking for a relationship with an individual person that functioned. When he actually got into a relationship, it ended up not quite ending out too well. And there’s a single mother character, as well. It’s a little bit more ridiculous, but you obviously have the example from early on of the princess who runs away with the girl of her dreams instead of entering her arranged marriage. 

All these sort of things throughout that just turns over this idea that Marriage, with a capital M, is held up as this very brilliant… this special thing that you have to have. It’s a milestone in your life that shows you are a successful normal adult. And a lot of people sort of stumble into it, chasing that ideal, rather than letting an actual romantic relationship with a person they want to spend their life with develop organically. And of course, our weirdo protagonists, bless them, they find their way to romance in spite of all of that in the end, and it’s very lovely. So, very cute and also very interesting.

PETER: [crosstalk] Spent 11 episodes revealing that they’re not actually getting married, admitting it to every character in this entire series that they’ve set up, and then in the 12th episode, they text everybody instead, “Actually, we’re getting married.”

ALEX: “Actually we are getting married.”

[Chuckling]

ALEX: “But for real this time!” [Chuckles] So, yes, I really like that one, and I thought it was really interesting. And hey, cool to see just romance starring adult characters in a workplace [Chuckles], as well, along the way.

PETER: Oh, bless, yes. Real adults in my anime. Can’t believe it.

ALEX: Wowee! Cool. All right. That, I think, brings us to the end of proceedings, so we’re not running too overlong. We have a few— There’s been some sequels and some extra series that have come out, as well. We won’t really get into them here. You will see a couple of them in our recommendations post coming out soon, though, so look forward to that. For now, though, I am going to wrap us up here. I’m going to close the curtain on the 2024 year of anime, at least in terms of our podcast coverage.

Thank you for listening. If you like what you heard and you want to see more of our stuff, you can of course, go to animefeminist.com. We’ve got reviews, we’ve got articles, we’ve got interviews and more podcasts for you to go through. If you really like what you heard, you can help us keep the lights on and help keep us paying our editors and contributors fairly. You can do that over at our Patreon, which I dropped the link for before. Or you can go over to our Ko-fi [pronounced “KOH-fee”] or our Ko-fi [pronounced “coffee”], as well. If you want to find us on socials, they are all gathered in one nice big pile at our Linktree, which is linktr.ee/animefeminist.

And, well, there we go. We’ve pondered orbs, we’ve had complicated feelings about gender… All the essentials! And, hey, that’s been 2024 of the anime season. We’ll look forward to 2025 and what that has to bring us. We hope to see you here very soon. Take care, everybody.